medicine
grrlscientist | April 4, 2007Scientists at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) have identified genes that might increase a person's ability to quit smoking. This research was conducted by George Uhl at NIDA's Intramural Research Program and a team led by Jed Rose at the Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research at Duke University Medical Center.
"This research marks the first time we've been able to identify genes involved in the ability to quit smoking," says NIDA Director Nora Volkow. "It marks a movement from identifying the genetics of addiction vulnerability to identifying the genetic basis of…
grrlscientist | April 4, 2007Relying on bacterial enzymes, scientists have developed a way of converting blood from groups A, B and AB into group O, which can be safely transfused into any patient. The blood cells from groups A and B have one of two different sugar molecules -- known as antigens -- on their surface, which can trigger a powerful, and potentially deadly, immune response. AB blood has both types of antigens, while group O blood has neither.
Groups A, B and AB can only be transfused into patients with compatible blood types, while type O, rhesus negative, can be given to anyone.
After a search of 2,500…
oracknows | April 4, 2007Well, well, well, well.
I hadn't expected it. I really hadn't. After just shy of three weeks since I first made my challenge to Dr. Egnor to put up or shut up regarding certain claims of his that the "design inference" has been "of great value" in medicine and results in "the best medical research," I had pretty much given up trying to get an answer out of him. I had come to assume that either (1) Dr. Egnor had been either unaware of my challenge (although I tended to doubt it, given how many echoed it, or (2) he was simply ignoring it in favor of posting some amazingly bad reasoning. To…
oracknows | April 3, 2007Dr Melody Clark of the British Antarctic Survey recently presented two bizarre adaptations that arthropods use to stave off cold temperatures. At the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Meeting in Glasgow last week, Clark showed how the Onychiurus arcticus, an Artic arthropod, copes with the freezing winters. As the surrounding temperatures fall, the Onychiurus arcitus literally dries up, leaving what Clark describes as "a normal looking head, and a body which looks like a crumpled up crisp packet when it is fully dehydrated. But add a drop of water and it all goes back to normal!"…
oracknows | April 3, 2007Given my post yesterday about how increased scanning finds more disease that may or may not ever cause problems (and, don't worry, the promised followup post is coming, either tomorrow or Thursday), I thought it was an opportune time to post this little gem that's been floating around medicine for a long time. I first got it back in the late 1990's, and there are several permutations of it around, all with the same basic message:
EVERYBODY MUST GET SCANNED
(Sung to the tune of Bob Dylan's "Everybody Must Get Stoned")
They scan you when you fall and bump your head
They scan you when they think…
oracknows | April 2, 2007In the course of a few days last week, two prominent political personalities from different parties, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, announced that their cancers (breast cancer in the case of Edwards and colon cancer in the case of Snow), after having apparently been successfully treated two years ago had recurred and were now metastatic. One of the issues that comes up whenever famous people announce that they have cancer is the question of early detection and why we don't detect tumors earlier. Indeed, Amy…
oracknows | April 1, 2007Most jellyfish drift freely in the ocean current but the dangerous box jellyfish is an active swimmer. To help it navigate, the box jellyfish has 24 eyes that dangle from their cube-shaped bodies. One set of eyes is remarkably well developed and can detect color, size and shape, similar to our own eyes. At Lund University in Sweden, researchers recently set up a jellyfish obstacle course to test their vision and were surprised by how deftly the box jellyfish were able to avoid objects in the tank. However, their ability to jump through flaming hoops left much to be desire
Clearly there will…
terrasig | April 1, 2007Doug Farrago, MD, is a private practice doc in Maine who has been publishing the print medical satire journal, Placebo Journal, since 2001. Doug does it all, including spoofing drug company adverts, collecting humorous doc stories, and generally poking fun at drug reps, HMOs, and lawyers.
About two years ago, Doug started sending out e-mails of the Placebo Gazette, a rather bloggy and somewhat more serious newsletter of issues facing docs and medicine in general. Imagine my surprise in Placebo Gazette #81 where Dr Farrago threatened to start writing a blog:
The Detroit Free Press did an…
oracknows | April 1, 2007Given that my attempt last year to pull an April Fool's Day gag fooled no one and in essence went over like the proverbial lead balloon, I'm chastened enough not to try it again this year. Maybe by next year, I'll get up the nerve again.
In the meantime, this little gem came through a mailing list that I'm on, and I wanted to see what my readers thought of it:
Redondo Beach Surfer News. Where the sun shines most the time, and the feelin' is laid back.
Sunday Apr 1, 2007. 5:40am
Chiropractic treatment fights global warming
by Olga Re
With the specter of global warming on the horizon, many…
evolvingthoughts | March 30, 2007
Here is a list of Basic Concept posts in Medicine and Psychiatry.
Recently added: The history of hormone therapy and menopause, parts 1, 2 and 3 by Evil Monkey at Neurotopia
Introduction to Microbiology and Infectious Disease by Tara C. Smith at Aetiology
Normal flora, Normal Flora 2 by Tara C. Smith at Aetiology
Determining the Cause of Disease (Koch's Postulates) by Sandra Porter at Discovering Biology in a Digital World
Seasonal Affective Disorder by Bora Zivkovic at A Blog Around the Clock
Selection of Antidepressants, Part I, Part 2 Part 3 by Corpus Callosum
Balloons, Stents and…
j7uy5 | March 30, 2007
A while back I started a series about the science and logic (and other
factors) involved in the selection of antidepressant medication.
