medicine
oracknows | July 31, 2007Since this seems to be the day for applying Respectful Insolence⢠to people who say stupid things about me...
Everyone knows that Dean Esmay and I don't exactly see eye to eye on a lot of things. Indeed, it could be safely said that Dean has nothing but contempt for me. It doesn't bother me. After all, I have to respect someone before his negative opinion of me can possibly bother me in the least. Between his HIV/AIDS denialism, his ignorant rants about cancer research, and his know-nothing conspiratorial "critiques" of the peer review system, Dean is clearly someone who has a far higher…
oracknows | July 31, 2007I was going to write about a recent study that purports to claim that smoking pot causes schizophrenia that's been making the rounds lately. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you see it), this week's host of the Skeptics' Circle, Mark Hoofnagle, beat me to it.
Can you say, "Correlation does not necessarily equal causation"?
The reporters who hyped the study and the investigators who enabled them should repeat this 100 times. Maybe it'll sink in.
denialism | July 31, 2007
What is it about reporting on pot that makes people so Puritanical? Today I read in the Guardian Cannabis joints damage lungs more than tobacco - study.
A single cannabis joint may cause as much damage to the lungs as five chain-smoked cigarettes, research has found.
Is that so? Let's take a look at the data.
The authors of the article compared smokers to fairly heavy marijuana users - based on the mean smoking exposure of the groups (54.2 joint years compared to 23 pack-years for the smokers both with a mean age ~42-46) the group was clearly smoking multiple joints a day over decades…
oracknows | July 31, 2007A couple of weeks ago, inspired by a somewhat drunken encounter two weeks prior, against my better judgment, I waded into the evidence supporting the contention that secondhand smoke is harmful to health, increasing the risk of heart disease and lung cancer in workers chronically exposed to it. In response to a list of quotes going around the Internet claiming that relative risks less than 2 are so unreliable that they may be ignored (conveniently enough, most relative risks reported for exposure to SHS are in the 1.2 to 1.3 range), I pointed out what a load of dishonest quotemining the list…
oracknows | July 30, 2007If you want to know how clueless our current President is about healthcare and the uninsured, just check out this quote from a speech he gave recently:
The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.
Isn't that one of the biggest problems with health care in our nation? Patients without health insurance flood the emergency rooms, which by law have to treat them regardless of ability to pay, leading to higher costs all around for unreimbursed care, for…
oracknows | July 30, 2007I've been a bit remiss about reporting an update on the Tripoli Six, six foreign health care workers who were falsely accused of intentionally infecting children at a hospital in Libya with HIV, leading to their being convicted and sentenced to death. The evidence against them was crap, and scientific analyses showed that the strain of HIV in question had been in the hospital before the arrival of the Tripoli Six. After a lot of international wrangling between Bulgaria, the EU, and Libya involving diplomacy and more than a bit of money, the Tripoli Six are free. The arrangement involved the…
oracknows | July 30, 2007Saturday, I thought that I knew what I'd be writing about for Monday, which, I've learned from my two and a half years of blogging, is a great thing when it happens. A certain Libertarian comic had decided that he wanted to argue some more about secondhand smoke and indoor smoking bans, starting a few days earlier with a rather specious analogy (which was handily shredded by you, my readers) and then finishing by annoying me with a comment and a post that implied that I didn't "care about the little guy." It looked like great fodder for a post to start out the week and a chance to apply a…
denialism | July 30, 2007
A lot of people are talking about a new study showing a 40% increase risk of "psychosis", which I first heard news of in this story, from the Daily Mail:
A single joint of cannabis raises the risk of schizophrenia by more than 40 percent, a disturbing study warns.
The Government-commissioned report has also found that taking the drug regularly more than doubles the risk of serious mental illness.
Overall, cannabis could be to blame for one in seven cases of schizophrenia and other life-shattering mental illness, the Lancet reports.
Something sounds a little off. Let's see what this Lancet…
oracknows | July 29, 2007
(LOL Oscar from Lauren.)
While I expressed skepticism the other day regarding the media reports that a cat named Oscar could predict which patients at the nursing home in which he resides were within hours of death, some of you believed it, some even going so far as to speculate that not only could Oscar detect impending death but that he hangs out by the dying because he wants a snack.
But none have gone so far as Mighty Ponygirl in speculating about Oscar's true motivation.
