Category: medical

Soldiers, Is That Our Answer to Everything?

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Obama is sending 3000 soldiers to Africa to deal with the Ebola outbreak in Africa.

Am I the only one who thinks that it might be a better idea to send doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and construction workers?

The Obama administration is ramping up its response to west Africa’s Ebola crisis, preparing to assign 3,000 US military personnel to the afflicted region to supply medical and logistical support to overwhelmed local healthcare systems and to boost the number of beds needed to isolate and treat victims of the epidemic.

Seriously? We need to send in the military to deal with an epidemic?

I am coming to believe that no one in Washington believes that any agency but the Pentagon can do anything, ever!

The More We Know About Pot, the Better it Looks

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Note that I do not know the extent of the statistics, but the fact that states with legal marijuana have a 25% lower opioid overdose rate bears further investigation:

States that allow legal use of medical marijuana have lower rates of fatal overdoses from prescription medications.

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found the 13 states where medical marijuana is legal had 24.8 percent fewer annual opioid overdose mortality rates.

The results indicate alternative treatments may be safer for patients suffering from chronic pain, researchers said.

About 60 percent of all deaths from opioid overdoses happen in patients who have legitimate prescriptions, and the number of patients who are prescribed opioids for non-cancer pain has nearly doubled over the last decade.

Deaths were nearly 20 percent lower in the first year after a state legalized medical marijuana and 33.7 percent lower five years later.

Clearly, the answer to this is to tighten restrictions on opioids, and we need to ditch all those medical marijuana programs.

Our drug policies are wasteful, destructive, and stupid.

If Not an Explanation, At Least It Gives Us Some Context

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It turns out that Robin Williams was suffering from early stage Parkinson’s Disease:

Patients with Parkinson’s disease often suffer from depression, medical experts said Thursday, after Robin Williams’ widow revealed that the comedian was in “early stages” of the neurological disease at the time of his apparent suicide.

The same biochemical changes in the brain that cause the hallmark physical symptoms of Parkinson’s — tremors, slowed movement, rigidity, balance loss — can also affect mood, said Dr. Jeff Bronstein, a neurologist in the Movement Disorder Program at UCLA.

“Obviously getting the diagnosis can make people depressed,” he said. “But we also know that there’s a much higher incidence of depression even before the disease is recognized. We think it’s one of the early symptoms.”

I don’t think that anyone can truly understand what was going on in his head, but the fact his limbic system was being short circuited from a lack of dopamine was certainly a major contributing factor.

Another Day, Another Study Proving Antivaxxers full of It

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Parents worried about getting young children vaccinated against infectious diseases have fresh cause for reassurance, researchers say.

A new review of existing scientific evidence has concluded that childhood vaccines are safe and don’t cause serious health problems such as autism or leukemia.

“Our findings support that vaccines are very safe for children, and add to a substantial body of evidence that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the very low risks,” said senior author Dr. Courtney Gidengil, an associate physician scientist at RAND Corporation and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. “Hopefully, this will engage hesitant parents in discussions with their health care providers.”

The review found strong evidence that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine is not associated with autism, which is consistent with previous reviews of this rumored link.

Some parents have chosen not to have their children vaccinated because of a now-debunked and retracted study published in 1998 that suggested that the MMR vaccine might cause autism. It was later reported that the study’s author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, had altered some of the study’s results.

The researchers behind the new study also found no link between childhood leukemia and vaccines for MMR, DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), tetanus, influenza and hepatitis B.

Overall, vaccines given to children 6 or younger are safe, causing few side effects, the review concluded. The findings are published in the July 1 online edition and the August print issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The fact that Andrew Wakefield is still a free man, when the death toll of his fraud numbers in the thousands, dishonors both the justice system and the scientific community.

Insurance Companies Go Postal on Advair, Sales Collapse

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It appears that pharmacy managers have decided that spending 5x as much as a French patient does is stupid:

Hallelujah. I never thought I’d see the day that I’d praise an insurance company. But the proverbial Atlas just shrugged.
Insurance company pharmacy benefit managers, who have apparently had it with drug companies charging American consumers ridiculously high, and ever-increasing, prices for prescription drugs, are starting to say “enough.”

 At the top of the list is my asthma drug, Advair.

