Safety protocols for Ebola treatment are not fool-proof

October 12, 2014

A hospital worker in Texas who helped treat Thomas Duncan, the Liberian Ebola patient who died last Wednesday, has now tested positive (to be confirmed) for the disease. He had used a full protective suit and all the safety protocols of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were apparently followed. If confirmed, it would be the first known case of the disease being contracted or transmitted in the U.S. The infected health worker apparently has a pet which is now being tested. A Spanish nurse in Madrid who treated a priest who had contracted Ebola was the first person infected outside West Africa. Her dog Excalibur was put down as a precaution.

One other person is in isolation at the hospital,  the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, which is no longer accepting emergency patients.

There is some serious speculation that the Ebola virus could become air-borne and the disease would not only be subject to transmission by contact with body fluids. Even if the case in Texas was due to some breach of safety protocols, these procedures are clearly not fool-proof. And they would be obsolete and quite ineffective if the virus is already mutating on its way to going air-borne.

It also brings into sharp focus the risks being run by health workers treating Ebola patients in West Africa.

Washington Post:

…. The worker is in isolation and in stable condition, the hospital system said.

Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer for Texas Health Resources, which operates Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, said the worker had been under self-monitoring in recent days, which includes taking a temperature twice daily. When the health worker showed signs of a fever, the person notified the hospital, went directly there and immediately was admitted to an isolation room. Varga said the entire sequence of events took less than 90 minutes. 

The CDC did not consider person to be “high risk,” Varga said. The person treated Duncan, the Ebola patient, after his second visit to the ER, on Sept. 28. The health worker was “following full CDC precautions,” including wearing a gown, gloves, a mask and a protective face shield.

“We’re very concerned,” Varga said, though he added that the hospital is “confident that the precautions that we have in place are protecting our health-care workers.”

The hospital has put its emergency room on “diversion,” which means that ambulances are not currently bringing patients to the ER, though patients already in the hospital are still being cared for.

“The system of monitoring, quarantine and isolation was established to protect those who cared for Mr. Duncan as well as the community at large by identifying any potential Ebola cases as early as possible and getting those individuals into treatment immediately,” Varga said.

Dallas officials deployed hazmat teams to decontaminate the entrance and common areas of an apartment complex in the 3700 block of Marquita Avenue where the health worker presumptively lives and the vehicle that the person used to travel to the hospital.

This Ebola epidemic has now claimed over 4,000 lives in West Africa predominantly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. If the disease does become air-borne it would probably happen first where the virus is present in abundance and that would probably be in West Africa.

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New red/green Swedish government attacks the elderly who would dare to work

October 12, 2014

Traditional socialists it seems would prefer that the elderly not work for longer. They should should leave the work-place, sit-out their days in an old-age home and die out quietly without making too much fuss. “Self-employed” has always been a dirty word in the socialist lexicon and the new Swedish government is training its sights especially on the elderly self-employed.

As it is, the age discrimination that is endemic in Sweden makes it virtually impossible for the elderly (>65 years old) to get employment. About the only real possibility for the elderly to work is to employ themselves and to be self-employed. The new government in Sweden wants to make it even harder for the elderly to be employed (by others) and to milk them for extra taxes when they do. The special payroll tax is to be increased by 8.5%. Employers must pay the extra and if the elderly are self-employed then they will have to pay the extra themselves. When the discrimination is built into the tax code then it must count as institutionalised age-discrimination.

It seems such a waste of experience and knowledge. The evidence shows, and common sense says, that it is not the elderly who take jobs away from the young. The elderly – when they are employed – are usually employed for the depth of their experience which is not an area of competition with the young. The previous government had managed to increase the employment of the over-65s by 1.5 percentage points. But the new government clearly wants to change that.

Of course the key point is that when over-65s lose their jobs, they do not – statistically – swell the ranks of the unemployed. And the new socialist government wants to milk whatever taxes it can from the elderly – especially if they are self-employed.

But in the long term the demographics dictate that with increasing longevity, society will have to encourage that people remain gainfully employed – on average – much beyond the age of 65. By 2050, this will need to be at least 70 years. The left will have to lose their antipathy for the elderly.

