ScienceBlogs Channel : Medicine & Health

Our government at work [Pharyngula]

PZ Myers none@example.com — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:49:16 -0500

Remember that awful, terrible Templeton-funded prayer study that had no controls, was unblinded, and had nothing but subjective measurements of improvement? Now it's being promoted on healthfinder.gov — with not a word of reservation, just a happy claim that prayer might help sight- and hearing-impaired people. It's a beautiful example of bad science reporting, in which they'll admit that maybe it's just the placebo effect, but they still run out and get quotes from people saying this stuff might help.

Read the comments on this post...

More in the annals of "Boy, did they ever send this to the wrong blogger!" [Respectful Insolence]

Orac none@example.com — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:00:01 -0500

Hi
I was just authorized by my company, DrNatura, to offer an exclusive $10 coupon to you and the readers of Respectful Insolence, towards our most popular product, the Colonix Program. I thought you and your readers would be interested to know that DrNatura is an internationally recognized line of health products and programs specializing in body detoxification which can help anyone feeling tired, uncomfortable or stressed.

I've put together a site with the coupon code, tips, symptoms, and lots of great content so please feel free to share any or all of it:

http://www.drnaturanews.com

If you are able to post a mention or tweet, please let me know. I am also here to help if you have any questions.

Thank you so much,

Diane

--
Diane Myer
facebook.com/drnatura
twitter.com/drnatura

Request granted, Diane. Colon "cleansing" is one of the most bizare forms of quackery there is, deserving of only extreme ridicule. In fact, so bizarre is colon cleansing quackery that it's one of the first topics I ever took on in Your Friday Dose of Woo in posts entitled Mere regularity is not enough and Would you like a liver flush with that colon cleanse?. Perhaps we should start posting links to it on Twitter and Facebook for Diane's edification while I'm in Chicago and the original blog posts are both briefer and less frequent than usual.

Read the comments on this post...

More on Excrement [The Pump Handle]

Liz Borkowski none@example.com — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:56:24 -0500

Check out Carnal Carnival #1: Essentials of Elimination, hosted by Bora at A Blog Around the Clock. It's a fascinating collection of blog posts all about poop. (The post I put up yesterday on sanitation is among them.) Many of the posts are about the interesting things scientists can learn by studying excrement - human or animal, fresh or fossilized.

A couple of the posts deal with a topic that seems to be attracting more and more attention: gut flora, or the microbiome. Basically, our digestive systems are colonized by a range of microbes, some of which assist us with digestion and vitamin synthesis. As a whole, these microbes may protect us by occupying space that might otherwise allow harmful bacteria to establish themselves.

Mike the Mad Biologist focuses on the statistics in a recent study that compared the bacteria present in the stool of children from Europe who ate a Western diet to those present in the stool of children from rural Burkina Faso who ate a less-processed, more fiber-rich diet.

The Lorax at Angry By Choice describes a study in which 15 patients suffering from severe Clostridium difficile infections received stool transplants from family members with "normal" microbiota - and 13 of the 15 recovered almost immediately. (Tara Smith at Aetiology has another interesting post on an earlier case series involving such "fecal transplants.")

So, this month's Carnal Carnival includes one post about the importance of eliminating exposure to excrement and another about how exposure to certain excrement may be beneficial - plus many other poop-related posts that are well worth a read. Next month's topic will be regurgitation; host Dr. Carin Bondar has the details.

Read the comments on this post...

Here we go again: More entertainers sucked into the "autism biomed" fundraising maw [Respectful Insolence]

Orac none@example.com — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:00:58 -0500

Here we go again.

Apparently, trying to bounce back from the humiliation of having had its plan to do a music and comedy fundraiser with Jill Sobule as one of the headliners shot down when Sobule found out that Generation Rescue is an "autism organization" that supports anti-vaccine pseudoscience like that of Andrew Wakefield and Mark and David Geier and quite correctly decided to withdraw, Generation Rescue is at it again with an event it's calling Comedy for Kids with Autism.

