medicine
oracknows | December 11, 2006It's that time of year again. Nominations are open for the best medical blogging:
Welcome to the third annual Medical Weblog Awards! These awards are designed to honor the very best in the medical blogosphere, and to highlight the diverse world of medical blogs.
The categories for this year's awards will be:
-- Best Medical Weblog
-- Best New Medical Weblog (established in 2006)
-- Best Literary Medical Weblog
-- Best Clinical Sciences Weblog
-- Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog
-- Best Medical Technologies/Informatics Weblog
-- Best Patient's Blog (a new category this year)
Nominations are…
oracknows | December 11, 2006Via The Millenium Project, I've learned that some of the "Dummy" books may be living up to their names a bit too literally:
I almost didn't believe it when I was told that Understanding Autism for Dummies contains advice about how chelation might be a useful treatment for autism, so I used Amazon's "search inside the book" feature and there it was. Perhaps the authors could get a testimonial for the next edition from Abubakar Tariq Nadama. Oh that's right, Abubakar can't give testimonials because he's dead.
Understanding Autism for Dummies, indeed. Peter Bowditch is right. It's all there, if…
oracknows | December 11, 2006Over a week ago, fellow ScienceBlogger revere fired a bit of a pot shot across my bow regarding my bow regarding a study regarding, of all things, chicken soup. Initially, it was at a bad time, when I had other things to do, having just labored mightily to produce the latest Hitler Zombie extravaganza, after which I had to lay low blogging for a while because of obligations midweek. When those obligations were over, then blogging about the Tripoli Six took precedence, as did this week's Your Friday Dose of Woo (which, by the way, is still overrun by the tinfoil hat brigade). And then I just…
oracknows | December 10, 2006
I know, I know.
When I first found out that I had been nominated for a 2006 Weblog Award for Best Medical/Health Issues Blog a few days ago, I initially said that I didn't think I would win and didn't really care if I would win. And it was true.
Then.
Then, much to my surprise, I found myself actually in the lead by a sizable margin for a couple of days, but over the last day or so a diet blog has passed Respectful Insolence in the voting. Now that I see might actually have a chance to win this thing, I've had--shall we say?--an attitude readjustment. I've decided that maybe it's not so…
clock | December 9, 2006The protist and the virus appear to be helpful to each other:
HIV cripples the infected person's immune system which allows malaria to thrive. Similarly, individuals with malaria have recurrent feverish periods during which the viral load increases by a log factor. Higher viral loads mean that there is a greater risk of infection when coming into contact with this person's blood/body fluids.
oracknows | December 8, 2006Via The Second Sight, I find an example of a tool that, I suspect, many alties will find highly useful: The Woo World Self Treater. It'll allow you to diagnose yourself free from the boot of big pharma and the oppressive evidence-based medicine that close-minded "conventional" doctors like me advocate.
My results are below the fold:
Quantum-consciousness analysis of your auric field shows you are suffering the symptoms of Temporomandibular Joint Disorder, which is commonly seen among males born under the sign of Leo. This may also be due to alien implants. Magnet therapy has been shown to be…
grrlscientist | December 8, 2006
Llama, Llama glama.
Image: source
Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington have discovered that llamas, a member of the camel family, have unusual antibodies in their blood that do not break down at high temperatures, unlike those of humans and most other animals. As a result, llama antibodies could be developed for use as biosensors against potential biological warfare agents in the field.
"We're interested in the development of biosensors for biothreats in the field, and hopefully these antibodies will help lead to more rugged antibodies that have longer shelf…
j7uy5 | December 7, 2006This has been a topic at ScienceBlogs before. Now, finally,
the New England Journal of Medicine is catching up. They have
an editorial on the ethics of vaccination against Human Papilloma
Virus. It turns out that there are many facets to this issue.
The background is this: HPV is a major factor in the
development of cervical cancer. About 10,000 women are
diagnosed with cervical cancer each year in the USA, and there are
about 3,700 deaths per year from the disease.
To put that in perspective, that is more than the total number of
deaths in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. …
omnibrain | December 7, 2006It's nothing new for those of you outside the U.S. to see a little more scary warnings for cigarettes (Smoking may cause death, etc.) than what they show us here in the states (Please miss...don't smoke if you're pregnant - it might be slighly damaging to your unborn fetus - have a nice day and enjoy your cigs!). It seems that in Belgium they are taking the scare factors one step further, to something that might actually scare someone.
