medicine
oracknows | September 12, 2006As much as I try to deny it, I can't anymore. Now that I'm on the wrong side of 40, I have to face what we all eventually have to face, the fact that we will age and that our physical and some of our mental abilities will decline. For some of us, the decline will be slow, and we will retain much of our previous abilities into our 60's, 70's, and even 80's. For others, the decline may not be so slow. We all have experience seeing people in their 50's or 60's who look and move as though they are in the 80's, and we all hope that we will be in the former group, retaining most of our physical and…
oracknows | September 11, 2006It never ceases to amuse me when a blogger known for his embrace of bad science anxious to claim the mantle of "skeptic" falls flat on his face doing so. For an example of just such an occurrence, check out Skeptico's latest post, A Straw Man Gets AIDS. In it, Skeptico systematically demolishes an AIDS/HIV "skeptic's" attempt to list what he thinks are supposed "logical fallacies" used by those who argue for the conventionally held scientific consensus that HIV infection usually results in AIDS. Yes, it's an old friend and occasional commenter, a tireless HIV/AIDS "dissident," and Skeptico…
j7uy5 | September 11, 2006The adjective extreme has been extremely overused
in recent years. For example, I recently saw a sign in a gas
station that advertised an Extreme Meal Deal: a hot dog, chips, and
soda for $2.49.
But
href="http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=14&click_id=125&art_id=vn20060910094616232C393327">Extreme
Drug Resistant tuberculosis is no hyperbole:
Dr Tony Moll of the Church of Scotland hospital at
Tugela Ferry was the first to alert the world to the emerging human
tragedy when it was found that HIV positive people who had appeared
initially to "do well" on antiretroviral…
purepedantry | September 11, 2006I talked earlier this year about a patient who recovered from a coma after 20 years. In that post, I discussed how -- with respect to the diagnostic criteria -- the difference between a persistent vegetative state and a minimally conscious state is the difference between someone who has only autonomic nervous activity and episodic conscious activity. In this way, someone who is in a minimally conscious state -- as that patient was -- still has the possibility for recovery even if recovery is very rare.
Here is another case of a woman in a persistent vegetative state discussed in the…
j7uy5 | September 11, 2006There is a lot of
information about
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve_stimulation"
rel="tag">vagus nerve stimulation as a treatment
for depression, that you can get from the latest New York Times article
(
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/business/yourmoney/10cyber.html?ex=1315540800&en=7877734ab451d64f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">Battle
Lines in Treating Depression, permanent link) on the subject.
Unfortunately, most of the good information is found by
following links. The article itself is pretty bad.
The author launched into a…
oracknows | September 10, 2006It's almost here already, hard as it is to believe. The next Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is due to appear on Thursday, September 14 at Adventures in Ethics and Science. Given her spearheading of the lastest blog silliness that's been going around here lately, namely the nerd-off that most of us have been engaging in over the last several days (apparently all of us angling for a choice role in the upcoming remake of Revenge of the Nerds), I think Janet is quite qualified to do an outstanding job with the Circle.
But she can't do it without the help of skeptical bloggers, bloggers…
oracknows | September 10, 2006Pediatric Grand Rounds vol. 1, no. 11 has been posted at Breath Spa for Kids. Enjoy!
j7uy5 | September 9, 2006The
little guy pictured to the left is
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dapoxetine" rel="tag">dapoxetine,
a drug under development for the treatment of
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premature_ejaculation"
rel="tag">premature ejaculation.
I wrote about this
href="http://trots.blogspot.com/2005/05/cns-pipeline-updatewas-dr-angell-right.html">before,
in the context of recent criticism of the pharmaceutical industry.
Some have argued that the industry spends too much time and
money developing drugs that we no not really need.
That is not too much of a problem, except…
j7uy5 | September 8, 2006Just a quick note to spread the word: The University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine has put up an online archive of material about the 1918 influezna pandemic.
