Sources for medical information for non-medics and non-scientists Grant Jacobs Mar 18

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A recent up-swing locally in credulous claims about vaccines and the diseases they address has prompted me to list a small number of resources that I have found to have readable explanations of medical information for non-medics and non-scientists.

My lists are not complete or “definitive”, nor do I claim to be some authority on things medical. I’m just sharing a few sites I have used in the hope that they are useful for others who want find medical information. I have not listed sites that deal with medicines per se; these sites are focused on diseases.

Don’t forget that your best source of information is your registered medical practitioner.

(I emphasise registered medical practitioner to distinguish them from those offering “natural remedies” and those whose style themselves as doctors but are not in fact registered practitioners.)

Useful medical information websites

Others are welcome to recommend other sites in the comments below. The links are on the title of the sources.

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Medical DIY… Grant Jacobs Mar 18

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You know how the classic scene goes. Naïve ambitious husband describes his Do-It-Yourself plans… and “skills.” Wife stands there, wordless, with ever-widening eyes forecasting a disaster.

(Source: Wikipedia.)

(Source: Wikipedia.)

That’s how precisely researchers and medics feel watching non-medics and non-scientists determined to “do it their way” on things that affect others’ lives.

Sure, a few will genuinely do well. A rare few.

Most really should be honest and admit they haven’t the skills, or, realistically, the time to be good at it.

Civilisations are built on an acceptance of division of labour. Builders know how to build sound structures so that your house doesn’t crash around your ears in a storm. Electricians know how to wire things up without zapping everyone to kingdom come. Plumbers know how to fit pipes that don’t create a lake in your living room. (Well, most of the time!) GPs know how to diagnose and treat the more frequent disorders, and a few besides (but they refer to specialists to for things out of the ordinary; they know when to pass the buck onto the better (wo)man).

Don’t fight it. Division of labour is there to get the best out of each area of knowledge.

Fighting it and trying to “do it yourself” without the training and experience is like the household DIY thing: maybe OK for very minor things; dodgy for even modest things; and downright silly for everything else.

You or your family’s health is worth a bit more than DIY set of shelves or light fitting, right?

Anyone who claims that in a few hours or weeks or even months of study they are able to speak more authoritatively than someone who has spent years (or decades) of full-time study on a subject has got to be kidding themselves.

This isn’t just about medical research. It applies to everything. Building, electronics, cooking fine cuisine, motor mechanic, competitive sport, whatever.

Don’t be a DIY idiot.

Footnote

Just in case anyone gets the wrong idea, this is not trying “bash” anyone! I’m just trying to express the feeling of watching people try their hand at something they haven’t the background to do.

This was written thinking of those people trying to “out research” the medical and medical research community. It’s go0d to see people trying to learn, but until they are at comparable level and have gotten past the “goofy error” stage (let’s admit it, we all made goofy errors early on in whatever we’re now good at!) it’d be wiser to rely on those with experience and training.

Other recent articles on Code for life:

Simon Singh, leaving job to deal with chiropractic legal case

Molecular biology in museums

An horrific case of natural health treatment of cancer

The inheritance of face recognition, or should you blame your parents if you can’t recognise faces?

Homeopathy check-up: Not in the health system, disclaimers on labels

Deleting a gene can turn an ovary into a testis in adult mammals

Too much attentiveness leads to inattentiveness Grant Jacobs Mar 17

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Some time ago I presented a video illustrating change blindness (see Visual illusions, change blindness and autism). A related effect is inattentiveness, as featured in this short (1:22 min) video:

YouTube Preview Image

Then watch this for an explanation:

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Simon Singh, leaving job to deal with chiropractic legal case Grant Jacobs Mar 13

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Science writer and journalist Simon Singh, who faces a libel suit from the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for writing that a number of chiropractic claims of treatment of disorders unrelated to the spinal cord such as asthma were “bogus” has written in his column that it will be the last. He is resigning his job in order to give the libel suit the BCA has served on him full attention.

Simon Singh (Source: wikipedia)

Simon Singh (Source: wikipedia)

I recently pointed out an extensive review of the evidence for and against chiropractic treatment that showed that the claims that Singh objected as unsupported, are unsupported.

Another survey of the research literature for chiropractic treatments, that of Ernst (available free from the British Medical Journal), has an extensive collection of follow-on letters. The author, replying to the early letters, points out that neither his article nor the libel case are about safety; in moving onto safety in his reply, he concludes: “Applying the precautionary principle, one should therefore not recommend chiropractic but warn patients not to use this form of therapy.”

