Posts
We often talk about the death or damage of the biosphere, yet not enough discussion surrounds the systematic destruction of the ethnosphere... I leave it to the experts to discuss further....
click here to hear Wade Davis
Monday, May 3, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Harder than I thought -
So, after making a resolution to have an article posted every Sunday, here it is Monday morning and I am posting my next blog. What could have happened that would have stopped me from keeping to my new schedule?
A long time ago I decided I was going to ride in the 'Ride to Conquer Cancer'. Recently, the reality of that decision has been kicking in. I have been training. Yesterday, the goal was to bike 75 KM.
So, off I headed, to bike 75 KM and then I would come home and do some more work, including finishing my Sunday blog.
I got through 70 KM and came home. My body hurt, this was my longest ride to date and it wasn't just my legs that were sore, it was everything. Back. Wrists. Arms. Abs. Ouch.
So, to make a long story short, I came home, showered, made some food and fell asleep. But, this brings me to my topic for the blog --
How many of us don't know someone who has been afflicted by cancer?
30% of new cancer cases and 60% of deaths due to cancer occur in middle aged adults (30-59 years old).
Cancer incidence is rising in young women aged 20-39.
More cancer statistics here.
It isn't going to be easy, but I am going to try to ride 100 km a day for two days. I am also trying to raise $2500 for cancer. Help out if you can, it is a good cause.
Click here to see the site and make a donation:
My Ride to conquer cancer site
A long time ago I decided I was going to ride in the 'Ride to Conquer Cancer'. Recently, the reality of that decision has been kicking in. I have been training. Yesterday, the goal was to bike 75 KM.
So, off I headed, to bike 75 KM and then I would come home and do some more work, including finishing my Sunday blog.
I got through 70 KM and came home. My body hurt, this was my longest ride to date and it wasn't just my legs that were sore, it was everything. Back. Wrists. Arms. Abs. Ouch.
So, to make a long story short, I came home, showered, made some food and fell asleep. But, this brings me to my topic for the blog --
How many of us don't know someone who has been afflicted by cancer?
30% of new cancer cases and 60% of deaths due to cancer occur in middle aged adults (30-59 years old).
Cancer incidence is rising in young women aged 20-39.
More cancer statistics here.
It isn't going to be easy, but I am going to try to ride 100 km a day for two days. I am also trying to raise $2500 for cancer. Help out if you can, it is a good cause.
Click here to see the site and make a donation:
My Ride to conquer cancer site
Falling off of the blog wagon
Well, this has been an interesting year for me and there has been a lot of transition to go through. Through that transition came changes and challenges. Through that transition came the creation of this blog, and through that transition came that last nearly month of silence.
My goal is to fix that last month of silence, and to re-implement my blog writing habits. I will aim to have a new post here every Sunday. For those that have read this so far, thank you very much for your attention. It is a learning process for me, and I hope to evolve this into something that is informative and at the same time not too dry.
Hopefully I will be seeing a lot more of you over the next period of what I am sure will be rampant blog productivity.
Cheers,
Dave.
My goal is to fix that last month of silence, and to re-implement my blog writing habits. I will aim to have a new post here every Sunday. For those that have read this so far, thank you very much for your attention. It is a learning process for me, and I hope to evolve this into something that is informative and at the same time not too dry.
Hopefully I will be seeing a lot more of you over the next period of what I am sure will be rampant blog productivity.
Cheers,
Dave.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Life in Henry's wake
“...there is no such thing as objective journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction of terms.” – Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
Whether we admit it or not all journalism is fraught with opinion. A friend recently forwarded an article from the Post which she thought might make good material for the blog. She was right, it was a really interesting stuff – the kind of stuff I should have been able to sink my teeth into. Should have, but couldn’t. I was unsure of my opinion, I couldn’t find my stand. It turns out that without some sort of subjective stance I have no article to write, therefore proving Dr. Thompson’s quote, which I used to open this blog, particularly relevant.
Rather than allowing the dilatory pace of my own ethical compass to delay sharing the article any longer I decided I would just post it. These are complicated issues that we as a society are going to have to deal with. They are not going away. Read about it. Think about it. Talk about it.
Life in Henry's wake
Whether we admit it or not all journalism is fraught with opinion. A friend recently forwarded an article from the Post which she thought might make good material for the blog. She was right, it was a really interesting stuff – the kind of stuff I should have been able to sink my teeth into. Should have, but couldn’t. I was unsure of my opinion, I couldn’t find my stand. It turns out that without some sort of subjective stance I have no article to write, therefore proving Dr. Thompson’s quote, which I used to open this blog, particularly relevant.
Rather than allowing the dilatory pace of my own ethical compass to delay sharing the article any longer I decided I would just post it. These are complicated issues that we as a society are going to have to deal with. They are not going away. Read about it. Think about it. Talk about it.