According to the mass e-mail I received:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

What the GAO report on genetic testing should have told us [Genetic Future]

Daniel MacArthur none@example.com — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:45:00 -0500

The recent Government Accountability Office report into the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry certainly made a splash: it took centre stage at a Congressional hearing on the industry, and garnered media headlines about "bogus" results being generated by testing companies.

As I noted at the time of its release, the report is an obscenely one-sided affair: it's transparently framed as an attack piece rather than a balanced analysis of the state of the industry. That's a real shame, because the information collected by the GAO could so easily have been used to provide valuable insight into the industry, and to guide careful regulation that addresses the deficiencies of current tests without punishing innovators.

Over at Genomes Unzipped I have a post up with Luke Jostins and Kate Morley pointing out just how much of a tragically missed opportunity the GAO report represents: for a project that cost US tax-payers $30,000 in testing kits alone, it fails to capitalise on any of the data it collected or the expertise it consulted, and instead resorts to grand-standing and vitriol.

Over the next couple of weeks we'll be seeing what we can do to get access to the full transcripts and data used by the GAO for their report. To find out how that goes, keep an eye on Genomes Unzipped.

Read the comments on this post...

Can OSHA ban a dangerous work practice? [The Pump Handle]

Celeste Monforton none@example.com — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:55:09 -0500

Earlier this month, Labor Secretary Solis proposed more than $16 million in penalties to 17 employers involved in the construction of the Kleen Energy Systems power plant in Middletown, Connecticut. The construction site was the scene of a massive explosion on the morning of February 7 in which Peter Chetulis, Ronald J Crabb, 42, Raymond Dobratz, 58, Chris Walters, 42, and Roy Rushton, 37 were killed; Kenneth Haskell, 37, later died from his injuries. More than 50 other individuals were injured and residents as far as 20 miles away felt the blast.

Investigations by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) determined that high-pressure natural gas was being used to clean debris from pipes. The practice is extremely dangerous because the gas is highly flammable---the smallest ignition source, like a static-electric spark, can cause the gas to explode. In the Middletown, CT explosion, neither agency was able to identify the exact ignition source, but offered several possibilities including the electric heaters being used and the welding taking place during the "gas blows." Regardless of the exact ignition source in this particular disaster, both the CSB and OSHA conclude that using natural gas to blow clean pipes puts workers at very serious risk of death and injury.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Another pointless "acupuncture" study misinterpreted [Respectful Insolence]

Orac none@example.com — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0500

At the risk of once again irritating long time readers who've hear me say this before, I can't resist pointing out that, of all the various forms of "alternative medicine" other than herbal medicines (many of which are drugs, just adulterated, impure drugs), acupuncture was the one treatment that, or so I thought, might actually have a real therapeutic effect. Don't get me wrong; I never bought magical mystical mumbo-jumbo about "meridians" and "unblocking the flow of qi" (that magical mystical life energy that can't be detected by scientists but that practitioners of woo claim to be able to manipulate for therapeutic intent). The point is (sorry, couldn't resist) that acupuncture actually involves doing something physicial to the body, namely inserting thin needles into it. Shorn of its trappings of prescientific Eastern mysticism, acupuncture struck me as something that might have something to it.

Five years ago.

Since I started actually studying acupuncture and acupuncture studies, I've become acutely aware that my previous assessment was incorrect, and my pointing that out from time to time sometimes results in comments along the lines of, "We don't need to hear this again." Tough. For the benefit of new readers and readers who might not have read some of my previous posts on acupuncture before, I consider it important to reinforce that I have, in fact, undergone a bit of a change of heart. I have reviewed studies that showed that sham acupuncture works as well or even better than "true" acupuncture, with the needles placed right where those fancy acupuncture charts say they should be placed and that you don't even need needles. Toothpicks with their points twirled against the skin will do. I've also come to realize that many of the explanations postulated by acupuncturists and doctors who believe in acupuncture are actually far less interesting than actual scientific results that they produce in their search for "proof" that "acupuncture works." Sometimes, acupuncturists substitute active sorts of treatment for acupuncture and call it something else, like "electroacupuncture, which involves hooking up a weak electrical current to acupuncture needles. Electroacupuncture is in essence nothing more than transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), an accepted modality to treat pain.

