Whooping cough

The recent outbreak in California wasn’t the result of dummies not vaccinating their children, as I had assumed. The immunity wears off sooner than scientists realized, so a booster shot is necessary. Also, it sounds like the vaccine is less effective than I would have thought:

“A spokesperson for GSK, one of the pertussis vaccine makers, wrote in an email to Reuters Health that studies conducted by the company have shown the vaccine is about 78 percent effective in warding off disease up until the age of six years.” — Whooping cough vaccine fades in pre-teens: study

Seen at Aliens in this World

Demography and demos

This Australian newspaper column from 2006 makes a point I hadn’t thought of:

“Why is this newspaper published in the language of a tiny island on the other side of the earth? Why does Australia have an English Queen, English common law, English institutions? Because England was the first nation to conquer infant mortality.

“By 1820 medical progress had so transformed British life that half the population was under the age of 15. Britain had the manpower to take, hold, settle and administer huge chunks of real estate around the planet. Had, say, China or Russia been first to overcome childhood mortality, the modern world would be very different.” — Mark Steyn on Australia’s missing wee bairns, by Jill Stanek, seen here.

One might say “it’s not the place, it’s the people.”

Thought on preparedness

Disaster can come in different ways: “All my stockpiles of guns and ammo? Useless in this instance. Can’t eat them, and can’t hunt with them legally. SHTF doesn’t have to be a regional event. It can happen to you, and only you.”

Rhino horn

Because of demand for their horns, rhinos are threatened with extinction Some people in China want Rhino horn because the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine tells them it cures cancer. It doesn’t. But this is China, where unscrupulous businessmen put melamine in the baby formula to save a buck. For a bogus cancer cure, there’s no need to use the real thing. It seems like a dangerous and expensive hassle to hunt down rhinos in Africa, just to get a placebo.

If rhino horn really had some therapeutic value they could raise herds of rhinos for their horns. I’m sure the meat is at least edible, and the hide has to be good for something. Rhino-hide boots could even become fashionable. Of course, you wouldn’t want to buy your rhino-hide boots from China, because they’d be fakes made of ox-hide.

“I’m not crazy!”

…she shouted as she gripped the knife.

Chronic fatigue syndrome researchers face death threats from militants:

“For more than 20 years, scientists have struggled to find the cause [of Chronic fatigue syndrome], with some pointing to physiological reasons, in particular viral infections, while others have argued that psychological problems are involved. It is the latter group that has become the subject of extremists’ attacks. The antagonists hate any suggestion of a psychological component and insist it is due to external causes, in particular viruses.”

A published study set them off:

“It suggested that a psychological technique known as cognitive behavioural therapy could help some sufferers. This produced furious attacks on the scientists involved, including Michael Sharpe, professor of psychological medicine at Oxford University. He had already been stalked by one woman who was subsequently found to be carrying a knife at one of his lectures.”

I know nothing about chronic fatigue syndrome and no more about about medicine than I pick up hearing friends complain of their ailments. But I have a web log, so my guess is chronic fatigue syndrome will turn out to be multiple things with different causes. I don’t doubt some chronic fatigue is caused by an external agent – virus, bacteria, or another of those tiny invisible animals scientists claim to see. It also seems likely that some crazy people would have symptoms of chronic fatigue. What’s surprising is how much energy some sufferers display.

“One researcher told the Observer that a woman protester who had turned up at one of his lectures was found to be carrying a knife. Another scientist had to abandon a collaboration with American doctors after being told she risked being shot, while another was punched in the street. All said they had received death threats and vitriolic abuse.”

Being able to identify a medical researcher out walking, and then punch him, suggests a certain level of initiative, focus, and activity. Maybe fatigue isn’t the sufferer’s most pressing problem.

Evidence-based treatment

Be quiet

Speaking of epiphanies and wise men, scientists have discovered noise is bad. Now they’ll have to move the McDonalds french-fry machine out of the nurses’ station so the fries-are-up beeping won’t interfere with the patients’ recovery. And that clumsy guy on the third shift who delivers the pizza pans and cookie sheets to the ICU, he’s got to go.

With that and more to be done, it might be easier to move the patients out of the hospital. Maybe that’s the real goal of Obamacare – simply stop hospitalizing people. The patients will be happier and will live just as long on average, and medical costs won’t increase quite as fast. The empty patient rooms can be used as offices for the federal employees, insurance clerks, coders, bureaucrats, and paralegals.

