medicine
oracknows | May 23, 2008My British readers, say it ain't so! Hot on the heels of learning that, bankrolled by antivaccinationists, David Kirby is planning a trip to the U.K. in early June, I find out something even more disturbing. A reader forwarded this press release to me:
From: "Clifford G. Miller"
May 23, 2008 -- CONTACT: David Kirby - dkirby@nyc.rr.com
BESTSELLING AMERICAN AUTHOR
DAVID KIRBY TO SPEAK AT HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
Briefing by Journalist Who Covers Vaccine-Autism Debate is Sponsored
By Lord Robin Granville Hodgson, Baron Hodgson of Shropshire
U.S. Journalist David Kirby, author of the award winning…
oracknows | May 23, 2008I like my Folder of Woo.
Besides providing me endless fodder for this little weekly feature, my Folder of Woo also provides me nearly endless amusement. Sometimes, I'll just peruse it, looking at woo old and new, woo that's been featured in this little weekly exercise in diving into the belly of the beast, woo that has yet to be featured, and woo that will probably never be featured. Unless people suddenly discovery rationality and science, my Folder of Woo is likely to continue to exist. I suppose that could happen, but it's pretty unlikely, which means my Folder of Woo is likely to continue…
oracknows | May 22, 2008There's a new blog in town that I've been meaning to pimp. It's a blog by a retired epidemiologist who got things started looking at the role of diagnostic substitution in autism diagnoses and argued that the autism "epidemic" is an artifact of changing diagnostic criteria.
The blog is Epi Wonk, and it's a good one so far.
This week, I'm really glad Epi Wonk exists. The reason is that somehow, another Geier père et fils crapfest of dumpster-diving has somehow slimed its way into the medical literature, just in time to be used in the Autism Omnibus hearings no doubt. The "study" (if you can…
sb admin | May 21, 2008A rather opinionated reader made me aware of a disturbing issue. In Connecticut--the state whose city of Lyme gave the name to the tick-borne disease--the Attorney General decided that the nation's foremost infectious disease experts have their heads up their arses. Apparently responding to pressure from questionable advocacy groups, the AG launched an "investigation" into the Infectious Disease Society of America's Lyme disease treatment guidelines. The excuse for the investigation was alleged anti-trust violations.
Let's step back a little. As discussed yesterday, there is some…
oracknows | May 21, 2008"Early detection of cancer saves lives."
How many times have you heard this statement or something resembling it? It's a common assumption (indeed, a seemingly common sense assumption) that detecting cancer early is always a Very Good Thing. Why wouldn't it be, after all? For many cancers, such as breast cancer and colon cancer, there's little doubt that early detection at the very least makes the job of treating the cancer easier. Also, the cancer is detected at an earlier stage almost by definition. But does earlier detection save lives? Does finding more disease before surgery that wouldn…
oracknows | May 20, 2008ERV asks: What happens when a PI holding an NIH grant dies, given that PIs support post-docs, graduate students, and technicians in his or her lab?
In other words:
Or what would happen to me if Bossman got hit by a bus or got brain cancer.
Does the NIH have some sort of protocol for what to do when a PI dies? Do they just take the grant back and recycle it into a different award? Do they try to transfer it to someone else at the Uni who can do similar work?
Hell, screw the money, what happens to the ideas?? Thats what horrified me during our scare-- We were helping this fellow with a really…
sb admin | May 20, 2008New diseases are pretty rare these days. It used to be that a good observer could travel to the great unknown and acquire/discribe scads of new (to them) diseases. In the interconnected world of the present, "new" diseases spread rather quickly, and become old. When I was a young attending physician, I had heard of West Nile Fever from small chapters in medical school books. When I took over an inpatient medical service in the summer of 2002, I was taking care of several patients with the disease. It was new to me, but hardly new. Sometimes I wonder if people miss the great days of…
oracknows | May 20, 2008A couple of weeks ago, I linked to an amazingly ignorant antivaccination screed published in the Winona Daily News. In the comments, I was made aware of another antivaccination screed in the form of a letter to the editor to the Winona Post. (Unfortunately, I am unable to locate it online.) Now, today, I find that there are people in Winona who are trying to outdo Jim and Laurie Jenkinson (the authors of the first article) in serious stupidity in the form of a letter to the editor published in the Winona Daily News entitled It Is Important to Learn More About Vaccinations.
I'd normally agree…
oracknows | May 20, 2008I hate it when I fall behind in my journal reading. Of course, it happens all the time, as you might expect, with my time sandwiched between running my lab, writing grants, seeing patients, and operating. Sometimes, though, I get a chance to try to catch up a bit. Such was the case the other day, but unfortunately I came across an article that almost made me wish I hadn't. It was a study published in the February issue of Annals of Surgery1 and it showed that the situation is much worse than I expected. it also shows that I may be a rarer bird than I thought I was, and not just because of my…
oracknows | May 19, 2008I've written a lot about the legal thuggery perpetrated against autism blogger Kathleen Seidel by an unethical lawyer named Clifford Shoemaker, who issued a subpoena against her based on dubious conspiratorial thinking about her supposedly being a shill for big pharma. Shoemaker, in case you didn't know, is a lawyer who represents litigants suing vaccine manufacturers for "vaccine injury." In this case, he represented Reverend Lisa Sykes and her husband as they sued Bayer for alleged vaccine injury, and Kathleen Seidel had done a long post about Shoemaker's activities shortly before he issued…
sb admin | May 19, 2008The NIH announced today that it is launching its "Undiagnosed Diseases Program". This program will evaluate patients who are referred by physicians. They will also ask for input from so-called advocacy groups.
