revere
Posts by this author
December 3, 2006
One frequent refrain about why we don't have to worry about a bird flu pandemic is the astounding progress we've made in medical science in the 88 years since 1918. It's a good point. In 1918 we didn't even know the causative agent.
In this spirit I offer you an excerpt from a December 1918 report…
December 3, 2006
The Soldiers of God are on the warpath. The initial forays of the godless insurgents Dawkins, Dennett and Harris have provoked the predictable counterattack. The homosexual agenda and Islamic extremism are being displaced by insidious atheist subversion:
The Rev Campbell Paget, vicar of All Saints…
December 2, 2006
I would be embarrassed by this cheap and easy post about chicken soup for symptoms of cold and flu, but I have a more serious purpose. I want to ask ScienceBlogger colleagues who inveigh constantly against alternative medicine (or "woo" as orac at Respectful Insolence insists on calling it) what…
December 1, 2006
We mostly like being right, but we sometimes wish we weren't. A few days ago we concluded a post) on some scientific background about Polonium-210 by saying this assassination could also become a public health problem. That now seems to be the case, as a trail of radiation is being found in the…
December 1, 2006
Health Canada is following the US FDA in warning of adverse neurobehavioral effects of the influenza antiviral, Tamiflu. The drug is prescribed much more often in Japan, where it is used in seasonal flu, than in the US. The effects have been reported mainly in children and have included some…
November 30, 2006
Like most computer users I hate spam. But I've gradually gotten used to it. You can get used to anything, I was once told, even a stone in your shoe. Apparently I've gotten used to more than I thought. In a terrific piece in New York Press, Lindsay Beyerstein (aka Majikthise) calls our attention to…
November 30, 2006
Helen Branswell had an interesting piece about a rumor there was a human case of H5N1 in Canada, in a child. Branswell's pieces are the occasion for frequent posts here, although this is a bit awkward as it turns out she quotes us. Accurately. Which is characteristic of all her reporting and also…
November 29, 2006
There's been a lot of notice that the South Koreans are responding to two outbreaks of bird flu (H5N1) not only with the culling of poultry by the hundreds of thousands, something that has become quite routine, now, but also the slaughter of neighboring dogs and pigs. Pigs are a well known host for…
November 29, 2006
The "father" of epidemiology is a nineteenth century doctor, John Snow. He had more than one disciplinary child, since he is also considered the "father" of anesthesiology, having popularized the use of chloroform in obstetrics by using it on Queen Victoria in the 1850s. That distinction aside,…
November 28, 2006
Misery doesn't love company. Misery loves hope. Unfortunately, those of us in the beleaguered northern hemisphere won't find it in the Land of Oz, where Bush clone John Howard apes the chimp.
Via the sometimes hopeful, sometimes despairing but always excellent blog, The ImpactED Nurse (Canberra,…
November 28, 2006
[This is Part II of our explanation of some of the science behind the Polonium-210 poisoning case of Alexander Litvinenko. Part I. is here.]
In Part I. we sketched the physical background to understand radioisotopes like Polonium-210, the agent in the Litvinenko poisoning, but have yet to explain…
November 27, 2006
It's been a while since we visited the FDA's benzene-in-soft-drinks failure (see here, here, here and here). No time like the present.
Serious questions remain over how America?s food safety watchdog handled the presence of benzene residues in soft drinks, a senior ex-official has said, after tests…
November 27, 2006
It's bigger news in the UK than elsewhere but it's still big news. Apparently Russian dissident and former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned with Polonium 210. Time for some science.