Add to the evidence pile yet another study demonstrating that acupuncture is placebo medicine, reported in Arthritis Care & Research by a team of investigators based primarily at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center that I heard about via the TIME Magazine Wellness Blog. The study, entitled A Randomized controlled trial of acupuncture for osteoarthritis of the knee: Effects of patient-provider communication, demonstrates about as unequivocally as one can imagine that one form of so-called "acupuncture" is, as far as can be detected, virtually all placebo. What is surprising about this study is not so much that it shows that acupuncture doesn't work. In fact, it doesn't actually show that, because what is being used is not acupuncture. What is being used is "electroacupuncture, which is in essence nothing more than TENS! More amazingly, no one whom I've yet seen seems to be mentioning this. In essence, the results of this study are entirely consistent with the hypothesis that it doesn't matter whether you place TENS needles on acupuncture points or not. Will wonders never cease? Actually, that's not quite the right interpretation, as we shall soon see.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Live attenuated HSV-2 vaccine: One step closer to reality [erv]

ERV none@example.com — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:00:40 -0500

Hey, remember back in 2008, when I wrote a post on a neat idea in herpes vaccine design?

That paper was all ideas. Well, they just published a paper where they test some of the science of those ideas:

Herpes Simplex Virus 2 ICP0− Mutant Viruses Are Avirulent and Immunogenic: Implications for a Genital Herpes Vaccine

When most people think of 'herpes', they think of a 'social' disease. Yeah, the sores (wherever they crop up) are embarrassing, and its embarrassing telling your boyfriend/girlfriend about it, but its not like herpes kills anyone... right?

Well, no. Though its rare, babies born to HSV(+) mothers can get herpes encephalitis. Adults can get it too. Herpes is the leading cause of blindness in the US. And as Ive written about before, there is a connection between herpes and Alzheimers. Herpes isnt just a 'social' disease.

Scientists have been trying to make a HSV vaccine for years and years and years... its kinda like HIV-1 vaccine design. Everything they have tried has failed.

But HSV researchers have an option HIV researchers dont have: live attenuated vaccines.

(Previous post for more background)

Halford at al took a clever approach to 'deleting' the gene of interest, IPC0. When you are making a live attenuated virus for a vaccine, its not just a matter of 'Eh, we deleted the gene, lets go!'-- they 'deleted' IPC0 several ways, trying to minimize virulence, and maximize immunogenecity. In other words, they want to make a virus that is safe, but still have it annoy your immune system enough that you are protected from a real challenge.

One variant, HSV-2 0ΔNLS, where just a specific tiny region of the IPC0 gene was deleted, replicated just fine in cell lines but still had the phenotype they wanted (susceptibility to interferon).

What does this mean?

Well, if you take regular ol HSV-2 and put it in the eyes of mice, they die. In about a week. :-/

But if you take this attenuated strain, HSV-2 0ΔNLS, and put it in the eyes of mice... Theyre fine and dandy. And they were fine and dandy till the end of this portion of the experiment (60 days).

And I guess technically, they were better than fine and dandy. Because when mice vaccinated with the attenuated HSV-2 0ΔNLS were challenged with lethal doses of wild-type HSV-2 70-80 days post vaccination... they all survived.

100% dead, to 100% alive with vaccination.

Furthermore, one of the problems with HSV is that it moves. It travels up your neurons, and causes all kinds of trouble along the way. Well, the HSV-2 0ΔNLS used in these vaccines also had a fluorescent reporter built in. Cells infected with the attenuated virus glow green. So they could watch, to see what cells got infected with the vaccine virus, and where that virus went. Look at the poor little moosey mice (last figure) that got a wild-type+GFP virus. The infection starts at their eyes, and travels down their little faces, and their little eyes get all swollen :(

But the vaccine strain mice? Little glow in the eyes (where they were inoculated). Thats it.