From Swedish Radio:

The red-green government is making it more expensive to hire seniors. From next year, the fee paid by employers for workers over 65 will be raised. Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson says that the government needs the money.

The government wants to increase national revenues by 18 billion kronor next year. More than two billion will come from the increase in the fee paid by the employer to employ people over 65 years, the so-called special payroll tax. 

It thus becomes more expensive for firms to hire the over-65s from 1st January 2015.

The previous Alliance government had lowered the special payroll tax in 2007, and given the over-65s higher earned income tax credit. This resulted in more over-65s working according to a study by the Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, IFAU.

“These reforms led to an increase in employment by 1.5 percentage points”. says researcher Lisa Laun at IFAU. The study could not determine what impacedt employment most; the lower payroll tax or the higher tax credit. But both reforms together gave more jobs for the over-65s.

Lars Calmfors is a Swedish economist and Professor of international economics at the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University. He spoke to Swedish TV:

“It does not seem wise, if one wants to get older people to stay and work. We know that we have large departures in many professions, not least in health care and the teaching profession. One is keen to keep people at work here so the measure is probably ill advised”.  So said Professor Lars Calmfors  after the government proposed that the payroll tax for the elderly over 65 years will increase by 8.5 percent from the year-end. It is a tax paid by the employer for each employee. The self-employed must pay the tax themselves. 

Lars Calmfors sees two reasons why the payroll tax is now being raised for the elderly; first that the government needs more tax revenue, and second, that the government might think that fewer older people will take away jobs from the young – something that is not at all supported by research. 

“There’s very little support for the theory that higher employment of the elderly leads to lower employment among young people. Most indications are that in countries that have high levels of employment for the elderly there are also high levels of employment for young people. They don’t seem to compete against each other” said Lars Calmfors to SVT.

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MH370: Emirates CEO suggests plane’s flight was controlled

October 11, 2014

“Something is not right here and we need to get to the bottom of it.”

Sir Timothy Clark, CEO Emirates Airways

My “least implausible” theory about the disappearance of MH370, seven months ago, is that it was an engineered and highly successful hijack, by an unknown state intelligence agency, who incapacitated crew and passengers, took control of the aircraft and brought it down without trace, to prevent some of the cargo and some of the passengers from ever reaching China.

Now support for this – or some similar – explanation comes from an unlikely quarter within the heart of the airline industry. Tim Clark has been in the industry since 1972, was recently knighted and has been with Emirates since 1985. He became CEO in 2003 and is also President of the Emirates Foundation.

news.com:

Now, seven months after the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Sir Tim has cast doubt on the official version of events.

In an extraordinary interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, he challenges the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s conclusion this week that MH370 flew south over the Indian Ocean on autopilot for five hours until it ran out of fuel and fell out of the sky, forcing 239 passengers into a watery grave. 

Instead, Sir Tim believes it is far more likely that “MH370 was under control, probably until the very end”, questions the veracity of the “so-called electronic satellite ‘handshake’” used by analysts to pinpoint the probable crash site and insists the mysterious cargo in the hold (removed from the manifest by Malaysian authorities) is a crucial clue to the puzzle.

That an aircraft the size of MH370 can simply disappear without a trace, “not even a seat cushion” was downright “suspicious”, he said.

Seven months since 239 passengers and crew just vanished on a modern jet liner!

This was not an accident. The complete lack of any evidence suggests that “fingerprints have been wiped”. The so-called “electronic handshakes” give a hint of being fabricated to suit a story.

These are extracts of his interview with Der Spiegel:

His view of the vanished Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 is a provocative one. The plane that disappeared was a Boeing 777 and Emirates operates 127 such aircraft, more than any other airline in the world. ….

MH 370 remains one of the great aviation mysteries. Personally, I have the concern that we will treat it as such and move on. At the most, it might then make an appearance on National Geographic as one of aviation’s great mysteries. We mustn’t allow this to happen. We must know what caused that airplane to disappear. …. 

My own view is that probably control was taken of that airplane. ….. It’s anybody’s guess who did what. We need to know who was on the plane in the detail that obviously some people do know. We need to know what was in the hold of the aircraft. And we need to continue to press all those who were involved in the analysis of what happened for more information. I do not subscribe to the view that the Boeing 777, which is one of the most advanced in the world and has the most advanced communication platforms, needs to be improved with the introduction of some kind of additional tracking system. MH 370 should never have been allowed to enter a non-trackable situation. …..

