medical
emjohnson | October 7, 2009Researchers from Simon Fraser University, just a stone's throw from where I sit in Vancouver, have determined that the side effects from this endocrine disruptor can alter children's behavior:
Researchers have just linked prenatal exposure to bisphenol-A - a near-ubiquitous industrial chemical - with subtle, gender-specific alterations in behavior among two year olds. Girls whose mothers had encountered the most BPA early in pregnancy tended to become somewhat more aggressive than normal, boys became more anxious and withdrawn.
Another recent study, by Joe Braun of the University of North…
emjohnson | September 19, 2009Buffalo News / Adam Zyglis
"As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth."
- William Hazlitt, "On Patronage and Puffing", 1822
emjohnson | September 15, 2009Apparently so. It turns out that in nine states and Washington, D.C. insurance companies are not prohibited from dropping coverage for patients with a history of domestic abuse. The Women's Law Project documented this in detail in their 2002 Supplement Report entitled "Insurance Discrimination Against Victims of Domestic Violence" (pdf here) and in their 2008 report "Nowhere to Turn: How the Individual Health Insurance Market Fails Women" (pdf here).
According to WLP's 2002 Supplement:
Since 1994, 41 states have adopted some form of legislation prohibiting insurance discrimination against…
emjohnson | August 19, 2009
The only known photograph of famed head case Phineas Gage was discovered last month (on Flickr of all places!). Jack and Beverly Wilgus had the above daguerreotype for thirty years before realizing what it was. As they describe the image's history at their website:
We called it "The Whaler" because we thought the pole he held was part of a harpoon. His left eye (we have flipped the picture since the daguerreotype is a laterally-reversed mirror image) is closed so we invented an encounter with an angry whale that left him with one eye stitched shut.
We would still be telling that story if…
emjohnson | August 14, 2009In light of the AstroTurf outrage promoted by right-wing organizations, media pundits and lobbying firms over the health care reform legislation, I thought it would be appropriate to remember the reason we need reform in the first place.
In this interview with Bill Moyers, Wendell Potter, former head of corporate communications for CIGNA, reveals how the current system works and how the insurance companies, drug manufacturers and hospital conglomerates want our health care system to remain exactly as it is. Business is booming and they want those dollars to keep rolling in.
emjohnson | July 20, 2009Mark Hemingway, the Conservative "tough-guy" for the National Review, has just posted a rant against health concerns for the endocrine disruptor Bisphenol A.
I've seen some estimates that over a billion people have had exposure to BPA and there isn't proof of anything. So why the big scare? I assume trial lawyers are involved in the fear mongering. That's a given. But then I saw that last year two reporters from the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel won a George Polk Award-- a major journalism honor -- for reporting on the "dangers" of BPA. It's another reminder that there are some perverse…
emjohnson | July 10, 2009
The "Revelation" as described by St. John, though likely inspired through the
use of hallucinogens (see The Mystery of Manna).
The title for this post comes from a terrific book by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, but I think it's appropriate for a discussion on faith, feeling and reason. Francis Collins' nomination as Director of the National Institutes of Health has effectively gotten people talking about religion, science and what, if anything, each should have to do with the other. I recently brought up Sam Harris' critique of the editor's at Nature for their praise of Collins' book…
emjohnson | July 10, 2009
Science and religion bicker in the backseat. Collin Purrington / Creative Commons
With Francis Collins' nomination as head of the National Institutes of Health I felt it was appropriate to bring up Sam Harris' letter to the journal Nature objecting to what he called "high-minded squeamishness" on the part of the editors for their praise of his book The Language of God. In the book Collins states:
As believers, you are right to hold fast to the concept of God as Creator; you are right to hold fast to the truths of the Bible; you are right to hold fast to the conclusion that science offers no…
emjohnson | July 6, 2009Rejection of authority and working-class values inspired the scientific method.