I suppose I could put in the pinks to the first four parts,
but anyone can use the search box in the left-hand sidebar to search
for "selection of antidepressants" to find them. I suppose
when I am done I will go back to the first one and put in a list of
links to all the posts in the series.
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The first four posts presented a top-down view, looking at the concepts
and principles used when choosing an…
oracknows | March 30, 2007It is with some trepidation that I approach the latest target of Your Friday Dose of Woo.
No, it's not because the woo is so potent that it has actually struck the fear of You-Know-Who in me (I leave it up to readers to determine whether I was referring to God or Valdemort), although it is indeed potent woo. Nor is it that the woo is boring woo (there's a reason why "power of prayer" kind of woo usually doesn't make it into YFDoW unless there's a really entertaining angle to be targeted). No, it's because this particular woo seems to combine genetics with systems biology (I kid you not),…
ksharpe | March 29, 2007The Pharmalot blog reports today on a Reuter's story about an oral vaccine for Alzheimer's that proved successful at diminishing signs of Alzheimer's in a study of 28 mice bred to develop the disease. Limited testing of the vaccine in humans may be next.
The vaccine works by reducing the amount of amyloid plaques in the brains of the diseased mice, visibly improving their cognitive function. "In other words," writes Ed Silverman at Pharmalot, "[the mice] could find their way to the kitchen counter again."
oracknows | March 29, 2007I was going to try to be a good boy. Really, I was. I had been planning on answering a question about the early detection of tumors. It was an opportune time to do so, given the recent news of cancer recurrence in Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow, coupled with a couple of papers I saw just yesterday and the announcement of new screening guidelines for breast MRI. However, I was finding that writing the piece would be fairly complex (because it's a complex topic) and that it might even require a multi-post approach. There was no way to do it justice today; doing it over the weekend would make a…
oracknows | March 28, 2007It's been a week since I last wrote about dichloroacetate (DCA), the chemotherapeutic agent that targets tumor cells by an interesting new mechanism based on the Warburg effect, as I've described in the past. After a very interesting article in Cancer Cell in January by investigators at the University of Alberta, the blogosphere erupted with wild speculation that this was a "cure" for cancer, based only on animal studies that were fairly impressive. Because DCA is a small molecule that is supposedly "unpatentable," pharmaceutical companies have been rather cool in their interest, and it is…
oracknows | March 28, 2007It's been a bad few days.
A mere four days after Elizabeth Edwards announced that her breast cancer had recurred in her rib, with an update the other day saying that the apparently was also another lesion in in her hip, I learn from a commenter and multiple other sources that White House Press Secretary Tony Snow has suffered a recurrence of his colon cancer. Apparently, it has spread to the liver:
CBS/AP) Presidential spokesman Tony Snow's cancer has returned and spread to his liver and elsewhere in his body, shaken White House colleagues announced Tuesday. They said he told them he planned…
oracknows | March 27, 2007I've lamented time and time again how woo has been infiltrating American medical schools, even going so far as to find its way into being totally integrated into mandatory curriculum from the very first term of the first year of medical school at Georgetown. I realize I'm a bit late on this one, but sadly it's not just the U.S. where pseudoscience, anti-science, and woo are infiltrating universities. In the U.K., it's starting too:
Over the past decade, several British universities have started offering bachelor of science (BSc) degrees in alternative medicine, including six that offer BSc…
oracknows | March 27, 2007I realize that being in academic medicine at a tertiary care center often produces the "ivory tower" syndrome, but occasionally it is brought home to me that the way we practice surgery here often differs considerably from how surgery is practiced "in the trenches." This time around, it was a study about how often surgeons referred women whose breast cancers are large enough to require a mastectomy to treat to plastic surgeons for a discussion of reconstruction options prior to the mastectomy. The answer was: Not nearly often enough. See for yourself:
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Forty-four percent of…
oracknows | March 26, 2007There hasn't been much news in the last two or three months about Abraham Cherrix, the 16-year-old with Hodgkin's lymphoma who rejected conventional chemotherapy, first in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy and then for the ministrations of a radiation oncologist in Mississippi named Dr. Arnold Smith, who combines non-woo (low dose radiation therapy) with woo (a form of "immunotherapy" involving "belly plaques" that has no evidence showing efficacy, not "more innovative techniques, such as immunotherapy, which uses medications and supplements to boost the immune system," as the…
clock | March 24, 2007On Thursday night, I posted a large linkfest about the press-conference by John and Elizabeth Edwards and the revelation that her cancer has returned. Those were mostly first responses. There have been literally thousands of blog posts written since then, but I chose to link only to a couple of dozen that really deserve your attention due to quality, novel perspective, or information content (scroll below).
While there were certainly some very nice posts coming form the Right, wishing Elizabeth well and agreeing that the decision to continue campaigning is none of anyone's but the Edwards'…