Sunday Sermonette: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Skin Diseases
For those who claim that the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of God, and who claim to live by the Bible, Leviticus 13 and 14 ought to pose a considerable problem. Of course nobody who makes that claim is sincere. They just skip the embarrassing parts. Noah ' s ark is a fun story with animals. You can build a theme park around it. These chapters, however, are just deeply weird.It ' s important to note that " leprosy " here does not mean the disease which has been given that name in modern times, now more properly called Hansen ' s Disease. None of the symptoms described here correspond to those of Hansen ' s disease,...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 19, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Do viruses infect bones?
Viruses typically invade our bodies through an opening. Think gastrointestinal flu, COVID-19, AIDS. Our bones, however, are normally protected from any outside exposure, so they should be safe, right? The short answer is yes and no. Of course, knowledge is power, and we need both right now, so here is a nuanced answer. Patients with smallpox frequently […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 14, 2020 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/roy-a-meals" rel="tag" > Roy A. Meals, MD < /a > < /span > Tags: Conditions COVID-19 coronavirus Infectious Disease Source Type: blogs
The COVID Pandemic: WHO Dunnit?
By ANISH KOKA, MD
COVID is here. A little strand of RNA that
used to live in bats has a new host. And
that strand is clearly not the flu. New
York is overrun, with more than half of the nation’s new cases per day, and
refrigerated 18-wheelers parked outside hospitals serve as makeshift
morgues. Detroit, New Orleans, Miami,
and Philadelphia await an inevitable surge of their own with bated breath. America’s health care workers are scrambling
to hold the line against a deluge of sick patients arriving hourly at a rate
that’s hard to fathom.
I pause here to attest to the heroic r...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 11, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Zoya Khan Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy Anish Koka coronavirus Pandemic Sars-CoV-2 WHO World Health Organization Source Type: blogs
Science Tuesday: What is a virus anyway?
As you may have observed, I like to step back sometimes and think about deep stuff. The origin of life is one of the Big, Hard Questions but a related question to which we have no clear answer is the origin of the viruses.Here ' s a good summary of the problem from Nature magazine.Most people begin by asking whether viruses are even alive. I classify that as a semantic quibble. Personally, I find the word " life " useful to describe self-replicating entities that expend energy for the purpose (and whatever else it takes along the way). Can viruses be said to satisfy those criterion? They replicate but they require the mach...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 3, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The real cost, and longer term implications, of the Wuhan coronavirus
It ' s too soon to know for sure how the tale of the novel coronavirus will play out,but at this point we have a pretty good idea. A stipulation in both of the scenarios at the linked essay is that yeah, it gets loose into the wild and eventually can show up anywhere in the world. I think that ' s pretty much definitely going to happen if it hasn ' t already.Scenario number 1, and most likely, in my view, it will just be one more virus that causes what amounts to a common cold and in a few people who are otherwise debilitated goes on to be complicated by pneumonia. In that case, for a year or two it will circulate as a nov...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 5, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Oh no! Are we all going to die?
Yes. However, very probably not because of the novel coronavirus that has appeared in China. This seems to be front page headlines in every media outlet on the planet, and the World Health Organization has convened a meeting to decide whether to declare an official Global Health Emergency.This sort of flapdoodle happens every time a novel pathogen appears. Back when I lived in the Hub of the Universe a mosquito-borne disease called West Nile virus appeared (having formerly been large confined to, yes, west of the Nile). For weeks, every time a new case was identified it would be on the front page of the Boston Globe....
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 22, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Childhood Vaccination in the United States: The Current Landscape
The topic of childhood vaccination has
become increasingly tendentious in recent years. While ‘vaccine hesitancy’—a term that
encompasses a wide range of attitudes, from those who have some misgivings
about vaccination to those who refuse all vaccinations for their children—has
existed ever since Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine in 1798, many
point to a now retracted 1998 paper in The Lancet as the origin of today’s
particular brand of vaccine hesitancy.