This should be interesting. I'm sure they will be receiving requests from people with "chronic Lyme disase", "Morgellons syndrome", and "chronic fatigue syndrome". From what I can tell from reading the press release, the program is aimed at the individual patient, and is does not focus on epidemiology. This has it's pluses and minuses. The individual patient is the smallest "…
vhughes | May 19, 2008Monday night, the British Parliament voted on embryo science laws for the first time in nearly 20 years. After weeks of debate, the House of Commons voted 336 to 176 to reject a proposed ban on the use of human-animal hybrid embryos in scientific research.
Human-animal hybrids were first created in 2003, by Chinese scientists who fused human cells with rabbit eggs. In 2004, researchers in Minnesota created pigs with pig-human blood cells.
So far, this kind of research has been banned in Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.
Do you agree with Parliament's decision?
Click Here for…
oracknows | May 19, 2008I realize that I've been very, very remiss in attending to a task that I've been meaning to get to since late January. There are several reasons, albeit not excuses, for why I have failed to do this task. Perhaps the most powerful impediment to my overcoming my inertia and just diving in and doing what needs to be done is that it depresses me to no end to contemplate what needs to be contemplated to complete this task. Moreover, although I have completed a great deal, I sense that I have barely even scratched the surface of what needs to be done to complete the task, which also continuously…
sb admin | May 17, 2008MarkH recently gave us a case to play around with. Since this is usually great fun, I thought we could try another one. I'll start you off with very little information, and I'll answer any questions you bring up.
I'll warn you that this one is complex, and shows off the type of intricate problems that internists deal with every day.
A woman in her 60's came to the ER complaining of weakness and light headedness. This is one of my favorite places to stop. For the non-physicians in the crowd, I'll give you a head start. Light headedness is often a sign of insufficient blood flow to the…
oracknows | May 17, 2008Believe it or not, even I, Orac, sometimes get tired of blogging about antivaccination idiocy. Indeed, this week was just such a time. I hope you can't blame me. After all, the last few months have been so chock-full of some of the most bizarre and annoying antics of antivaccinationists at such a frequent clip that there was just no way I could even keep up with it, and trying was starting to burn me out. (I guess there's only so much that the stupid can burn before even Orac's nearly indestructible clear plastic case can handle before he needs a break.) Truth be told, not wanting Respectful…
oracknows | May 16, 2008This week was difficult.
No, it wasn't difficult because I had hit one of my periodic woo writer's blocks that I whine about, no doubt to the occasional annoyance of my readers, even though I have one of the greatest hobbies in the world. I mean, I get to do something that I love (writing and blogging) and even get paid a nominal sum for doing it. Even better, this whole Respectful Insolence⢠thing has grown far beyond my wildest imaginings when more than three years ago, on winter's day in a deep and dark December, I experimented with Blogger on a whim and created the first incarnation of…
clock | May 15, 2008Social networking meets social conscience:
As reported today in the science journal Nature, MalariaEngage.org aims to help in the stuggle against malaria. Rather than throwing buckets of money at big name Western research institutes, the new website aims to give smaller locally-based African projects a bigger profile.
Relying on grass-roots support from people who are concerned about poverty and disease, the website hopes to fund in-country research that would otherwise be overlooked by the big funders such as the Gates Foundation or NIH.
The site provides profiles of projects that…
sb admin | May 15, 2008A few months ago, I gave you a short primer on the immunology of vaccines. It's time now for another short, oversimplified primer, this time on the immunology of HIV. This was originally up on the old blog, but it will provide some necessary background for upcoming posts (I think).
HIV denialists form a persistent little cult, and one of their newest leaders is Gary Null. Despite their small size and dearth of academic heavy-weights, they are quite loud, and can affect health policy.
Let's delve into the immunology, and, once again, please forgive the over-simplification.
HIV---nasty non-…
oracknows | May 15, 2008Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions held about cancer among lay people is that it is one disease. We often hear non-physicians talk about "curing cancer" as though it were a single disease. Sometimes, we even hear physicians, who should know better, using the same sort of fuzzy thinking and language about "curing cancer" as well. But cancer is not a single disease. Indeed, it's a collection of dozens of different diseases, with different cell types of origin, pathophysiologies, behaviors, and treatments. True, there are a fair number of commonalities between cancers in terms of…
oracknows | May 14, 2008...because the author of the book that fueled the rise of the mercury militia in 2005, that indefatigable purveyor of bad science, logical fallacies and bizarre speculations, that useful idiot that antivaccinationists all know and love, is coming to the U.K next month.
Yes, I'm talking about David Kirby. Credulous blogger Ginger of Adventures in Autism has informed me that, thanks to "support" from antivaccinationist groups Generation Rescue and the National Autism Association, Autism Research Institute, Coalition for SAFE MINDS, and Talk About Curing Autism, David Kirby will be traveling to…