j7uy5
Posts by this author
April 9, 2009
Someone reached my site by searching for "callosal boobs." He
probably was disappointed. The Corpus Callosum does not have
boobs.
style="display: inline;">
However, nearby, there is a pair of structures known as the
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammillary_bodies">mammillary…
April 7, 2009
The American Psychiatric Association is considering whether to
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/magazine/05wwln-safire-t.html">reboot
their diagnosis machine. In 1952, the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual (DSM) was published. In 1980, the third edition was
published. The third…
April 3, 2009
From time to time, we hear of faux psychotherapy interventions that are
intended to convert persons from homosexuality to
heterosexuality. Mostly, the publicity has centered on
pseudomoralistic interventions that clearly have a religious agenda as
opposed to a health-enhancing agenda. As such…
March 30, 2009
The New England Journal of Medicine has four open-access articles of
the topic of electronic medical records (EMR). One article
reports on a survey of the characteristics of EMR in use, and the
extent to which they have been adopted within US hospitals. The
second discussed the barriers to the…
March 25, 2009
I saw this article in a couple of places before it dawned on me what
the implication is:
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/health/research/21alcohol.html">Drinkers'
Red Face May Signal Cancer Risk
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: March 20, 2009
People whose faces turn red when they drink…
March 23, 2009
The New York Times has an editorial written by Evo Morales Ayma, the
President of Bolivia. It has nothing to do with globalization, or
the ravages of capitalism, or the environmental destruction wrought by
multinational corporations, which is what one might expect.
Rather, it is about coca leaves…
March 20, 2009
When I was at work today, I saw a headline that irritated me. I decided
I would blog about it when I got home. But now the headline has
been changed. I will still blog about it, though.
The original headline was: Report: Alternative energy quest endangering
birds. Now, it is worded differently…
March 18, 2009
Today's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association
contains a study that employed PET scans to determine the effect of
modafinil upon dopamine concentration and reuptake in the human central
nervous system. They conclude with a caution that clinicians
should be mindful of the…
March 17, 2009
Dr. Richard
Friedman, professor of psychiatry at Weill Medical College of
Cornell University, has an article in the New York Times. In it,
he claims that reforms in medical residency training may be leaving
young doctors "a little more hesitant and uncertain than you might
like."
At first I was…
March 15, 2009
An opinion article (
href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123689292159011723.html">There's
No Pill for This Kind of Depression) in the Wall Street Journal
contained the following unsupported claim:
The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is
widespread. In New York their use became…
March 9, 2009
class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;">
href="http://xkcd.com/552/">(comic from
href="http://xkcd.com/552/">kxcd)
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
alt="ResearchBlogging.org"
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/…
March 5, 2009
Obama has made
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/02/AR2009030200371.html?wprss=rss_nation">two
important appointments, to positions that will influence healthcare
policy. The attention so far has been focused on
href="http://www.governor.ks.gov/">Kathleen…
March 3, 2009
At first I was happy to see some good news on the Internet, a
refreshing break from the avalanche of bad stuff rolling down every
peak.
href="http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/03/02/fewer_children_have_high_lead_levels/">Fewer
children have high lead levels
Associated Press /…
March 1, 2009
There you go again, Mr. George Will.
In case you've somehow missed the fray, George Will has posted two (
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302514.html">2/15/2009,
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/26/…
February 27, 2009
href="http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2009/03/02/090302po_poem_cohen">In
The New YorkerPoetryA
Street
by Leonard Cohen
[...]
I see the Ghost of Culture
With numbers on his wrist
Salute some new conclusion
Which all of us have missed
[...]
The ghost of culture is so much wiser than us…
February 26, 2009
Psychiatrists of old, never gave advice. But here's some advice:
And never trust with your money anyone making a potential
bonus.
From
href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fa89be08-02aa-11de-b58b-000077b07658.html">Nassim
Nicholas Taleb, author of Black Swan; HT:
href="http://theautomaticearth.…
February 25, 2009
When Bush announced the Global and Perpetual War on Terror, and shifted
funding away from environmental, worker, and consumer safety functions,
I speculated that "the terrorists" would not have to do anything to
kill us: our own corporations would do the job for them. This has
turned out to be the…
February 25, 2009
Folks, please help me understand
href="http://www.michnews.com/J_Grant_Swank_Jr/430598.shtml">this:
Why did God create Israel in 1948?
He did so, not for the Jews' sake primarily, but to vindicate His holy
name.
I guess you have to read the whole thing to get the full effect.
Well, maybe not…
February 19, 2009
The NEJM has published a provocative article about the ethics of the
globalization of clinical trials. (The article is openly
accessible.) The big issue is this: clinical trials are very
expensive. It is cheaper to do them overseas, but this raises
questions of scientific integrity, as well as…
February 18, 2009
The UN Office of Drugs and Crime brings us
href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2009/01/25/europe/OUKWD-UK-FINANCIAL-UN-DRUGS.php">this
cheerful news:
VIENNA: The United Nations' crime and drug watchdog has
indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep
banks…
February 16, 2009
This is a photo of an embarrassing misattribution. It features a
quote often misattributed to Charles Darwin: It is not the
strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but
rather the one most adaptable to change.
title="Click this link to find out details of the Creative…
February 13, 2009
A minor controversy has erupted over the health care provisions that
were slipped in to the economic stimulus bill without discussion.
It has provisions such that..
Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a
federal system...One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of
Health…
February 10, 2009
The new Congress and new Administration passed a law already. It
was barely notied by the media. It is a reauthorization and
expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program
(SCHIP). Given the expected resistance to major changes in
health care, it was astonishingly easy for Congress…
February 10, 2009
Wouldn't you know it? Right after I post a compilation of
graphical representations of the
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-naw-obama10-2009feb10,0,7686262.story">winter
of our hardship, out come some more (HT:
href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/02/why-we-…
February 9, 2009
Just like I was saying. HT:
href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/02/financial-times-martin-wolf-team-obama.html">Naked
Capitalism. With videos.
This is not from some marignalized doomer. It is from the
Financial Times.
February 9, 2009
This chart shows what the stock market had been doing since the summer
of 2007, when the effects of the economic crisis were openly recognized
by the Administration. You can see that that various
interventions have resulted in brief improvements, but nothing
sustained. The overall trend clearly…
February 5, 2009
I used to wonder why we, the people of the USA, tolerate our
government. Then I read
href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=au4Y7Cudw2Xo&refer=home">this:
“Front-running isn’t
who’s getting the benefit; it’s who’s
paying the price,” says Henning, noting that
Madoff’…
February 2, 2009
This needs to be replicated before any conclusions can be drawn, but it
is encouraging. 21 patients with relapsing-remitting
href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/multiple-sclerosis/overview.html?scp=1-spot&sq=multiple%20sclerosis&st=cse">multiple
sclerosis, in whom…
January 28, 2009
Our man in Chicago turned me on to Charlie Stross. Little did I
know, Stross' writings have become something of a sensation in the
academic world.
One of the first blogs I read was Crooked
Timber. I think it was our man in Chicago who showed me the
way there, IIRC.
Anyway, Crooked Timber has a…
January 27, 2009
On 26 January 2008, major employers in the USA announced 60,000 jobs
would be lost. The market responded positively, as it often
does. The S&P 500 gained 0.56%.
Clearly the best thing that businesses could do would be to fire
everyone. A quick Google search indicates that there are about…