There are many, many, many more questions to ask and answer before this would ever be available to humans. But I think this is a super neato step in a right direction!

Read the comments on this post...

Occupational Health News Roundup [The Pump Handle]

Liz Borkowski none@example.com — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:34:47 -0500

Before BP's name was linked in everyone's mind to the Gulf oil disaster, the company was infamous for its unsafe Texas City refinery, where a March 2005 explosion killed 15 workers and injured 170. In September 2005, OSHA cited BP for $21 million, and BP paid the fine and entered into an agreement with OSHA under which the company would identify and correct safety problems. But when OSHA conducted a follow-up investigation in 2009, it found that the company "failed to live up to several extremely important terms of that agreement." OSHA issued failure-to-abate citations to the tune of $50.6 million, plus $30.7 million for 439 new willful violations it identified.

The newsworthy event last week was BP's agreement with OSHA to go ahead and pay all of the $50.6 million and to immediately start improving safety at the Texas City refinery, including an investment of at least $500 million on safety efforts. The New York Times' Steven Greenhouse reports:

BP had originally disputed almost all of the 709 violations found by OSHA during the 2009 inspections. But under the agreement announced Thursday, the company accepted the 270 citations for failing to fix problems as promised in the previous settlement.
... Under the agreement, BP agreed to have the head of the Texas City refinery meet monthly with the top regional OSHA official and to begin performing safety reviews of the equipment at the facility, one of the nation's largest refineries, according to set schedules. The company also agreed to have independent monitors verify its progress in meeting its safety commitments and to include the United Steelworkers union, which represents the hourly workers at Texas City, in the safety process.

The maximum penalties OSHA is allowed to issue are still pathetically low dollar figures, but BP's commitment to fix safety problems - starting immediately - and have its progress verified will benefit the workers at this facility.

In other news:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Skepchicks are made of awesome--and they could use your help [Aetiology]

Tara C. Smith none@example.com — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:00:00 -0500

The Skepchicks are sponsoring a pertussis vaccination clinic at Dragon*Con over Labor Day weekend. They're teaming up with the Georgia Dept. of Health, who is providing free assistance and vaccines, but they need some assistance raising funds to cover space rental, posters, and other miscellaneous charges. If you're able to assist, you can donate to their "Hug me! I'm vaccinated!" campaign at the links included in the post.

And while I'm nagging about donations, I'll also note that donations to help the flooded in Pakistan have been slow, especially compared to the Haiti earthquake. If you can spare a few dollars, Doctors Without Borders is one of my favorite charities (though I've not seen a dedicated Pakistan donation page there), and here is one list of other charities working there. With either of these causes, remember that every little bit helps.

Read the comments on this post...

More false "balance" on vaccines and autism [Respectful Insolence]

Orac none@example.com — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0500

There's so much horrible reporting on vaccines and the whole manufactroversy that promulgates the myth that vaccines somehow cause autism through a combination of confusing correlation with causation, bad science, quackery, and misrepresenting autism that it's gotten harder for me to be sufficiently irritated to write about it. When I see yet another another example of credulous reporting, it has to be either truly egregious to the point of catching my attention above the baseline noise of stories presenting anti-vaccine pseudoscience as though there were any truth to it or somehow illustrate something about the anti-vaccine movement that needs to be pointed out--or both. Not uncommonly, such articles are touted on that repository of anti-vacccine quackery and propaganda, Age of Autism, as examples of the media "finally getting it." So it is with a truly execrable piece of crap journalism that the merry band of anti-vaccine propagandists over at AoA--specifically, one of that merry band, Anne Dachel, Media Editor of AoA--found and promoted yesterday. It's an article that was first published in The Hudson Reporter entitled To 'V' or not to 'V'? Free vaccinations offered; controversy continues.

