Sunday shorts, 1st April 2012. Awards, bullet-proof hard drives and more.
(Sorry, no April Fool’s joke here.)
Congratulations to Zoe Hilton for her Unesco-L’Oreal International Fellowship who ’won one of three fellowships awarded to young women in the Asia Pacific region’. Well done! More details are in the New Zealand Unesco news page and the New Zealand Herald.
There’s some wonderful historic quotes in From the Hands of Quacks (great title too). She writes infrequently, but very well. In addition to the recent quips it’s worth reading her account of a complaint in April 1839 by Joseph Toynbee warning Lancet readers of (Toynbee’s words) ’quack curers for the deaf’,
’[H]e sends his advertisement to the public papers,’ Toynbee wrote, ’for an enormous payment gets it inserted as a paragraph…[and] by the aid of the circulation of this puff…deaf people consult Dr. Turnbull; he makes his application, and takes his fee.’[4] Toynbee insisted this was a disgraceful and underhanded maneuver directed towards drawing in patients, who were left vulnerable to potentially dangerous treatments […]
Toynbee goes on to relate that the important element was study.
I’m not picking at Turnbull, whose treatment if attacked here, but rather find it interesting that the general issue of advertorials for ‘treatments’ via newspaper were alive and well back then and that this will have a very familiar right to those with an eye to the present-day equivalents.
Bullet-proof hard drives. Reading the comments following an ArsTechnica article on destroying old backup hard drives (lest someone pilfer the data) I stumbled on this account of trying to destroy one:
So last fall I shot one with a .22 pistol. Would you believe it only dented the case? Not to be thwarted, a friend who went with me shot with a .44. The damned case stopped that too! If you’re ever pinned down by gunfire on a server farm, make a vest out of hard drives and you can probably run away safely.
I’d be a little worried about ricochets myself, but that aside bets for this appearing in a (geeky) thriller in the future? Geeky hero holed up in server farm guts the racks of hard drives, wires up a vest and walks out amid a hail of bullets flying off him (her) in all directions…
Seriously, craigbass76v goes on to write more practically, ’The magnets work awesome on the fridge; my black lab can’t knock papers off with his tail now if they’re held on with a hard drive magnet.’ Must try getting the magnets out of the old crashed HDs myself.
Mutant influenza studies now to be published. Some readers might recall that two papers were withheld from publication over fears that details of the mutations identified to make H5N1 flu’ to become transmitted readily by respiratory transmission might fall in the wrong hands (read: terrorists). Nature has reported that these two papers have now be cleared to be published.
Blogger being sued for complaining about homeopathic product. In Portugal it seems a blogger his being made to have a day in court by a local company over him complaining about their product. (Google translate page; H/T Sandra Porter. Original here.) Luis Grave says (twice!) ’It will be fun!’
4 Responses to “Sunday shorts, 1st April 2012. Awards, bullet-proof hard drives and more.”
Closer to home it seems another blogger is being sued by a homeopath, this time in Melbourne, Australia. Here’s a letter from the victim (on the ABC news network; note that it’s originally from 2004 – google shows this case in the media over there last year):
Scammed to death: How Francine Scrayen killed Penelope Dingle:
http://www.danbuzzard.net/journal/scammed-to-death-how-francine-scrayen-killed-penelope-dingle.html
Penelope Dingle’s Letters To Francine Scrayen:
http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2011/s3260776.htm
and the blogger’s recent posts on the case:
Homeopath Francine Scrayen in court for the death of her “patient”:
http://www.danbuzzard.net/journal/homeopath-francine-scrayen-in-court-for-the-death-of-her-pat.html
Francine Scrayen sends me a Cease and Desist:
http://www.danbuzzard.net/journal/francine-scrayen-sends-me-a-cease-and-desist.html
This tweet suggests that their national body hasn’t reacted to Francine Scrayen’s actions:
@lecanardnoir She’s [was] still registed with the Australian Register of Homoeopath last week so perhaps not
And here’s the coroner’s report (PDF file):
http://www.safetyandquality.health.wa.gov.au/docs/mortality_review/inquest_finding/Dingle_Finding.pdf
e.g.
“I am satisfied that MrsScrayen did convince the deceased that the homeopathy treatment which she was providing could provide a cure for her cancer.â€
and
“It appears that Dr Dingle had previously consulted Mrs Scrayen for homeopathic treatment himself and as someone who had previously been very critical of mainstream medical practice, he was more reluctant to
Inquest into the death of Penelope DINGLE page 94.
intervene than would have been expected of a normal loving partner. Dr Dingle, in fact, became actively involved in the application of Mrs Scrayen’s treatment regime by purchasing homeopathic remedies and isolating the deceased from outside intervention and the deceased could not have continued on the path of stand alone homeopathic treatment for as long as she did without his involvement.â€
also
“During the period in 2003 while the deceased was relying on the treatment provided by Mrs Scrayen, not only did she lose whatever chances of life she had, she suffered extreme and unnecessary pain.â€
No matter which way you look at this it is tragic story, one in which a homeopath features strongly in the patient’s suffering and (loss of) chances of survival.
There’s also a transcript of an ABC show on the case:
http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2011/s3260786.htm