Carnival Time!

Be Lambic or Green will be hosting the 14th Skeptic's Circle in a few days.  Consider sending submissions as follows:

The 14th Skeptic’s Circle will be happening in two weeks time, and I have the pleasure of being the 14th host. I have a very special venue planned, but before I can finalize those arrangements I need some skeptical submissions! If you’re having skeptical thoughts and you need to get them off your chest, then blog about them, and send me a link.

Submissions can be sent here. I have heavy-duty spam-filters in place, so if your mail bounces or you don’t get a response from me, leave a comment here and I’ll find another way to contact you. [If you still don't get an acknowledgment, you can send the submissions to Orac, who will forward them on.]

Submission guidelines are here.

Tags: quackery, pseudoscience, skeptic

Pharmaceutical Advice on the Internet

After writing my last serious post, I got to thinking about the issue of Pharmaceutical Advice on the Internet.  Although the issue of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) by pharmaceutical companies is a big issue, too, it seems to be more widely discussed.  I haven't run across much that deals specifically with pharmaceutical sales and advice over the Internet, even though that is a much more serious problem.  At least DTCA is regulated by the FDA, whereas there is absolutely no regulation on the Internet, other than on the sites put up by the drug companies themselves.  

In this post, I cast a skeptical look at Pharmaceutical Advice on the Internet, and conclude with some advice, including pointers on how to spot pseudoscientific nonsense.  Continue reading here.

Categories: Science, medicine
Tags: quackery, pseudoscience, skeptic, medicine

Got That Settled

My pirate name is:

Iron Roger Read

A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough matey. That's okay wit' ye, though, since ya' be a tough matey. E'en though many pirates 'ave a rep'tation f'r not bein' t' brightest souls on earth, you defy t' sterotypes. Ye got taste and education. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

I just realized that the format of this post is messed up if viewed with Internet Explorer on Widnows XP. If I cared enough I would try to fix it; but I don't, and won't. You all should be using Firefox, anyway. (Or Safari or Opera, I suppose, or Konqueror.)

The Easy Way or the Right Way?

To a great extent, the success of a Presidency is determined by the quality of the President's advisors.  Equally important, though, is the President's choice when different advisors give different advice.  When it came to the question of the use of torture in military investigation, we learn now that the President received conflicting advice.  His legal advisor, Alberto Gonzales, told him it was OK.  His military advisors told him it was a bad idea.  Specifically, the military advisors told him it was wrong, and that it could put US troops at risk.  

Always unbiased, I give thanks to the Republican Senator who brought us this information: Senator Lindsey Graham, (R-SC).  As reported in the NYT:

Military's Opposition to Harsh Interrogation Is Outlined

By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: July 28, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 27 - Senior military lawyers lodged vigorous and detailed dissents in early 2003 as an administration legal task force concluded that President Bush had authority as commander in chief to order harsh interrogations of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, newly disclosed documents show.

Despite the military lawyers' warnings, the task force concluded that military interrogators and their commanders would be immune from prosecution for torture under federal and international law because of the special character of the fight against terrorism.

In memorandums written by several senior uniformed lawyers in each of the military services as the legal review was under way, they had urged a sharply different view and also warned that the position eventually adopted by the task force could endanger American service members.

The memorandums were declassified and released last week in response to a request from Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. Mr. Graham made the request after hearings in which officers representing the military's judge advocates general acknowledged having expressed concerns over interrogation policies. [...]

"These military lawyers were clearly disturbed by the proposed techniques that were deviations from past practices that were being advocated by the Justice Department," said Senator Graham, himself a former military lawyer.

This raises a point: when confronted with a difficult decision, does it make more sense to listen to the people who are saying what you want to hear, or the people who actually know what they are talking about?  We know which is easier.  I would like to think, though, that Mr. Bush was not elected in order to do things the easy way; he was elected to do things the right way.

Categories: rants, politics
Tags: torture, politics, Guantanamo, Lindsey Graham, Bush is an idiot

I'm Glad We Got That Sorted Out...

Sort me!

CNS Update: Riluzole For Depression and OCD?

Occasionally, pharmaceuticals developed for one purpose turn out to have applications that differ from the original use.  This may turn out to be the case with riluzole (Rilutek® - Aventis Pharmaceuticals Products Inc.).  [Package insert (PI)]  I've blogged about this before, but this post has some new information, and presents a different perspective.  In addition, I've concluded with some notes and cautions about the accurate interpretation of blog posts on medical topics.  Continue reading here.

Categories: Science, medicine
Tags: depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, medicine, psychiatry, mental health, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Resolution of Inquiry

House Resolution 375, proposed by the Honorable Barbara Lee (D-CA), calls for Congress to exercise its Constitutional oversight of the executive branch, by investigating the communication that took place between the USA and the UK in the run-up to the Iraq War.  Although this is unlikely to go anywhere, given the yellow-hammerlock that the Republican Party has on Congress, it is a serious matter nonetheless.  

If our President indeed lied to the American people prior to the war, that would be a High Crime, by any definition.  Recall that he stated, on numerous occasions, that the decision for war had not been decided until a few days before hostilities began.  The gravity of the situation was underscored by the nation-wide recognition given to the Downing Street memos.  This is analogous to the situation with the 16 words about "uranium from Africa."  Those words were contained in a State of the Union Address, which is a Constitutionally-mandated official report to Congress.  Knowingly including a lie in report to Congress is no small matter.  Ol' Cranky at The Disenchanted Forest has the latest on that.  Continue reading, here.

Categories: rants, politics
Tags: politics, Downing Street Memo, BBA, impeachment, Valerie Plame

Fossils, Old and New

In 1978, road construction in South Africa resulted up an unexpected find.  Several fossilized dinosaur eggs were found.  Recently, scientists have been studying them.  This provides the first opportunity to study the embryonic development of a dinosaur.

In modern times, similar troves are being established all across the USA.  Smithsonian Magazine reports that we dispose of 100 million electronic gadgets per year.  In the next five years, 136,000 computers will become obsolete every day.  We can be hopeful that some of them will find their way to developing nations, elementary schools, and the like.  Eventually, though, they all will end up as trash.

Better yet, some programs are springing up around the country to recycle those once-beloved machines.  Computertakeback.com offers an easy way to find recyclers for your old electronic stuff.  

Geeks, of course, will reuse the various parts of their computers for as long as possible.  In some instances, manufacturers facilitate this process.  For some computers, especially the low-end ones, most of the essentials (processor, logic chips, sound, and video) are integrated onto the motherboard.  What that means is that many of these machines can be brought up to date with a "simple" motherboard swap, and some new RAM, and possibly a new hard drive.  Today's hard drives are so big, though, that most people won't come close to filling them up.  

What many people don't realize is that, if paleontological or archeological remains are found during the course of construction, the construction has to stop while the scientifically valuable material is preserved.  So the more gadgets we dump into landfills today, the slower new construction projects will be in the future.  

So let's not slow down our progeny's road construction projects.  Instead, let's hang on to those machines as long as possible, upgrade instead of replace, and recycle when there's no other choice.

In related news, American Scientist has released a report about postdoctoral students: Doctors Without Orders (1.8MB PDF).  It seems that many of them end up consigned to various fates, similar to those of the fossilized dinosaur eggs.  