The transponders are under the control of the flight deck. These are tracking devices, aircraft identifiers that work in the secondary radar regime. If you turn off that transponder in a secondary radar regime, that particular airplane disappears from the radar screen. That should never be allowed to happen. Irrespective of when the pilot decides to disable the transponder, the aircraft should be able to be tracked. …… The other means of constantly monitoring the progress of an aircraft is ACARS (Eds. Note: Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System). It is designed primarily for companies to monitor what its planes are doing. We use it to monitor aircraft systems and engine performance. At Emirates, we track every single aircraft from the ground, every component and engine of the aircraft at any point on the planet. Very often, we are able to track systemic faults before the pilots do. ….. Disabling it is no simple thing and our pilots are not trained to do so. But on flight MH 370, this thing was somehow disabled, to the degree that the ground tracking capability was eliminated. …….

I’m still struggling to come up with a reason why a pilot should be able to put the transponder into standby or to switch it off. MH 370 was, in my opinion, under control, probably until the very end.

why would the pilots spend five hours heading straight towards Antarctica?

If they did!

I am saying that all the “facts” of this particular incident must be challenged and examined with full transparency. We are nowhere near that. There is plenty of information out there, which we need to be far more forthright, transparent and candid about. Every single second of that flight needs to be examined up until it, theoretically, ended up in the Indian Ocean — for which they still haven’t found a trace, not even a seat cushion. …. 

Our experience tells us that in water incidents, where the aircraft has gone down, there is always something. We have not seen a single thing that suggests categorically that this aircraft is where they say it is, apart from this so-called electronic satellite “handshake,” which I question as well. …..

There hasn’t been one overwater incident in the history of civil aviation — apart from Amelia Earhart in 1939 — that has not been at least 5 or 10 percent trackable. But MH 370 has simply disappeared. For me, that raises a degree of suspicion. I’m totally dissatisfied with what has been coming out of all of this.

Somehow, it feels like a betrayal as the event is labelled an “unsolved mystery” and the world just moves on. Not just a betrayal of the 239 passengers and crew and their families but of the innate sense of human curiosity and questing.

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What does the deployed oxygen mask on MH17 signify?

October 10, 2014

So the Dutch Foreign Minister made a boo-boo by revealing that one Australian passenger was found to have an oxygen mask around his neck. He has been criticised  for revealing this information which found no mention in the preliminary Dutch report. The crash investigators and NATO (why NATO?) have also been vehement in denying that this changes anything in the preliminary report. The final report is not due till summer 2015.

NYT: Frans Timmermans, the foreign minister, mentioned the discovery of the oxygen mask late Wednesday during an appearance on a popular Dutch television talk show, where an interviewer brought up the July 17 crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 people.

Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the Dutch national prosecutor’s office, expressed dismay about the disclosure on Thursday. He confirmed that forensics experts had found a yellow plastic oxygen mask around the neck of a male victim among the bodies that arrived at Eindhoven Air Base a week after the crash.

Why the fuss? Why would it be significant whether the oxygen masks had deployed or not?

The point apparently is that if the aircraft had been brought down by a Russian ground-to-air BUK missile – fired by the rebels – then the aircraft would have failed catastrophically and there would have been no time for the oxygen masks to deploy. All on board would have died almost instantaneously.

If instead MH17 had been brought down by a Ukrainian fighter jet – as the Russians suggest – then the air-to-air missile would not have been as immediately catastrophic as the much more powerful BUK missile. Then there may well have been time for some of the oxygen masks to deploy – even if the aircraft was later “finished off” by cannon fire. I am given to understand that the size of the wreckage found is not consistent with just an air-to-air missile but could be consistent with cannon fire subsequent to a missile. More tellingly, some of the many, small and uniform “shrapnel holes” found could have well been due to external cannon fire. The Russians keep asking why the cockpit – ground control conversations have not been released but I have not seen any convincing explanation for that information being withheld.

NYT: 
Analysis: The shrapnel came from outside the plane
Many of the holes are relatively small … … and uniform in size.

