This morning, the three winners of the 2008 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine were announced. One of the honored three is French scientist Françoise Barre-Sinoussi, a member of the team who first discovered HIV and its role in causing AIDS. Her co-discoverer, and fellow Nobel winner, is Luc Montagnier. Besides the fact that they were the first researchers to isolate the virus, the biggest thing there is to know about them is that one is a man, and the other is a woman.
Unfortunately for Françoise—and for the reputation of the science-covering media—the Nobel committee apparently failed to include a picture of her in the press release, spelling out her female-ness for all to see. What happened next, in a display of basic fact-checking—or even just minor Googling—that would make Jayson Blair proud, was the following CNN report:
Two Frenchmen and a German won the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine for their discoveries of viruses that cause HIV and cervical cancer, the organization’s Web site said Monday.
Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier of France were honored “for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus.” The pair are recognized as the discoverers in 1983 of the virus that can expose people to AIDS.
And to pour a little sodium chloride in the wound, Scientific American’s Steve Mirsky described the duo as “the two Frenchmen” in a podcast that’s now posted on their Web site. The transcript of the podcast has since been changed—without any note of the correction—to “the two French scientists.” Apparently Françoise was deemed female enough to be identified as such—Nobel Prize and all.
• The debates are on! Slate analyzes what each candidate must do to win, while a cognitive linguist says the key to victory is appealing to “values, not facts.” Clearly the GOP got that memo.
• Eye-gate explained: A doctor-blogger discusses the controversy over McCain’s apparent facial ailment.
• If you’re going to be president in one of the world’s most volatile times, it’s good to have the Nobel winners on your side.
• January may not be soon enough: The director of NIH resigns, leaving the organization in purgatory until the next administration shows up.
• So signs of autism appear around the time of vaccinations, therefore vaccines must cause autism! Not so much. Here’s a far likelier (and actually logical) explanation.
• This is your brain on cell phones: More warnings from scientists to Congress on your cell’s potential danger.
• Facebook and the science of narcissism.
• Congratulations to Andy Revkin, New York Times reporter and DISCOVER alum, on winning the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, which is given to journalists who provide excellent reporting on “stories that simmer instead of explode”—though whether global warming falls into the former category or the latter remains to be seen.
• DrugMonkey sounds off on the “broken” NIH grant review system.
• The National Institute of Mental Health calls off a study on chelation in children. Why? Because it was dangerous and “unethical.” No kidding.
• We here in Mother Russia do not like silly American “Google.”
• Is media sensationalism a product of evolution?
• No politician is safe! An activist group hacks into Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account, leaving McCain grateful that he doesn’t know how to use the Internet.
• Which scientific experts should the next U.S. president appoint to guide him? The National Academy of Sciences has a few ideas—and they’re happy to share.
What are the most important things the next U.S. president needs to do for science? To cut through the jargon and find an answer, we bring you the DISCOVER Science Policy Project, in which we give a group of the country’s most celebrated scientists and thinkers the chance to respond to the following question:
What are the three most important things the next president can do to positively impact scientific research in the United States?
In the November issue of DISCOVER, we compile and analyze the results. In the meantime, we will be posting each response in its entirety here on Reality Base. Today’s entry is by C. Everett Koop, the former U.S. Surgeon General and founder of the C. Everett Koop Institute. Feel free to offer your own ideas and analysis in the comments section. All past responses can be found here.
C. EVERETT KOOP
Former U.S. Surgeon General
(more…)
• M.I.T.’s president calls for a major R&D funding increase for alternative energy; the world (hopefully) listens.
• Newsflash: Doctors admit to sometimes acting unprofessional. Good thing they’re only laughing at you while you’re anesthetized, and not handing you prescriptions for a drug they’ve been paid to endorse… oh, wait, never mind.
• Ed Brayton summarizes McCain’s “sex ed-gate” mess.
• And Gristmill offers a breakdown of the “Palin v. Palin” climate change message.
• The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund has its say on aerial wolf hunting.
(more…)
Things are looking up for STDs these days. On the side of the newly-revitalized Christian right, you have abstinence doctrines strangling sex education and disease prevention efforts in schools (and celebrating the teen pregnancies that result). On the left, you have the “demystification” of non-lethal diseases like chlamydia, gonorrhea and HPV, sending the message that unprotected sex (and the infections that result) are “really no big deal.” Mix them together, and you’ve got a spike in U.S. infection rates, after years on the decline.
Granted, given that diseases like chlamydia and gonorrhea can be cured with antibiotics, and non-curables like herpes controlled with medication, it’s worth asking: Why are non-lethal STDs so dangerous?
(more…)
We decided to take a break from the creative environmental fables springing forth in Minneapolis to hit yet another field where fact and fabrication have been scarily intertwined: autism and vaccines. The anti-vax celebrity movement is going strong—now they can add Lance Armstrong to their ranks—and more parents are jumping on the “screw public health, we don’t want autistic kids” bandwagon.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is already seeing a measles spike, while Canada is reporting a mumps epidemic and the U.K. is bracing itself for a possible measles outbreak. All while the actual research continues to show that there is absolutely no link between vaccines and autism, Crohn’s disease, colitis, asthma, teenage pregnancy, incurable foot odor, etc.
A stock anti-vax response to these facts? “So what? Who says the measles are so bad?”
(more…)
Throughout the 2008 campaign, both Obama and McCain have been pushing preventative-care programs as a solution to exploding health care costs. Which seems sensible enough given that, from a logic standpoint, it sounds like a flawless cost-saving strategy: We take measures to stamp out diseases and other health problems before they start, and save ourselves the costs (both in care and increasingly precious doctor hours) of treating them later.
