Category: medical

This Ain’t Good

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Lung damage appears to be far more common in H1N1 cases than it is in normal influenza, which is troubling, because the Spanish Influenza epidemic was characterized by fatal rapid onset pneumonia:

Study of about 70 fatal H1N1 cases so far also reveals there may be more incidences of co-infections with bacteria than was earlier thought, Dr. Sherif Zaki told The Canadian Press in an interview.

The damage to lung tissue is consistent with that inflicted by ARDS or acute respiratory distress symptom, Zaki says, referring to an often-fatal, difficult-to-treat syndrome that can have a number of causes. The U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute estimates about 30 per cent of people who develop ARDS die.

“In terms of the disease, yes, it (H1N1) is remarkably different than seasonal flu,” Zaki says. “The pathology looks very similar to H5(N1).”

This winter will not be pretty.

Elections Make a Difference: Prescription Drug Edition

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The Federal Trade Commission is coming out in support of legislation outlawing pay for delay deals between brand-name and generic drug manufacturers.

Pay for delay is where the drug maker that created a drug pays generic drug manufacturers not to make a generic equivalent once the patent has expired.

Eliminating this practice should save consumers about $35 billion over the next 10 years.

ACLU Challenges Gene Patent

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The ACLU is arguing that Myriad Genetics’ holding a patent on two genes associated with various forms of cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2, is not a legal use of the patent process.

I got some training in engineering schools on patents, and it was always made clear to us, by our non-lawyer professors, that a patent was for an invention, not a discovery, and it seems to me that these genes are the latter, not the former, but I’m an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!*

Among other things, they are arguing not just that the patent should not have been granted, and I agree with that, because at its core IP is an infringement on every one’s rights in order to, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” as it says int he constitution, and it is clear that by patenting a gene, they are not doing this.

Additionally, the ACLU is saying that the way that Myriad is violating the first amendment:

As the A.C.L.U. explored the restrictions on competition that companies like Myriad had put in place — blocking alternatives to the patented tests, and even the practice of interpreting or comparing gene sequences that involved those genes — the restrictions started to look like not just a question of patent law, Mr. Hansen said, but of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech as well.

I’m not sure if that would fly, since, after all, IP has at its core the restrictions of the rights of everyone for a perceived public benefit.

As to the reason as to why the patent examiners approved it?

The decision to allow gene patents was controversial from the start; patents are normally not granted for products of nature or laws of nature. The companies successfully argued that they had done something that made the genes more than nature’s work: they had isolated and purified the DNA, and thus had patented something they had created — even though it corresponded to the sequence of an actual gene.

This is bullsh%$. They are arguing that they can patent a discovery, because it’s hard work.

Here’s hoping that they win, because the current patent regime in the US is hamstringing economic development and innovation in our society, which is the exact opposite of its intended purpose.

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!

Getting Old

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OK, so I am now firmly in my late 40s, and I’ve been putting my glasses on my forehead for close work for about a year, and it’s time for me to get a new prescription, and I got bifocals.

Presbyopia catches up with us all.

In any case, the lenses are of the no line variety, and I’m still adjusting (I think that they may have gotten my left (dominant) eye wrong.

Swine Flu Update

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The caveat here is that the only country with enough cases for any real data is Mexico, and their public health system is awful, so the numbers are suspect, and there are a lot of untreated TB, asthma, and HIV, but it appears that most of the deaths so far have been young adults.

This may just be an artifact of the fact that Mexico is missing cases, etc., but it could point to an immune system response known as a Cytokine storm it was the reason that Spanish Influenza in 1918, and SARS more recently, disproportionately effected young adults.

Washington’s Various Serious People in Action

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Here we see Republican Senator Susan Collins saying that we should cut the stimulus money for flu pandemic.

They cut the money, because they are “centrists”, and unless they do something to throw their weight around, it means nothing, so Collins killed the money on pandemic preparedness, to show “fiscal responsibility”, and we may be on the brink of a major flu outbreak.

