j7uy5 | October 2, 2009This is a bad sign. Specifically, it is an instance of the mainstream media starting to hint at the truth. I take this as a sign that things are getting worse, as the effort to keep up the pretense is no longer even remotely credible.
What this article shows, is that the economic models are wrong. That in itself is not news. Regular visitors know that all models are wrong. But they can be useful, if the underlying assumptions are correct, or nearly so.
U.S. Job Losses May Be Even Larger as Labor's Model Breaks Down
By Carlos Torres
Bloomberg
Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economic slump…
j7uy5 | September 28, 2009The new drug is called iloperidone; the brand name in the USA
will be Fanapt. It is yet another antipsychotic that
blocks D2 and 5HT2 receptors. Although there is no universally
accepted way of classifying drugs into families, it will be referred to
as an atypical or second-generation
antipsychotic. This designation will indicate a loose kind of
similarity to risperidone, aripiperazole, ziprasidone, quetiapine,
olanzapine, clozapine, and paliperidone.
It turns out that there is a Wikipedia page for
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iloperidone">iloperidone.
It is not one of the…
j7uy5 | September 25, 2009Practitioners are warned that it is astonishingly easy to make dosing
errors with the oral suspension of Tamiflu (oseltamivir).
This is a product that is mostly given to kids, although it
could be used for adults who have difficulty swallowing, or for anyone
if there is a shortage of the capsules.
The reason: usually, doctors write prescriptions for liquid medications
by specifying the number of milliliters, or sometimes teaspoons, to
administer. But the dispenser that comes with the product is
marked in milligrams, not milliliters.
This came to attention when a doctor got a prescription…
j7uy5 | September 24, 2009A recent report refers to
the increasing number of Alzheimer patient an "emergency." Yet,
despite an enormous amount of research, and a handful of drugs, we are
not particularly close to having a robust intervention for this
condition.
Perhaps the reason is that we have been looking in the wrong
place. Traditionally, brain disease tend to be thought of a
neuronal diseases, with many interventions aimed at neurotransmitters,
the chemical messengers that convey information from one neuron to
another. But there is a lot more to the brain than neurons and
transmitters.
One researcher is going…
j7uy5 | September 21, 2009This is kind of strange: a post about an insurance company, that has
nothing to do with health care.
href="http://www.guideone.com/">Guideone Mutual Insurance
Company recently settled a lawsuit in which religious
discrimination was alleged. This had to do with a "product"
called FaithGuard, which was a kind of homeowners'
insurance.
In 2006, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development began an
investigation, after the GuideOne
href="http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/11860056.html">failed
to respond to a complaint:
GuideOne routinely asks for religious affiliation
when…
j7uy5 | September 17, 2009The people of Obama are selling jellyfish candy. Really.
style="display: inline;">The photo shows a diver next to a specimen of Nomura's jellyfish,
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomura%27s_jellyfish">Nemopilema
nomurai. These creatures occasionally
href="http://scienceblogs.com/guiltyplanet/2009/07/another_year_another_giant_jel.php">swarm
off the coast of Japan, where they are a nuisance. Some
creative souls have responded by
href="http://scienceblogs.com/shiftingbaselines/2008/02/more_jellies_fill_your_belly.php">finding
ways to eat them.
Now, schoolkids in the…
j7uy5 | September 15, 2009There is an interesting parallel between the fight over rural
electrification, in 1935, and the current health insurance debate. (HT
href="http://dangerousmeta.com/site/comments/newwestnet_if_you_read_nothing_else_today/">dangerousmeta)
href="http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/how_fdr_enacted_his_public_option/C37/L37/">
href="http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/how_fdr_enacted_his_public_option/C37/L37/">How
FDR Enacted his "Public Option"
By Bob Simmons, Crosscut.com, Guest Writer, 9-13-09
...President Roosevelt had decreed a public option in 1935,
putting the federal…
j7uy5 | September 14, 2009The SEIU website makes an
href="http://www.seiu.org/2009/09/domestic-violence-victims-have-a-pre-existing-condition.php">astonishing
claim:
But, in DC and nine other states, including Arkansas,
Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming, insurance companies have gone too
far, claiming that "domestic violence victim" is also a pre-existing
condition.
Words cannot describe the sheer inhumanity of this claim. It serves as
yet further proof that our insurance system is broken, destroyed by the
profit-mongering of the very companies…
j7uy5 | September 9, 2009I understand as well as anyone, that the health care finance reform
process has been dispiriting so far. Congressman Joe Wilson of
South Carolina has
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6165489/Barack-Obama-health-care-speech-Republican-calls-president-a-liar.html">brought
the process to a new low. So low, in fact, that his
href="http://www.joewilson.house.gov/">website is down for
maintenance (at the moment, anyway), and the
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addison_G._Wilson">WIkipedia page
about him has been locked, due to vandalism.
When the…
j7uy5 | September 8, 2009Poets on Prozac is the short title of a book by
psychiatrist-poet Richard M. Berlin, MD. The full title is: Poets
on Prozac: Mental Illness, Treatment, and the Creative Process.
Berlin was an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of
Massachusetts Medical School; now he's in private practice, and a
Senior Affiliate at U Mass. And a writer. His personal
website is here.