 Some big insurance company pharmacy benefits managers are simply no longer permitting their plans to cover Advair. Or at best, they’ve relegated Advair to the lower “third tier,” which means the patient has to pay so much of the price that they simply won’t buy the drug at all.
As a result, Advair sales plummeted 30% this year in the US.

(emphasis mine)

It’s a battle between two groups of parasites, and I hope that there is a way for both of them to ose.

Come to think of it, there is, it’s called Single Payer, bitches.

I Had an Epic Day at Work Today

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I generally embargo anything that happens at work, on the theory that it’s my employer’s business, and with a few exceptions, blogging about is just not a good idea.

However, what happened today breaks this embargo:

John at work came in limping today.

 He had a Brown Recluse bite on his leg, and he said that the doctor had prescribed steroid and Sulfa drugs (probably Dapsone).

 I told him that he should drink lots of water, because Sulfa drugs tend to accumulate in the kidneys.

 Then as I was walking away, I turned and said:

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 You know where this is going, don’t you…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 I’m an Engineer, not a Doctor, Dammit!!!!!!

I haz a happy!

What, You Mean $1000.00 a Pill is too Expensive?

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A few months back, I wrote of push-back from an NGO about the price of Gilead Sciences’ Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi.

Well the World Health Organization and the pharmacy benefits management company Express Scripts are pushing back as well.

While the WHO is engaging in fairly typical hand wringing:

Gilead Sciences’ new hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi, will cost $84,000 for a 12-week treatment plan, rounding out to $1,000 a day. Bound to cause a whirlwind among investors and the healthcare world, the World Health Organization has stepped in.

 The drug is facing protests in the United States because of the excessively high price that Gilead Sciences set for their new product. Despite its potential effectiveness – it is projected to cure 90% of the targeting hepatitis C patients – its gross income will exceed that of every other pharmaceutical drug if a majority of 150 million hepatitis C patients purchase it.

 As a result, the World Health Organization is urging Gilead Sciences to make the drug cheaper and more accessible to help those in dire need of the medication and to avoid creating tremendous problems for insurance companies and investors. But pharmaceutical companies argue that they need to charge high prices on new effective drugs because they need to cover the expensive cost of development.

Express Scripts is playing some serious, and very well deserved, hardball:

Express Scripts Holding Co. (ESRX), a pharmacy benefit manager that handles more than 1 billion prescriptions annually in the U.S., is ratcheting up its effort to force Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD) to cut the $84,000 price of its new hepatitis C pill Sovaldi.

 Express Scripts plans to ask its clients, composed of national employers, health insurance plans and government agencies, to join a coalition that would stop using Sovaldi once a rival medicine is approved for the U.S., expected next year, said Steven Miller, chief medical officer of the St. Louis-based company. Express Scripts said in December it may block reimbursement for Foster City, California-based Gilead’s pill once other new hepatitis C therapies are on the market.

 “What they have done with this particular drug will break the country,” Miller said in a telephone interview. “It will make pharmacy benefits no longer sustainable. Companies just aren’t going to be able to handle paying for this drug.”

 Cara Miller and Amy Flood, Gilead spokeswomen, didn’t return phone calls yesterday seeking comment. The company has previously justified the price for Sovaldi by saying it would pay for itself by avoiding future complications from the virus.

(emphasis mine)

Note that Sovaldi has been granted a breakthrough designation by the FDA, which allows the drug to hit the market faster, for which the US government, and the taxpayers got a consideration of ……… nothing at all.

Basically the declaration of “breakthrough” status, and that is the term the 2010 law uses, is a subsidy to the manufacturer, both extending the time available to Gilead under exclusivity, and reducing capital costs by allowing revenue to start earlier.

Maybe the FDA should include a “reasonable and justifiable pricing” clause to things like this.

My Hunch Seems to Have Been Vindicated

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I have always felt that the Black Death in Europe was from something significantly different from the Bubonic Plague as we know it now, if just because the speed of the spread was astonishingly fast (something more than 20 miles a day in Britain).

Well, a study now indicates that it was likely a variant of Yersinia pestis that was genetically predisposed to go pneumonic, meaning that the transmission would have been far faster than the flea borne variants that we see today:

It was already known as perhaps the bleakest episode in British history.

Now, new research suggests the Black Death was even more lethal than was previously thought.

The findings go further to exonerate rats as being responsible for the outbreak, which swept the country in the middle of the fourteenth century, killing vast swathes of the population.