Now I Won't Shop at Wal-Mart, Twice

I know that Wal-Mart is staggering because of my refusal to shop there.  But now they are really going to suffer.  Not only will I not shop there, now I won't shop there twice as often.  

Solomon, writing on For Real Things I Know, informs us that a Wal-Mart in or near Pensacola forced the Pensacola News-Journal to remove their newspaper vending machines from Wal-Mart lots, because their manager was offended by an editorial in one of their editions.  The Wal-Mart manager, Bob Hart, told the senior editor that the News-Journal might be able to replace the machines if he fired the reported who wrote the column.  

Wal-Mart is a company that wraps itself in red, white and blue.

I might understand it if Wal-Mart said I ought to fire Mark because what he said wasn't accurate. But that isn't the case. Mark accurately reported that there are 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees in a health-care program that is costing Georgia taxpayers nearly $10 million a year.

Shouldn't we talk about that?

Well, yes, we should talk about that.  We should talk about it because it is a tacit endorsement of the concept of universal health coverage.  I wonder: How many managers and CEO's of large corporations have employees who have to resort to government programs because of low wages?  I also wonder: How many of those people would be upset if we had universal health coverage?  Not content to stop wondering, I wonder: how many of those people realize what hypocrites they are?

Categories: rants
Tags: health policy, Wal-Mart

What Health Insurance Is, Really

I had other things to do, did not get anything written for Grand Rounds this week.  But at least I can link to it: Pharyngula is the host this week.  He even managed to find a unique format for the presentation, and to make an observation that must have seemed profound:

Doctors seem to spend a fair amount of time wondering why they became a doctor, and how to train more doctors.

Indeed.  

His use of the percentages of medblogging topics as an indicator of how doctors spend their time fails in two areas: it does not account for time spent sleeping, since hardly anyone blogs about sleeping.  Unless you count dreaming, and doctors rarely reveal their dreams.  And it does not account for time spent doing paperwork, which is what I am supposed to be doing right now.

I know my syntax is lousy tonight but that is because I am listening to my new Patti Smith CD;  Mother Rose is brilliant, by the way.  As is Radio Baghdad: "They're robbing/The cradle/of civil-/-ization."

If I had gotten to it, I would have submitted this.

Skeptic Poseurs

I have a bumper sticker that says "Question Skepticism."  There's a reason for that.  Primary, it's my idea of a joke.  Secondarily, it is a reminder that skepticism can be mean-spirited.  Today I encountered a particularly good example of that.

We all are familiar with those poseurs who pretend to be patriotic, but are not; who pretend to be religious, but really are pressing a personal agenda; who pretend to have a romantic interest, but really have their mind in the gutter.  This is a reminder that there are those who would pretend to take on the prestigious mantle of the Skeptic, but who really are just a pain in the ass.

In the one and a half years of the Corpus Callosum, there has been only one winner of the Yellow Hammer Award: Tom DeLay.  At the end of this post, I will announce the awarding of the second YHA.  In this post, I show why Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Ed Whitfield (R - KY) deserve the 2005 YHA.  Continue reading here.

Prometheus On the Edge of the Rings

You might have to click on this picture to get the full-size view to appreciate it.  Barely visible, near the center, is Prometheus.  Along the bottom, you see the rings of Saturn; arcing from lower right to upper left, Saturn itself.  

Prometheus On the Edge of the Rings

Jul 22, 2005 - In this photograph, Cassini is looking through Saturn's rings to see the planet and one of its shepherd moons, Prometheus. The rings are casting a shadow onto the planet, and you can see the narrow, dense regions which are created by gravitational interaction with the shepherd moons. This picture was taken on June 3, 2005, when Cassini was 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn.

Although you can't tell from this picture, there are no wars on Saturn.

Categories: science, cool stuff
Tags: science, astronomy, Saturn

More on John Conyers

Rep. Conyers hugs Lila Lipscomb.

From coverage of the Town Hall Meeting:

Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a career Army sergeant killed in Iraq and featured in the popular anti-war documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore, added her call for an end to the war.

After thanking Conyers for honoring her son with his courage in taking up this fight, Lipscomb criticized the administration for deceiving the public and for claiming to know what is best for us. She asked the attentive audience, "Aren’t you tired of being treated like you’re stupid and don’t know anything?"

Lipscomb also weighed in on the failure of the administration to reconstruct war-torn Iraq. She said that in her many communications with soldiers currently in Iraq, the main construction seems to be on US military bases. "Is that an exit strategy?" she wondered.

Urging the people to demand the truth about the war, Lipscomb added that it is our responsibility to bring the troops home safely. "I refuse for another child to die over lies and ignorance."

Categories: rants, politics
Tags: John Conyers, Lila Lipscomb, Downing Street Memo

I Want to Feel

Hot, white sand between my toes.

Potter mania could negatively affect kids: psychiatrists

Apparently there is a bit of controversy about Harry Potter, from, among all people, psychiatrists in India.  They interviewed two.  One seems to feel that the stories could have a negative effect on kids.  The other thinks it is no big deal.  I side with the latter view:

However, psychiatrist Sanjay Parekh defends the author saying the book is not necessarily so-called children's literature.

"The book is a progressive series and the youngsters must have grown up along with Harry. Though anything violent is not condoned, but adolescents can easily identify with the boy wizard's emotions, his passing phases," Parekh says.

As for the generous smatterings of romance in the book, he says "romance can never be a matter of concern for children. Violence is. Parents of little children thereby must also themselves read any literature they hand to their kids, to answer their curiosity," he says.

The article does not contain plot spoilers, but there are some hints to the content, so those who have not yet read the sixth book might want to wait before reading the article.

While We Wait

There are some comments about today's Town Hall Meeting with the Honorable John Conyers posted at Michigandem's Livejournal.  We're still waiting for more, both there, at at Conyer's blog.  Michigandem promises pictures, which I would like to see.

A few comments of my own:  

First: Traffic and construction in downtown Detroit is absolutely terrible.  And they don't mark their detours very well.  And my car overheats when it is not moving, which is a problem I'll have to solve later.  Fortunately, I have an adjustable Thermaltake fan on my CPU, so I don't have to worry about heat while blogging.  If only cars were simple, like computers.

Second: There was a lot of positive energy in the room.  There were over 300 people there, many (including us) standing in the back because the auditorium was full.  It was not full of dejected sour-grapes-sore-looser liberals.  It was full of people who still have hope that we can get rid of the crooks and liars in the White House.

Third: The most electric moment occurred during the talk by Robert Sedler, Distinguished Professor of Law, and Gibbs Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, at Wayne State University:

Professor Sedler teaches courses in Constitutional Law and Conflict of Laws. He has published extensively in both fields, and in 1994 published a book, Constitutional Law — United States, in the Constitutional Law series of the International Encyclopedia of Laws for an international audience.

He used the word, "impeachment."  The audience went nuts, respectfully, for a minute or two.  Apparently, he is serious about impeachment.