The only problem is that preventative care may not save money at all. A recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine found that rather than cutting costs, preventative-care plans often wind up costing more than treatment. Written by Tufts health-policy researchers Joshua Cohen and Peter Neumann and Harvard professor of health policy Milton Weinstein, the paper declares that “[s]weeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention … are overreaching” since “[s]tudies have concluded that preventing illness can in some cases save money but in other cases can add to health care costs.”
(more…)
• Are Olympic cheaters slipping through the cracks?
• Turns out it’s not just the uninsured who are getting screwed by medical bills: Those with insurance are under water as well.
• Dear presidential candidates: No matter which of you wins, you’ll be receiving a $9 billion bill for global warming. Please pay accordingly.
• Do degenerating brain cells make us hungrier (and thus fatter) as we age?
(more…)
We’re not one to say “I told you so” (oh, who are we kidding) but reports are in from the CDC that the number of measles cases in the U.S. has risen to its highest level in more than a decade, with nearly half of the reported cases involving children whose parents chose not to have them vaccinated for the disease.
Granted, the number of cases is low, 131 total, but that’s only from January through July of 2008—and that increase is significant, considering that 2007 saw a grand total of 42 cases. Thus far, none of the newly infected have died, though 15 were hospitalized. To make matters worse, the AP reports, at least 17 children contracted whooping cough (which can be fatal to children) at a private school in the San Francisco Bay area, and 13 of them weren’t vaccinated against the disease.
(more…)
The definition of addiction has been expanding all over the place, with rehab programs springing up for Internet addicts and class action lawsuits hinging on whether gambling falls under the addiction umbrella. Given the latest obesity studies proclaiming the eventual corpulence of everyone in America, it’s worth asking: Is overeating an addiction, and should it be treated like one?
So far, research on obesity has followed pretty much the same line as research on gambling, Web surfing, and other compulsive behaviors: When the brains of an overeater, compulsive gambler, etc. are examined, their increases and reductions in dopamine receptors follow similar patterns to those in drug addicts.
Now, a new drug developed to treat drug addition has also been shown to cause rapid weight loss. Called vigabatrin, the drug is currently in the clinical test phase for cocaine and methamphetamine dependence.
(more…)
ABC News has a report on the Lend4Health blog, which offers a person-to-person lending system for parents who can’t afford and/or whose insurance won’t cover autism treatments for their children. The concept follows the model of Prosper.com and other individual loan sites. But the idea behind it—loans exclusively for treatments of a particular disorder—is unique among micro-lenders.
The system was created by Tori Tuncan, a mother of two who decided to take action after hearing one too many stories about insurers denying coverage for autism therapies. Tuncan acts as the money go-between, reviewing pictures, bios, references, and the treatments desired by potential borrowers, and then doling out micro-loans at her discretion.
It’s true that this kind of system could be a potential lifesaver for patients who desperately need certain procedures or treatments, but are caught in insurance company red tape and can’t come up with the money. But the current setup of one person deciding what treatments are worth funding, and handing out funds accordingly, sets a dangerous precedent. Tuncan is not a doctor and has no medical training. In fact, it’s unclear if she has any particular knowledge about the complexities of autism therapies, or the controversies surrounding them.
(more…)
The big story today: A new study from the University of Liverpool found that birth control pills could be messing with women’s ability to find genetically dissimilar partners, thereby upping the chances of infertility, miscarriage, and offspring with weakened immune systems.
The key issue, according to Craig Roberts, an evolutionary psychologist who led the study, is body odor:
Humans choose partners through their body odor and tend to be attracted to those with a dissimilar genetic make-up to themselves, maintaining genetic diversity. Genes in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), which helps build the proteins involved in the body’s immune response, also play a prominent role in odor through interaction with skin bacteria. In this way these genes also help determine which individuals find us attractive.
The pill has been shown to affect the sense of smell in the past, and while the exact reason for this side effect isn’t known, researchers have speculated that, since the areas of the brain that control both the sense of smell and the ovaries are located near one another, taking a pill that alters one could alter both.
The problem with the odor effect, argue the authors, is that it alters subjects’ preferences for genetically dissimilar men—a loaded idea, given that it hints there might be serious repercussions from the world’s most popular form of birth control. The odor-changing theory has been around for a while, and until now most of the data on MHC differences were gathered from rodents.
(more…)
Recessions have been shown to lead to dramatic health declines among adults. But now, it looks like even being born during a downturn can come back to bite you later in life. A new paper out of Germany’s Institute for the Study of Labor found that people born during a recession die on average 15 months earlier than those born during times of prosperity. The difference is predominantly due to heart disease, which often doesn’t show up until people’s 70s or 80s.
To test their theory, the research team used that hallmark of human data: identical twins, all from the Twin Registry in Denmark, which has carefully recorded birth and death dates and causes of death since the 1870s. Lead author Gerard van den Berg and his co-authors compared sets of twins born in different years with the macroeconomic conditions (GDP) at the time of their birth, controlling for the modest advances in medicine and health care over time.
(more…)
While the celebrity smackdown between former Playboy bunny Jenny McCarthy and actress Amanda Peet has been working its way through the media python coils, another autism/vaccine showdown has sprung up—this time at the New England Journal of Medicine. Pro-vaccination guru Paul A. Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has gotten into it with Jon S. Poling, a Georgia neurologist and the father of Hannah Poling, who was diagnosed with autism after receiving five standard vaccines.
The dispute is over a piece Offit did for NEJM on Hannah’s successful lawsuit against the government after her diagnosis, which made her the first autistic child to collect damages under the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Offit argues that, while anti-vacciners have pointed to the case as proof that the government knows vaccines are dangerous and can cause autism, in reality the Poling win was one in a chain of sketchy decisions by the VICP, which “seems to have turned its back on science.” Sure enough, in swooped Poling Sr. with the following response:
(more…)
