You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November, 2006.
By Laura H. Kahn
The medical community is devoting a lot of effort to researching bioterrorism agents and diseases that could become human pandemics. But in many cases, they’re overlooking a potentially critical resource: veterinarians.
Zoonoses are diseases of animals that can be transmitted to humans. These diseases include: SARS, West Nile virus, HIV/AIDS, and recently avian influenza (H5N1). Many of the agents of bioterrorism are zoonotic in origin such as anthrax, tularemia, and plague. Veterinarians have long recognized the interconnectedness between human and animal health and gave it the term “One Medicine” to reflect this fact. Historically, human and animal diseases have largely been treated as separate entities since physicians and veterinarians do not commonly communicate or collaborate with each other. In the course of my research on emerging infectious disease outbreaks, I came to the realization of the importance of zoonotic diseases after reading the veterinary medical literature.
by PotomacFeverish
What is on the agenda for science during the last 2 years of this Administration? Many believe that with the change in Congress, now we can relax regarding the abuse of science that we have seen in recent years. The scientific community needs to be aware that much of the actions taken by the Executive Branch cannot be blocked by Congress, at least not in the short term. Every administration has made promises, and they often endeavor to come through on these promises during the last few years (or even the last few months) of their term of office. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, if the goals are consistent with good science, public health and the law. Are we going to see a “compromising” Executive Branch, working with Congress, promoting good science, or are we going to see more of what we have seen in the past, issuing of regulations, decisions, and policies that undermine the missions of our health, environment, and science-based agencies?
by Susan F. Wood
Much has been written about the antibiotic drug, telithromycin, otherwise known as Ketek. It seems to combine a host of concerns all in one place (see also Matthews, AW, WSJ, May 19, 2006:B1). Critically, concerns about safety, from visual effects to fatal liver toxicity, are paired with questions about lack of relative efficacy. These very basic concerns are then confounded with problems in particular safety studies that were carried out fraudulently and the faulty data derived from it provided to the FDA. But FDA leadership/management apparently discounted these problems, did not relay this information to the advisory committee which recommended approval, and approved this new drug in 2004. This past summer more concerns were raised about studies on Ketek in children; these are no longer ongoing, but FDA has yet to take specific action on whether these studies are permissible.
In last week’s New England Journal of Medicine, David Graham points out another weakness in the approval of Ketek(NEJM, 355(21), November 23, 2006, 2260-2261). He reports on the fact that given the fraudulent safety study, FDA used adverse event data from Germany and France where Ketek is marketed. Unfortunately, Dr. Graham’s analysis points out that the data was insufficient to detect a signal for a safety problem, but “the FDA interpreted the absence of a signal of acute liver failure in the overseas data as confirmation of telithromycin’s safety when the data could not be used to identify the problem.”
By David Michaels
In a move that recognizes the post-election climate change in Washington, the EPA has told two Democratic Senators that it is revising plans to roll-back the reporting requirements of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). In a post yesterday, I wrote about TRI as an important (and cost-effective) example of “Regulation by Shaming” or “Democracy by Disclosure.”
Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post obtained the letter EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson sent to New Jersey Democratic senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez in which he announced his plans. According to Eilperin, one of the nation’s best environmental reporters, this change
highlights how the political climate has shifted since the Democrats won control of the House and Senate. The administration is not likely to bend on its top environmental priorities, such as climate change, but it may make concessions on other fronts.
By David Michaels
Last week, public scorn forced Rupert Murdock, powerful chief executive of the News Corp, to cancel “If I Did It,” OJ Simpson’s book and Fox TV tie-in. While shaming has fallen out of favor in the field of criminal justice, the heaping of public scorn and anger - dating back to putting criminals in public stocks and labeling adulterers with a scarlet letter — has long been recognized as a deterrent to unacceptable behavior
Shaming works on corporations as well as individuals. As a mechanism for restricting undesirable behavior, or promoting desirable behavior, shaming is far less expensive or bureaucratic than most rules enforced by federal agency. Some of our most effective public health programs work on this principle – think about the impact of potential customers reading graphic descriptions of restaurant health code violations.