Fourth: One of the speakers was a former CIA agent, and a classmate of Valerie P.  He was the one guy in the room I wouldn't have wanted to armwrestle with.  Jim Marcinkowski was an "operations specialist," whatever that is, in the Navy, from 1975-1980; he was an operations officer in the CIA from 1985 to 1990; he got his start in politics as President of the Michigan Young Republicans.  It would be difficult for anyone to accuse him of being "politically motivated."  Although composed and steely-eyed, he was one pissed-off dude.  He stated that he knows that worldwide intelligence operations have been damaged by the leak.  It is his opinion that national security continues to suffer every day that the Administration fails to address the issue of the Plame leak.  His comments today were pretty similar to what he said yesterday at the Waxman hearing, which you can find in the Hearing transcript (especially pages 26-28.)

Fifth: The meeting originally was planned to commemorate the anniversary of the Downing Street Memo, but the other topics (Rovegate, impeachment) were included.  They are pertinent because those three topics are the ones that emerge most clearly from the background noise of "politics as usual" that enable us to conclude that our current Administration really is composed of a bunch of crooks and liars.
_____
UPDATE: 3 photos are up at AfterDowningStreet.org, here.
_____

UPDATE: Detroit media appear to have ignored the Meeting. Just in case you want to let them know how you feel about this:

Local News Contacts

Channel 2 (Fox): Feedback / Comments
Channel 4 (WDIV): We Want To Hear From You
Channel 7 (WXYZ): E-mail

Detroit Free Press: City/Metro desk city@freepress.com
Detroit News: Mark Silverman, Publisher & Editor: msilverman@detnews.com
_____

UPDATE: Michigandems photos are up, here. I suggest taking a look, if only to see the faces of the people who may be able to change our lives for the better.

Categories: rants, politics
Tags: John Conyers, Valerie Plame, Downing Street Memo, Karl Rove

If You Think I'm Too Critical...

Just in case anyone thinks I'm too critical of our government, just take a look at the transcript (171KB PDF) from today's House hearing on the Plame incident, chaired by Rep. Waxman.  

HOLT: If you had a message for Congress then, how should we prevent something like this from ever happening again, what would be called for?

JOHNSON: I say this as a currently registered Republican: I wish Howard Baker was back in the Senate. I wish there was a Republican of some courage and conviction that would stand up and call the ugly dog the ugly dog that it is. But instead, you know, I watched last night, John McCain on Chris Matthews' "Hardball," making excuses, being an apologist. Where are these men and women over there with any integrity to stand up and speak out against this? And I don't have great Republican credentials, but I started out in '72 working on the gubernatorial campaign of Kit Bond. Orrin Hatch wrote my recommendation letter. And I'm still a registered Republican. I expect better behavior out of Republicans.

LANG: Look, let me just say something about this. In the past, a junior officer in some setting who broke an intelligence person's operational cover would be punished administratively. The mechanism is there for doing this. This is an unauthorized disclosure of classified information. And if you didn't choose to deal with it yourself, as Marcinkowski said, you could get him punished. But the problem is, when you get to this kind of level, you know, things stop being unauthorized disclosures in reality and become press releases. And that has to -- what has to be stopped. There has to be a way, in fact, to discipline people who are closer to the center of power. Otherwise, I suspect that the temptation to deal with your enemies in ways like this may be overwhelming for a number of people. And it's a really despicable thing to do, really.

[...]

JOHNSON: It would be one thing if he was a freshman member of Congress and never had any exposure whatsoever to national security issues. But we're talking about a member of the Republican leadership in the House and that level of ignorance is frightening. Perhaps that explains why we've gotten into some of the other messes overseas. If they're that ill-informed on an issue so basic about how the intelligence community operates, what other things are they so ill- informed on?

[link, emphasis added]

The whole thing is 53 pages long.  It's absolutely blistering.
_____
UPDATE: see John Conyer's take on the hearing on his blog.

Categories: Rants, politics
Tags: Valerie Plame, Henry Waxman, John Conyers

Medical Research News

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has announced a $3.7 million program for medical education:

Medical Students Win HHMI Research Awards
June 30, 2005

More than 100 medical students from medical schools all over the country are learning what life is like in a research lab.

This year, 66 medical students received HHMI research training fellowships, which they will use at medical research centers nationwide. Another 42 medical and dental students were accepted as HHMI-NIH research scholars. They will live and work on the campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, where HHMI's research scholars program is based at a historic building informally known as the Cloister.

If those students really want to know what life is like in a research lab, I could show them for a lot less than $3.7 million.  This summer would be a good time, as a matter of fact.  

I have a number of large boulders on my property, as well as a few medium-sized hills.  I figure it would take about 10 medical students a few days to roll all of those boulders up to the top of a hill.  I could push the boulders back down to the bottom, and the next ten could come over.  By the end of the summer, all 108 of them would have a pretty good idea of what it is like to work in a research lab. And it probably would be a lot more realistic than living in "The Cloister."

Speaking of Google Maps...

They've added the Moon.

Welcome to Google Moon

In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps  interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing. More about Google Moon.

Town Hall Meeting

Town Hall Meeting

Town Hall Meeting With Congressman John Conyers

Wayne State University Law School Auditorium
471 W. Palmer
Detroit, Michigan 48202

July 23, 2005,02:00 PM

Keynote speakers:

• Congressman John Conyers;
• Lila Lipscomb of Gold Star Families for Peace, who - you will recall - was the most powerful part of "Fahrenheit 9-11";
• Detroit Area Peace and Justice Network coordinator Al Fishman; Bob Sedler, constitutional law expert from Wayne State University;
• moderator Tony Trupiano

So far, 83 people have signed up to attend; with a bit more publicity, perhaps there will be more.  At least one person is offering to carpool from the Ann Arbor area.  A PDF map is here.  The Google map is here.  The satellite view is here (click to enlarge)

In related news, Carl Levin has posted his report regarding his recent "junket" to Iraq.

One purpose of my trip was to gauge the level of the insurgency. I found strong support for the recent assessment of General Abizaid, the regional U.S. Commander, that the insurgency is not weakening and that the flow of foreign jihadists into Iraq has increased. I found no support for Vice President Cheney's view that the insurgency is in its “last throes.”

Categories: politics
Tags:downing street memo , john conyers

On A More Serious Note

Grand Rounds 43 is up at Aggravated DocSurg.  Again, this is a weekly Carnival that is not limited to posts by doctors and nurses.  Anyone with something to say about medicine or health care is welcome.  Submission guidelines are here.

Remember, the target audience here is NOT other medical bloggers, or people in the health care industry. It's the educated but nonmedical readers coming from general-interest blogs. So write for that audience, if only for this one post (even if your blog is about echocardiography). The idea is to introduce the wider world to the growing medical blogosphere -- the doctors, nurses, students, administrators, EMTs, techs, and patients who blog.

Submissions for next week go to Pharyngula.  I've volunteered to host the one after Labor Day.  Hosts between now and then are needed.  All it takes is a blog, a rudimentary knowledge of English, and a willingness to stay up late on Monday night.  Let Izzy know if you are willing.  If you need an inducement: it is guaranteed to bring a new audience, and lots of traffic, to your blog.

Real Money-Making Opportunity

No door-to door sales, no deposed government official in Nigeria, no experience required.  

The Federal government is taking private bids to operate Los Alamos National Laboratory.  Unhappy with the performance of the University of California, and eager to create get-rich-quick-off-taxpayer-resources opportunities, Our government is looking to unload some prime real estate in scenic northern New Mexico.  