Life in Henry's wake
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The vaccine question
Imagine if a cure was discovered that would prevent all HIV related deaths. How much impact do you think that would have?
Let’s think even bigger: Imagine if a treatment was discovered which could prevent all deaths from stroke. According to the World Health Organization approximately 5.5 million people die from stroke every year (550 million deaths every one hundred years).
The estimated death count from smallpox in the 20th century ranges between 300-500 million people (1 out of every 7 children in Russia). Since the world population was smaller at the time, smallpox was a bigger killer in the 20th century than stroke is in our current generation. Three hundred million people - roughly the current population of the United States, about 10 times more people than have died from AIDS, 10 times more than died during world war 1 and about 100,000 times as many deaths as attributed to the 911 attack. Only about 1 in 4 are people who contract small pox die from the disease, so the 300–500 million estimate does not include the many survivors were scarred or blinded by the disease. What happened to small pox?
In 1798 Edward Jenner demonstrated that inoculation with cowpox could protect against smallpox initiating the use of vaccination. By the 1950s it was estimated that the infection had decreased to about 50 million cases of smallpox world-wide per year and intense vaccination efforts led to eradication of the disease with the last natural case of small pox documented in Somalia in 1977.
This is probably one of the greatest achievements of medical science to date.
Since the 1930’s Thiomersal, which is a mercury-containing compound, has been used in some vaccines to prevent bacterial and fungal growth. Questions have arisen as to whether the mercury contained in the vaccine preservative could cause health problems, particularly whether it is associated with an increase in autism.
The Lancet, a leading medical journal, published an article written in 1998 by a Dr. Andrew Wakefield suggesting that autism was linked to children receiving mercury containing measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. Despite this study being based on only 12 children (11 males and 1 female) and scientific evidence to the contrary, Britain's child vaccination rates consequently fell by 20% after the study came out and the UK and America has had waves of measles outbreaks. In 1998, the year the study came out, England and Wales had 56 cases of measles; by 2008 the number was 1,370. In 2007, a large outbreak of mumps was set off in Canada after the virus was purportedly imported from the United Kingdom.
It has been discovered that Dr. Wakefield had been paid to conduct his study on children who were clients of a lawyer preparing to initiate a lawsuit. The General Medical Council recently concluded, after a lengthy investigation into Wakefield’s study, that it was fraught with financial and scientific conflicts of interest. The medical community, including 10 of the 13 authors of the original paper, have rejected the validity of the findings years ago. Little to no scientific evidence supports the study’s findings, and subsequent studies have refuted its claims. In February of this year the Lancet officially retracted the paper, something it doesn’t do lightly and an act which officially invalidates the study.
Controversy on both sides of the debate
Shortly after the Lancet’s retraction a scandal was brought to light form the other side of the table. Poul Thorsen, a researcher who was on two important publications discrediting the link between mercury containing preservatives and autism, is allegedly being investigated for potentially forging documents in order to misappropriate 2 million dollars of grant funding.
Dr. Thorsen was not the lead author or involved in collecting the data and the coauthors of the two studies maintain validity of the research. Federal authorities are investigating.
This has not prevented writers from attacking any scientific work connected to Dr. Thorsen, particularly Robert Kennedy Jr, an active spokesperson for the autism-Thiomersal link .
There is reason for concern and our attention
Dr. Arnold Relman, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine from 1977 to 1991 claims that, “The commercialization of medicine poses the greatest threat to U.S. health care,” and that “From my experience and perspective, it’s clear that fraudulent, unethical behavior is a more common problem than it used to be.”
Can vaccines be made thiomersal free?
So to summarize, vaccination is scientifically proven improve our bodies immune response and increase our chances of immunity. Yet, the problem is the use of questionable preservatives in the vaccine, and whether they are harmful. Can the vaccines be produced without Thiomersal?
The short answer is yes. Thiomersal use as a preservative was phased out of Canadian vaccines. It is sometimes used in the production of the vaccine, but is later filtered out. The degree to which some trace elements are left in the vaccine is still a point of contention, and it is possible to make the vaccines without the use of Thiomersal at all.
Mercury free MMR vaccines are available and are produced, but have an increased cost of administration, which limits their availability in the developing nations where cost is a factor. Even though the link has been officially discredited, most of the remaining Thiomersal vaccines are now headed for poorer developing nations.
Relevant Links:
http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=156969
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704022804575041544115791952.html
http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/thiomersal/questions/en/index.html
http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/resources/atlas/en/
http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/en/cvd_atlas_14_deathHD.pdf
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/02/02/autism-mmr-lancet-Wakefield.html#ixzz0ioueLfic
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article972665.ece
Let’s think even bigger: Imagine if a treatment was discovered which could prevent all deaths from stroke. According to the World Health Organization approximately 5.5 million people die from stroke every year (550 million deaths every one hundred years).
