medicine
oracknows | September 17, 2007While I'm flogging blog carnivals, here's another one that's right up my alley that seemingly came into existence without my having been aware of it: the Cancer Research Blog Carnival.
The first edition of the carnival at Bayblab has a lot of good stuff. The next edition will be at nosugrefneb.com on October 5. I might have to submit a piece.
grrlscientist | September 17, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, bipolar disorder, manic-depressive illness, unipolar depressive disorder, clinical depression, seasonal affective disorder, SAD, circadian clock, light therapy
"Starry Night" (1889) is an oil painting by Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. It was added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City in 1941. [wallpaper size].
According to a "NewsFocus" article that appeared in last Friday's Science, there is a move afoot to use light therapy and sleep deprivation to help the body's circadian clock reset and maintain…
oracknows | September 17, 2007
It would appear that there's finally some good news in the strange and sad case of Starchild Abraham Cherrix. The AP reports that he and his doctor are reporting that his lymphoma is in remission again:
FLOYD, Va. -- A 17-year-old who won a court battle against state officials who tried to force him to undergo chemotherapy for his lymphatic cancer is in remission following radiation treatments over the past year, the teen and his doctor said.
Starchild Abraham Cherrix's case spurred debate on whether the government should get involved in family medical decisions. It also led to a state law…
oracknows | September 16, 2007I've been very remiss about this, but the e-mail notifying me of it happened to arrive a couple of weeks ago, back when I was out of town because of the recent death in the family. While cleaning out my e-mail boxes, I came across the notice again and decided it was time to rectify my oversight, do my surgeonly blogging duty, and plug these carnivals.
It looks as though there's a new blog carnival in town, and it's all about surgery: Surgexperiences. The latest edition is at Other Things Amanzi. Check it out.
The next edition will be at Suture for a Living on September 30.
j7uy5 | September 16, 2007I support universal coverage in a single-payer system.
I won't belabor the point. Today I just want to
point out another insurance industry lie, printed in the New York Times
today.
It's in an article about Mrs. Clinton's health care finance reform
proposal. (Which I do not support.)
Mrs. Clinton was
href="http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/us/politics/16clinton.html">quoted:
But she is prepared once again to do
battle with insurance companies, which she has said “spend
tens of billions of dollars a year figuring out how not to cover
people…
oracknows | September 16, 2007There's a long and strange history of truly bizarre experiments done in the name of science. Alex Boese has gathered twenty of the strangest examples here. There are the usual suspects, such as the Stanford prison experiment and the Milgram obedience experiment, but there were others that I hadn't heard of. To me, the award for the most bizarre has to be a tie between the vomit drinking doctor and this one:
Ever since the carnage of the French Revolution, when the guillotine sent thousands of severed heads tumbling into baskets, scientists had wondered whether it would be possible to keep a…
sb admin | September 14, 2007 Artist Katelyn Sack emailed me earlier to clarify some info. She shares truth:
The post you link to incorrectly states the series is composed of fridge magnets. While I can make prints, magnets, T-shirts, and even baby bubbles featuring any of my artwork, 'Baby, Be A Brain Surgeon!' as featured on The Science Creative Quarterly this Tues., Sept. 11 is oil paint on 4.25" x 4.25" ceramic tiles. You can see my original blog post on the artwork here, and I also list it for sale on my website here.
In her original post, she describes the vision behind her designs. Nursery room decor for a…
j7uy5 | September 14, 2007The Guardian Unlimited has a provocative
article on the role of
endocrine disruptors in increasing the ratio of girl babies to boy
babies in the Arctic.
I've written about the topic before (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/02/endocrine_disruptors.php">1
2)
as have
href="http://scienceblogs.com/terrasig/2007/02/lavender_and_tea_tree_oils_may.php">Abel
and
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/satans_perfect_food_tofu.php">PZ.
James Hrynyshyn, on Island of Doubt, has
already commented on
the Guardian article:
href="http://scienceblogs.com/…
oracknows | September 14, 2007Regarding Dan Olmsted's latest foray into autism pseudoscience at Rescue Post, Kev asks, "Why aren't you scared to death?"
Olmsted's latest happened to appear while I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, and there's so much other interesting stuff out there to blog about since I got back that I never got around to addressing yet another of his attempts to blame autism on mercury. This time, though, just like J.B. Handley and others who have been steadily backing away from the "mercury in vaccines causes autism" hypothesis (mainly because each new epidemiological study that comes out fails…
oracknows | September 14, 2007
Earlier this week, I deconstructed a truly inane article on Mike Adams NewsTarget website espousing dangerous cancer quackery, with claims that herbal concoctions alone could "naturally heal" cancer. Such a claim wouldn't have attracted bringing the hammer of Respectful Insolence⢠down if there had been some actual evidence presented that this healer could do what she claimed she could do. Unfortunately, as is the case with virtually all such claims, there was none, just a complicated regimen involving four or five different herbal brews involving a total of around 40 different plants and…
denialism | September 13, 2007There have been two interesting court decisions, I think both decided correctly for science this week. In the first, a federal court has decided states may regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. In particular, one statement from the judge seemed to come straight from the deck of cards.