Bidders already include the likes of Bechtel and Lockheed-Martin.  It is estimated that profits from the Lab could top $80 million per year, working on things like the W76 nuclear warhead.  

But I have a better idea.  All I need is a little startup capital, and somewhere to store some nuclear waste.  You see, I have a cousin in Alaska, who runs a little florist shop.  She says that there is a tremendous market for fresh plants in Alaska.  And -- get this -- right now, there is absolutely no one importing cactus into Alaska!

The only problem is that cactus do not grow very well in Alaska.  But with all that pristine desert to work with, and a few gamma rays, we could change all that!  Imagine the possibilities!  Cultivating cactus that would grow in Alaska would create business opportunities that would make $80 million look like pocket change.  With all the brilliant minds at Los Alamos working on the problem, it should be a piece of cake.

The scientists remaining at Los Alamos, those who have not quit or retired early, might grumble a little bit at having to shelve their work on bunker-busters, only to cultivate new varietals of tumbleweed, but they would get used to it.  They might even like not having to walk around with lead-lined underwear.  I understand that stuff is nasty when you get all sweaty, anyway.

The fact is, the world already has something like 30,000 nuclear warheads.  The market for those things is getting a little thin.  Besides, they kill people.  Cactus might give you a little poke now and then, but that's no big deal.

If you live in an igloo, imagine how your property values will soar if you have a pair of 8-foot yucca framing your entryway!  Tired of sled dogs painting your outside wall yellow?  Just plant a row of barrel cactus...problem solved!  And the best thing about it: those pesky moose and polar bears won't nibble on it all the time!  

But wait!  There's more!  If we act now, we can get ready for all those Texas oilmen when they come up to make ANWR into the next Love Canal.  Imagine how it'll warm their little hearts to see saguaro all over the oil fields!  Just like home!  Then their little minds won't be so homesick.

I tell you, it's the opportunity of a lifetime!!!

Panda Baby Boom Arrives on Pink Paws

A newborn giant panda is about as big as a stick of butter and lacks the familiar black-and-white markings for its first month or so of life. Successful births in captivity are extremely rare—and extremely prized by conservationists, given the species's dwindling numbers. About 1,600 giant pandas remain in the wild, plus about 160 living in zoos and breeding centers, according to the National Zoo.

Look Upon This, Rumsfeld, and Weep

I had posted too many politically-oriented things lately, so I went to one of my favorite sources of medical news: Medscape.  Medscape almost never publishes anything with political implications, except those pertaining to health policy.  The following article appears to have been so compelling that they made an exception. (Free registration required)

Medical Investigations of Homicides of Prisoners of War in Iraq and Afghanistan
Steven H. Miles, MD
Medscape General Medicine.  2005;7(3) 2005 Medscape
Posted 07/05/2005

Introduction

The publication of the photographs of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has resulted in a widening circle of disclosures and official investigations of similar abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay. There are reports that some medical personnel neglected detainees' medical needs and collaborated with coercive interrogations.[1,2] Some physicians, medics, nurses, and physician assistants failed to report abuses or injuries caused by the abuses that they witnessed. This article reviews another human rights issue -- the medical evaluation of cases of which prisoners potentially died of because of mistreatment or under suspicious circumstances. [...]

I've posted before on the fact that medical personnel were involved in interrogations, contrary to established medical ethics, and contrary to US military policy.  The Medscape article amplifies and confirms prior allegations of a different sort: medical personnel failed to provide adequate investigation and documentation of the deaths of detainees.  

The article quotes the applicable Geneva Conventions, which apply broadly to "internees."  The significance of this is that it does not matter why the person was being detained.  Thus, the internee's status, whether as prisoner of war, unlawful combatant, or innocent bystander, does not matter.  

The article details many specific examples of incomplete or misleading autopsy reports, mishandled forensic evidence, and obstructed death investigations.  Furthermore, it documents cases in which military personnel wither were not charged with crimes, or were given minor punishments:

Even when investigators found a criminal homicide, the US Department of Defense was reluctant to prosecute those involved or who were aware of the abuse. A soldier who shot a prisoner to death was not prosecuted because he was not informed about the rules for using force against prisoners.[38] At Camp Bucca in September 2003, an International Committee of the Red Cross monitor saw a guard shoot a prisoner in the chest. The monitor said, "The shooting showed a clear disregard for human life and security of the persons deprived of their liberty.[9]" The US Army concluded that the shooting was justifiable. Escaping, nonthreatening detainees were shot on other occasions.[39] The base commander at Tikrit prison used an administrative procedure to preempt the prosecution of the soldier who killed Obeed Hethere Radad (see Table ). Most of the soldiers prosecuted for criminal homicides of prisoners received nonjudicial punishments, such as a reduction in rank, and the record of charges, punishments, and even the name of the victim are sealed.[3]

Dr. Miles concludes with remarkable restraint:

The failures of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology have had diverse adverse consequences. A death monitoring system, which might have led to earlier awareness and prevention of homicides and abuse caused by torture, was never operational. Mishandled evidence and incomplete evaluations allowed alleged perpetrators of lethal torture to go unprosecuted. The failure to integrate the completion of death certificates into a Geneva-mandated system for notifying relatives of deaths compounded the grief, anger, and uncertainty of families. Bodies were administratively buried rather than being interred by relatives with proper ceremonies in the family's chosen place of interment. Our national reputation and interests were harmed by these failures.

Yes, our national reputation and interests were harmed.  The reputation of the medical profession has been harmed.  The reputation of the US and British military forces were harmed.  Somehow, though, the politicians have been given a pass.
_____
Update: as pointed out by Dr. DeFACCto from Cardioblog, there's a pertinent op-ed piece by By Burton J. Lee III, M.D., in the Washington Post, here.

Concrete Horse

We put this concrete horse up near the house.
For some reason, the real horses keep knocking it over.
I think it bothers them.

Republican Presidential Strategy in 2008

No, I don't have any leaked memos.  I'm just making this up.  But I think it is true and I think it illustrates an important point.

A recent essay by John Kenneth White and John Zogby discusses President Bush's declining poll numbers, and delves into the numbers behind the numbers.  What they find is that much of the downturn is due to declining support among independents and moderates.  While both groups trended toward Kerry in 2004, now they have turned overwhelmingly against Bush.  This provides clues about the likely Republican Presidential Strategy in 2008.  In this post, I examine the reasons for the loss of support amongst independents and moderates, and the implications of this shift.  Continue reading here.

Categories: politics
Technorati tags: Karl Rove, downing street memo, John Conyers

Harry Potter Stats

Guaranteed: NO PLOT SPOILERS IN THIS POST

According to Zogby, Hermione Granger would beat Harry and Ron in a Presidential election.  Also, most Harry Potter fans think that both George W. Bush and Hilary R. Clinton belong in Slytherin.  29% of adults say they have read at least one Harry Potter book, and 66% of those say they plan to read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  

President Granger

Technorati tag: Harry Potter

Old News Still Relevant

Link-skipping today, I encountered an article at BBC News about an unusual case report, or at least, a case report of an unusual presentation of a common illness:

Loud snoring link to hallucinations
BBC News
January 15, 1999

A sleep disorder that results in loud snoring could also combine with other factors to induce hallucinations, doctors say.