In the United States, there are three ways
by which a child can be exempt from vaccination. State
laws differ ...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 19, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Bioethics Today Tags: Health Care Adolescent Health Author: Bunch syndicated vaccines Source Type: blogs
Could it really be this easy?
If you take blood pressure medication (and a lot of people do, or should)a new study find that taking them at night instead of morning cuts your risk of cardiac events in half, including death. Normally we like to provide information on absolute rather than relative risk, so here it is:Commenting on the findings, Tim Chico, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Sheffield, UK, said, “The results are impressive. From the 19 084 people who took part and were randomised to taking their tablets at either bedtime or morning, just over 9% suffered a heart problem over the 6.4 years of the study. Of these, ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 1, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The history of antivaccination sentiment
In 1902, a smallpox outbreak infected thousands of people across the northeastern United States. That year, in Massachusetts alone, 2,314 people were infected, and 284 died. This was not unusual for early-twentieth-century Massachusetts: The smallpox vaccine had been invented more than a century earlier and had markedly reduced the incidence of the disease, but the diminished […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 8, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/caroline-castleman" rel="tag" > Caroline Castleman < /a > < /span > Tags: Conditions Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs
Why Measles Making the News Is a Sign of Progress
A set of measles outbreaks in Washington state, New York City, and elsewhere, is making national headlines and frightening parents around the United States. Counter-intuitively, measles making the news is a sign of progress. Not long ago, measles was so common that it was simply not newsworthy. Suffer ing from the extremely infectious disease, which causes spotty rashes and a hacking cough, was widespread and often deadly.It was once the case that even royalty fell victim to diseases now easily preventable with routine shots given during childhood. Measles killed the un-vaccinated King Kamehameha II of Hawaii, a...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 15, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Chelsea Follett Source Type: blogs
The Stupid . . .
.. it burns. A few years back I devoted multiple posts to the Upper Class Twit of the Century, delusional moron Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He returns unwelcomed to our consciousness in the midst of the measles epidemic, which as a reader points out iseven more rampant in Europe, particularly Ukraine, than in the U.S. This is a disease which could have been eradicated from the earth, like smallpox, if not for idiots like Kennedy and scammers like Andrew Wakefield.Unfortunately there are people who assign credibility to celebrities, including people whose only claim to fame is their parentage, so Kennedy ' s anti-vaccine campaign...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 8, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Measles, tuberculosis, and wheat
Humans have made many dietary mistakes over the years but two mistakes, in particular, stand out: close contact with animals, mostly ruminants, who conveyed their diseases to us and the adoption of the seeds of grasses as human food. These two practices not only changed the course of human history but also human disease.
Over the last several centuries, Westerners have populated North America, South America, Pacific islands and other regions. Equipped with superior tools of warfare such as swords and muskets, contact with Westerners decimated indigenous people such as the millions of native Americans, Aztecs, and Amazonian...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - April 17, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle gluten-free grain-free grains joint pain Source Type: blogs
Criminal antivaxxer
Thirty years as a science writer, covering almost every #STEM beat at some point, I just received my first antivax death threat…
“Your criminal bastard david bradley published an article lying about the benefits of vaccinations. The only benefit is for the evil criminal government bastards running this planet who need to be executed! We know vaccines are nothing but toxic bioweapons ow because of Planet X and they are designed to make people too sick and stupid to pay attention! They also spread government-created designer diseases like when they AIDS in smallpox and hepatitis vaccines. So your evil lying bast...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 11, 2019 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs
The 2019 Skinnies Awards: Gout in “The Favourite”
Emma Stone rushes to Queen Olivia Colman ’s side when she has a flare of gout. Winner of the Royal Rash category, learn more about this painful condition whose rate is on the rise. And take a look at runner-up Margot Robbie ’s Queen Elizabeth afflicted by smallpox. See it all only at Skinema.com... (Source: Skinema, dermatology in the media blog)
Source: Skinema, dermatology in the media blog - February 21, 2019 Category: Dermatology Authors: Vail Reese Tags: Film Health Source Type: blogs