The first photos are just being put on packets. They include images of what damage smoking can do to your gums and teeth as well as pictures of cancer…
clock | December 7, 2006Revere reports that there is a new article in Nature (pdf) demonstrating even stronger scientific support for the innocence of the Tripoli 6, the one doctor and five nurses facing a possible death penalty in Libya. The final verdict will be read on December 19th. The international pressure from the medical world as well as the blogosphere has been enormous, but there is no sign that the Libyan government is listening to it. Certainly now, in the last stretch, we need to renew our efforts and broadcast about this and ask our readers to write letters to people in power. Janet provides…
oracknows | December 6, 2006A few months ago, I wrote about a horrific miscarriage of justice in Libya that could result in the deaths of innocent health care workers whose only crime was to have the wherewithal to want to work in Libya to help the people there, but who have been falsely accused of intentionally infecting children with HIV. My original post was prompted by Declan Butler and an article in Nature.. The six health care workers (known as the Tripoli Six or the Benghazi Six) were convicted in a sham trial that was rigged and far from impartial. Apparently Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi found them a…
purepedantry | December 6, 2006CNN's headline reads Flatulence on plane sparks emergency landing:
It is considered polite to light a match after passing gas. Not while on a plane.
An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, authorities said.
The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and five crew members were taken off and screened…
oracknows | December 6, 2006The Cheerful Oncologist posts a nice piece about When Is No Treatment the Right Treatment? It's a difficult question that surgical oncologists have to face as well. His example is a man with lung cancer who has recently rapidly deteriorated with little hope for long-term survival. Should he get chemotherapy? Are the risks (immunosuppression, etc.) worth the rather meager benefit?
It's a really, really tough question.
We surgeons face this question as well, although probably much less frequently than medical oncologists do (another reason I don't think I could do medical oncology). One of the…
clock | December 6, 2006This is an appropriate time of year for this post (February 05, 2006)...
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So, why do I say that it is not surprising the exposure to bright light alleviates both seasonal depression and other kinds of depression, and that different mechanisms may be involved?
In mammals, apart from visual photoreception (that is, image formation), there is also non-visual photoreception. The receptors of the former are the rods and cones that you all learned about in middle school. The receptors for the latter are a couple of thousand Retinal Ganglion…
oracknows | December 6, 2006Although I've mentioned before that I am a surgical oncologist, but I recently noticed that, in nearly five months of blogging, I've yet to explain exactly what that is or what it means. I've written about all sorts of things, ranging from alternative medicine, to the evolution-creationism conflict, to the Holocaust, to even trying my hand at reviewing music.
True, I've discussed a fair number of anecdotes based on patient stories. Certainly those stories can give a feel for what I do in the clinical part of my duties, but they don't really explain what my specialty is. I've also spoken about…
j7uy5 | December 5, 2006NEJM has a nice, short article on the management of menopausal
symptoms. Usually their clinical stuff is subscription-only,
but this one is openly accessible. I'm not going to comment
on it, specifically, but mention it only because it might be something
of general interest.
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/22/2338">Management
of Menopausal Symptoms
Deborah Grady, M.D., M.P.H.
Volume 355:2338-2347, November 30, 2006, Number 22
This Journal feature begins with a case
vignette highlighting a common clinical problem. Evidence supporting
various strategies is…
j7uy5 | December 4, 2006I had to think about this for a bit before it made sense (free
registration on Medscape required):
href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/547792">Does
Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Decrease Gastroesophageal Reflux in
Patients With Obstructive Sleep Apnea?
Twenty-four-hour esophageal pH monitoring was used by Spence and
colleagues[4] to determine whether continuous positive airway pressure
(C-PAP) decreases nocturnal reflux in patients with obstructive sleep
apnea. Seventeen patients were studied on 2 different nights; 12 were
overweight (body mass index: 27.3-50.8). All…
purepedantry | December 1, 2006Trushina et al from the Mayo Clinic have made a big advance in understanding the etiology of Huntington's disease.
Huntington's disease is a progressive and ultimately fatal disease that is characterized by uncontrollable limb movements and progressive dementia and psychosis. It is 100% penetrant and shows autosomal dominant inheritance in the causative gene called Huntingtin. We know that Huntingtin has a triplet repeat region -- the same three nucleotides over and over again -- that can be of variable size. Have a relatively short one and you are fine. Have long one and you are going…