The 1918-1920 Influenza Pandemic
Escape Community Digital Document Archive
In the summer of 2005, the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School was contacted by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and asked to conduct research into and write a report on American communities that had experienced extremely low rates of influenza during the infamous 1918-1920 influenza…
clock | September 8, 2006The Center for Health Design Research has issued its Report on The Impact of Light on Outcomes in Healthcare Settings. You can download the entire report as PDF:
Light impacts human health and performance by enabling performance of visual tasks, controlling the body's circadian system, affecting mood and perception, and by enabling critical chemical reactions in the body. Studies show that higher light levels are linked with better performance of complex visual tasks and light requirements increase with age.
By controlling the body's circadian system, light impacts outcomes in healthcare…
j7uy5 | September 8, 2006This has been a topic here at ScienceBlogs, and elsewhere. In
this post, I point out some of the blogosphere commentary, and provide
links to some commentary published in journals that might otherwise
escape widespread attention.
href="http://scienceblogs.com/seed/2006/04/psychiatry_experts_linked_to_d.php">
class="linkTitle">Psychiatry Experts Linked to Drug Makers--
And?
The New York Times reported yesterday that many of the authors of the
DSM-IV, the sine qua non diagnostic manual (I'm 300.00, thanks for
asking) for mental health professionals had ties, either before or
after…
moleculeoftheday | September 7, 2006There are two kinds of fatty acids: saturated and unsaturated. Saturated fatty acids have no carbon-carbon double bonds (-CH=CH-), they have only (-CH2-CH2-) single bonds. Notice that carbons only involved in single bonds have one more hydrogen than those involved in a double bond. They are "saturated" with hydrogens.
Double bonds come in two forms: cis and trans. A cis double bond has both large substituents (the carbons in the fatty acid chain) on the same side of the double bond. A trans double bond has large substituents on either side of the double bond. Below is a picture of three 18-…
oracknows | September 7, 2006The blog carnival of nursing, Change of Shift (vol. 1, no. 6), has been posted at Emergiblog. Enjoy!
oracknows | September 6, 2006While I'm back on the subject of autism, I thought I'd post this video that Kevin Leitch created while I was on vacation and posted to YouTube. Let's just say that it takes a rather dim view of autism "advocates," particularly the autism=mercury poisoning crowd.
I particularly love the picture of J. B. Handley that Kev found. It's also amusing to note that J. B. made an appearance in the comments of Kev's post, and he was not pleased. Also, if you're wondering what the whole "Illuminati" thing is about, Kev explains here.
Not to be outdone, Autism Diva produced her own contribution (below…
oracknows | September 5, 2006Grand Rounds vol. 2, no. 50 has been posted at Clinical Cases and Images. Enjoy!
clock | September 5, 2006
Hypotheses leading to more hypotheses (from March 19, 2006 - the Malaria Day):
I have written a little bit about malaria before, e.g, here and here, but this is my special Malaria Action Day post, inspired by a paper [1] that Tara sent me some weeks ago and I never got to write about it till now.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a journal called "Medical Hypotheses" Kumar and Sharma [1] propose that jet-lagged travellers may be more susceptible to getting infected with malaria. They write:
Rapid travel across several time zones leads to…
oracknows | September 5, 2006I was perusing some articles that had accumulated while I was away, looking for ones that I wouldn't want to have missed and also looking for blog fodder (sometimes my day job and my blogging job actually mesh quite well, at least when it comes to discussing biomedical studies), and then I found an article that I had to discuss. Somehow I had missed it in the week leading up to my departure; how that happened I don't know, but it's time to make up for it. In any case, when I saw this article over the weekend, I knew I'd better comment on it, because, mark my words, it will soon be showing up…
oracknows | September 4, 2006Dr. Chris Rangel has posted a good discussion of trauma due to stingray barbs, stingray venom, and Steve Irwin's tragic death yesterday. It's well worth a read.