It turns out that, since my departure, New Jersey has become a hotbed of "vaccine choice," a.k.a. anti-vaccine propaganda masquerading as "personal exemptions," "health freedom," and "vaccine choice." The staff reporter who wrote this article, Lana Rose Diaz, has dropped a steaming, drippy turd of a "tell both sides" article that really doesn't tell both sides. Rather, it tells the side of Louise Kuo Habakus, Founder of Life Health Choices. We have, of course, met Ms. Habakus before. For example, she was awarded the AoA Person of the Year Award for 2009. Most recently, she was one of the main instigators of the anti-vaccine rally in Chicago attached to Autism One that turned into an embarrassing fizzle. Basically, she's a woman who's made a name for herself opposing vaccine mandates in New Jersey and New York based on the same sort of rank pseudoscience that AoA promotes on nearly a daily basis. No wonder AoA likes Ms. Habakus so much!

So what sort of nonsense is Ms. Habakus spewing in this article this time? Plenty, actually, and AoA loves it because in writing the article Ms. Diaz uses the time dishonored tactic of letting the advocate of pseudoscience blather on and on and then only at the end provide the science-based viewpoint, almost as perfunctory afterthought that had to be included because it's expected. However, it's obvious where Ms. Diaz's heart is, and it's not with the science-based viewpoint, at least not on this issue. After all, why else would she represent a clueless advocate of pseudoscience like Ms. Habakus as a "mother turned medical practitioner"? Get a load of this:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

The bio-mechanical problems of breasts [The Scientific Indian]

Selva none@example.com — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:36:28 -0500

are acute especially when those carrying it are active in sports like running. Some recent updates at NY Times.

Read the comments on this post...

Are Ethics Case Studies Really That Idiotic? [On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess]

Isis the Scientist none@example.com — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:54:48 -0500

The discussion of the case I posted yesterday continues over on my Scientopia blog...

Read the comments on this post...

Editor's Selections: Apologies, Fish Markets, and Addictions to Video Games and Cocaine [The Thoughtful Animal]

Jason G. Goldman none@example.com — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:52:32 -0500

Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week!

At BPS Research Digest, Christian Jarrett asks what makes for an effective apology?
Krystal D'Costa of the Urban Ethnographer blog describes an afternoon at a fish market in New York City, and ponders the relationship of smell and memory.
The Neuroskeptic asks "Are you addicted to Starcraft? Do you want to get off Battle.net and on a psychoactive drug?" Is there really a drug that can curb your addiction to video games?
Dirk Hanson of Addiction Inbox discusses the chase for the genes implicated in cocaine addiction.

Read the comments on this post...

Ion Torrent bought by Life Technologies [Genetic Future]

Daniel MacArthur none@example.com — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:45:00 -0500

More huge news in the sequencing industry, following on from the public share offer from Pacific Biosciences - relative newcomer to the field, Ion Torrent, has just been bought by Life Technologies for an impressive US$375 million in cash and stock, with an option to increase by a further US$350 million if "certain technical and time-based milestones" are met by the end of 2012.

Ion Torrent made a splash with its launch at this year's Advances in Genome Biology and Technology meeting in February (here's my coverage from the meeting). The company has developed a sequencing technology based on measuring the flow of hydrogen ions (produced as new letters are added to a DNA strand) through tiny pores in a semiconductor chip.

While the initial specifications of the technology aren't really competitive with existing second-generation sequencing platforms, Ion Torrent has a few key advantages: it's cheap ($50,000 per machine and $500 per run, according to the promotion material at AGBT), quick, has a small footprint on the bench (especially compared to the mammoth Pacific Biosciences machine) and has potential for further development. In particular, its reliance on semiconductor technology means that developers can leverage rapid advances in that trillion-dollar industry to wring more and more bases out of the platform over time.

[Added in edit: interestingly, as Keith Robison highlights, Life Technologies appears to have backed away from the $50,000 price tag discussed at AGBT towards a more conservative "less than $100,000" price. However, it's unclear exactly what that price includes, so I'll seek clarification from Life before commenting any further on that.]