Doctors from Kings Mill Hospital in Nottinghamshire studied the case of a man who was admitted to hospital suffering confusion during the day and hallucinations at night.

Hospital staff originally thought the 65-year-old man, who also suffered bronchitis and was overweight, was suffering from dementia.

But he was referred to a specialist respiratory unit when his wife mentioned that he snored heavily, with periods of choking and breath-holding. [...]

The doctors say sleep apnoea combined with bronchitis could cause progressive carbon dioxide retention, leading to the man's symptoms.

They write: "Obstructive sleep apnoea is common, with prevalence estimates in the adult male population of about 1%.

"The main features of obstructive sleep apnoea are snoring and daytime sleepiness, but its presentation with neuropsychiatric symptoms is well recognised."

My only objection pertains to the last sentence. Patients with obstructive (or central) sleep apnea often do present with psychiatric symptoms, and this is well documented in the medical literature, but that is not the same as being well recognized.  Doctors quite often fail to recognize this presentation.  Patients who come in with main complaints of a psychiatric nature often are not subjected to sufficient medical evaluation.

Categories: medicine, sleep disorders
Technorati tags: medicine

Alternative Treatments?

LAT, among others, reports on a study that investigated congregational prayer, and bedside therapies using music and touch, to see if they could detect an improvement in survival after surgery.  The study was published in The Lancet.  Unfortunately, the Lancet site is down for maintenance so I can't access it now.  I can, however, put on my perpetual sophomore hat, and offer a few uninformed comments.  Continue reading here.

Categories: science, medicine, being nice
Technorati tags: medicine

Friday Blog Blogging

A while back, someone suggested that I submit a picture of our new colt to Modulator's Friday Ark.  I think it was "grrlscientist" AKA Hedwig the Owl,  at Living the Scientific Life.  I never got around to it, though, just as I've not yet gotten around to the Book meme she so graciously tagged me with.  But surprise, surprise, Modulator found yesterday's photo of April and Champie and included it anyway.

I actually happen to have quite a lot of photos that I could put up, but I'm still laboring with a 56K dialup connection, and it really is a pain in the neck to upload all that stuff.  Hedwig has a ton of great bird pictures on her Flickr site.  Another neat nature site is Sunidesus Sees.

And there was another blog surprise this week.  When I first started this blog, I never thought that one of my more popular posts would be about feminine hygiene products.  Surely, it would be something about the CNS drug pipeline, or an advance in sleep disorder research, or an environmental exposé, or maybe an incisive political analysis.  Just goes to show how unpredictable life can be.

Since I often write about medical topics, you might think I would have something to say about the rising possibility of a bird flu epidemic.  But no.  Instead, what I've noticed is that there has been an epidemic of photos from New Mexico.  The latest outbreak is at zap (patriotic).  Other outbreaks have been sighted at Mousemusings (1 2) and Dangerousmeta, and photo-secession.org (which appear to be two sites run by one guy), as well as sergeant's photostream.  

And to top it all off, here's a photo by a guy I once spent a summer with in Wyoming...

Photo in the News: Whale Found in Egypt Desert
Photograph courtesy Philip D. Gingerich/University of Michigan

The first of the truly gigantic whales, Basilosaurus had the serpentine shape of a sea monster and short, sharp teeth for hunting sharks and other prey. Unlike today's whales, it had no blowhole—the ancient behemoth had to raise its head above water to breathe. What's more, Basilosaurus still had the feet it inherited from its land-dwelling ancestors, according to Gingerich, who works for the University of Michigan and is a National Geographic Society grantee.

Presidential Fumble?

Those of us old enough to remember Gerald Ford (in the mid-70's) recall that he had been a football player at the University of Michigan.  Somewhat paradoxically, he often was portrayed in the media as being a bit uncoordinated.  There even was a Saturday Night Live skit about him, in which he was awakened at night, fumbled around trying to turn on his bedside light -- which was made from a UM football helmet -- and knocked it over.  But in reality, Ford never made any really big fumbles as a President.

Skip forward to 2005.  We learn from Americablog, via Informed Comment, that there is a distinct possibility that Bush II may have committed a really big fumble.  From Juan Cole:

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog brings up the awful possibility, based on an ABC report, that the Public Relations-hungry Bush administration may have interfered with a British and Pakistani investigation of an al-Qaeda plot to bomb London that ties into July 7. [...]

In response to White House pressure, the Pakistanis were in fact able to make an arrest, which was announced during the Democratic National Convention. [...]

The announcement set off a frenzy of press interest in the basis for then Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge's alarm. Either from a Bush administration source or from a Pakistani one (each government blames the other), they came up with the name of Muhammad Naeem Khan, a recently arrested al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan, and published it. But it turns out that the Pakistanis and the UK had "turned" Khan and were having him be in active email contact with the al-Qaeda network in the UK so as to track them down.

On August 3, the Bush administration released the name of Abu Eisa Khan, a suspected al-Qaeda operative in the UK who had been arrested. The motive for this shocking lapse in security procedure appears to have been the desire to trumpet a specific arrest. [...]

For the sake of three year old intelligence, the Bush administration had helped blow the first inside double agent the Pakistanis and the British had ever developed. [...]

Muhammad Sadique Khan, one of the July 7 bombers, was apparently connected to one of the suspects under surveillance in early August, 2004. [emphasis added]

The implications are obvious.  Of course, it is too early to draw any firm conclusions, but this certainly warrants investigation.  If true, it would be an even greater intelligence gaffe than the Plame outing; and even more politically damaging than the Downing Street Memo.  This would not be an instance of "fixing" intelligence; it would be an example of breaking it.

Categories: Politics
Technorati Tags: Bush is an idiot, downing street memo

April and Champie

Here, Champie is just under three months old.
He's going to be a big horse.

From Time Magazine

About The Following Exchange...

The neuroscience grad student, SFTR, on her blog, She Falters to Rise (presumably a sly reference to She Stoops To Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith), does not use run-on sentences as much as I do, but she does have some entertaining and interesting posts, such as Freaky Monday; I left a comment there that drew some amusing responses.  First, an excerpt from the post:

[...] Second, I ate lunch today. I rarely crave lunch--usually I'm running around too quickly to even think about eating. Today, for some reason, I needed to eat. If that doesn't amaze you, here's the real kicker. I ran over to the campus store and bought sushi. I NEVER eat sushi. I find it disgusting and noxious and blah-gag-blah. For some reason though, I just had to have wasabi, ginger, and soy sauce, and the only sane way to eat these thing together is to have some sushi. [...]

The comments (selected):

: Joseph j7uy5 said...

Ummm, Ummm, I don't know about the spilling etc., but the sushi?...Could your beta-HCG be, ummm, elevated?

Sorry. None of my business.

2:04 PM

she falters to rise said...

No need to apologize--that was the first thing I thought when I started to salivate at the thought of popping california rolls;) As far as I can tell, a body-snatcher is a more probable cause than an increase in my beta-HCG. Still, a craving for sushi is really off-the-wall for me.

2:26 PM

trisha said...

    You science nerds! Couldn't you just ask her if she is knocked up?

    3:26 PM

Piece of Work said...

I second Trisha's comment! Hilarious post, by the way. Hope the invaders continue to help you with your lists.