Polonium 210 is a radioisotope, meaning it is an isotope of the element Polonium that is…
November 26, 2006
This weekend is Effect Measure's Second Blogiversary and it coincides with two other events: the new Flu Wiki Forum and the incipient debut of a new progressive public health blog, The Pump Handle, to which The Reveres will be occasional contributors (some original posts, some cross posts). We are…
November 26, 2006
I'm no fan of WalMart's. Too much disruption of the retail world at the expense of the global environment and workers around the world and too little attention to the needs of its own workers. My side of the political fence is not friendly WalMart territory, to be sure. It turns out that right wing…
November 25, 2006
After many travails and gnashing of keyboards, The Flu Wiki Forum has a gorgeous new look. We have migrated from PMWiki to SoapBlox and in the process acquired some wonderful new capabilities, among them the option of having nested or threaded comments (you can keep the old forum comment…
November 25, 2006
If you want to know where the WMDs are, look no further. In fact in at least seven US communities you can see them by looking out your window. We're talking about our WMDs, of course. It's OK for us to have them. They won't get into the hands of terrorists from us. At least we hope not. They are a…
November 24, 2006
One of the remarkable things about The Flu Wiki is how it has taken root in other places. There are now several non-English versions of it, including français, español, Türkçe and norsk.
In a recent comment our Norwegian colleagues asked we remind you they are there. I went and took a look at…
November 24, 2006
This week The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published three articles on the evolving story of the influenza A/H5N1 panzootic that has the potential to become a human pandemic. Two are rather meager case series, one from Turkey and one from Indonesia. It is an extraordinary indication of…
November 23, 2006
It seems like only yesterday that Dear Leader was making a surprise visit to the troops in Iraq for his annual Thanksgiving photo-op. Here's the report on CNN from 2003. You will see that things weren't going so great even then:
His visit marked the first time a U.S. president had traveled to Iraq…
November 23, 2006
Since it's Thanksgiving I was going to do a shortish post about the tryptophan hypothesis being the cause of sleepiness after a turkey dinner, but the real expert on sleep cycles, my ScienceBlogs comrade Coturnix, beat me to it by a day. Which is good because without his excellent post I would…
November 22, 2006
China is becoming an environmental nightmare. Now experts from the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, a Chinese government think tank, have located the culprits. The rest of the world. We are forcing China to make products for them and as a result making…
November 22, 2006
I like Representative Charlie Rangel, the feisty New York Democrat, but he's dead wrong on reinstating the military draft. It would be the worst thing that could happen.
Rangel has twice sponsored legislation to reintroduce the draft on the grounds that an all-volunteer army puts disproportionate…
November 21, 2006
It's hard to believe but apparently people are still falling for the Nigerian email scam. Reuters has a story saying it is costing millions to UK residents and I'm guessing the same is true in the US. Since you are no doubt reading this on a computer and are therefore hooked up to the internet and…
November 21, 2006
Breathing asbestos fibers kills workers. It's as simple as that. Not everyone who breathes asbestos gets an asbestos related disease but enough do that it is a real risk. So you don't want to work with asbestos without taking precautions and you can't take precautions if you don't know you are…
November 20, 2006
In the late 1990s congress decided to invest in our future by doubling the NIH budget. If you are a scientist today trying to get an NIH grant, however, you are in tough shape. Success rates are falling like a stone, with less than 20% of grant applications now being funded. It is common to submit…
November 20, 2006
Reader Dylan has brought me the good news that the Bush Administration, with its many failings, has a plan to wipe out hunger in America. Really. And I think they will carry it out. Really.
The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low…
November 19, 2006
Nancy Pelosi is the new Speaker of the House but she has some illustrious (as well as not so illustrious) predecessors. Denny Hastert was not so illustrious. Tip O'Neill, the legendary congressman from Massachusetts, was another matter. O'Neill rented an apartment in Washington, DC, but mostly…
November 19, 2006
I remember a joke that went something like, "What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian? Someone who knocks on your door for no apparent reason." I was reminded of this from an article in the Greensboro, NC News-Record, "Unitarian church extends welcome to nonbelievers."
It…
November 18, 2006
Yet another urgent cry for help concerning the dire medical care catastrophe in the Israeli occupied territories of Palestine. Israel has cut off tax revenues they have collected, essentially confiscating Palestinian wages for work done. At the same time international donors have cut-off aid in an…