Bobby Jindal lambasted volcano monitoring, and Mount Redoubt erupted.

Republican spending cuts are making me very nervous about the next shoe to drop.

My Take on Swine Flu

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In no particular order:

  • It is H1N1, a variant of the Spanish Influenza.
  • We don’t know the numbers from Mexico, only the numbers of those seriously ill, so we don’t really have mortality and serious illness percentages from them.
  • The US numbers appear to show that it’s not so bad.
    • It may become a pandemic, but if so, think Hong Kong Flu (Influenza A virus subtype H3N2) where the 1968-9 pandemic killed about 33,800 in the us, primarily among the old, very young, and immune compromised, not Spanish Influenza, where ½-¾ million died, and it hit the young and healthy hard through cytokine storms.

Summer flu is not unknown, so don’t panic, but do wash your hands.

The Phrase is “Good Germans”

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The term which should be applied to doctors and other medical personnel who aided in torture at Guantanamo and the CIA gulag system.

Note that while the Red Cross did say that medical assistance rendered in furtherance of torturer was unethical even if it was the preserve the life or health of the subject, that the activities of medical personnel did not even fall under this limited scope, but rather that they were, “medical professionals’ role was primarily to support the interrogators, not to protect the prisoners, and that the professionals had ‘condoned and participated in ill treatment.'”

This is wrong, and the people involved should never be allowed to participate in patient care ever again.

An Interesting Development in Autism Spectrum Conditions

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It appears that there is a genetic link between nicotine addiction and autism, in the neurexin-1 gene, which creates an excess of neurexin-1 beta protein, which aids in nerve cells linking up with nicotine like substances to neuro receptors, in people addicted to nicotine.

It turns out that the levels of the protein, and the gene, are deficient in some people on the Autism spectrum.

It raises some interesting questions, though at this point I would be very cautious, and I think that a first step would be to compare smoking and non smoking populations of people on the spectrum.

The fact that quack physician Jeff Bradford has apparently already started putting nicotine patches on his patients should not be viewed as significant by anyone except, perhaps, for malpractice lawyers.

Giving small children nicotine is an invitation to injury or death, because a nicotine overdose can kill someone very quickly.

H/T A Photon In The Darkness.

I REALLY Do Not Want to See Your Vacation Pictures

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Least inspired promotional sweepstakes ever!

If you win the CBS Cares® Colonoscopy Sweepstakes:

Welcome to the CBS Cares Colonoscopy Sweepstakes!

This is an actual sweepstakes and, if you are the grand prize winner, we will fly you and a companion to New York where you will receive a free colonoscopy. You will also be given three nights’ accommodation in a suite at the luxurious Loews Regency Hotel, which will include the night before you are “awarded” the colonoscopy.

…….

This is just wrong on so many levels.

People over a certain age should get regular colonoscopies, and they should be checked for polyps, but this contest is the worst idea since the little Johnnie home root canal kit.

Truth Hits the Autism-Vaccine Wacko Community

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Well, a couple of days ago, it was revealed that doctor Andrew Wakefield’s data on autism and vaccines were completely fraudulent, and now the federal vaccine court, which was largely created on the back of Wakefield’s myth, has ruled that there is no credible connections between vaccines and autism.

As to the court case:

The decision by three independent special masters is especially telling because the special court’s rules did not require plaintiffs to prove their cases with scientific certainty — all the parents needed to show was that a preponderance of the evidence, or “50 percent and a hair,” supported their claims. The vaccine court effectively said today that the thousands of pending claims represented by the three test cases are on extremely shaky ground.

In his ruling on one case, special master George Hastings said the parents of Michelle Cedillo — who had charged that a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine caused their child to develop autism — had “been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment.”

Hastings said that he was deeply moved by the suffering autism imposed on families such as the Cedillos, but that “the evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating . . . a link.”

As to the despicable Andrew Wakefield and his 1997 article in the Lancet, this is more than just bad science.

Wakefield, in the employ of vaccine litigation specialists, simply made up data:

The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

You can see my earlier posts on this here.