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Celeste was the first to draw attention to the Department of Labor's proposed risk-assessment rule, whose title appeared suddenly on the Office of Management and Budget website without having been published first in DOL's regulatory agenda, and she's continued to track the news about it and…
In a commentary on this morningâs Marketplace, the Cato Instituteâs Will Wilkinson critiqued T. Boone Pickensâ new energy plan â and in doing so, painted a misleading picture of the governmentâs role our energy usage.
Pickens wants wind energy to replace natural gas in electricity generation, and…
My recent post on tobacco poisoning focused on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the cause of about one-third of smoking related deaths. Let's move on to cardiovascular disease (CVD), which accounts for another third.
When we talk about CVD, what are we taking about? The pathophysiology is…
Congressman George Miller (D-CA) along with 11 co-sponsors introduced a bill yesterday (H.R. 6660) to prohibit Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao from issuing her proposed rule mandating new requirements for health risk assessments prepared by MSHA and OSHA. The Congressman's statement…
This is one of those topics I've always sort of avoided, and I'm still avoiding it for now. But that doesn't mean you have to remain silent. Here's the reader comment/question:
This is off-topic, but I wanted some doctorly input to a discussion that I am having over at another blog.
This lady is…
It's up over at Martin's place. His blog came out of nowhere (don't they all) a few months back, and he's hit the ground running.
Just, please, when you get to my section, try not to use your imagination too well. Trust me.
Every once in a while I like to do a piece on how real science works. The New England Journal of Medicine was kind enough to serve up a nice example for us this week.
Real science is hard. It's time-consuming, expensive, and leads down many blind alleys. That's one of the reasons pseudoscience is…
One of my favorite pet websites is RationalWiki, which is slowly transforming into it's 3.0 iteration. It originated as a parody/rebuttal site to the execrable Conservapedia (and no, Conservapedia is not a parody, just an example of Poe's Law at work). Eventually, it expanded to developing…
In the Wausau Daily Herald, Gannett Wisconsin Media reports that an explosion at the Packaging Corp of America in Bradley, Wisconsin killed three workers: Randy Hoegger, 55, and Steve Voermans, 52, both of Tomahawk, and Donald Snyder, 46, of Merrill.
According to a company human resources manager,…
by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
The FDA is saying they still aren't sure how over 1200 Salmonella stpaul cases resulted from food chain contamination but they are saying its from jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico. This from a press release July 25:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is…
Oh. My. F-ing. God. All the news that's fit to print???
I know some of my readers don't think much of the New York Times (yes, PP, I'm talking to you), but despite some of my reservations, it's still the Paper of Record. That's why I was, er, um, was nauseated was flabbergasted threw up in…
Thanks to Carol Leonnig at the Washington Post and her confidential sources, we can see the true measure of Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao's disrespect for U.S. workers, embodied in her proposed rule on risk assessement. I blogged first about this "secret rule" on July 8, with follow-ups (…
The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin reports that a senior EPA official has told managers that they shouldn't answer questions from reporters, congressional investigators, or the agency's inspector general - instead, they should direct them to a press officer. (The group Public Employees for…
I frequently get questions by email or by comment. If it's simple, I might fire off an answer. If it's about a personal medical problem, I either don't answer, or send a standard disclaimer to seek medical care. If it's a really interesting question, I blog. Today, I blog.
The question regarded…
This comes up every day. Everyone's afraid of the big "C", and they should be. Smoking increases a person's risk of dying of lung cancer by about 12-20 times (whatever that means, but it's significant).
And while cancer may be scary, other diseases are just as bad. Lung cancers attributable to…
by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
As we noted two days ago in a post about how the produce industry is now interested in tracking regulations they previously opposed after being whacked with billions of dollars in losses because of a protracted Salmonella outbreak whose source was…
What could be more important than a good old-fashioned flame war? I'll get to that in a moment, so please stick with me.
The recent imbroglio between some of our doctor bloggers and non-physician scientists got me thinking (so it couldn't be all bad).
As a quick summary, PhysioProf of the…
The EPA comes under scrutiny this week:
Jennifer Sass at NRDCâs Switchboard applauds the agencyâs proposals to cancel all uses of the pesticide carbofuran.
Andrew Schneider at Secret Ingredients warns of EPA moves to water down regulations determining the cancer-causing danger of asbestos exposure…
"Destined to fail." That is the troubling conclusion of MSHA's 12-month investigation of the coal mine disaster at the Crandall Canyon coal mine that killed nine men last August. They were: Kerry Allred, 58; Dale Black, 48; Don Erickson, 50; MSHA's Gary Jensen, 53; Brandon…
My Scibling DrugMonkey brought up a half-valid point. The half that was valid was that none of the medical bloggers spoke out about the surgeon who assaulted a patient. The half that was insane was where this is used as further evidence that doctors are arrogant pricks. Based on this comment and…
Our Scibling PhysioProf has launched the opening salvo in what may turn out to be a rather bloody flame war. In the interest of actually gaining something from this other than venting my own anger and frustration, I will beg your indulgence here as I explain why my colleague is so utterly…
Congressman George Miller (D-CA) and Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) have strongly urged Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to withdraw the proposed rule on occupational health risk assessment which her Department submitted to OMB on July 7.  Their letter says:
"we are deeply…
DROP YOUR CELL PHONE NOW!!!!111!
(don't send me the bill for the replacement)
I'm sure others will cover more of the scientific details, but science aside, we should examine why today's statement on cell phones out of Pittsburgh is so ridiculous. Setting aside the lack of data connecting cell…
The folks at bloggingheads.tv whoring for some link love sent me an interesting link. They had a talking heads session ("diavlog"---damn, that's hard to say) between John Horgan and some other guy (sorry, "Some Other Guy"). Horgan is the guy who brought us The End of Science, a book which was…
Following The Pump Handle's July 8 post "Secret Rule on OSHA Risk Assessment" (and July 10 here), a front-page Washington Post article provides more details on the Bush Administration's plan to "reform" the system used by OSHA and MSHA to assess workers'…
by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
The tomatoes-peppers-cilantro-? Salmonella story is starting to break, although which way is hard to say at this moment. Beginning about 3 pm yesterday afternoon newswire stories began to report that the FDA had found a single jalapeno pepper in a small…
Radovan Karadzic, one of the worst mass-murders of the post-WWII era, has been captured, or, perhaps more properly, has been allowed to be captured. Karadzic was responsible for orchestrating the murders of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan Wars.
A close friend of my family…
The American Geriatric Society has announced that falls are a leading cause of serious injury and death among the U.S. elderly. HealthDay News reports:
Each year, about one in three Americans aged 65 and older suffers a fall, and 30 percent of those falls cause injuries that require medical…
Here and in other venues, we've written quite a bit about the tactics used in the anti-vaccination movement (or as I like to call it, the "infectious disease promotion movement (IDPM)"). Let's examine some less subtle tactics.
The disease promoters are good---very good. Take this, for instance:…
Who has the moral high ground in the vaccination wars?
My initial response is that I do, "I" meaning the medical and public health fields---those of us who prevent disease, disability, and death.
But it's much more complicated. Many anti-vaccine activists are "true believers". They really…