As everyone knows, when food is digested it is processed into chyle and turned into blood by the liver. This blood then flows to the lungs where it releases any impurities into the air. Flowing from the lungs into the left ventricle of the heart the blood then mixes with air and is charged with animal spirit - where it changes from dark purple to bright red. This charged blood then passes through the arteries and throughout the body.At least, if you had lived anywhere in the Western world up until the early 1600s…
emjohnson | June 28, 2009 Our newborn takes after his father.The following is something of an impromptu experiment in live birth twittering. It started out simply as a means to update friends and family, but as events transpired we received some unexpected international attention. The entire labor lasted 47 hours, involved three different locations and two surgeries. This after we had carefully planned for a natural birth with no interventions. Thank you to the hundreds of people in at least eight countries who followed our story and sent messages of support. Special thanks to Henry Gee, Senior Editor of…
bioephemera | June 24, 2009
The "gastronomical cocktail" called "sex on a drip" is just one reason to hop a plane to Singapore and visit The Clinic, a theme restaurant that's probably not for the squeamish.
Their website boasts, "Clinic's unique alfresco is easily identified by its hospital whites, colourful pills, syringes, drips, test-tubes, and paraphernalia in all manner of the clinical, all in tribute to the tongue in cheek pop art of Damien Hirst." I don't know about Hirst - rotting, half-preserved sharks don't make me hungry - but their website is definitely fun in a trippy, pharma-chic way, complete with…
bioephemera | June 18, 2009
Joanna of Morbid Anatomy is on a quest to locate private collections of medical oddities. She's already sussed out fourteen such hidden wunderkammern and photographed their treasures, but she wants to find more:
"Who are these private collectors, and what sort of treasures do they possess? How might their methods of displaying collections differ from institutional approaches? Are we reaching a historical moment similar to the pre-museum era of private cabinets, in which the most interesting artifacts are now in private rather than public hands?"
It's a really interesting question.…
bioephemera | May 30, 2009In the June Atlantic Monthly, Joshua Wolf Shenk has a long, moving article about what may be the longitudinal study of all longitudinal studies - the Harvard Study of Adult Development (Grant Study), begun in 1937. Its creator Arlie Beck planned to track 268 "healthy, well-adjusted" men from their sophomore year at Harvard through careers, marriage, families, retirement and eventually death - and somehow, from this glut of longitudinal data, to glean the secrets of "successful living."
But the portrait Shenk paints is as full of pathos as it is of success.
Delving into the case files, now…
palmd | April 30, 2009The time is now. The gauntlet of idiocy rests at our feet. Shall we turn and walk away, or shall we bend down, pick it up, and accept the challenge? What? What's that you say? Turn from the forces of darkness?
ARE WE NOT WO/MEN?!?
We must not turn from the task before us. The Huffington Post has spit in the eye of reason, and worse, has aided in the proliferation of horridly deceptive health news, thinly-disguised infomercials, and frankly dangerous lies.
We have nothing left but our honor, and our honor demands vendetta.
Now, before you start sharpening your knives, I'm actually asking…
bioephemera | March 2, 2009
Wax anatomical figure of reclining woman, Florence, Italy, 1771-1800
Science Museum London
Starting today, the Wellcome Trust and sciencemuseum.org.uk open a brand spanking new collection of medical history archives. "Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine" is searchable by people, place, thing, theme, and time. You can view a timeline of medical history in Europe next to similar timelines for the Islamic empire, Egypt and Greece (I do wish China and India were as prominently placed). You can read essays about larger questions, like what "wellness" means, or play with a cool…
laelaps | November 2, 2007Mark of SB's own Denialism Blog has asked other science bloggers who use animals in their research to speak up and discuss what they do either in their own posts in the comments. I do not participate in lab research involving animals, but I have taken an interest in the subject, especially when non-human primates are used. While I don't doubt the importance of animal testing, I do have reservations about the ethics of using non-human primates in medical research. This is not to say that I advocate the acts of terrorism by extremists as related in Mark's posts, but I do have concerns about…