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Have you ever taken one of the now-over-the-counter heartburn relief remedies like Tagamet, Zantac, or Pepcid? How about the beta-blocker atenolol (Tenormin) or metoprolol (Lopressor) for antihypertensive therapy, or the original less-selective beta-blocker propranolol (Inderal) for migraines, presentation anxiety or stage fright? If you answered yes to either question, you owe a debt of gratitude to Sir James Black, the Scottish physician who left us earlier this week at age 85. The best obituary I have seen memorializing Sir James comes from the UK Telegraph. Black was called the father…
As I've mentioned before, I've been spending a lot of time working on a book. Initially, I was working on a book made up of a collection of material from blog posts; along the way, I got diverted, and ended up writing a book about cloud computing using Google's AppEngine tools. The book isn't finished, but my publisher, the Pragmatic Programmers, have a program that they call beta books. Once a book is roughly 60% done, you can buy it at a discount, and download drafts electronically immediately. As more sections get done, you can download each new version. And when the book is finally…
Our post on drugs and documents found in the Sedona resort room occupied by self-help guru James Ray requires a correction and a clarification related to the Michigan doctor of osteopathy who, according to publicly-available records, prescribed some of the drugs as detailed in these publicly-available documents. 1. Correction: Dr. John Crisler was referred to as an "Internet physician from Michigan." To be clear, he is a physician with an office in Lansing, Michigan, with an internet presence at allthingsmale.com. On his website, he lists an "Office Visit Fee - Office or Virtual" for $60.00…
In discussing the Christmas birth of a son to ScienceBlogs launcher and science journalist Christopher Mims and his wife, I neglected to note another addition to our tribe of science, from a science blogger specifically. ChemicalBiLOLogy blogger, Arlenna, gave birth on Christmas Eve to a beautiful girl, pictured here with Mr. Arlenna. In her brief post, "I had a baby!," Arlenna posited: . . .whoever invented epidurals and started using them in childbirth should win the Nobel Prize. Despite my lack of training in anesthesiology or obstetrics, I thought I might look into this a bit. I had…
It's Sunday morning on the US East Coast and I really need to put the computer down to get out for a hike in the crisp, autumn air. Sunday morning is a great time to catch up on long-form writing but I won't be the one providing it for you. Instead, I encourage you to take 15 minutes this morning to read an "old" (2005) article in Fortune magazine entitled, The Law of Unintended Consequences, by Clifton Leaf in Fortune magazine. This article details the impact of a 1980 amendment to US patent and trademark law put forth by Senator Bob Dole and the senior Senator Bayh, Birch. The Bayh-Dole…
Denise Gellene in the New York Times is reporting this morning that Scottish physician, Sir John Crofton, passed away on 3 November at age 97. Crofton is best known for implementing a combination drug regimen to treat tuberculosis, the insidious lung infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis which decimated the US early last century and still kills 2 million a year worldwide. The concept of using drug combinations to increase individual drug potency and slow the emergence of resistance is now a mainstay of therapeutic approaches for cancer, HIV, and other infectious diseases. Gellene…
I've been being peppered with questions about Go, the new programming language just released as open-source by Google. Yes, I know about it. And yes, I've used it. And yes, I've got some strong opinions about it. Go is an interesting language. I think that there are many fantastic things about it. I also think that there are some really dreadful things about it. A warning before I go on: this post is definitely a bit of a rush job. I wanted to get something out before my mailbox explodes :-). I'll probably try to do a couple of more polished posts about Go later. But this should give you a…
From today's article by the always-interesting Sarah Avery at the News & Observer: After several failed attempts to extract the item, Manley was referred to another doctor, who suggested removing the entire left lung. "I said, no, I wouldn't be doing that," Manley says. That's when he decided to seek a second opinion at Duke University Medical Center. We've heard of "hot tub lung" and "popcorn lung" but my chest hurts just thinking about "jagged, fast-food implement lung." If this case does not make it into the New England Journal of Medicine, I will be disappointed. Photo credit: Duke…
The other day Orac at Respectful Insolence wrote about yet another case where failure to vaccinate has caused a resurgence, in this case of measles in New Zealand. Otherwise preventable and potentially fatal diseases are popping up in communities around the world as the importance of immunization is ignored by a generation of parents who never knew these diseases. Well, looks as though they're beginning to find out. I'm keeping my eye on a similar case brought to my attention by my Twitter feeds from Colorado (if I can't be there, I'll at least read about it). This report from the…
Great news hit my e-mail box overnight: one of the premier literary physician-bloggers of my childhood days in the blogosphere has returned. Hi all, I missed you. I missed blogging. Just wanted to let you know that I'm returning to writing at http://theexaminingroom.com I hope you'll stop by, and I look forward to catching up with you all! Dr. Charles back from 2007 retirement This is VERY good news for all of us, especially if you never had the pleasure of reading The Good Doctor before. I cannot write with his clarity, of course. But I can say that Dr. Charles has a tremendous gift for…