Surely any sincere business would respond by simply pointing to evidence backing their original claims. Not so the BCA. The BCA was offered an opportunity to write a rebuttal in the Guardian (the newspaper that published Singh’s original article), but declined, seemingly preferring to legally bludgeon the writer, rather than reaffirm readers of the accuracy of their claims and the validity of the particular chiropractic practices referred to. (Or withdraw them.)

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High speed international connection? Yes, please Grant Jacobs Mar 11

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Announced just a few hours ago, for me via KAREN on twitter, is an initiative to build a high-speed direct internet connection linking New Zealand, Australian and the U.S.A.

pacific-fibre-mapAlthough the Pacific Fibre website is short on technical details, it does a great job of conveying the essence of the idea simply. Some details are available on their news blog, e.g.

The current proposed cable configuration would be 13,000 km long, and have two fibre pairs with 64 wavelengths (lambdas) each at 40 Gigabits/sec per lambda. The maximum lit capacity initially would be 5.12 Terabits/sec, but would be upgradeable to over 12 Terabits/sec as the emerging 100 Gbit/sec per lambda technology becomes reality. The newer cable and repeater technology that Pacific Fibre proposes to use will be substantially more easily upgradeable than that of existing cables.

pacific-fibre-model-2010They say they aim to have this ready for 2013 and that it is expected to cost around $NZ900M. Whatever the details, I am sure this will have internet users in NZ talking for some time and hatching new business plans. (For example, it would be interesting to learn if this would affect the idea that NZ can act to exploit that it is ~12 hours out of cycle of most of the bigger Western nations to deliver overnight service efficiently.)

pacific-fibre_model-2011It has been noted that those academic researchers whose data transport problems are solved by KAREN, a new network may not be needed. (From what I understand KAREN still has plenty of capacity: anecdotally I’ve heard figures of 5-10% of capacity being used. Viewing their excellent near-live “weather map” is worthwhile, try it.)

For those who need fast networking outside of this high-speed academic network, which is most of us, I’m sure this initiative will be widely viewed very positively. It is great to see people taking the lead on these things and pushing for it to get done.

pacific-fibre-model-2012For my personal situation, I need to learn more about it first: my position is more complex as in principle I can gain access to the large databases I use through other means, but being able to deliver large volumes of data may open up new opportunities for me.

Interested readers can follow the Pacific Fibre twitter discussion. Here are a few replies that might be worth others’ reading (comments in square brackets are mine):

  • @kuahyeow Current estimate is under $900m [I presume this is in response to an estimate for the costs.]
  • RT @ronanq: Best of luck. Great fibre connections is one of the reasons Google, Amazon, Paypal, Microsoft, Facebook and IBM are in Ireland
  • @sam_DPS we will sell to ISPs and major corporates. We are aiming for prices which will let them fulfll the uncapped high speed mandate
  • @samfarrow just international – we are focussing on just that one part of the problem. Others are working on the rest.
  • RT @Pete_Robson:As a former “Senior Product Manager” of the current SouthernCross Cable, I can safely say that there’s $ in that Awesome job

Peter Griffin, writing at idealog, has more detailed coverage.

Upcoming popular lectures by Professor Lawrence Krauss Grant Jacobs Mar 10

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The Psychology Department of the University of Otago is sponsoring two talks by leading physicist Professor Lawrence Krauss next week. If you’re in town, be there!

prof-lawrence-krauss-200pxAmong his popular science books are Hiding in the Mirror (2005) and The Physics of Star Trek (1995). Hiding in the Mirror is subtitled: The Quest for Alternate Realities, from Plato to String Theory (by way of Alice in Wonderland, Einstein, and The Twilight Zone), which will give readers a better idea of what it’s about!

Don’t be mislead by this to thinking he is a lightweight populist, he’s a serious physicist who has received many awards. According to wikipedia and his on-line biography he is “the only physicist ever to have been awarded the highest awards of all three major US Physics Societies”.

He is also a recognised science publicist, with his awards noting this in alongside his physics contributions. With the credentials he has in science communication, I have no doubt that he will be an excellent speaker.

Below are the blurbs for the two lectures cut’n’pasted from the advertising poster (with permission):

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For success, create the conditions for creativity? Grant Jacobs Mar 10

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Annually the TED (Technology, Education and Design) conference is held at Long Beach, California. Devoted to “ideas worth spreading” smaller TED events are now being hosted in other centres through a range of programs.

A event making it’s way around the internet again was a lecture by Sir Ken Robinson at Vancouver, Canada, in the latter part of last year speaking about stifled creativity in education.

After writing this post I saw that scibling Fabiana Kubke pointed to this lecture in December. I’d like to persist with it, as I’m thinking of another context again. As you shall see, while Sir Robinson was talking about (high school) education, my thoughts strayed to research institutes.

