Meddling Kids

Leave it to Science-Based Medicine to give a thorough and complete evaluation of the current situation as well as sage advice about not being too quick to point the finger of blame. Today’s post by Joseph Albeitz (Californians give a whoop – or I hope they do) provides excellent information on pertussis, the history of the disease, the symptoms, the threats, the vaccine, and all the details in between. Give it a read, it’s an excellent overview.

Remember, just because nobody’s sick where you live doesn’t mean that things won’t change. We have small outbreaks of pertussis in the province I live in every year, and there are plenty of people travelling in and out of affected regions every day. From what I gather from the article, though I am by no means an expert and am merely interpreting, it is primarily the adult population that are the pool for this virus. Adults often do not realize that their vaccination from grade 9 does not provide life-long immunity. I know I was unaware of this fact. It is recommended that ten years after the immunization, another is provided, but it is not known at this time if another will be necessary ten years after that.

My friend Tammy (HI TAMMY!) often comments here and has asked about more details about the vaccine. This linkis the Alberta Health and Wellness documentation about the DTaP vaccine, but to go one better I’m on hold with our local Health Link. Oh wait, it’s ringing… Now I’m on hold with the Communicable Diseases folks, who actually answered the phone, “Hello, communicable diseases.” I wanted to say, “No, it’s me, Jim. I’m not a communicable disease…”

For those in the Calgary area, the DTaP shot is available for $77 at any CHC location. The link will take you to Google Maps to see what’s nearby.

As with any epidemic, the answers are never clear until the data is evaluated. It is easy to blame the antivaxxers for a vaccine-preventable disease re-surging like this, but it is premature and likely one of many contributing factors.

Jim

As I mentioned a little while ago, Pertussis is back. Whooping Cough is an issue in California and elsewhere in the US, and is causing a lot of problems. Surly Amy from Skepchick wrote an article about this entitled quite beautifully Thanks, Assholes.

In the comments, she is attacked for her stance that this is the fault of the antivaxxers. The reality is that we don’t know the cause of it just yet. Epidemics in the wild are not fully understood until they are over. That’s what makes predicting them and preparing for them such a ridiculous impossibility, and what led to everyone getting sanctimonious about the H1N1 outbreak. So it’s true that you can’t put the blame squarely on the face of the anti-vax movement. But we know that the more people are vaccinated, the less the disease is able to take root. Many people have chosen not to get the vaccination because of misinformation from the anti-vaxxers, and as a result it’s easier for the disease to take root. There may be other issues at play, but it’s hard to imagine that declining vaccinations isn’t one of the players.

That lunatic maverick Dr. Joe Mercola is on about this too. In the comments on the article, I found a link (thanks IanJN!) to an article on his site that is just hard to stomach. He says: Read more…

I have lots of vegetarian friends. I hold no complaint to people who take the vegetarian way of life (or even the vegan way of life), but as with all things I believe a skeptical eye is key. Making the decision to stop eating meat for reasons of personal preference, dislike for the meat industry, sustainability, or any number of reasons are absolutely valid choices. Me, I’m trying (badly) to eat a lot more vegetation simply because I recognize that my diet has for too long been too focused on pasta and meat. But the idea of saying goodbye to meat completely just doesn’t seem like one I’m willing to make.

So I’m not actually debunking the idea of vegetarianism, but I wanted to post a link to this article on Science-Based Medicine about a book called The China Study: Startling Implications For Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-Term Health. It was a book that evaluated a rather huge data set and made claim that a vegetarian diet was one that would prevent or cure the vast majority of diseases. As the author, Harriet Hall, states, she had reviewed the book initially and had some issues with it, but left the in-depth combing of the data to others. Now that combing has been done, and it would appear that the book suffers from a bit of confirmation bias on the part of the author.

I particularly suggest my vegetarian and vegan friends read the article by Dr. Hall and the evaluation of data that inspired it. I am in no way suggesting that your lifestyle choice is wrong, but simply that some of the things you may believe about the health impacts of your decision may not quite be entirely accurate. That doesn’t mean I’m asking you to start eating meat, just that you should (as should I and all others) be aware of the impacts your diet has on your health one way or the other.

