public health
mikethemadbiologist | July 19, 2006
(via Shakespeare's Sister)
I've always found it odd that Christian conservatives constantly claim victim status, particularly when so many of them, when it comes to foreign policy are so convinced that will can overcome anything. It's sort of like Norman Vincent Pearle but with fighter bombers. Then again, logical consistency isn't exactly the Christian conservatives' strong suit.
The latest hue and cry of discrimination revolves around pharmacists and other healthcare workers who refuse to provide legal procedures and medications such as contraception and birth control. Shakespeare's…
tsmith | July 19, 2006Via EpiMonday comes an interview with epidemiologist and physican Larry Brilliant, who was tapped to be the head of Google.org ("the philanthropic arm of Google") earlier this year:
If Larry Brilliant's life were a film, critics would pan the plot as implausible. Trained as a physician, he was studying in an Indian monastery in 1973 when a guru told him to join the UN smallpox vaccination effort. Brilliant helped eradicate the disease from India and eventually the planet. He returned to the US and founded a charity organization, Seva, that has saved millions of people in developing…
tsmith | July 18, 2006 I've mentioned previously the role, or potential role, that bats play in disease transmission. They have long been suspected, and recently identified, as hosts for the Ebola virus. (Whether they're the main reservoir species and what--if any--role they play in transmission of the virus to humans remains to be determined). They've also been implicated in the emergence of SARS and Nipah virus, and of course, have long been associated with the maintenance of rabies virus. A new paper reviews the role of bats in the maintenance and emergence of novel viruses.
Bats represent a huge portion…
tsmith | July 18, 2006 Following this post about an outbreak of E. coli O157 at a daycare, I received a few emails asking thoughtful questions about food safety. One in particular asked about what food manufacturers are doing to keep their products safe, and what public health officials are doing to educate the public about how to properly handle and cook food. For the latter, I replied that we're doing what we can, but that it's difficult to reach people and get them to listen to advice on a topic where many people already feel they have enough education (I mean, food preparation and cooking isn't exactly…
tsmith | July 18, 2006I've mentioned previously the "hygiene hypothesis", but don't think I've ever really discussed it. SEED writer Emily Anthes has a new article on the topic at the homepage.
tsmith | July 17, 2006Listeria monocytogenes is a gram-positive, rod-shaped bacterium. It can be found in the environment as a soil inhabitant. However, it also can be a frequent contaminant of our food supply. As the latter, the bacterium is a significant public health concern, as it is capable of causing serious infections. Listeriosis (infection with Listeria) causes ~2500 serious illnesses and 500 deaths each year in the United States, and the hardest-hit are those with poor immune systems due to age (the very young and old), other immunocompromsing conditions (such as chemotherapy, organ transplant, or…
mikethemadbiologist | July 17, 2006The carnival o'the wee beasties known as Animalcules is up at Science Matters. I have a post about MRSA and drug use in this edition. There's also a good post about drug resistance in the HIV virus.
While I'm advertising things microbial, revere at Effect Measure has a good post on patenting microbes and other organisms. He's right: it's stupid.
mikethemadbiologist | July 16, 2006One of the most important things in science is the free exchange of information. This is all the more vital when the information deals directly with human health. In a recent Nature editorial, the hoarding of influenza genetic data was criticized:
Genetic data are also lacking. When [H5N1] samples [collected from animals or human patients] are sequenced, the results are usually either restricted by governments or kept private to an old-boy network of researchers linked to the WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the FAO.... Many scientists and organizations are also…
tsmith | July 15, 2006More interesting stories that I didn't get to this week...
Ewen is looking for volunteer producers for his radio show. If you're in his neck of the woods and would like to learn about science journalism, drop him a line.
Mike notes that MRSA is winning the war on drugs, due in part to dirty needles and a lack of needle exchange programs.
Orac discusses the latest Geiers drama (those would be the folks who've been most prominent in pushing the vaccination/autism link here in the U.S.) Turns out a court recently laid the smackdown on them, Kitzmiller-style.
More sequence information has been…
tsmith | July 14, 2006I was new to Iowa last summer, and not being much of a bicycle person, had never heard of RAGBRAI, the [Des Moines] Register's Annual Great Bicycle Race Ride Across Iowa. (Don't ask me why they didn't pick a catchier acronym). It's apparently a rather well-known ride, crossing Iowa from west to east on different routes each year. This year, it's heading through my neck of the woods, and bringing with it a big name and a public health message:
Not only will Lance Armstrong be among thousands of other bikers pedaling across Iowa, the seven-time Tour de France champion and cancer survivor…
mikethemadbiologist | July 13, 2006A recent Harris survey reveals that 61% of children aged eight to eighteen think that viruses can be stopped by antibiotics. The Harris Interactive summary explains why this matters (italics mine):
Today's young people, tweens (ages 8 to 12) and teens (ages 13 to 18) are raised in a world where potentially deadly viruses frequently make news headlines. In addition to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), recent public attention has also focused on viruses such as those which cause bird flu (avian influenza), Human Papillomavirus…
tsmith | July 13, 2006Here in the U.S., we've not found any high pathogenicity H5N1 influenza viruses, be it in our wild waterfowl, our domestic poultry, or our human population. But a recent story shows how quickly (and quietly) it could enter our country:
Officials investigate poultry from Troy warehouse
Michigan agriculture officials said Wednesday they have found no evidence of contaminated food in their investigation of frozen poultry that originated from China, where bird flu has been reported in some areas.