Georgetown University Medical Center

Correction 16 March 2011: Not GU Medical Center, but Georgetown University Hospital

Is it part of the culture of death now? This quote, if accurate, is damning:

“‘Hospitals cannot afford to allow families the time to work through their grieving process by allowing the relatives to remain hospitalized until the family reaches the acceptance stage, if that ever happens,’ Ms. Sloan said in an e-mail. ‘Generically speaking, what gives any one family or person the right to control so many scarce health care resources in a situation where the prognosis is poor, and to the detriment of others who may actually benefit from them?’” — Catholic hospital dehydrating immigrant woman to death

Maybe media attention will cause them to give the dying woman food and water.

UPDATE 12 March 2011: by court order, the feeding tube has been restored to the immigrant woman unable to pay a Jesuit hospital.

Life, death, and The State

In Canada an infant has a terminal condition. He’s on a ventilator now, and is expected to die without it, unless he has a tracheotomy. The doctors, the committee, and the judge have ordered his ventilator removed. His parents want the doctors to perform the tracheotomy so they can take him home to live as long as he can and then die with his family. The doctors, the committee, and the judge say he can’t have the tracheotomy – because it’s too risky. The hospital won’t let the parents be alone with their child – because that would be too humane, I guess. The parents can’t take their child to a hospital in the US because the right papers haven’t been signed. Even ignoring morality and humanity, it seems to make no sense at all.

I’d like to think there is more; that it’s not simply the Canadian authorities’ determination to be the ones deciding who lives and dies, and when, how, and where they die; but really I’m afraid that’s all there is to it. The State must have the power of life and death, and no impulse of mercy or reason can be allowed to interfere.

UPDATE 15 March 2011: The boy’s parents have transferred him to a US Catholic hospital , which will review his case.

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

UPDATE: For readers looking for information instead of a cynical blog post, here are some links:

• NIH Proposes New Center to Accelerate Drug Development, from the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, December 8, 2010
• Translation under one roof, SciBX, Published online December 16, 2010
• NIH’s Plan to Break Up a Center, Science Magazine, January 19, 2011
• NIH’s Collins Explains Why NCRR Must Go, Science Magazine, January 21, 2011
• FAQ: Proposed National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, nih.gov

Maybe more government is the answer

“The Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming out of the pharmaceutical industry that officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines.” — Federal Research Center Will Help Develop Medicines

Innovation is too slow, you see, so we need to bring in the US Federal Government.

Maybe they can fund it with a tax on drug companies.

UPDATE 26 January 2011, because it seems marginally relevant:

“Abbott Laboratories said Wednesday that it would cut 1,900 jobs, or 6 percent, of its U.S. workforce in the wake of a series of disappointments in its drug development pipeline, triggering a restructuring of pharmaceutical commercial and manufacturing operations.” — Abbott to cut 1,900 jobs in restructuring
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Deaths at abortion clinic

Well, yeah.

Doctor Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia has been charged with eight counts of murder for the deaths of seven infants and one adult woman in conjunction with abortions at his clinic, according to the New York Times: Doctor Is Charged in Killing of Newborns.

It is surprising this story has attracted relatively little commentary. Of course the accused may be innocent. The details in the article are grisly; a quote attributed to Dr. Gosnell is chillingly inhuman; but elements like that typically encourage news coverage. In this case I think little is being said because nobody knows quite what to say. This puzzlement is captured in the BBC’s headline: Dr Kermit Gosnell ‘killed babies’ at abortion clinic.

UPDATE: Elizabeth Scalia talks about Gosnell and the deliberate cultural/regulatory structure that enables abuses like those he’s accused of.

“Yesterday on Twitter, a journalist wrote: ‘This abortion doctor story is gruesome. Anti-choicers will seize on it, but it’s about criminal behavior, not abortion.’ It’s funny how framing works. A massacre perpetrated by a deranged man is not about the deranged man; it’s about ‘rhetoric.’ But a massacre perpetrated by an abortion provider whose violations against laws of the nation and of humanity were overlooked for years is ‘not about abortion.’” — Gosnell; Baby Feet Kick the Nation

This case is particularly gruesome; but infanticide is infanticide, no matter which side of the state or national border the “clinic” is on, and whether or not the operator keeps souvenirs. If it’s done with order and professionalism in a scrupulously clean building with the assistance of well educated staff, so much the worse.