5:15 PM

she falters to rise said...

It seems he doesn't realize that it's OK to be forthright with me. It's probably scary for a man to ask someone if she is "knocked-up", especially when he doesn't know the potential baby's mama.

Or, he's just as dorky as me and likes to use nerd-speak.

Or, he was testing our knowledge...

I don't like to discriminate. I welcome all street-talk, nerd speak, and any other type of vernacular.

5:57 PM

Beta-HCG is the beta-subunit of human chorionic gonadotropin, which is secreted by a developing placenta; when elevated, it is an indication of pregnancy.

As it happens, I used to be a literary kind of guy, before my brain started to look like this:

I happen to recall that, in She Stoops To Conquer, one of the plot lines is an attempt to interest a young lady in a gentleman acquaintance:

HARDCASTLE. Depend upon it, child, I'll never control your choice; but Mr. Marlow, whom I have pitched upon, is the son of my old friend, Sir Charles Marlow, of whom you have heard me talk so often. The young gentleman has been bred a scholar, and is designed for an employment in the service of his country. I am told he's a man of an excellent understanding.

MISS HARDCASTLE. Is he?

HARDCASTLE. Very generous.

MISS HARDCASTLE. I believe I shall like him.

HARDCASTLE. Young and brave.

MISS HARDCASTLE. I'm sure I shall like him.

HARDCASTLE. And very handsome.

MISS HARDCASTLE. My dear papa, say no more, (kissing his hand), he's mine; I'll have him.

HARDCASTLE. And, to crown all, Kate, he's one of the most bashful and reserved young fellows in all the world.

MISS HARDCASTLE. Eh! you have frozen me to death again. That word RESERVED has undone all the rest of his accomplishments...

So in accordance with my peculiar, idiosyncratic sense of humor, and in recognition of the name of the blog, I thought it would be amusing to feign being RESERVED in the comment.

In my own defense, I must say that I spent a number of years working in a treatment program for persons with Anorexia.  Every day, I talked with patients about such things as pregnancy and contraception.  Women with Anorexia stop having periods, and often they assume that they can't get pregnant.  That is, to put it mildly, A BIG MISTAKE.  So I talked about it a lot.  I also learned to be comfortable, in direct contravention to my Catholic upbringing, talking about breast size, hips, and all that stuff.  

And as a husband, I know what it is like to go through this:

"Honey, I'm on my way home now.  Do you need anything from the store?"

"Yes.  I need some Always^® unscented pantiliners.  Be sure to get the unscented ones."

Then, I stand in aisle 7 at Meijer, the only man amidst a crowd of women, searching through the thousands of boxes of feminine products, making sure I get the right kind.  

Note to unmarried guys: you would not believe how many different kinds of those things there are.  Note to recently-married guys: for some reason, you HAVE TO get EXACTLY the right ones.  Don't even think of coming home with the wrong ones, unless you have an unusually large, air-conditioned, doghouse in the back yard.

I'll admit, I was a bit embarrassed at first.  If you call blushing, palpitations, sweaty palms, and shortness of breath "a bit embarrassed."  But after a while, you get used to it.

Four Pictures Are Worth 16,000 Words

For Some Parkinson's Drugs, the Side Effect May Be Gambling

First, note that the latest Grand Rounds is up at Shrinkette (don't you just love that name?).  

On to today's story: This story appeared in today's LA Times.  They mean it literally.  Dopamine agonists such as ropinirole (ReQuip ®) and pramipexole (Mirapex ®) have been linked to about forty cases of compulsive gambling.  Researchers reported those cases as having a definite link to the drug.  They estimate that perhaps one percent of the patients given these drugs actually develop compulsive gambling.

Dopamine agonists are used in the treatment of Parkinson disease and Restless Leg syndrome.  Dopamine is a chemical messenger in the brain that is involved in the brain's reward system.  The effect, however, does not appear to be caused by other drugs that increase dopaminergic effect, such as carbidopa/levodopa (Sinemet ®).  This is interesting, because it illustrates the subtlety of the brain.  Sinemet causes all dopamine receptors to see increased activation.  Mirapex and ReQuip are selective in which types of dopamine receptor they activate.  Plus, they act differently.  Sinemet increases release of dopamine from dopamine neurons.  ReQuip and Mirapex act directly on receptors.  

The exact mechanism of this is not known.  The article mentions, however, that some other patients reported "increased appetites for food, alcohol and sex."  That sounds like hypomania.  I know there is at least one article that indicates that Mirapex can be used to potentiate the effect of antidepressants.  Antidepressants are well known to cause hypomania or mania in a small number of people.  Therefore, it is tempting to speculate that what the researchers are seeing may actually be a form of hypomania, rather than a specific effect of causing gambling.  I'll be curious to see what emerges from this line of research.

Categories: science, neuroscience, armchair musings
Technorati Tags: medicine, neuroscience

Note To BBA/DSM Crowd

Hints for generating greater exposure for DSM-related posts:

If you include a Technorati Tag at the bottom of (or anywhere within) your DSM posts, as follows:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/downing+street+memo" rel="tag">downing street memo</a>

then ping Technorati, your posts will get wider exposure.  (So far, only a few of us are doing that.)  See this page to find out what the tag does, or this page for a general explanation.

We can increase exposure even more if you add a marquee to your blogs using the following:

<marquee><script language="JavaScript" src="http://ns2.bigbold.com/digest/95b264fa9c14/3552a8cde0bc.js"> </script>
</marquee>

This script creates a marquee that scrolls the titles of the ten most recent DSM posts tagged with the Technorati Tag above.  If you use the script, you should put the following acknowledgment somewhere on your blog:

<a href="http://bigbold.com/rssdigest/index.html"><img width="88" height="31" src="http://bigbold.com/rssdigest/3.gif" border="0" alt="Some Feeds via BigBold" /></a>

to give credit to the service that hosts the script.  

You can ping Technorati here, or use Ping-O-Matic.  Some blogs are configured to ping automatically.  See this page for information about that.

If none of this makes any sense to you, just ignore it; or better yet, find someone who knows HTML to explain it to you.

Technorati tags: downing street memo

Good News: Virology

Scientific American has a nice, short article about a major discovery.  The SARS virus produces a protein known as Spike, that interacts with a well-known protein, ACE2 [angiotensin I converting enzyme (peptidyl-dipeptidase A) 2].  Apparently Spike reduces the expression of ACE2.  The article isn't clear about the nature of the interaction; whether Spike acts on the gene itself:

or whether it binds to the protein itself.  In any case, there is a reduction in activity of ACE2.  This apparently causes or contributes to the respiratory distress that is characteristic of SARS:

SARS infection, and specifically the SARS protein known as Spike, reduces ACE2 expression. As a result, blood vessels in the lungs become damaged and the lung becomes flooded as a result.

Treating mice with a related condition, ARDS (1 2), with ACE2 protects the animals from pulmonary failure.  ARDS has a number of causes, and is common in humans.  