Some of the poultry found in a Troy warehouse has been seized and destroyed in the past few weeks…
tsmith | July 13, 2006Received this press release in my email: Rudd Center Creates Blog for Discussion, Debate of Obesity Epidemic"
The Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale goes live today with a blog that encourages people to discuss topics ranging from how advertising determines what children eat to what pressures a bride-to-be is facing to squeeze into a size-four gown.
The center was founded last year in response to the obesity epidemic as well as to the prejudice faced by people who are obese. As a practitioner of "strategic science" designed to develop solutions to this major public health…
tsmith | July 12, 2006Some interesting public health stories on MSNBC today:
In the first, they highlight discrepancies in newborn testing between states.
States have nearly doubled the number of newborns being tested for a host of rare but devastating genetic diseases -- yet where you live still determines just how protected your baby will be, the March of Dimes reports.
For almost two years, specialists have urged that every U.S. newborn be checked for 29 disorders, to detect the few thousand who will need early treatment to avoid serious, even life-threatening, problems.
The geographic disparity is gradually…
tsmith | July 12, 2006It was difficult for me to imagine that anyone could possibly be upset about the announcement that billionaire Warren Buffet had decided to team up with Bill Gates and donate billions of dollars to improve global health. Silly, naive little me; nothing should surprise me anymore, but this is really beyond the pale.
Via Moment of Science, I found someone who does, indeed, gripe about the donation: none other than (cue menacing music) Focus on the Family:
"It's very scary," D'Agostino told CitizenLink. "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has very close ties and gives a lot of money to…
tsmith | July 12, 2006 The good Dr. Flea has taken some flack previously for comments he's made regarding the treatment of ear infections (or rather, the non-treatment of such). As he notes, most ear infections resolve without antibiotics. Despite this, ear infections are the most common illness for which children visit a pediatrician, receive antibiotics, and undergo surgery in the U.S., at a huge economic cost. A new paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests at least some of that cost is wasted, because the bacteria are present in the form of antibiotic-resistant biofilms.
A biofilm…
mikethemadbiologist | July 10, 2006There is a winner in the War on Drugs: methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, also known as MRSA. A recent article in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology reached the following conclusion:
Injecting drug users accounted for 49% of CA-MRSA infections but only 19% of the HA-MRSA infections (odds ratio, 4.2; 95% confidence interval, 2.4 to 7.4). Our study shows that a single clone of CA-MRSA accounts for the majority of infections. This strain originated in the community and is not related to MRSA strains from healthcare settings. Injecting drug users could be a major reservoir for CA-…
tsmith | July 10, 2006Ames, Iowa may not exactly be thought of as a major tourist destination, or sporting venue. Last week, however, it was both, as the host of the first ever Special Olympics USA National Games, with Ames serving as an "olympic village." Most of it went off rather smoothly, but it also became newsworthy for another reason:
Illness identified at Special Olympics
Several people affiliated with Special Olympics teams who fell ill this week have tested positive for norovirus, a common cause of what is known as the stomach flu, state health officials announced Saturday.
Overall, 52 people…
tsmith | July 7, 2006Those of you who have followed creationism/intelligent design literature over the years have probably felt as if you're living in an alternate universe sometimes. In that literature, many times it seems as if "up" means "down" and "highly supported by the evidence" means "a theory in crisis."
You may not have been following the comments to this thread on AIDS (and lord, I can't blame you), but if you have been, you've seen a similar phenomenon, where it's suggested that mutations found in RNA viruses are just due to sloppy lab work, essentially blowing off an entire field of research.…
mikethemadbiologist | July 7, 2006From the Boston Globe comes this disturbing report of the massive underdiagnosis of influenza in children:
Doctors fail to diagnose the flu in the vast majority of young children, depriving them of medicines that could shorten their illness and keep them from spreading it to others, a study suggests.
Flu infections were missed in four out of five preschoolers who were treated for flu symptoms at a doctor's office or emergency room and in about three-quarters of those who were hospitalized, researchers report.
"Many of the children did not have a test performed and few of the children were…