Read the rest of this entry »
by Liz Borkowski
Parties to the Basel Convention—the international treaty dealing with the transport and disposal of hazardous wastes—are meeting this week in Nairobi, and e-waste is on their agenda. Each year, consumers generate 20 – 50 million tons of e-waste (waste from electrical and electronic equipment), and it’s full of hazardous substances: heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and chromium, and flame retardants such as polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs).
Much of the e-waste ends up in developing countries, where its toxic components endanger workers and the environment. In a 2003 Washington Post article, Peter S. Goodman offered a disturbing portrait of its effects:
By David Michaels
Meat factories continue to be among the most dangerous places to work in America. According to a devastating article in the Dallas Morning News, “thousands of illegal immigrants gravitate toward meatpacking plants in places like Cactus, Texas” where each year more than one out of every ten workers gets injured carving meat on fast moving conveyer belts. The line speed requires exhausted workers wielding the sharpest of knives or hooks to make hundred of cuts an hour. OSHA inspectors are rarely seen in these factories.
One worker at the Swift & Co’s Cactus, Texas plant described it:
by Dick Clapp
The publication of my article on mortality among IBM workers was the culmination of a two and a half year process. I obtained the data, which included information on the deaths of nearly 32,000 former workers who had died between 1969 and 2001, when I served as an expert witness in a lawsuit brought against IBM on behalf of employees who had developed cancer after working at the company’s San Jose facility. I found that among the workers, the death rates from several cancers—including cancers of some digestive organs, kidneys, brain and central nervous system, melanoma of the skin, and non-Hodgknin’s lymphoma —were particularly high when compared to the national averages.
IBM won the San Jose jury trial and then settled the lawsuits with the remaining plaintiffs, but I still thought that it was important to publish the study to make others aware of the occupational health risks in these manufacturing activities. IBM’s lawyers derided my work (one said it gave “junk science a bad name”) and asserted that I couldn’t publish the results because the data was confidential under a court order. I had to undergo a lengthy process in order to publish this study, but I am convinced that it was worth it now that I see that it has helped bring greater attention to the occupational health risks related to computer chip manufacturing.
by Liz Borkowski
If you haven’t read Laurie David’s op-ed, “Science a la Joe Camel,” in yesterday’s Washington Post, I recommend clicking over to it. David was a producer of Al Gore’s climate change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” and reports that the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) turned down 50,000 free DVDs of that movie, which the movie company offered for classroom viewing.
Why would an organization of science teachers turn down a movie that brings science to a mainstream audience and tackles what’s arguably the most important environmental issue of the day? Because, David explains, NSTA is funded by ExxonMobil.
by revere
[This is another cross-post from Effect Measure but it fits here because it lays out some of the history of the progressive public health blogosphere and welcomes The Pump Handle as its newest -- and we hope brightest -- member!]
This weekend is Effect Measure’s Second Blogiversary and it coincides with two other events: the new Flu Wiki Forum and the incipient debut of a new progressive public health blog, The Pump Handle, to which The Reveres will be occasional contributors (some original posts, some cross posts). We are semi-thrilled to still be around after two years. Semi-thrilled, because two years is a long-time in the blogosphere, especially if you blogged all 730 days of it. Just a few under 1500 posts all told. We know there are a lot of blogs more prolific than ours and older. Our hats are off to them, because we know it’s hard work. If we had known just how hard, we probably wouldn’t have started it. The Reveres are still bickering about who got us all into this. Assuming of course there is more than one Revere. If there’s only one, then he/she/it is working too hard. One thing we’ll admit to. There’s only one at a time.
by revere
[Since my colleague and new blog sibling Dave Ozonoff posted here some advice on NIH grant writing in response to a post of mine over at Effect Measure, I thought I'd cross-post a follow-up I did on NIH funding a few days later. BTW, Dave, I'll have to give you some lessons in snarkiness. Your post was way too benign!]