Personally, I like my explanation that it's just confirmation bias better. It's less--shall we say?--disturbing. I…
oracknows | July 29, 2007Here's something that's not a good idea:
Boston, MA (AHN) - The Board of Registration in Medicine, which is the governing authority issuing licenses to Massachusetts doctors, has reportedly suspended a Boston anesthesiologist from the practice of medicine for dozing off during an operation.
However, the headline is misleading. It turns out that this doctor has a bit more of a problem than just dozing off during an operation:
In December 2005, Thomas Ho admitted inhaling anesthetic gas while on lunch break on another occasion. The Board also added that following month Ho had taken a…
oracknows | July 27, 2007copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy…
oracknows | July 27, 2007The Brothers Bleiman
Since early childhood, Andrew and Ben Bleiman have shared an obsession with zoology, corresponding with the mammalogist George Schaller before puberty and memorizing more than one illustrated animal encyclopedia. Although they currently both work in the software industry, Zooillogix is both a hobby and a secret outlet of forbidden passion...
Andrew studied biology and animal behavior at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently, he is an active member of the auxiliary boards of both the Shedd Aquarium and Lincoln Park Zoo. Additionally, he manages pro-bono consulting…
oracknows | July 27, 2007Zooillogix has been invited to join ScienceBlogs and we have decided to take them up on the offer. ScienceBlogs is a unique community of science related blogs that run the gamut from highly informed and technical to... errr.... us.
What this means for you the reader (e.g. the bored desk slave, bored 12 year old boy or renowned zoologist doing research on your next paper):
The Content Won't Change: You can expect the same fascinating stories and questionable attempts at humorTechnical Difficulties: There may be a short "outage" period of a day or two, during which time you will be forced to…
clock | July 27, 2007
You can now register for the third ConvergeSouth conference in Greensboro, NC, October 19-20, 2007. Among many others, you will be able to meet me there. Keep and eye on the blog for new developments.
grrlscientist | July 27, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, animals, predict death, Oscar the cat, New England Journal of Medicine
Oscar the cat provides comfort to the dying.
According to an article that was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a two-year-old cat that lives in Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, can correctly predict impending death among the residents. Oscar the cat has a habit of curling up next to patients who are in their final hours, and so far, he has been observed to be correct in 25 cases.
"He doesn't make many mistakes. He seems to…
oracknows | July 27, 2007Harvard professor Robert Wood unveiled his newest creation recently, a robotic fly that can be used as a spy, according to this posting on engadget.com. They fly weighs only .002 ounces and has a wingspan of 1.18 inches. Due to light weight carbon joints, the fly's wings beat 110 times per minute and the creature mimics the exact movements of a real fly. Funded, obvi, by the generous folks at the U.S. Defense Department, the little robo-pest has myriad possible uses including surveillance and even monitoring the air for chemical agents. Wood plans to install a battery and a remote…
oracknows | July 27, 2007
This sort of thing makes one wonder if the personification of Death should in fact be a cat, although, oddly enough, not a black cat:
Oscar the rescue cat is not simply a welcome feline companion at the Steere nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island. According to a new report in a medical journal he has a remarkable, though morbid talent - predicting when patients will die.
When the two-year-old grey and white cat curls up next to an elderly resident, staff now realise, this means they are likely to die in the next few hours.
Such is Oscar's apparent accuracy - 25 consecutive cases so far…
j7uy5 | July 26, 2007For
some reason, my Father used to say that when he made an
indisputable point of some significance. It is in the
href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=put+that+in+your+pipe+and+smoke+it"
rel="tag">Urban Dictionary in case you are curious
about the expression. It is also the title of
href="http://www.autoblog.com/2007/07/17/put-that-in-your-pipe-and-smoke-it-fords-made-of-hemp/">a
post on Autoblog about a 1941 Ford made of organic plastic,
which had been made from plant material. Apparently they now
are researching a similar idea using hemp.
href="http://blog.…
oracknows | July 26, 2007...or was it?
I'm pretty sure it was.
The dream needed a little bit more of a zingy ending, though, like waking up and finding Bobby Ewing still alive or finding out that everything that happened at the hospital was the fantasy of an autistic boy.
Or something like that
clock | July 26, 2007Mo is really spoiling us with exciting, well-researched posts from the history of science and medicine (remember the trepination post from a month ago?). And here he does it again: The rise & fall of the prefrontal lobotomy, the most gripping post on science blogs this week. And a Wicked Stepmother is one of the main characters!