Policy
tsmith | February 21, 2008Last fall I wrote about the bizarre case of University of Pittsburgh geneticist Robert Ferrell. Dr. Ferrell, you may recall, had been prosecuted for sharing generally-harmless strains of bacteria with a colleague, SUNY-Buffalo art professor Steven Kurtz. Dr. Kurtz then used the bacterial cultures in an art display, which drew the attention of authorities following the death of Dr. Kurtz's wife. Then all hell broke loose (after the jump):
Ferrell violated [the Material Transfer Agreement] by sharing the strains with Kurtz. Normally, this would be an issue handled between Ferrell (and his…
tsmith | February 5, 2008I mentioned previously a clash between religion and public health, where a Liberian immigrant was jailed for importing bushmeat. She argued that infringing upon her religious freedom in this manner was unconstitutional; authorities argued that she couldn't put others at risk because of her religious beliefs. Another clash where religious beliefs are at odds with public health is simmering in the U.K.; more after the jump.
Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their…
tsmith | January 29, 2008Yesterday I mentioned the controversy over needle exchange programs as an analogy to the objection the administration has to providing heroin anti-OD kits containing Narcan to drug users. In a bit of good timing, the LA Times has an article about a 73-year-old HIV+ lay preacher, of all people, who was on arrested while working a needle exchange program--which remain illegal in his home state, Texas.
tsmith | January 28, 2008 An ongoing outbreak of Salmonella associated with turtles has now sickened more than 100 and caused a quarter of that number to be hospitalized:
Cases have been reported in 33 states, but mostly in California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Most of the patients have been children.
No one has died in the latest outbreak, which began in August. But some patients have experienced severe symptoms, including acute kidney failure.
The most common symptoms reported to the CDC included bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping, fever and vomiting. The median age of patients was 7 1/2 .
More after the…
tsmith | January 28, 2008Via new acquaintance Tom Levinson of the Inverse Square blog comes an all-too-familiar story of our "compassionate conservative" administration putting their own morality above proven public health programs:
Fact 1: public health officials around the country...are distributing rescue kits [containing Narcan, see below --TS] that save heroin users from overdoses. The kits cost $9.50, and they are credited with reversing 2,600 overdoses in 16 such local programs around the country. For context: NPR reports that "overdoses of heroin and opiates, such as Oxycontin, kill more drug users than AIDS…
illconsidered | November 6, 2007According to a recent poll from PIPA (Program on International Policy Attitudes), commissioned by the BBC, people world wide are ready and willing to pay more for energy supplies in order to combat climate change.
Once again the US is defining "leadership" as "dragging feet, kicking and screaming behind everyone else".
The true costs of oil are buried deep in huge military budgets and corporate welfare for the richest corporations in human history. Bottled water costs more.
(don't forget to check the details [PDF's, both])
illconsidered | November 2, 2007Via Andrew Dessler on Gristmill, we have this quoted material:
At the World Climate Conference in Geneva this week, the United States blocked consensus on specific goals for reduction of carbon dioxide emission. As What's New predicted a month ago, the US sided with such backward nations as China and the Soviet Union, and oil producers like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Our traditional allies, Western European nations, Canada Japan, New Zealand and Australia, said they could cut emissions through energy efficiency measures at no net cost. A German study even concludes they can make money --…
tsmith | October 15, 2007Being a microbiologist can be a dangerous business. Some of us work out in the field, exposed to weather, animals, and pathogens of all different forms. Some do research in countries with unstable governments, collecting samples and tracking down infected individuals in the midst of strife, poverty, and warfare. Some remain in the lab, but share it with agents that can be handled only under high levels of containment, and may need special labs and permits just to do their research. We all realize our job contains some level of risk, and do what we can to minimize that.
However, as much…
tsmith | September 18, 2007...They make be spreading disease.
British hospitals are working on keeping that in check by implementing a new dress code:
British hospitals are banning neckties, long sleeves and jewelry for doctors -- and their traditional white coats -- in an effort to stop the spread of deadly hospital-borne infections, according to new rules published Monday.
Hospital dress codes typically urge doctors to look professional, which, for male practitioners, has usually meant wearing a tie. But as concern over hospital-born infections has intensified, doctors are taking a closer look at their clothing.
"…
tsmith | September 10, 2007 September 8th was world rabies day. In the United States, this was celebrated with the news that the canine rabies strain appears to be eliminated from this country. In the U.S., rabies in both humans and domestic animals remains rare, though the virus remains endemic in several species of wildlife (especially raccoons, skunks, and bats). However, worldwide, rabies remains a significant public health problem, causing an estimated 50-60,000 deaths per year worldwide--one death every ten minutes. More after the jump...