In the late 1990s congress decided to invest in our future by doubling the NIH budget. If you are a scientist today trying to get an NIH grant, however, you are in tough shape. Success rates are falling like a stone, with less than 20% of grant applications now being funded. It is common to submit a proposal several times before finally getting a grant or giving up and moving on. What happened?
by Liz Borkowski
After posting about the global water and sanitation crisis, I learned via Gristmill that rap star and Def Jams president Jay-Z has aligned himself with this important cause. On a recent world tour, the star visited Angola and South Africa and witnessed firsthand what life is like for the more than one billion people who lack access to clean drinking water. MTV will air a 30-minute documentary about Jay-Z’s trip on Friday (a two-minute “Diary of Jay-Z in Africa” clip is available on MTV’s site).
by Celeste Monforton
From the Ground Zero construction site to an expansion of the Los Angeles International Airport, the tide seems to be turning for cleaner diesel engines, particulate filters and low-sulfur fuels. As Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter Alex Frangos writes: “Instead of belching black smoke, the bucket loaders, cranes and other diesel-power behemoths” are being replaced with less-polluting equipment in order to win community support for massive construction projects in populated areas. Lawmakers are backing these measures, too. On November 1, Governor Pataki signed a new law which will reduce particulate pollution emitted from state-owned heavy-duty equipment, noting “we are taking another important step to protect public health and our environment by reducing the amount of harmful pollution from diesel vehicles.”
by Dick Clapp
Atul Gawande is well-known around Boston because of his skills as a surgeon, but also for his books and articles in the New Yorker, and his interviews with local media. He was a recipient of one of this year’s MacArthur grants, in recognition of his work. I got one of his books, “Complications,” as a gift and read it and liked it a lot. He’s an incredibly talented writer, and he has ahumane surgeon’s view of medical practice. My father was a surgeon too, so his book resonated with me.
I have another response to Atul Gawande, though, based on an article he wrote for the New Yorker in 1999 called “The Cancer-Cluster Myth.” (PDF here)
by Liz Borkowski
Nearly half of Mumbai’s 18 million residents live in unofficial settlements called zopadpatti. In one of these areas, Dharavi, estimates suggest there is one toilet for every 1,4440 people, tap water flows for only two hours each day, and approximately 15 families share each water tap.
Around the globe, rural residents are migrating to urban areas and expanding these unofficial settlements, where global challenges in water and sanitation are highly visible. Many rural areas that struggled with water to begin with face new constraints as aquifers are depleted and global warming shrinks once-reliable water sources.
The 2015 Millennium Development Goals deadline is approaching quickly, and we’re unlikely to meet the MDG targets if we don’t address the crisis in water and sanitation. That’s according to a new report from the UNDP, which warns that one in five people living in the developing world lacks access to clean water and that 2.6 billion people – nearly half of the total developing-country population – lack access to adequate sanitation. Read the rest of this entry »
by Celeste Monforton
Who was the most compelling speaker at last week’s 134th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association? It wasn’t a scholarly epidemiologist warning about pandemic flu, or an emeritus professor presenting research on health disparities. No, the superstar speaker was a petite grandmother, wearing a red “Hotel Workers Rising!” t-shirt. Read the rest of this entry »
by David Ozonoff
My new Pump Handle blog colleague, “Revere”, has posted on NIH’s proposal to limit the Research Plan section of Research Project Grant applications to 15 pages, down from the current 25. He/she/they (Revere’s blog, Effect Measure, is ambiguous as to how many Reveres there are) also gives a peek into the NIH grant review process, something people are often curious about. As Revere says, it’s a bit like seeing how sausages are made. You might not want to know. In any event, since Revere opened up the topic and since this site is more pitched to public health professionals than Effect Measure (which is a public health blog for anyone interested in public health), I thought I’d add my thoughts on things I’ve found to be most important in writing an NIH grant proposal.
The story of the pump handle is familiar to any first-semester public health student: During the London cholera epidemic of 1854, John Snow examined maps of cholera cases and traced the disease to water from a local pump. At the time, the prevailing theory held that cholera spread through the air, rather than water, so Snow faced criticism from others in the science community – not to mention resistance from the water companies. He finally convinced community leaders to remove the pump’s handle to prevent further exposure
We’ve created The Pump Handle blog to serve as a gathering place for people interested in public health and the environment. Science is the product of community effort, and it often takes a community effort to make sure that science is used appropriately, and not buried or corrupted for ideological or profit-making reasons.
Are there new ideas or discoveries from the public health or environmental fields that you think deserve more attention – or that aren’t getting explained quite right in the mainstream media? Leave us a comment and let us know.
