Siouxsie Wiles • May 01, 2012 •
I’ll be spending the next 31 days trying to raise money for my research using the crowd funding model on the RocketHub platform, where contributors exchange small donations (in the 10-100 dollar ballpark) in return for ‘rewards’. As a microbiologist who makes glow-in-the-dark bacteria for a living, my rewards are things like sending donors a picture of their name … Read More
Peter Griffin • Dec 07, 2011 •
It’s National Handwashing week in the US this week and if you’ve see the movie Contagion, you’ll understand the virtues of lathering up with soap and disinfecting your hands on a regular basis. The people at Certification Map put together the following useful infographic highlighting the virtues of handwashing and reveals some interesting human behaviour around hand washing and our … Read More
Guest Author • Oct 26, 2011 •
By Jesse Toe, doctoral student at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Victoria, Australia. One touch and you’re infected. By the next day your muscles ache, you have a fever and the beginnings of a headache. You don’t know it yet, but you only have a one in three chance of survival and you’ve already infected three other people. Two … Read More
Jim McVeagh • Oct 02, 2010 •
Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article I was amused to see this article is the Herald yesterday. Talk about trying to rehash old news… Two more deaths but swine flu cases fall Twenty deaths this year have been swine flu-related but health authorities say the [...] Related posts: … Read More
Bryan Walker • Aug 19, 2010 •
Severe risks to human health will accompany the disturbed global climate which comes with global warming. We have only to consider the consequences of the heat waves, the flooding, the African droughts, of recent times to be alerted to that. Our experiences of climate change in New Zealand are unlikely to reach such extreme levels, [...] … Read More
Jim McVeagh • May 22, 2010 •
The Herald reports that a report by Martin Dawe of the first two weeks of the Swine Flu epidemic is intensely critical of the lack of planning and poor coordination of data resources. This was the MacDoctor’s impression of the entire debacle. I knew of a potentially deadly strain of Mexican flu three days before [...] Related posts: … Read More
Jim McVeagh • May 09, 2010 •
In a move that defies all logic, the FDA advisory panel investigating the contamination of Rotavirus vaccine with pig virus has recommended that vaccine use be continued because “The vaccines offer a clear public health benefit that far outweighs a “theoretical” risk from PCV (Porcine Circo-virus)”. How very reassuring. Not. PCV type 1 was found [...] Related posts: … Read More
Jim McVeagh • Feb 03, 2010 •
The Lancet has finally withdrawn the paper on MMR and autism that it published 12 years ago. The study: “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children” consisted of a series of 12 children all of whom had been referred in to a paediatric gastroenterology unit with a triad of autism-like symptoms, abdominal [...] Related posts: … Read More
Jim McVeagh • Oct 25, 2009 •
Obama has declared the Swine Flu epidemic in the US a national emergency. Swine Flu has been a public health emergency since April of this year, but making it a national emergency provides people like Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius quite sweeping powers to bypass most federal rules. I am a little curious as [...] … Read More
Jim McVeagh • Oct 24, 2009 •
I see once again the “superbug” is in the news, with poor old North Shore Hospital attempting to control an outbreak by splitting up their wards. Having worked in such an environment, I know exactly how frustrating that can be for nursing staff. Reverse barrier nursing (gloves, gowns, caps and overshoes to protect the nurse [...] … Read More