medicine
oracknows | September 19, 2006Grand Rounds, vol. 2., no 52 has been posted at Tundra Medicine Dreams.
Enjoy!
clock | September 19, 2006Grand Rounds, v.2, n.52 is up on Tundra Medicine Dreams. Gorgeous pictures from Alaska and the best of medical blogging.
The Synapse v.1, n.7 is up on GNIF Brain Blogger
oracknows | September 19, 2006Unfortunately for them, folks in Colorado have a hard core anti-vaxer named Dawn Winkler running for governor on the Libertarian ticket. I'm hoping for their sakes that, as a third party candidate, that she has virtually no chance of winning. Check out some of her rhetoric posted on Whale.to seven years ago in response to an essay by Dr. J. Thomas Megerian of Children's Hospital in Boston. Even though it's seven years old, I present part of it because it is so astonishingly clueless and because, as you will see later, Winkler apparently hasn't learned a thing since then:
How on earth did we…
oracknows | September 18, 2006Ensconced at a conference center in North Carolina near Abel's and Bora's home turf since Saturday, I appear to have missed an update on the story of Starchild Abraham Cherrix. As you may recall, he is a 16 year old who fought for the right to pursue "alternative" therapy over evidence-based medicine to treat his relapsed Hodgkin's lymphoma. Last month he and his parents agreed to a compromise with the court in which he would be allowed to pursue his desired form of quackery (known as the Hoxsey therapy) in addition to other therapies in the clinic of a radiation oncologist named Dr. Arnold…
oracknows | September 17, 2006I'm still kind of scratching my head over this one. It's preaching to the converted and is not particularly illuminating.
Surely they could have come up with something better. (Via the bioethics web log.)
j7uy5 | September 16, 2006
Yes!
magazine is one of my favorite progressive publications.
The reason is that they tend to take a positive view of
everything. That is unlike a lot of politically-oriented
publications, most of which somehow manage to make everything sound
dire.
The latest issue has several articles on health care.
Specifically, they examine the case for single-payer,
universal coverage.
On the right is a graphic from one of the articles,
href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1503">Has
Canada Got the Cure?
by Holly Dressel.
The article was adapted from Holly Dressel’s book
God Save…
oracknows | September 16, 2006This reminds me of what the result might be were Monty Python to do a public service announcement encouraging organ donation, except Monty Python would have done it in drag rather than using a real female:
oracknows | September 16, 2006It may not seem like much when it comes to dealing with animal rights "activists" who cross the line into vandalism, harassment, and intimidation, but it's a start:
Three animal rights activists who organized a campaign to harass employees and clients of a New Jersey research lab were sen tenced to prison yesterday by a judge who said their commitment to social justice had morphed into frightening and sometimes violent protests outside people's homes and offices.
"The means used, the harm im posed, almost arrogantly, is serious -- and warrants serious punishment," Senior U.S. District Judge…
clock | September 15, 2006A Community Genetics Forum 2006: Finding the Genome is a 3-day conference here in the Triangle. I will try to go to the third day events on Saturday, 10am - 3pm.
It is a very medically oriented meeting, so I doubt they will mention the importance of comparative genomics in the study of evolution, but it will be fun anyway.
On the other hand, it is probably good for my emotional well-being that there is likely to be no mention of Francis' awful book...
oracknows | September 15, 2006It's about time it was Friday. No, it's not because it will mean any less work for me; in fact, this weekend will probably mean more, as I have to go to a workshop that's more like boot camp. It's more because the subject matter of this blog had become such a major bummer, with the fifth anniversary of September 11, followed by a rumination about aging, followed by two posts about the dismal funding situation at the NIH. The only thing breaking up the gloom was getting a chance to point out a lovely deconstruction of an HIV "skeptics'" misguided attempt at claiming the mantle of skepticism,…
clock | September 14, 2006Nicotine Lessens Symptoms Of Depression In Nonsmokers:
Nicotine may improve the symptoms of depression in people who do not smoke, Duke University Medical Center scientists have discovered.