The significance of this is twofold.  First, and most obviously, it could point to a treatment to help patients with SARS, should there be another outbreak.  Second, and more importantly, it could point to a treatment for ARDS.  If so, this could have widespread applications:

"We of course need to extend these findings in mice now to humans," Penninger says. "Yet in essence, SARS pointed us to a protein that may help millions of people affected with a previously untreatable disease." Indeed, John Nicholls and Malik Peiris of the University of Hong Kong note in an accompanying commentary in Nature Medicine that the results could be applied to acute lung injuries arising from viruses and other causes, including a potential avian flu pandemic.

One of my professors in medical school remarked, upon hearing of the retroviral nature of HIV, "we are going to learn a lot from this disease."  Indeed, we have.  Now it appears that we may learn something important from SARS as well.  Cripes, if we can figure out how to ameliorate lung injury in ARDS, we could help a lot of people.  ARDS is reported to have a mortality of 20-30%, in one of the references; 40-70% in another.  (Most patients with ARDS have some other, very serious, condition, at the same time.  Thus, it is difficult to estimate the risk posed by ARDS alone.)  The incidence is estimated at 150,000-200,000 cases per year in the USA.  Thus, the importance of this discovery extends far beyond the treatment of SARS alone.  This is really cool.  

Chest radiograph of a patient with adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)	Histologic section of the lung showing diffuse alveolar damage in adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

Categories: science, medicine
Technorati tags: medicine

Some Things Positive

Remembering a fun time in my life:

canyon near Taos NM


rock formation near Taos


This is next to the church in Taos


San Francisco de Asis church in Taos
My brother says this is one of the most-photographed buildings in the USA.

News That's Being Missed

One more thing.  Some people want to impeach our President.

IMPEACH CENTRAL...

has the petition.  Will it do any good?  I don't know, but it makes me feel better.  They lay out the case, starting with the notorious Downing Street Memos and taking off from there.  It's an impressive list of impeachable offenses they've got there.

See also these sites: Impeachnow.org and www.votetoimpeach.com.

Categories: undifferentiated malignancies, Clostridium difficile
Technorati Tags: downing street memo, impeachment

All The News That's Being Missed

As usual, there are only a few stories in the news that are getting any attention.  London bombing, hurricane, Karl Rove.  A while back, I though of doing a weekly roundup of the important stories that are getting missed.  However, I never did it.  

Today I thought of it again, and decided to give it a try.  Then I remembered why I had not done it before: it's too damn depressing.

Here's a sample from Reuter's AlertNet:

July 2005

Srebrenica: Lessons of a terrible blunder
International Herald Tribune, July 9, 2005
Ten years ago, the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serbs who went on to massacre thousands. Lessons learnt: don't send multi-tasking UN peacekeepers into an ongoing war situation; improve UN intelligence perhaps under the guises of a conflict prevention centre; don't look the other way, says Alexander Ivanko.

Swaziland's sugar farmers face ruin as EU takes axe to special price deal
The Guardian, July 8, 2005
A fixed price for EU sugar farmers has for three decades been extended to farmers in Swaziland and 17 other African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. Sweeping EU subsidy reforms will change this, slashing prices for these 18 and devastating livelihoods of the poorest, reports Kristy Siegfried.

AIDS: Africa's doctors
International Herald Tribune, July 8, 2005
Across Africa 1.3% of the world's health workers fight 25% of the world's disease. Fighting AIDS will be a losing battle until Africa can retain health workers and access money targeted for health and procure drugs reliably, writes Malawi's health minister.

Philip Bowring: Don't blame AIDS on Muslims
International Herald Tribune, July 7, 2005
A U.S. think tank has released a report describing the spread of HIV/AIDS among Muslims as "the newest phase in the global pandemic". Look beyond religion is the response of this editorial.

The repatriation of Liberian refugees
The Guardian, Nigeria, July 7, 2005
The last of thousands of Liberian refugees who fled to Nigeria when war broke out in 1989 are now to return home. But forthcoming elections must proceed smoothly if Liberia's peace process is not to be derailed, says this editorial.

Sudan: What's wrong with this picture?
Christian Science Monitor, July 5, 2005
Interest in Darfur that had built up in the international community has waned and the tsunami now seems to have been a deadly distraction writes G. Jefferson Price III, emergency correspondent with Catholic Relief Services.

Monster of the moment
The Guardian, July 1, 2005
World Bank projects have evicted 10 million, hundreds of thousands are regularly moved on by governments around the world for urban development work and the only reason Mugabe is the West's pet monster is because he chose to reclaim and redistribute land grabbed by whites, John Vidal points out.

Giving and taking away
International Herald Tribune, July 1, 2005
The U.S. has made some important steps, for instance in approving generic anti-retroviral drugs, but at the same time polices such as refusing to fund needle exchange programs, and influencing other UN actors to do likewise, are dangerous, according to this Washington Post editorial.

Pardon Me, But...

I didn't take the time to organize my thinking on this; I just want to get the thoughts down on paper pixels.  

In the late 80's to early 90's, psychologists and psychiatrists who were not psychodynamically oriented developed a branch known as cognitive therapy.  This essentially was an outgrowth of behavioral therapy.  Pure behaviorists are fond of pointing out that it was not really new; after all, thinking is just a specialized form of behavior; therefore, cognitive therapy is just a specialized form of behavioral therapy.

It occurs to me that it might make sense to think of emotions and logic in the same way.  That is, logic is just a specialized form of emotion.  Continue reading here.

Categories: armchair musings
Technorati tags: psychology

Another Gallup Result

July 06, 2005
Choosing a New Supreme Court Justice

When asked specifically if they would want the new justice to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade or to vote to uphold that decision, Americans overwhelmingly would want that justice to uphold the decision rather than overturn it.

Technorati Tags:  Supreme Court, abortion

Another Perplexing Statistic

From The Gallup Organization:

June 22, 2005
Many Americans Reluctant to Support Their Child Joining Military
Nearly half would suggest a different occupation

by Jeffrey M. Jones
   
A new Gallup survey finds only a bare majority of Americans saying they would support their child's decision to enter the military if he or she made that choice, while a substantial proportion would suggest their child try a different occupation. This represents a significant decline from 1999, when two-thirds said they would support their child's decision to enter the military. A majority of Americans oppose mandatory military training for young men, and more than 8 in 10 Americans are opposed to re-instituting the draft.

You have to pay to get the full report, which I am not willing to do.  It probably would not answer the question, though: how is it that anyone could support their child's decision to join the military?  Continue reading here.

Categories: war, politics
Technorati Tags: draft, downing street memo, Impeachment, general strike

Another Victory For Empiricism

The Truth About Job Growth

...will not be found in this post.  I cannot claim to know the truth.  However, I do know that the headlines are misleading.  Unemployment and poor economic conditions still are major issues.  I suppose, though, if you really believe in the ideology of trickle-down economics, you know that economic conditions must be improving.  And that becomes your truth.  In this post, I question the validity of the slant in current economic reporting, and speculate about the reason for the distortion.  Continue reading here.

"Queen" Squeaker

In Memoriam

Squeaker the cat, so named because of the distinct squeaky quality of her meow, on her throne.

Was That A Flip Or A Flop?

In one of my first serious essays on Corpus Callosum, I coined the term "flippedy-do-floppedy-da-floop" to describe the following:

So, we see that, before the 2000 election, Bush initially promised to take steps to reduce CO2 emissions, then changed his position; after the election, he claimed he was going to take steps to reduce CO2 emissions by 18%, then a few months later, he submitted a plan that would have no impact on CO2 emissions.