First, the news about the U.S. and dog rabies. Like most viruses,…
tsmith | August 27, 2007Yes, that's actually the argument made by the Orwellian group, PRISM ("Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine"):
Policies are being proposed that threaten to introduce undue government intervention in science and scholarly publishing, putting at risk the integrity of scientific research by:
* undermining the peer review process by compromising the viability of non-profit and commercial journals that manage and fund it;
* opening the door to scientific censorship in the form of selective additions to or omissions from the scientific record;
* subjecting the…
tsmith | August 16, 2007I've not mentioned this yet because I hadn't had a chance to see it myself, but C-SPAN did broadcast this year's YearlyKos Science Panel. You can see Chris's talk on hurricanes and global warming here; Ed's talk on fighting creationism by running for school board here, and Sean's talk on dark energy and dark matter over yonder. I have the videos of the final parts--the Q&A session--after the jump.
tsmith | August 9, 2007
Apologies for the silence; as I mentioned, August is a crazy month for me. I hope to get back to some heavier science posts some point here, but those will, unfortunately, have to wait a bit. In the meantime, I did want to say a bit about last week's science discussions at YearlyKos, featuring (L-R) Ed, Sean, and Chris; More after the jump. (All photos courtesy of Lindsay).
First, a bit about what went on. I arrived there Thursday, and the first order of events was to get ready for the Science bloggers' caucus Thursday afternoon. This was pretty much a no-holds-barred, unscripted…
tsmith | June 7, 2007 My office in the epidemiology department is located within the hospital. Therefore, every day when I walk into work, I pass by a sign like the one on the left. Like most states, Iowa has a safe haven law--a law that allows parents to leave a newborn infant at a designated site, no questions asked, without any threat of prosecution. These sorts of laws were developed in response to cases where babies had been left on doorsteps, or thrown in trash dumpsters, etc. Safe Haven laws, in theory, should prevent those kinds of abuses--the parents abdicate responsibility for the infant, who can…
tsmith | May 31, 2007In the comments to the XDR-TB update post, Scott suggested that bloggers were putting too much emphasis on whether the TB patient was stupid/arrogant/self-centered/whatever, and later that "waxing indignant is pointless." I started this as a response to those comments, but thought instead it might be an interesting conversation--is it pointless? Certainly indignation about this guy's behavior won't change what's happened. Indignation about creationists' abuse of science won't make them stop. Does it have a point? My thoughts on it below the fold.
So, my thoughts. I think there…
tsmith | May 30, 2007I blogged earlier about the Georgia man who globe-trotted while infected with XDR-TB. I wrote that post late Tuesday evening, and since then, a number of other details about his case have come to light--and they're not encouraging. In fact, this serves as a nice example of a convergence of a number of areas I've written about before--obviously, the evolution of antibiotic resistance and the terrible position it leaves us in, the politics and policies of quarantine/isolation (and how they'd be enforced), and the global spread of infectious disease, so I figured this would warrant another…
tsmith | May 30, 2007 I blogged back in March about World TB day, the theme of which was "TB anywhere is TB everywhere." We know that someone can simply hop on a plane halfway across the world, and be practically anywhere else on the globe in the span of about a day--and their bacteria and viruses are just along for the ride. This is particularly disconcerting when it comes to respiratory diseases, where fellow airline passengers may be coughing and sneezing all over you, or touching shared objects without washing their hands. This is also a scenario that's known to have spread SARS, and may spread a future…
tsmith | May 8, 2007 Smallpox is, without a doubt, the biggest success story in all of vaccination. The practice of variolation, or the purposeful inoculation of naïve individuals with material from scabs of smallpox victims, was practiced for years prior to Edward Jenner's substitution of cowpox for the smallpox (Variola) virus. The vaccinia virus, thought to be a derivative of cowpox, has been used in the 20th century in smallpox vaccination campaigns. Vaccina elicits antibodies that protect from smallpox infection, yet typically causes an asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic infection. This…
tsmith | April 24, 2007Last summer, I mentioned that groups receiving federal funding were providing misleading information about abortion, including the unsupported statement that having an abortion increases the risk of development of breast cancer. As I noted, this "link" has been refuted by a number of analyses, including a 2004 Lancet paper and a 2003 National Cancer Institute report. As if those weren't enough, a new study comes to the same conclusion: yep, no link. More after the jump.
The new study, appearing in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, looked at data from 105,716 women participating in…
tsmith | April 12, 2007It's difficult to believe that it's been over a year since I last wrote a post on the use of masks in the event of an influenza pandemic. Since then, there's been a virtual glut of information out there, and from what I've seen at least, people, businesses, organizations, government, etc. interested in preparation seem to be taking more of a structured approach, rather than a knee-jerk reaction that we saw last year with Tamiflu hoarding and stockpiling masks, which, as I mentioned in the post linked above, have uncertain effectiveness in the event of a pandemic.
I also noted that one big…