The finding does not mean that people with depression should smoke or even start using a nicotine patch, the researchers caution. They say that smoking remains the No. 1 preventable cause of death and disability in the United States, and that the addictive hazards of tobacco far outweigh the potential benefits of nicotine in depression.
But the finding suggests that it may be possible to manipulate…
j7uy5 | September 14, 2006GARDASIL®,
the vaccine intended to prevent infection with
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_papilloma_virus"
rel="tag">human papillomavirus (HPV), was
controversial even before it was
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/18/health/main1628221.shtml">approved
by the FDA.
href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/31/MNG2LFGJFT1.DTL">Debate
rages on use of cervical cancer vaccine
Rob Stein, Washington Post
Monday, October 31, 2005
(10-31) 04:00 PDT Washington -- A new vaccine that protects against
cervical cancer has set up a…
oracknows | September 14, 2006I never knew that puppies liked logic and critical thinking. I always thought that they liked running, playing, eating, sleeping, and being petted. But, according to Janet Stemwedel, there is at least one puppy who is a budding skeptic, and bad reasoning and gullibility make him sad. She explains in the introduction to the 43rd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle:
Welcome to the meeting of the 43rd Skeptics' Circle! Good logic and critical thinking never hurt anyone, but bad logic, gullibility, and uncritical acceptance of questionable claims causes distress to small, furry animals. I'm not…
oracknows | September 13, 2006With the latest edition of the Skeptics' Circle due to appear later today, I'd just like to point out that I've become aware of two new skeptical blogs:
Action Skeptics (I like its catchphrase, "Annoying stupid people, one woo at a time.")
The Antidote: Counterspin for Health Care and Health News
They're worth checking out, and I'll keep an eye on them to see how they develop. And while we're at it, I would be remiss if I didn't mention another skeptical blog belonging to someone who's become a frequent commenter here. That's right, I mean Amy Alkon, a.k.a. The Advice Goddess, who runs a…
oracknows | September 13, 2006Tangled Bank #62 has been posted at The Hairy Museum of Natural History. Get your science blogging fix.
oracknows | September 12, 2006Sometimes there are things that happen when blogging. You get accolades from unexpected sources, little ego boosts that make it all worthwhile. Such a thing happened yesterday, on the basis of my little blurb mentioning Skeptico's takedown of Hank Barnes's misuse of logical fallacies. The reaction, as reflected in the comments in Hank's blog, was quite hilarious. One reader whined:
Whenever somebody claims to be debunking something, it always means that somebody revealed an uncomfortable truth and now they've got to stuff it back in the bottle.
Well no, actually, the only thing "uncomfortable…
moleculeoftheday | September 12, 2006Yesterday's mention of tyramine, and the comment, reminded me of inhibitors in general, and one in particular: harmine. Harmine belongs to a class of MAOIs known as the beta-carbolines.
MAOIs are problematic because they inhibit the metabolism of certain (toxic in the absence of gastrointestinal MAO) chemicals such as tyramine. Certain MAO enzymes, active in the gut, process these chemicals (ingested through foods such as cheese and wine, as mentioned yesterday). Oral MAOI-class antidepressants act as inhibitors of this enzyme. They aren't used much these days, because of newer…
oracknows | September 12, 2006Grand Rounds no. 2, vol. 51 has been posted at Diabetes Mine. Time for more of the best medical blogging of the last week.
purepedantry | September 12, 2006GNIF Brain Blogger has a good article describing the DSM -- Diagnostic and Statistcal Manual of Mental Disorders -- that is used by psychiatrists to diagnose mental health issues of all types. Drawbacks and benefits are discussed.
In spite of some rather notable problems with the DSM -- for example, in earlier editions homosexuality was still listed as a mental disorder -- I have to sympathize with the people who write it. In contrast to most other areas, most psychiatric disorders are syndromic in nature and lacking in definitive lab tests. This makes diagnosing them an act of guessing…
clock | September 12, 2006The newest edition of the medical carnival is up on Diabetes Mine. The theme is Celebrating Education.