Mr. Foster said the contour of the aluminum and the blistering of the paint around many of the holes indicate that small pieces of high-velocity shrapnel entered the aircraft externally. 

MH 17: Shrapnel or external cannon fire? image NYT

It is also possible that that some tampering took place on the ground after the event. This is implied by some of the statements attributed to “officials”. However, it seems improbable that somebody – a pro-Russian rebel is implied – could have looked for and found an intact oxygen mask – especially if they had not been deployed – to drape around one of the victims’ neck.

But the bottom line is that if there was time for the oxygen masks to deploy then it is more likely that a Ukrainian jet was responsible rather than a BUK missile. Such a “politically incorrect” conclusion would not be acceptable for NATO. It is unlikely that any final report will come to any such clear conclusion. I am afraid that the final MH17 Crash Investigation Report will be – and maybe already is – compromised. The final conclusions will be contaminated by political agendas.

But the oxygen mask does make the theory about a Ukrainian jet being responsible a tad more likely.

Whoever was responsible, 298 innocent people were killed.

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Posted in Aviation, Holland, Politics | 2 Comments »

Adding a “total asshole” to your author list can get you published

October 10, 2014

This is reblogged from Retraction Watch.

How do you “peer review” a paper written by a “total asshole”? Presumably there are sufficient peers available. 

Retraction Watch:

When science writer Vito Tartamella noticed a physics paper co-authored by Stronzo Bestiale (which means “total asshole” in Italian) he did what anyone who’s written a book on surnames would do: He looked it up in the phonebook.

What he found was a lot more complicated than a funny name.

It turns out Stronzo Bestiale doesn’t exist.

In 1987, Lawrence Livermore National Lab physicist William G. Hoover had a paper on molecular dynamics rejected by two journals: Physical Review Letters and theJournal of Statistical Physics. So he added Stronzo Bestiale to the list of co-authors, changed the name, and resubmitted the paper. The Journal of Statistical Physicsaccepted it.

27 years later, Bestiale is still listed as co-author on several papers. He also has a Scopus profile that lists him as an active researcher at the Institute of Experimental Physics, University of Vienna.

This isn’t the first time a scientist has added a fictional co-author to a paper to make a point. In 1978, Polly Matzinger added her impeccably-named Afghan hound, Galadriel Mirkwood, to a Journal of Experimental Medicine paper to protest the use of passive voice in scientific papers.

Hilarious as these examples are, it does prove a point that’s a little less fun: The scientific community needs to be on its toes about who (or what) is writing the papers they publish, to help keep merde out of the literature.

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Posted in Trivia | Comments Off on Adding a “total asshole” to your author list can get you published

Another Australian couple abandon an unwanted surrogate twin behind

October 10, 2014

Barbarism takes many forms and it is not only the beheading of innocent victims. It is also an Australian couple who had commissioned a surrogate birth in India, which resulted in twins, and who then abandoned one because it was the wrong gender. It was not so long ago that we learned of the Australian couple (where the father was a convicted sex-offender) who abandoned a surrogate twin in Thailand because it had Down’s syndrome.

Having an abortion because of the coming child’s gender is not unknown in India but it is illegal and there are efforts underway to try and curb the practice. Abandoning girl children is also not unknown in many parts of the world. But commissioning a birth and then abandoning an unwanted twin  of the wrong “gender” sinks to the level of barbarism. It makes it no better that the Australian High Commission permitted the parents to apply for citizenship of only one of the twins – knowing full well that the other twin existed.

Both surrogacy and abortion prioritise the desires of the would-be or would-not-be parents and any thoughts about what is best for the child are entirely subordinated to the convenience of the parents.

Given a choice I wonder if the child /foetus to be aborted or to be “acquired” or abandoned would have chosen to be born – or not? Would any surrogate child choose to have that particular commissioning couple as parents? Or would any surrogate child choose to have two mothers or two fathers? But no child – after all – has any choice in its parents

The Hindu:

An Australian couple, who had biological twins from an Indian surrogate mother two years ago, abandoned one of the children and returned home with the other. The case came to light on Wednesday after the Australian family court chief Justice Diana Bryant announced that she was informed by an Australian High Commission official in New Delhi that the couple had left one child behind.