If I sound like I’m tip-toeing around a bit, it’s not intended that way. I have no trouble bashing vegetarians when they are obnoxious to me about the horribleness of my decision to continue to eat meat. However, in this case I see no reason to be a cock. Most of the vegetarians I know are fantastic people who do not make their politics my problem, and I present this to them in the interest of sharing new information. To those vegetarians and vegans who are jerks about it, you can instead cram this study up your cram-hole, ya carrot-eating mudkip.

Jim

Science is routinely criticized for spending billions of dollars on useless and boring things like quantum string theory research or the mundane discovery of hundreds of planets in other solar systems, while neglecting to create anything useful.

Well criticize this, critics!

Looks like a team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University have joined forces like Voltron to create something we can all get really excited about. The Dissolvable Vaccine Delivery Patch!

My lack of techno-naming creativity aside, there is some amazing science behind this thing. It’s even touted as being a more effective method of delivery than your traditional “sharp-pointy-object-jabbing-into-muscle” method!  This short article explains it nicely ..

So, in the very near future you’ll go into the doctor to do your herd-immunity duty and instead of getting a round of vaccination shots, she’ll just slap a patch on your arm (or your ass, preferably?) and send you out the door. Brilliant. Even the staunchest anti-vaxxer can get behind that.

The future is now, people.

BoyInfidel

In the past couple of weeks I have posted quite a bit about the ugly side of nature with regards to the things that crawl on it. However, it’s not just the parasitic wasps and rabid dogs that are in nature’s arsenal of awfulness. If one wants to find the workings of a benevolent and loving creator, one need look no further than the exciting world of plants.

What triggered this post was a couple of articles I read today in my journeys. The first is about Jeracleum mantegazzianum, a lovely plant that is spreading in Eastern Canada using the pseudonym Giant Hogweed. And giant it is, folks. According to the article, it can grow to twenty feet tall and five feet wide. Yup, sure is a big plant. And it’s a powerful reproducer, an introduced species with no natural predators here. But that’s not the big part of the story.

You see, The ole’ Giant Hogweed is dangerous. Get a bit of sap on you, sweat, and then hit the sun and you may well suffer a condition they call phytophotodermatitis, which is Latin for plant-light-skin-pain, and essentially means either massive, ugly blisters that hurt like hell and/or ugly scars that may last years. Get some of that sap in your eyes and you’re looking at a case of blindness.

Read more…

I just read an article on Science-Based Medicine that contains some good news for sufferers of shingles, also known as herpes zoster (not to be confused with good ole’ herpes, the STD). Zostafax is a vaccine that was made to fight shingles, which in case you weren’t aware, is like leftovers from the chicken pox. Once you get chicken pox, some of it can live in your cells for years and THEN trigger an extremely unpleasant variation of chicken pox.

I’ve known people who had shingles, and it looks like a great big bag of suck. As I understand it, it is more a threat as we age, and despite being massively uncomfortable, is not generally considered life-threatening. However, who wants to come down with a vaccine-preventable disease described as a great big bag of suck?

The Zostavax vaccine has been around for a few years, licensed by the FDA in May of 2006. Prior to that, they’d gone through a lot of testing (as all vaccines do, despite what the nutbars will tell you) and it looked fairly safe, but the folks at Veterans Affairs (remember, this is a disease that makes life crappier for older people) have done a much more thorough after-the-fact evaluation and have found that the incidents of harsh reactions to the vaccine were identical to the incidents of harsh reactions in the placebo-controlled group. In other words, it looks like yet another safe vaccine.

The vaccine is recommended for anyone over 60, so if you’re an old-timer, consider getting this one.

Jim

Good news, folks. Pertussis is back. Oh, maybe you know it better as Whooping Cough? Well, whatever you call it, the little bugger’s on the rise in California, so much so that they have released a statement saying that it’s officially an epidemic. There’s more details in this post from Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog if you’re curious, and there’s also this article from the New York Times.

It seems strange to me that we live in a world where pertussis can still be a viable threat, but as I’ve dug into this a bit, I adequately certain that I am not up to date on my own vaccinations. It’s an important reminder that I’ve got to fix that. Funny to think, but as surly as I am towards the anti-vaxxers, I am (at least at present) a part of the problem. Fortunately, the solution is readily available.