"There is no question that the GHG (greenhouse gas) regulations present great challenges to automakers," Judge William Sessions III, sitting in the U.S. District Court in Burlington, wrote at the conclusion of his 240-page decision.
He added, "History suggests that the ingenuity of the industry…
oracknows | September 13, 2007Today, on my way into work, I did something momentous, something that marks a turning point in my life. It was a small act, but one that has lifted a huge weight from me.
I put a check in the mail to pay off the last of my student loans. Free at last! And it's only been 19 years since I graduated from medical school, too!
Thinking about it, my overall debt when I finished medical school was relatively small, around $55,000 or so. True, it did balloon up to around $80,000 during the years when I could not afford to make payments due to the low pay of residency and the small stipend when I was…
grrlscientist | September 12, 2007tags: Tangled Bank, blog carnivals
The 88th issue of Tangled Bank is now available for you to read. This blog carnival links to the best recent writing about nature, science and medicine in the blogosphere. Be sure to go there to explore the links they have!
oracknows | September 12, 2007I'm away from regular blogging for a couple of weeks, and what do I find when I finally get back into the swing of things?
Dangerous cancer quackery published on Mike Adams' Newstarget site, that's what.
I know, I know. I shouldn't be surprised, and I'm not. It's all par for the course for Newstarget, where evidence-based medicine is viewed as nothing but a conspiracy of big pharma, evil scientific doctors, and the FDA to poison patients against their will. Truly, Mike Adams has decided to go head-to-head with Whale.to and Dr. Mercola for the title of most ridiculous website ostensibly about…
j7uy5 | September 11, 2007I don't think this has ever happened before. I was
reading an
article about the organizational chart at the
href="http://www.fda.gov/" rel="tag">FDA
and I laughed out
loud.
Unfortunately it was not a good "monkey-on-a-goat" LOL moment; rather,
it was a "WTF-sounds-like-Bush" kind of LOL.
The chart is from this article:
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/10/960">Sidelining
Safety — The FDA's Inadequate Response to the IOM,
by Sheila Weiss Smith, Ph.D, in the latest NEJM (Volume 357:960-963).
(It's open-access.)
I've written about this at length before (
href…
oracknows | September 11, 2007Jake over at Pure Pedantry pointed the way to an article in Science that I hadn't seen yet because of my absence. Just like yesterday's topic, this one too is right up my alley. Specifically, it's about something near and dear to my heart, namely the trials and tribulations of being a physician-scientist. The article paints a rather grim picture, with the observation that, although most MD/PhD's would like to remain researchers, many are dropping out in order to become straight clinicians, clinical instructors at medical schools, or industry researchers. Jake's commentary is certainly worth…
omnibrain | September 10, 2007According to MSNBC:
A small number of companies have linked health factors to what employees pay for benefits, but the practice is expected to grow now that some federal rules have been finalized, spelling out what's allowed by law. Employee advocates worry that other anti-discrimination laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act won't cover the person who is 20 or 30 pounds overweight.
I can't think of one legitimate reason why people shouldn't be charged more for living an unhealthy life style. After all, the inflated health care costs are in large part due to peoples unhealthy life…
grrlscientist | September 10, 2007tags: suicide, world suicide prevention day, mental health, depression, bipolar disorder
Suicide is a major public health issue and accounts for nearly 3% of all deaths worldwide -- around the world, one million people will die by suicide this year. But suicide is a taboo subject that many people, regardless of age, sex, socioeconomic status or religious and cultural affiliations, are ashamed of, and rarely speak about. This veil of secrecy leads to needless deaths worldwide. So as a result, today was designated as World Suicide Prevention Day, which is designed to raise public awareness of…
oracknows | September 10, 2007Way back when I first started my blog, one of my favorite blogs was A Photon in the Darkness, in which Prometheus regularly demolished quackery, particularly autism-related quackery. Sadly, Prometheus' blogging has become more and more sporadic over the last year or so, with gaps sometimes longer than a month between posts. I was worried that he might be retiring permanently from the blogosphere. That would be a great loss.
Recently, however, Prometheus has been a bit more active. In fact, he's even moved his blog to a new location: http://www.photoninthedarkness.com. Moreover, he's recently…
oracknows | September 10, 2007Sadly (with regards to vacation) and not-so-sadly (with regards to the events of last week), it's time to dive headlong back into the "real world" at work, starting with clinic today. It also means it's time to get back to my favorite hobby (blogging) in a much more regular way, although I will say that a relatively prolonged break from the blog was good, and my traffic only suffered mildly for it. I may have to do it more often, if only to keep things fresher.
One of the tasks that confronted me this weekend as I got ready to face a full week back at work was to try to catch up on all the…