My Life in the Sunshine

I am a moderate democrat and a confirmed Lutheran.   Not everyone knows this, because I generally do not talk about religion or politics when making small talk.  Please stop assuming that just because I voted for Obama and don't carry a Bible around with me everywhere I go, I'm going to nod in agreement when you rail against "Christians" and "Capitalists."   Contrary to what you apparently believe, not everyone willing to have a civilized conversation with you is your pal in Godless communism.

Love,

Your friend, Jette

There is something wrong with this study about autism prevalence  but I can't quite put my finger on it.  It seems to me that the inclusion of Asperger's, earlier diagnosis  and immigration into the state would account for much more of the supposed 7-8X increase in autism rates than the researcher came up with (she says it only accounts for about 2x but not 8x).  It just seems fishy and with an agenda to me.

Even if an agenda is something I concurr with (I too would like a cleaner environment), it pisses me off in my science.

English

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I saw this in the SF Chronicle's "Day in Pictures" feature.  The caption reads, "Excellent point: In Houston, a Texan protesting amnesty for illegal immigrants argues that anyone who can't master English doesn't deserve to live in America."

I used to like Breyer's All  Natural Vanilla because it didn't have any stabilizers in it, and I liked the non-gummy texture.

Now they have changed the recipe

SAD SAD SAD SAD

Vivid memories from 30 years earlier suddenly flooded back to a 50-year-old obese patient who was undergoing deep-brain stimulation of the hypothalamus to suppress appetite, researchers here reported.

Creepy!

"Please be advised that there is now a mandatory ban on wearing artificial nails by anyone providing patient care.  Effective today, January 14, 2008, anyone wearing artificial nails has 2 weeks to remove them.  This ban will officially go into effect on January 28, 2008, and will be enforced by all supervisors."

This seems like basic health care 101 - you gotta wonder exactly what adverse event precipitated this.  I am envisioning a "Kramer drops his Junior Mint in the patient" type of scenario.

Quick reversal of symptoms in Alzheimer's case is claimed with Entanercept.

At first blush this seems like an exciting new discovery, right? Grandma won't have to go to the home, Grandpa will be able to recognize you. Hell, let's put this stuff in the drinking water, better cognition for all! 

But not so fast. First,  this is not your highly rigorous, double blinded, peer reviewed study that means Science with a capital "S."  Instead, you have a physician who is conducting his own, off-label study - and he has stock in the pharmaceutical firm that has created it.  Then you have him apparently trying to patent his scarily invasive delivery method - and insisting that no other method will work - which other doctors dispute.  And then you have the manufactuer in question declining to explore this off label use of their drug because they just don't think getting into it is going to be cost effective.    Physician ego, scientific community in-fighting, pharma's orientation towards the bottom line... pretty much business as usual.  So even if this was a cure, and it's always possible that this man and the other 14 patients in his cohort are just flukes, it's going to be years before a clinical trial even gets funded and five or so years after that before it's available for the average patient and covered by insurance.   And this is with technology available now.   I have doubts they'll cure Alzheimer's in my lifetime, I can only hope I don't get it (and with a big branches of my family tree a mystery to me, I have no way of knowing what's in store).

Awful, you say? The alternative is the equally as common pushing drugs through before they're ready - heart attacks from cox-2 inhibitors, anyone?  Or ask Europeans of a certain age about thalidiomide.  No easy answers but certainly some interesting scenarios.  

I'm writing a business letter and it occurs to me that  if my name was Laura Outlaw, I'd don't think I'd have ended up in the accounting deparment of a private research firm in Chappel Hill.

Did you know there was a "Lady Tata Memorial Trust" which funds medical students in India?  Now you do.  Lady Ta-ta.  Playing doctor. Heh. Heh.

An offhand comment on Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke reminded me of the Thalidomide scandal/tragedy of the late nineteen fifties/early nineteen sixties. 

What I didn't know was that just one woman, new to the job, stood between the manufactuers of the teratogenic medicine and FDA approval, surely averting a major epidemic of birth defects in the United States single handedly.