Instead, the study claims the disease was passed directly from human to human and was, in fact, pneumonic plague – a more virulent and infectious form than bubonic plague, which has historically been blamed.

………

The same bacteria – which is almost identical to the strain still found on four continents – is responsible for both bubonic and pneumonic plague, but the experts taking part in the show concluded that the latter, which is spread by the fleas of infected rats, would not have been able to have the devastating impact caused by the Black Death.

Dr Tim Brooks, an expert in infectious diseases from Public Health England who is based at Porton Down – the Wiltshire site used by the government for dealing with biological threats – said: “As an explanation, for the Black Death in its own right, it is simply not good enough. It cannot spread fast enough from one household to the next, to cause the huge number of cases that we saw during the Black Death epidemics.”

Instead, he identified what he considers was a mutation from the bubonic plague, borne on rats, to the pneumonic variant, whereby it spread to the lungs of sufferers, who then passed it on to others, by coughing.

This makes sense, though there are alternate ways for it to spread so quickly, such as it being carried by bird borne parasites.

It is almost certain that it was Y. pestis though.

Why We Should Ban Antibiotics in Animal Feed

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Here is something that I missed.

I knew that antibiotics served to make animals to gain weight faster, but it never occurred to me that antibiotic residues are making the American public fat as well.

It makes sense antibiotics make cows, chickens, and pigs gain weight faster, so why shouldn’t it have the same effect on humans?

This is particularly significant with pigs, because as opportunistic omnivores, they are metabolically quite similar to us:

If you walk into a farm-supply store today, you’re likely to find a bag of antibiotic powder that claims to boost the growth of poultry and livestock. That’s because decades of agricultural research has shown that antibiotics seem to flip a switch in young animals’ bodies, helping them pack on pounds. Manufacturers brag about the miraculous effects of feeding antibiotics to chicks and nursing calves. Dusty agricultural journals attest to the ways in which the drugs can act like a kind of superfood to produce cheap meat.

As an aside here, we know that this produces cheaper meat, and thanks to the Danes experiences with their antibiotic ban over the past 15 years, we know about how much money it saves, and it is less than 10¢ a pound.

It is basically negligible.

But what if that meat is us? Recently, a group of medical investigators have begun to wonder whether antibiotics might cause the same growth promotion in humans. New evidence shows that America’s obesity epidemic may be connected to our high consumption of these drugs. But before we get to those findings, it’s helpful to start at the beginning, in 1948, when the wonder drugs were new — and big was beautiful.

 ………

 In 2002 Americans were about an inch taller and 24 pounds heavier than they were in the 1960s, and more than a third are now classified as obese. Of course, diet and lifestyle are prime culprits. But some scientists wonder whether there could be other reasons for this staggering transformation of the American body. Antibiotics might be the X factor — or one of them.

I think that it’s clear that the major issue here is sources of chronic antibiotic exposure, with meat and poultry being the primary contributors, though the article downplays this:

Of course, while farm animals often eat a significant dose of antibiotics in food, the situation is different for human beings. By the time most meat reaches our table, it contains little or no antibiotics. So we receive our greatest exposure in the pills we take, rather than the food we eat. American kids are prescribed on average about one course of antibiotics every year, often for ear and chest infections. Could these intermittent high doses affect our metabolism?

This statement is at best an inaccurate generalization.

There are numerous reports about issues involving antibiotic residues in meat, and it is one of the reasons that the FDA is proposing tighter restrictions on antibiotic use on livestock.

I Am a Whore, Not a Slut, Act Accordingly

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After I wrote a post about the abuse of the IP process and price gouging for a potential HIV prophylaxis treatment, I got an email from a PR person with a link to a promotional graphic for the product, and a request that I post it.

No offer of payment.

Not even an offer of swag.

I realize that my readership numbers probably don’t rate a T-shirt, but I wasn’t even offered a f%$#ing key fob.

Seriously, if you are not going to read my article, and know that I condemned what your employers are doing, at least have the decency of offering some form of remuneration.

It’s a matter of pride.

To quote fellow engineer Montgomery Scott, “This was a matter of pride.”

Mon dieu, pas de polonium. Qui a été foutu avec nous*

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Well, the French Doctors have finished their autopsy of Yassir Arafat, no Polonium, cause of death inconclusive, so I guess the next question is how did that exotic radioactive element end up in his personal effects, if it did at all:

French investigators studying the remains of Yasir Arafat have concluded that the Palestinian leader most likely did not die of radiation poisoning, Mr. Arafat’s widow, Suha, said here Tuesday. She noted, however, that the investigators did find unusually elevated levels of radioactivity in and around his body.