That happened to be the first post of mine that was linked to by others, so I remember it fondly.  I recall it now because of the following story from Reuters AlertNet:

Bush says man contributes to global warming
06 Jul 2005 08:31:05 GMT
Source: Reuters

COPENHAGEN, July 6 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he recognised that man contributes to global climate change but remained unyielding in his opposition to the Kyoto accord on the issue.

"Listen, I recognize the surface of the Earth is warmer, and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem," he told a news conference during a visit to Denmark on his way to the G8 summit in Scotland.

He said: "Kyoto didn't work for the United States and frankly it didn't work for the world" because many developing nations were not included. He said he was pushing for a "post-Kyoto era" at the G8 summit.

The old CC post, from January 2004, turned out to be prescient.  In it, I pointed out that there were reasons to question Mr. Bush's veracity and credibility.  Little did I know how true that would turn out to be.

Trying To Figure This Out

When I encountered this article in the British Medical Journal, I was hoping to find some reliable report of the accuracy of the test they mention.  All they do is repeat the manufacturer's claim of 99.9% accuracy.  Then I tried to figure out why this product exists.

BMJ  2005;331:69 (9 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7508.69-c

Home test shows sex of fetus at five weeks of pregnancy
Janice Hopkins Tanne

A finger prick test for pregnant women that can tell them the sex of their child has aroused huge public interest since it was featured on a US television show. The test, which can allegedly show the sex of the fetus at only five weeks of pregnancy, is claimed to be 99.9% accurate...

So there is one question that remains unanswered: how accurate is the test when performed in an uncontrolled setting?  That, however, is not what I am trying to figure out.  Since there is no way to figure it out with the information provided, there is no point in trying.  What I am trying to figure out, is why this thing should be so popular.  The company estimates that 50-70% of parents-to-be want to know if they’re having a baby boy or girl.  Continue reading here.

This Is Not About Politics

Instead, I am going to write about the Internet, Internet tools, and blogging trends.  As far as I know, there are no serious studies yet about the predictive power of blogs.  We do know, however, that commodity-type markets have predictive value.  In these markets, people buy and sell "shares" that represent the probability of some political outcome.  Those markets turn out to be fairly accurate.  I would love to see someone do a similar study on blog posts.  Although people don't exchange money, they do trade on their on-line reputations; that should have some predictive value.

It now is possible to get accurate measures of blogging trends:

Here, we see that the Downing Street Memo is past its peak, although it remains a strong topic.  Impeachment, though, is showing a resurgence.  This is due, primarily, to a Zogby poll that showed something like 42% of Americans would support impeachment if it could be shown that the President lied about the rationale for war.  There are even entire websites devoted to the topic.  The Washington Post even wrote about it, on their "blog."  

The spikes in the occurrence of the word "impeachment" so far can be explained entirely by the fallout from the DSM and the Zogby poll.  I would be interested to see, though, if a drumbeat of impeachment persists beyond those specific precipitants.  If so, we may be able to witness an instance of blog activity predicting a political event.

Categories: statistics, Internet, blogging
Technorati tags: downing street memo, Blogging, Internet, impeachment

From National Geographic News...

Every once in a while, NG comes up with an investigation into the big scientific questions of our time.

Scientists Ponder Universe's Missing Democrats
John Roach
National Geographic News
July 6, 2005

Why is the universe dominated by Republicans? It is among the most perplexing questions to face particle physicists, scientists who study the tiniest building blocks of the universe.

Theories of physics require that for every particle of Republican created at the big bang—the cosmic explosion that marked the beginning of the universe—so too was its antiparticle equivalent, or Democrats, said Persis Drell, a particle physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, California.

"That's fine, but all we see now is Republicans. Everything on Earth, in the solar system, everything as far out as we can see is made of Republicans," she said. "What happened to all the Democrats?"

Elvin Harms, head of the antiproton source department at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, said another way to phrase the question is: Where are the Democrats?

"Is it just this part of the universe that tends to be dominated by Republicans?" he said, raising the possibility that other parts of the universe are dominated by Democrats.

In recent years researchers have begun to formulate answers to these questions, but their best explanations fall short of accounting for the Republican-Democrat imbalance in the universe today.

According to Drell, a new particle collider under construction on the border between France and Switzerland by European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and a second collider proposed by the international science community may provide more answers.

"We are hoping from these particle colliders—the Large Hadron Collider and the [International] Linear Collider—to go another step deeper and make progress," she said.

Particle Annihilation

Republicans and Democrats share nearly identical properties except the Democrat has an opposite electric charge from the Republican. For example, an Republican has a negative charge, so its antiparticle, the Democrat, has a positive charge.

Since opposites attract, Democrats and their Republican counterparts are inclined to join together. But when they do, they annihilate each other in a flash of pure energy...

Corpus Callosum Consensus

The British Medical Association and the President of the AMA have formally agreed with the Corpus Callosum

BMA meeting condemns doctors’ involvement in torture
Manchester

Zosia Kmietowicz

Doctors’ leaders have condemned members of their profession who take part in torture or advise on techniques for interrogating prisoners and have called for a public denouncement of such practices to doctors around the world.

Documents made available under US freedom of information law and interviews with US military sources show that doctors at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison have been involved in "interrogation procedures that violate the laws of war," said Dr Helena McKeown, a representative of the conference of local medical committees (an annual conference of GPs held before the BMA’s meeting).

The doctors had been involved in making individualised interrogation plans for detainees and in supervising them, she told representatives at the BMA’s annual meeting in Manchester. They had advised on the minimum amount of bread and water a detainee would need to stay alive, sleep deprivation and isolation plans, stress positions, and extremes of heat and cold that a person could tolerate.

"Not only did care givers pass health information to military intelligence personnel, physicians assisted in the design of interrogation strategies, including sleep deprivation and other coercive methods tailored to detainees’ medical conditions. Medical personnel also coached interrogators on questioning technique," Dr McKeown told representatives.

The issue of doctors collaborating in torture had not received high enough priority by the profession and needed to be widely publicised, she said.

John Hughes, a GP in northern Manchester who assesses refugees for the Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture, said that people had told him that doctors have both supervised and directed torture. "Doctors have been called upon to advise on issues such as ‘What is the maximum pain I can cause without killing someone?’" he said.

"Doctors collaborating in torture is totally unacceptable, no matter where they come from," said Dr McKeown. However, she accepted that some doctors were coerced into participating in torture against their will and that they needed support from colleagues to resist intimidation.

The president of the American Medical Association, Edward Hill, who was invited by representatives to address conference, condemned the participation of any doctor in torture or interrogation as "totally unacceptable and unethical."

The conference voted unanimously to censure doctors who collaborated in torture. Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of ethics at the BMA, said that plans were already afoot to strengthen important policy documents governing doctors’ role in torture at the assembly of the World Medical Association in October. These included the Declaration of Tokyo on the treatment of prisoners and the Declaration of Geneva on the Hippocratic oath.

"By amending these documents, medical records on prisoners will not be allowed to be released to interrogators [so that individualised torture plans can be drawn up]," said Dr Nathanson.

More news about the BMA annual representative meeting can be accessed in News and News Extra.

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