My knee-jerk reaction was to bitch about the anti-vaxxers in this post, but the more looking into it I did (including the aforementioned embarassing realization) the more I came to realize that this is a bigger issue. One of the significantly largest outbreaks in the area is in an area highly populated with Latino immigrants, and the five children who have died were all Latinos. It is plausible (though simple speculation) that these particular communities may have significantly lower immunizaation rates due to a variety of factors ranging from not being aware of the free pertussis vaccinations to distrust of the medical establishment. However, one way or the other we are dealing with a disease that is largely preventable through immunization. There needs to be a greater push towards ensuring that more people understand the issue, including those who, like myself, have allowed their vaccinations to slip.

I for one will be getting caught up on my shots. How about you?

Jim

I would highly recommend people read The FDA for the Average SBM Consumer by Martin A. Lessem, J.D. which was posted today on Science-Based Medicine. It’s a fascinating look at how the Food and Drug Administration came into being, and contains much that I did not know about this rather important US government body.

The FDA is, even more than Orac or Big Pharma, the whipping boy of the alternative medicine movement. It’s a funny argument that they present, arguing that since the FDA once “allowed” thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, clearly over 50 years later we simply cannot trust them to look out for our best interests. This is a fantastical mauling of the facts, but a fine example of how we can’t always believe what we google.

As the article states: Read more…

I have of late been quite intrigued by the bacteria that live all over and in the human animal. I’ve been reading Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach, which has quite a lot of explanation on the role that bacteria play while we are alive, how they are controlled and used, and how, after death, we lose that control and the bacteria run roughshod, bringing about the decomposition of our bodies. It’s a tremendously interesting concept to me, this symbiotic relationship we have with these invaders. I’ve also recently had a few conversations with people on the topic of colonics, and it concerns me how many people don’t understand that the bacteria that live in our colons are for the most part not just useful but actively important to our day-to-day lives.

As such, my eye was drawn to the title of this post on Discover Blogs’s Not Exactly Rocket Science entitled When bacteria fight, bacteria lose. It’s a study of two types of bacteria (Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae) that battle for their place in those noses of mice, and presumably the model holds true to human noses. The war that these two bacteria strains fight is quite clever, and can result in serious health problems.

What I think is interesting is the notion that, unless aroused to battle by the presence of H.influenzae, the S.pneumoniae which can cause among other things pneumonia and meningitis, is a generally harmless presence. If this bacteria was to kill us, it’s host would die and given that it is not contagious, it is not advantageous for the bacteria to do so. But when conflict with H.influenzae happens, things get ugly.

Essentially, this is describing a scenario where our getting sick is a side effect not of our late night party binges or cold weather or sharing a joint with a sick person; in this instance, we get sick as the offshoot of a war we had nothing to do with between two types of bacteria that just happen to be duking it out in our noses. In this situation, we’re the true victims, simply nostrils in the wrong damned place at the wrong damned time.

Jim

The seed point for this particular post comes from Dr. David Gorski’s recent post on Science-Based Medicine about the Pharma-Shill Gambit. But I’m not going to dwell on the idea that anyone who speaks out against the alt-med industry is deeply in the pockets of Big Pharmaceutical. Instead, I seek to pose the question of who should be responsible for paying for scientific advancement.

I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It’s a great place to live for the most part, and I love it here. But the biggest down-side is the lack of foresight. I don’t believe this is a Calgary-only problem, but one that is all over the world and impacts almost every imaginable aspect of human society. But Calgary is a good model. Many years ago, I sent an email to my alderman wondering about urban sprawl. At the time, we were nearing the one million people mark, and the city’s solution to growth was to build outwards. The direct result of this decision as has been seen in countless other cities is the massive problems in the inner city, and the huge cost of building schools, transit service, hospitals, and all the other amenities needed as young families continue to move further and further into the sticks. The response was typical of all of the conversations I’ve had with my elected representatives. I received a form letter assuring me that they were going to be starting a group to evaluate options and opportunities using best-practices learned from other cities of similar size and growth patterns. Never fear! A council would be formed!

Today, nothing has changed. We’re closing schools and building new ones as fast as we can because applying the brakes to urban sprawl is a necessary but unpopular decision. People want their own brand new house. Telling them they need to consider anything less is just out of the question because that’s not how you get re-elected.

Read more…