A sample of his work is
href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/296/7/737">here;
After Reading Music From Apartment 8
for John Stone, MD
When I started out in medicine,
before I married and…
j7uy5 | September 3, 2009The odd thing about the Pfizer story is that it is old news.
Fierce Pharma
href="http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/pfizer-takes-2-3b-bextra-charge/2009-01-26">wrote
about it on 26 January 2009, and Neuron Culture
href="http://scienceblogs.com/neuronculture/2009/01/pfizer_takes_23b_bextra_charge.php">posted
about it, on 27 January 2009. Yet it just appeared in the New
York Times:
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/business/03health.html?sq=pfizer&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print">Pfizer
Pays $2.3 Billion to Settle Marketing Case
By GARDINER HARRIS
WASHINGTON -- The…
j7uy5 | August 28, 2009...and the steel hits the flesh.
Mark Rosenberg, MD, representing the
href="http://www.researchamerica.org/pgr_society">Paul G. Rogers
Society for Global Health Research, had an opinion piece published
in the Boston Globe. He makes a good point about health. It
is not just doctors and hospitals. Urban design, and
infrastructure maintenance have a role to play.
href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/18/roads_that_are_designed_to_kill/">Roads
that are designed to kill
By Mark Rosenberg
August 18, 2009
...Most people think we are doing all…
j7uy5 | August 27, 2009The health care reform process is getting extremely ugly.
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-na-healthcare-insurers24-2009aug24,0,6925890.story">
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-na-healthcare-insurers24-2009aug24,0,6925890.story">Healthcare
insurers get upper hand
Obama's overhaul fight is being won by the industry, experts say. The
end result may be a financial 'bonanza.'LA Times
By Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger
August 24, 2009
href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090823_this_isnt_reform_its_robbery/">This…
j7uy5 | August 24, 2009
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
alt="ResearchBlogging.org"
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
style="border: 0pt none ;">
A fair amount has been written about the topic of motivated
reasoning. Jonah Lehrer
href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/09/motivated_reasoning.php">explains
the relationship between motivated reasoning and the political process;
Orac
href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/04/why_projection_isnt_all_its_cracked_up_t.php">addresses
the issue with regard to quantum woo. (Plus more at Mixing…
j7uy5 | August 23, 2009Some irreverent souls have taken to Sunday blogging on a freethinking
themes. I choose to Ozymandize* that which we worship the most:
our economic system.
That plant in the middle is
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2009/07/color_of_the_year_mimosa.php">my
mimosa (
href="http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=ALJU">Albizia
julibrissin) tree, the one I am growing from seed. It is,
literally, a green shoot (although the leaves close and droop at night).
style="display: inline;">
"They" say that green shoots are everywhere these days. Do we
believe "them"?
href="…
j7uy5 | August 22, 2009IEEE
href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/hydrogen-helper">reports
that chicken feathers are superior to carbon nanotubes:
src="http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs148.snc1/5494_920199924833_2254023_51033310_7917444_s.jpg"
align="left" height="86" width="130">Scientists
at the University of Delaware say that carbonized chicken feathers
could be a cheap way to store hydrogen for fuel cells. According to
chemical engineering professor Richard Wool, the heat-treated feathers
could hold more hydrogen than costlier competing technologies, such as
metal hydrides…
j7uy5 | August 19, 2009It is refreshing to see something like this. Both drugs are
available as generics, so the financial motivation for a study like
this is not great. But the clinical benefit could e substantial,
albeit for a small subset of patients.
Clozapine is considered to be the most efficacious antipsychotic
medication, in that it is the drug to which the highest percentage of
persons with psychosis have a positive response. It is, however,
considered a third-line drug. The reason is that about 1% of
patients will develop severe granulocytopenia. So, in general, a
patient will be tried on at least…
j7uy5 | August 13, 2009At the Lawrence Hall of Science, at the University of California -
Berkeley, there is a children's playground. On the playground,
theere is a whimsical sculture based on DNA. Lots of people like
it. Indeed, Dr. Stemwedel wrote
href="http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2007/08/friday_sprog_blogging_fsb_goes.php">a
post inspired by an experience her kids had there. That's
where this photo comes from. (More
href="http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/gallery/gal094.html">here.)
src="http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2007/08/31/DNA.jpg"
height="375" width="500">
So what's…
j7uy5 | August 13, 2009I haven't been a good blog-citizen lately. And no, it is not
because of fatigue. Anyway, I've going to try to get back to
looking at other people's blogs more, and not just here at
ScienceBlogs.
Dr. Serani kindly
href="http://drdeborahserani.blogspot.com/2009/08/5-reasons-you-may-be-tired.html">pointed
out an
href="http://www.parade.com/health/2008/10/5-reasons-you-may-be-tired">article
on common causes of fatigue. Sleep disorders, thyroid problems,
diabetes, depression, and anemia.
My comment of this has to do with how these problems are screened for
in general medical…
j7uy5 | August 9, 2009The way that the debate over health care is being conducted is brazen and disturbing. If it turns out to be a flashpoint for violence -- as it may -- it will be profoundly ironic: our efforts to improve health care delivery, end up being a catalyst for generalized thuggery.