Jump to about 16 min if you want to cut to the chase. You’ll miss a lot of good banter, though. For example, Sir Robinson describing maths theses: “Page after page of math.” [Pause.] “With equals at the end.” (It doesn’t come across well on it’s own; the delivery is very dry.)

http://www.vimeo.com/9842035

Here’s my summary of the closing few minutes of his presentation, with extensive paraphrasing:

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Molecular biology in museums Grant Jacobs Mar 09

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The past fifty years has seen the rise of molecular biology. Many museums have little to represent molecular biology and it’s impact on medicine, perhaps because the objects studied in molecular biology are usually visualised indirectly, whereas museum visitors traditionally go to view objects with their own eyes.

While on blogcation,1 biologist-artist Jessica Palmer continues to write posts to her blog, bioemphemera.

canterbury-museum-350px

Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand. Note the early power poles. (Source: wikipedia.)

Recently she pointed out a conference on presenting modern modern science in museums, quoting from the call to contributions. It’s a lengthy “call”—almost a treatise!—so I will present only the initial portion (interested readers should read read the full account):

The 15th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums for the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) will be held at the University of Copenhagen, 16–18 September, 2010.

This year’s conference focuses on the challenge to museums posed by contemporary developments in medical science and technology.

The image of medicine that emerges from most museum galleries and exhibitions is still dominated by pre-modern and modern understandings of an anatomical and physiological body, and by the diagnostic and therapeutical methods and instruments used to intervene with the body at the ‘molar’ and tangible level — limbs, organs, tissues, etc.

The rapid transition in the medical and health sciences and technologies over the last 50 years — towards a molecular understanding of human body in health and disease and the rise of a host of molecular and digital technologies for investigating and intervening with the body — is still largely absent in museum collections and exhibitions.

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An horrific case of natural health treatment of cancer Grant Jacobs Mar 08

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Some of my local readers will have seen last night Lorelei Mason of TVNZ (Television New Zealand) present an horrific case of an iridiologist treating a skin cancer on the scalp which went on to invade the patient’s skull, eventually requiring major surgery.

(Source: wikipedia.)

(Source: wikipedia.)

You can read a text account of this news presentation, with comments from readers, or view the TV presentation on-line. (If you are viewing the video, you will need to wait for the advertisement to complete. Those squeamish about viewing exposed brains, may wish to avoid the appropriate parts of the video.)

Dr. Swee Tan, interviewed in the presentation, says that natural health practitioners ought to be registered. Some commenters offer that registration will not solve the problem.

My own thoughts, as a non-medical person-on-the-street, are that in one sense registration might legitimise the more moderate use of “remedies” like iridology, which grates given that many, if not most, of these remedies are nonsense under any use, but on the other hand registration offers some control over the worst extremes of misuse by obligating practitioners to adhere to guidelines.

Despite my unease at giving practices that lack evidential support credibility, my initial thoughts are that Swee Tan’s suggestion makes some sense: clients approaching someone offering medical remedies—of any kind—should have some assurance that the practitioner is being held to at least some basic responsibilities and at least some basic level of education in medicine. Ideally I would like to see unsound ‘natural remedy’ practices gone, but realistically this is unlikely to happen any time soon. Registration might be a good compromise in the meantime. Personally, I would like to see these guidelines also include some level of control over use of remedies that are not backed by evidence.

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137 years of Popular Science back issues, free Grant Jacobs Mar 08

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One-hundred and thirty-seven years of back issues of the monthly magazine Popular Science are now available on-line free.

Popular Science cover, October 1977. (Source: Google books)

Popular Science cover, October 1977. (Source: Google books)

You can either search the Popular Science archives, or access issues via Google books. It does not appear to be possible to download copies to read them locally, as some might prefer.

Popular Science was first published in May 1872 with quite substantial editions, over 100 pages in length.

With it’s long history, it will appeal to many different readers.

Those on a short budget will like the free access last year’s editions. Some will enjoy exploring the historic “science”—not all of it would be considered science today—of the editions from the late 1800s. Others might prefer the early colour illustrations. Fans of old advertising will be in for a treat, too.

Popular Science was intended to address the non-scientific public, as explained in the Editor’s Table of the first edition, to “contain papers, original and selected, on a wide range of subjects, from the ablest scientific men of different countries, explaining their views to non-scientific people.”

Before I continue I should confess I’ve never read Popular Science. My own science reading tends more to the research literature, books or blogs.

I’m going to limit this article to mainly the first edition, partly in the interest of time, and partly as what drew my attention to this resource being made available was access to early attempts to bring science to the wider public.

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