Life Technologies already owns a second-generation sequencing platform - the SOLiD system - but has been struggling to compete against the current market-dominating technology from Illumina. This purchase represents a serious additional investment in sequencing from Life, on top of its ongoing research into an advanced "third-generation" sequencing technology that also debuted at AGBT.

The company thus now has a pretty diverse portfolio of sequencing technology at its disposal, but Illumina won't go down without a fight: its recently launched HiSeq instrument is rapidly becoming the platform of choice for genome facilities around the world, and it also has purchased exclusive distribution rights to exonuclease sequencing, a third-generation technology being developed by the intriguingly stealthy Oxford Nanopore.

With the addition of (currently) independent competitors Complete Genomics and Pacific Biosciences, the stage is now set for a battle of truly mammoth proportions over the potentially enormous market for sequence-based diagnostics. Next year's AGBT promises to be a fiery affair...

For more coverage, check out GenomeWeb; Luke Timmerman at Xconomy calls the purchase "a very aggressive move", while Matthew Herper also has typically incisive analysis.

Read the comments on this post...

The luxury of anti-vaccinationism: Part II [erv]

ERV none@example.com — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:00:02 -0500

Part I: HPV
Part II: Measles

Anti-vaxers are absolutely disgusting.

I couldnt possibly care less what other people choose to do with their own bodies. I dont care if guys want to use steroids for cosmetic purposes, any more than I care if a female wants to get a boob-job (or vice versa). I dont care if someone is a vegetarian for health reasons or drinks a liter of Jack a day because they dont care about their health.

The line gets drawn when peoples own decisions effects other people. If you are buying cycles of steroids and getting boob jobs while your kids are starving, thats disgusting. If you drive after throwing back a liter of Jack, thats disgusting.

So, along those same lines, voluntarily choosing, for completely non-medical reasons, to not allow your child to receive basic immunizations is like driving drunk: Your irresponsible decisions are not your own. They can hurt/kill other people. Thats disgusting.

Its disgusting on a visceral, human level. Theres an outbreak of measles in Malawi right now. About 200 people (children) are dead in this outbreak alone (1,400 in Africa this year), and who knows how many will have life-long complications of their infection.

Contrast that with this with a US community totally chosen at random: Solana Beach, California:

86.7% white (US, 75.1%)
57.9% college educated or higher (US, 24.4%)
$47,753 per capita income (US, $21,587)
3.6% families below poverty (US, 9.2%)
$467,300 average house (US, $119,600)
Dipshit self-centered, self-absorbed assholes who didnt vaccinate their damn baby and brought measles back to the US from a delightful holiday in England

Man, and look at that grand adventure dipshit family had after they got back from their international vacation: water park, horse riding, shopping (including Costco, CVS, and an 'upscale' stationary store that recommends placing orders several months in advance)...

Exposing all kinds of other people, young and old, to their contaminated spawn.

Stupid fucking assholes who turned up their nose at a medical breakthrough that other people on this planet are dying without... Only in America, baby.

Read the comments on this post...

Oh, no! School wi-fi is making our kids sick! [Respectful Insolence]

Orac none@example.com — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:00:07 -0500

Over the years, I've written a lot about cell phones and the scientifically highly implausible claim that radio waves from cellular telephones can lead to brain cancer and other health problems. For example, two years ago, when the then director of the respected University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center, Dr. Ronald B. Herberman issued a warning to the faculty and staff of UPCC to limit their cell phone use because of the risk of cancer, I had a definite bone to pick with him. The evidence upon which Dr. Herberman based his hysterical warning, which was duly picked up by the press and spread throughout the country, was so thin that you would need an electron microscope to see its edge, and it was truly depressing to see someone who really, really should know better engaging in such irresponsible fear mongering.