The results partly contradict and partly confirm those of Swiss scientists who last month reported finding abnormal levels of radioactive polonium-210 in Mr. Arafat’s remains. In contrast to the French, however, they concluded that their findings “moderately support the proposition” that Mr. Arafat, who was 75 at his death in 2004, died of radiation poisoning.

The French investigators concluded that the remains had been irradiated post-mortem by the air and soil surrounding his body and “dismiss the hypothesis of poisoning by polonium-210,” Ms. Arafat said.

………

Mr. Arafat’s body was exhumed in Ramallah, in the West Bank, last year. Body, air and soil samples were taken by French judicial investigators and by the Swiss scientists, who were commissioned by Ms. Arafat, her lawyers said, and by Russian scientists contracted by the Palestinian Authority, whose relations with Ms. Arafat are known to be hostile.

The French report was delivered on Tuesday but has not been made public, as it is part of a continuing judicial inquiry. As a complainant in the case, however, Ms. Arafat is legally authorized to describe its contents.

In contrast with French and Swiss scientists, the Russians have reported finding no abnormal levels of radioactive polonium in Mr. Arafat’s remains, said Saad Djebbar, a lawyer who represents Ms. Arafat. But Mr. Djebbar characterized those findings as unserious and incomplete.

I’m beginning to think that someone is trying to ratf%$# (frame) someone here.

The only question now is who is trying to ratf%$# whom.

Wheels within wheels.

*I last took French in 1979, and got a “C”, so cut me some slack.

If You Don’t Trust Bill Gates with Your Data, Will You Trust Him With Your Penis

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It appears that among his various charitable endeavors Bill Gates is trying to create a super condom:

It’s been hailed as the new wonder-material, set to revolutionise everything from circuit boards to food packaging, a magic super-strength membrane that is barely there at all. Now, thanks to the unlikely sex champion Bill Gates, graphene could be used to make the thinnest, lightest, most impenetrable condom ever conceived.

“The common analogy is that wearing a condom is like taking a shower with a raincoat on,” says Dr Papa Salif Sow, senior program officer on the HIV team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has awarded $100,000 (£60,000) to scientists at the University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute to aid their pursuit of the ultimate super-sheath. “A redesigned condom that overcomes inconvenience, fumbling or perceived loss of pleasure would be a powerful weapon in the fight against poverty.”

At only one atom thick, an all-graphene condom would put the Durex Ultra Thin to shame – although the fact that the material is barely visible to the naked eye could lead to some awkward moments between the sheets. A slight ruffle of the duvet and could it just float away?

Dr Aravind Vijayaraghavan, who will lead the research team, explains the focus is on developing a composite material, with latex, “tailored to enhance the natural sensation during intercourse while using a condom, which should encourage and promote condom use.”

If Windows gives us the Blue Screen of Death, what does the BingCondom give us?

I don’t trust Windows Firewall, and I should trust this?

Jeebus, Now I Have to Defend Dick Cheney

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Joan Walsh is now accusing Dick Cheney of being an even bigger monster because he’s not trying to look into the background of his heart donor:

Still, I was a little startled to hear the former vice president express total indifference to questions about his heart donor in a revealing interview on Politicking with Larry King (it airs Thursday night; here’s a clip). It’s a window into his utter entitlement and self-absorption, and he comes off as an even bigger monster than I’d thought. Most people would at least feign interest in the donor; Cheney can’t manage it.

When King asks if he knows the identity of the person whose heart keeps him alive, Cheney, who is promoting a book about his transplant experience, says no, and adds, “it hadn’t been a priority for me.” ………

Seriously, why should Dick Cheney feel compelled to find out about his donor?

The idea that Cheney should somehow engage in some sort of narcissistic quest for information about his donor, with the likely effect of causing pain from his surviving loved ones?

If my heart ended up in Richard Bruce Cheney, I wouldn’t want anyone to know.

Another Nail in the Anti-Vaxxers Delusions

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Researchers have determined that indicatations of autism are present in children in the first 6 months of life:

An early indication of autism can be identified in babies under six months old, a study suggests.