Dear PharmGirl, We wanted to make this note public today because a great many of our blog friends know of your dedication as a physician, wife, and a mother. Yesterday you finished an association with an academic medical institution where you have been for half your life. From young women with breast cancer to old men in the V.A. Hospital, literally thousands have been touched by your gifts of intelligence, remarkable clinical judgment, and, perhaps most importantly, compassion. The recognition from your patients was abundant and we were privy to the personal notes of just how much you…
I love it when new readers stumble upon old posts. Such was the case when I received the following delightful comment from Seattle-based psychologist, Dr Gary Grenell, on my April 2008 post about the passing of Dr Charlotte Tan, a pediatric cancer chemotherapy pioneer: I was probably in one of her earliest actionmycin-D trial groups for Wilms tumor in 1957. Now at age 55, 52 years later, still going strong! Most of you scientific youngsters today probably only know of actinomycin D as a laboratory tool for inhibiting RNA synthesis. But here in the following repost, learn about the…
In general, I try to keep the content of this blog away from my work. I don't do that because it would get me in trouble, but rather because I spend enough time on work, and blogging is my hobby. But sometimes there's an overlap. One thing that's come up in a lot of conversations and a lot of emails it the idea of cloud computing. A lot of people are interested in it, but they're not really sure of what it is, or what it means. So what do we mean when we talk about "cloud computing"? What's the cloud? How's it different from good old-fashioned client/server computing? The idea of cloud…
Although I saw this obituary over the weekend, I didn't get to posting it until today. I was reminded by a local friend, an outstanding young scientist in her own right, of the impact that Dr Schanberg had made on so, so many lives in science, medicine, and our larger community. I only had the honor of meeting Dr Schanberg once, shortly after his cancer diagnosis, while we were at a Duke Cancer Patient Support Center fundraising dinner. His wife of over 50 years, Rachel, is founder and former director of the organization which they started following the loss of their own daughter. Among…
The other day I wrote about a really nice post someone wrote about a cardiologist with whom I have had a relationship since postdoc years. I also have several physician friends and colleagues IRL and on these interblogs who must constantly be questioned about their motives, their pharma connections, etc. Let me state from this place and time: t There are far more physicians who uphold our idealistic Rockwellian view of them than not. Two years ago, I shared a cab with a doc on his way to a basic and clinical cancer research meeting focused on an organ we both study. Good guy. I might have…
Bear with me this morning because I am growing very weary of my physician colleagues enduring all sorts of haranguing for being hateful, pharma shills who only want to cut, burn, and poison. I was extremely fortunate, personally and professionally, to train in two clinical units with strong basic science programs. As such, I worked at the bench with MD fellows and we schooled each other on our respective strengths. I loved when when my colleagues would come back from clinic and tell me of experiences that put our bench work in real world perspective. Yes, not all bench work is immediately…
I just had a chance to check in on a triad of posts by Prof Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science (1, 2, 3) on the ethical issues of the conduct of studies, particularly clinical trials, supported by the US NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). For background, NCCAM was originally established for political, not scientific reasons, as the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine in October 1991. It received a token budget of $2 million at the time. They still only get $120-ish million; modest by NIH standards as compared, say, with the 2007 NCI…
I know that many of you have seen this article by Matthew Perronne since it was picked up by the majority of AP outlets this morning: Two drugmakers spent hundreds of millions of dollars last year to raise awareness of a murky illness, helping boost sales of pills recently approved as treatments and drowning out unresolved questions -- including whether it's a real disease at all. Key components of the industry-funded buzz over the pain-and-fatigue ailment fibromyalgia are grants -- more than $6 million donated by drugmakers Eli Lilly and Pfizer in the first three quarters of 2008 -- to…
I've been having this 3:30 am (EST) insomnia for about the last two months, so I often pull the laptop up and survey the blogosphere in the still of the night. A simple look at the Last 24 Hours at ScienceBlogs and elsewhere in the blogosphere tells me that some knuckleheads in the mainstream press have taken issue with Dr Jill Biden, doctor of education, using the honorific, "Dr." Keep in mind that the article in question comes from the L.A. Times - the very same paper that graces my e-mail account weekly humping their fishwrapper's science and environment coverage. I did just look up some…
Let me just start off this post by thanking Mark and Chris Hoofnagle for inviting PalMD to join them at denialism blog. Through Orac, I had followed Pal at his White Coat Underground and was delighted when the Hoof-gents invited PalMD to a bigger forum in their ScienceBlogs digs. PalMD has now metamorphosized with his old blog now on ScienceBlogs. Congratulations, friend! My Mom, a retired nurse, will understand completely when I say that PalMD is the kind of doc I once thought I could be (and Mom, you've got to put this guy in your bookmarks!). Many speak of Pal's criticism of…