Since then, periodically, I've decided to take on studies of cell phones and cancer, for example this one or this one. I have yet to see one that makes me stop, scratch my chin, and think, "Hmmmm. Maybe there is something to this whole claim that cell phones cause cancer, after all. That's some damn suggestive evidence there." Of course, it would be surprising if such evidence were to come to light because of the aforementioned extreme improbability that the low energy radiation that makes up cell phone radiation could cause cancer. Cell phone radiation lacks one major ability that carcinogens in general have, and that's the ability to break chemical bonds in DNA and thereby induce mutations. It's just too wimpy to do it because it is not ionizing radiation. The primary action that cell phone radiation has is heating, but it's so low energy that its ability to penetrate the skull and heat the neurons on the side of the brain is puny compared to the normal thermal heating that we experience any time we go out into the sun.

Of course, I do tend to part ways a bit with some skeptics on this issue in that I still leave the door open for a possible biological mechanism that we have yet to discover by which cell phone radiation could potentially cause cancer. Some of the rebuttals of the cell-phone cancer link that I see from those not well versed in cancer biology (usually physicists) reveal a painfully simplistic understanding of cancer biology along the lines of "mutations = cancer," but that's what happens when you wander too far afield from your own specialty without the requisite humility. In any case, as I've said before, I still consider the likelihood that there is an as yet undiscovered biological mechanism by which cell phones could cause cancer to be highly implausible. Maybe not homeopathy level implausible but pretty darned implausible.

Even more implausible an etiological link between cell phone radiation and cancer is what is being claimed by some parents in Barrie, Ontario:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Does Violation of an Animal Research Protocol Warrant Suspension? [On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess]

Isis the Scientist none@example.com — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:06:23 -0500

I received notification of a new piece of commentary from the National Institutes of Heath's Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare today. This commentary, published in the journal Lab Animal is part of an article titled "Noncompliance in survival surgery technique". The article proposes this situation in which a postdoctoral fellow is not compliant with her IACUC-approved research protocol.

Great Eastern University's surgical training program covered everybody who performed major survival surgery for research purposes, including board-certified surgeons, veterinarians, technicians and others. People who claimed to have basic surgical competency were thoroughly tested in aseptic technique and basic surgical skills by a surgical trainer, using a simulated animal. Basic skill training was provided by a surgical trainer for those who required it. Advanced training for specialized techniques was provided by the surgical trainer or the research laboratory, using previously euthanized animals and progressing to non-survival surgery, as specified in the IACUC protocol. A veterinarian or training specialist always observed the first one or two survival procedures; if there were perceived problems, the trainer was required to immediately inform the Attending Veterinarian or IACUC chairperson.
The training and testing program worked almost flawlessly, until the veterinarians received a report from a veterinary technician that animals on which Linda Girard, a postdoctoral fellow, had operated two days earlier had a high incidence of wound dehiscence and infection. Some had to be euthanized. Necropsies revealed that the surgical procedure had not been carried out well. When confronted, Girard admitted that she took protocol 'shortcuts' because she was overwhelmed with lab work. The shortcuts included wiping instruments with alcohol rather than sterilizing them between procedures on different animals when multiple animals were operated on during the same surgical session. She disinfected but did not change her surgical gloves between procedures on different animals. She used a continuous suture pattern to close the abdominal wound when individual sutures were specified. Lastly, she sutured the peritoneum, muscle and skin as a unit, rather than closing the skin incision independently from the other layers. All of these shortcuts were contrary to her IACUC training. The findings were promptly transmitted to the IACUC, and the committee immediately convened an emergency meeting with Girard and the Principal Investigator (PI) in attendance.

After a discussion, the committee found itself in a quandary. Girard had been properly trained, and her surgical technique had been observed and approved. The current problem had been quickly identified. When Girard and the PI were told by the IACUC what was required to bring the study back into compliance, they immediately agreed to do it. Additional IACUC monitoring of Girard's work was mandated. But was the infraction of sufficient magnitude for Girard to be suspended? Even if she were not suspended, should this incident be reported to the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare at the National Institutes of Health? Some IACUC members said yes to the suspension and report, while others disagreed. Those that disagreed said that in order for the committee to suspend Girard or report the incident, the details of the committee's expectations (e.g., changing surgical gloves between animals) should have been specified in the approved protocol or at least be part of a written IACUC policy. Because neither of these conditions was met, they believed that Girard could not be tightly bound to a nonexistent policy or nonexistent protocol details.