US researchers, writing in Nature, analysed how infants looked at faces from birth to the age of three.

They found children later diagnosed with autism initially developed normally but showed diminished eye contact – a hallmark of autism – between two and six months of age.

A UK expert said the findings raise hope for early interventions.

In the study, researchers led by Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta used eye-tracking technology to measure the way babies looked at and responded to social clues.

They found infants later diagnosed with autism had shown a steady decline in attention to the eyes of other people from the age of two months onwards, when watching videos of natural human interactions.

Lead researcher Dr Warren Jones told BBC News: “It tells us for the first time that it’s possible to detect some signs of autism in the first months of life.

“These are the earliest signs of autism that we’ve ever observed.”

I’m not surprised by this study.

My wife pegged Charlie as being on the spectrum in his first week outside of the womb. She knew something was different in the first 5 minutes.

Of course, she is a trained special educator, so it’s in her profession.

What this means is that autism is present well before when know-nothings claim that vaccinations “cause” autism.

Can we please stop listening to Jenny McCarthy Now?

Some People are Terrified by Women’s Sexuality

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Case in point, the developers of a drug called, (I am not joking here) Lybrido, which is intended to increase sexual desire and response in women.

I don’t have a problem with this, though the idea that insufficient desire might be pathologized as hypoactive sexual-desire disorder (HSDD) is a bit troubling.

That being said, this following quote is even more troubling:

But of course swallowing a tablet can take us only so far. Chemically enhancing a woman’s desire might play out in all kinds of ways within a relationship. Some couples might feel closer, others might feel desolate because, despite more sex, their bond isn’t stronger. Wives might yearn for the old seductive efforts of their husbands, even if those gestures stopped working long ago. Women might feel yet more pressure to perform: Why not get that prescription? their partners might ask; why not take that pill? And men, if they are willing to confront the truth, might not be so happy about the reminder, as their partners reach for the pill bottle, that their women need chemical assistance to want them. All the agonies that have existed since the dawn of monogamy will still pertain, many of them coming down to the craving to feel special.

Beyond what might happen in millions of bedrooms, it’s even more difficult to foresee what societal transformations might be stirred. Just as with the birth-control pill, a foreboding not only about sex itself but also about female empowerment may be expressed in a dread of women’s sexual anarchy. Over the last decade, as companies chased after an effective chemical, there was fretting within the drug industry: what if, in trials, a medicine proved too effective? More than one adviser to the industry told me that companies worried about the prospect that their study results would be too strong, that the F.D.A. would reject an application out of concern that a chemical would lead to female excesses, crazed binges of infidelity, societal splintering.

“You want your effects to be good but not too good,” Andrew Goldstein, who is conducting the study in Washington, told me. “There was a lot of discussion about it by the experts in the room,” he said, recalling his involvement with the development of Flibanserin, “the need to show that you’re not turning women into nymphomaniacs.” He was still a bit stunned by the entrenched mores that lay within what he’d heard. “There’s a bias against — a fear of creating the sexually aggressive woman.”

Yes, giving 70 years erections to unleash upon the rest of society is a great profit center, but if women start wanting sex, it can create “societal splintering”.

So, men suddenly want to copulate with anything with a hole in it: Good.

Women wanting to have sex: Scary.

Someone needs to get their heads out of their ass.

LINKAGE

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This is too funny for words:

On the Other Hand, This Decision is a Good One

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The Supreme Court upheld the right of the FTC to sue to prevent brand name drug manufacturers to bribe generic drug manufactures to keep them out of the market:

This case is an antitrust challenge to an increasingly common practice in the pharmaceutical industry. Brand-name companies faced with generic competition pay the would-be competitor an amount of money to stay out of the market. The payment comes in the form of settling a dispute over the validity or infringement of the brand-name company’s patent. Because generic entry reduces drug prices, these “pay for delay” or “reverse payment” agreements are alleged to reduce competition and increase drug costs. The Federal Trade Commission sued drug companies over one such deal. The court of appeals rejected that claim, explaining that the brand name’s patent includes the right to exclude competitors.

Today, by a vote of five to three, the Supreme Court reversed and held that the claim can go forward. Justice Breyer wrote the Court’s opinion, joined by Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Chief Justice Roberts dissented, joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas. Justice Alito was recused from the case.

While they did not rule that the payments were presumptively illegal, it does make such payments far more unlikely, since the right of review has been affirmed.