The estimated death count from smallpox in the 20th century ranges between 300-500 million people (1 out of every 7 children in Russia). Since the world population was smaller at the time, smallpox was a bigger killer in the 20th century than stroke is in our current generation. Three hundred million people - roughly the current population of the United States, about 10 times more people than have died from AIDS, 10 times more than died during world war 1 and about 100,000 times as many deaths as attributed to the 911 attack. Only about 1 in 4 are people who contract small pox die from the disease, so the 300–500 million estimate does not include the many survivors were scarred or blinded by the disease. What happened to small pox?
In 1798 Edward Jenner demonstrated that inoculation with cowpox could protect against smallpox initiating the use of vaccination. By the 1950s it was estimated that the infection had decreased to about 50 million cases of smallpox world-wide per year and intense vaccination efforts led to eradication of the disease with the last natural case of small pox documented in Somalia in 1977.
This is probably one of the greatest achievements of medical science to date.
Since the 1930’s Thiomersal, which is a mercury-containing compound, has been used in some vaccines to prevent bacterial and fungal growth. Questions have arisen as to whether the mercury contained in the vaccine preservative could cause health problems, particularly whether it is associated with an increase in autism.
The Lancet, a leading medical journal, published an article written in 1998 by a Dr. Andrew Wakefield suggesting that autism was linked to children receiving mercury containing measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. Despite this study being based on only 12 children (11 males and 1 female) and scientific evidence to the contrary, Britain's child vaccination rates consequently fell by 20% after the study came out and the UK and America has had waves of measles outbreaks. In 1998, the year the study came out, England and Wales had 56 cases of measles; by 2008 the number was 1,370. In 2007, a large outbreak of mumps was set off in Canada after the virus was purportedly imported from the United Kingdom.
It has been discovered that Dr. Wakefield had been paid to conduct his study on children who were clients of a lawyer preparing to initiate a lawsuit. The General Medical Council recently concluded, after a lengthy investigation into Wakefield’s study, that it was fraught with financial and scientific conflicts of interest. The medical community, including 10 of the 13 authors of the original paper, have rejected the validity of the findings years ago. Little to no scientific evidence supports the study’s findings, and subsequent studies have refuted its claims. In February of this year the Lancet officially retracted the paper, something it doesn’t do lightly and an act which officially invalidates the study.
Controversy on both sides of the debate
Shortly after the Lancet’s retraction a scandal was brought to light form the other side of the table. Poul Thorsen, a researcher who was on two important publications discrediting the link between mercury containing preservatives and autism, is allegedly being investigated for potentially forging documents in order to misappropriate 2 million dollars of grant funding.
Dr. Thorsen was not the lead author or involved in collecting the data and the coauthors of the two studies maintain validity of the research. Federal authorities are investigating.
This has not prevented writers from attacking any scientific work connected to Dr. Thorsen, particularly Robert Kennedy Jr, an active spokesperson for the autism-Thiomersal link .
There is reason for concern and our attention
Dr. Arnold Relman, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine from 1977 to 1991 claims that, “The commercialization of medicine poses the greatest threat to U.S. health care,” and that “From my experience and perspective, it’s clear that fraudulent, unethical behavior is a more common problem than it used to be.”
Can vaccines be made thiomersal free?
So to summarize, vaccination is scientifically proven improve our bodies immune response and increase our chances of immunity. Yet, the problem is the use of questionable preservatives in the vaccine, and whether they are harmful. Can the vaccines be produced without Thiomersal?
The short answer is yes. Thiomersal use as a preservative was phased out of Canadian vaccines. It is sometimes used in the production of the vaccine, but is later filtered out. The degree to which some trace elements are left in the vaccine is still a point of contention, and it is possible to make the vaccines without the use of Thiomersal at all.
Mercury free MMR vaccines are available and are produced, but have an increased cost of administration, which limits their availability in the developing nations where cost is a factor. Even though the link has been officially discredited, most of the remaining Thiomersal vaccines are now headed for poorer developing nations.
Relevant Links:
http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=156969
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704022804575041544115791952.html
http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/thiomersal/questions/en/index.html
http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/resources/atlas/en/
http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/en/cvd_atlas_14_deathHD.pdf
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/02/02/autism-mmr-lancet-Wakefield.html#ixzz0ioueLfic
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article972665.ece
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
The placebo effect
Scholars don't agree on how it is pronounced, or how it works - but for those who look into it, most agree that it is amazing.
One of my favorite podcasts does a much better job of discussing the placebo than I could do,
check it out here:
One of my favorite podcasts does a much better job of discussing the placebo than I could do,
check it out here:
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