What do you think the Great Eastern IACUC should do?

What do you think, darling readers? Should Girard be suspended? The other question that I have that is not specified in the original article is, how culpable is the PI in this? Does she bear any responsibility for not supervising her trainee's surgeries?

Read the comments on this post...

Genes + Virus + Timing = CRAP!!: Crohns Disease and Noroviruses [erv]

ERV none@example.com — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:00:47 -0500

Thanks to BleachGate, this is probably the first time many of you all in the Skeptical Community have heard about Crohns Disease (SPOILER: kid with Chrons gets booted from a 'support' forum for speaking out against woo-'treatments').

Crohns is an inflammatory bowl disease (IBD), where your guts do fun things like shrink until your bowls are obstructed, or your body decides you need more passages out of your intestines (Google 'fistula'. I dare you.), and some times you just good-old-fashioned poop blood. So, dont confuse IBD with IBS, and dont get me started on IBS.

Crohns is the usual grab-bag of 'What causes this disease?' Yeah, there are genes that have been associated with Crohns-- about 30. But just because you have the genes, or any particular collection of genes, doesnt mean you are going to get Crohns. Some people have correlated Crohns with diet, or smoking, or oral contraceptives, or E. coli... We just dunno what causes this disease yet.

Well a friggen NEATO paper came out that might help treat Crohns, but definitely helps illustrate how complex this stuff is:

Virus-plus-susceptibility gene interaction determines Crohn's disease gene Atg16L1 phenotypes in intestine.

They have a mouse model that has one of the 'Crohns susceptible' genes. That mouse does not develop mouse Crohns on its own.

BUT!

When that mutant mouse is infected with a mouse norovirus, the mouse gets mouse Crohns!

BUT!

You have to infect the mutant mouse at just the right time (virus, then induce some inflammation) for it to get mouse Crohns. If you induce inflammation and infect at the same time, the mouse is fine.

BUT!

If you infect that mouse with a different kind of mouse norovirus, its fine. Timing doesnt matter.

Oh... and intestinal bacteria have a hand in this too (if you give the mice antibiotics, the pathology isnt so bad).

So you have to have 1) the 'right' genes, with 2) the 'right' virus, at 3) the 'right' time, with 4) the 'right' commensals for this mouse to develop a pathology similar to human Crohns Disease.

Not everything is as simple as "Disease X is caused by a mutation in Gene X", or "Disease Y is caused by infection with Pathogen Y". Sometimes, disease is just an awful, awful slot machine.

Read the comments on this post...

Battle for the genome continues: Pacific Biosciences goes public [Genetic Future]

Daniel MacArthur none@example.com — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:15:00 -0500

The long-awaited public stock offer from third-generation sequencing technology company Pacific Biosciences has finally arrived (here's the SEC filing, and coverage from Matthew Herper and GenomeWeb).

PacBio has already raised almost US$400 million in venture capital, and aims to increase this by up to US$200 million from its share offering. The sheer scale of these figures gives you a sense of just how much money is being thrown around in the race towards ever cheaper, faster and more accurate DNA sequencing machines. Of course, whether investors will decide to throw more money in PacBio's direction remains to be seen.

The next few months for the company will be crucial: given the sheer amount of money now sloshing around behind PacBio, it needs to sell a lot of machines to keep its investors happy.

The sequencing arms race has been heating up in other areas too: two weeks ago, sequencing service provider Complete Genomics also filed for a public offering - and was promptly sued by established competitor Illumina for alleged infringement of two patents.

Why did Illumina wait until after Complete's announcement to launch the law-suit? Obviously we don't know for sure, but the timing sure looks like a seriously impressive piece of evil genius: unsettled litigation is liable to make investors nervous, but restrictions on the public statements companies can make after announcing a public offering mean Complete is basically unable to defend itself in the media.

Interesting times indeed...

Read the comments on this post...