Justice Bryant has reported that the High Commission in New Delhi had delayed giving the parents a visa and tried to convince them to take both children home, but the parents did not relent. The couple’s decision to leave the child behind was based on their preference for a specific gender.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on behalf of Australian government on Thursday admitted that the couple had left the baby behind and since this case; the Indian government has tightened controls on commercial surrogacy arrangements in India.

When asked whether the High Commission could have prevented the parents from leaving the child behind, the spokesperson told The Hindu: “The parents in this case decided to apply for citizenship for only one of the twins. The involvement of the Australian High Commission in New Delhi was limited to assessing the application by the Australian couple for citizenship, and subsequently a passport, for the one child. The High Commission had no grounds to refuse the citizenship application and a passport for the one twin for whom application was made — the child met the criteria for citizenship and an Australian passport”.

It was pointed out that India became responsible for the welfare of the other child and adoption arrangements became a matter for its legal system. “The Australian government does not regulate overseas surrogacy arrangements; this is a matter for the countries in which these arrangements are made. Within Australia, the regulation of surrogacy is a matter for states and territories,” the spokesperson added.

It seems some political /financial pressure was brought to bear on the Australian High Commission to accept the abandonment of one twin. There are reports that the boy-twin was abandoned.

SMH:

Chief Justice Bryant said the Australian High Commission in New Delhi delayed giving the Australian parents a visa to try and convince them to take both children home. 

The ABC investigation suggested that pressure had been applied to the High Commission to grant the visas by a senior political figure. 

“Yes, there definitely was some pressure being placed to expedite the process to ensure they could return to Australia,” said Chief Justice Bryant.

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US, UK and Turkey give up on Kobani

October 9, 2014

Neither the US or the UK see Kobani or its Kurds as having strategic importance. The US admits that air strikes alone cannot save Kobani. Turkey sees greater strategic value in not supporting the Kurds than in confronting ISIS.

As I thought, Turkey sees ISIS and their vision of a Caliphate as being a lesser evil than any future Kurdistan. Their reluctance to assist with ground troops to confront ISIS in Kobani has probably helped the US to stay out as well. John Kerry has confirmed what I suspected that helping the Kurds in Kobani is not a strategic objective (though one does wonder whether Obama and Kerry have any strategic objectives at all beyond public relations) for the US. The UK is content to follow where the US leads (or stays still).

ISIS must be quite encouraged by the US / UK idea of “a buffer zone for the influx of refugees crossing the border from Syria”. It suggests that the US and the UK have already given up on Kobani. They will effectively write off Kobani and put all the refugees into a miserable limbo. But it will help their ally Turkey from being invaded by more Kurds and in general a weakening Kurdish position. But they have no intention of protecting any such “buffer zone” from a rampaging ISIS. It will be nothing but a refugee camp with no exits.

Meanwhile the US-led air attacks against ISIS is giving Assad more room to attack his other opponents in Syria.

Deutsche Welle:

At a press conference on Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry indicated that saving the besieged Syrian town of Kobani from the terror of the “Islamic State” (IS) was not a strategic military objective for the United States.

Joined by British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond to address the press, Kerry also said the idea of a buffer zone proposed by Turkey should be thoroughly studied.

“As horrific as it is to watch in real time what is happening in Kobani … you have to step back and understand the strategic objective,” Kerry said.

“Notwithstanding the crisis in Kobani, the original targets of our efforts have been the command and control centers, the infrastructure,” he said. “We are trying to deprive the (Islamic State) of the overall ability to wage this, not just in Kobani but throughout Syria and into Iraq.”

He said the US and the UK were considering a buffer zone for the influx of refugees crossing the border from Syria – an issue Turkey should not have to deal with alone.

The advance of IS into the Kurdish town of Kobani, which can be seen from the Turkish border, has prompted 180,000 residents to flee to Turkey.

Turkey continues to watch.

BBC:

Turkey’s foreign minister says it cannot be expected to lead a ground operation against Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria on its own.

Mevlut Cavusoglu also called for the creation of a no-fly zone over its border with Syria after talks in Ankara with new Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg. …… Activists say IS now controls about a third of Kobane after fierce fighting. Monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, quoting “reliable sources”, said IS was advancing towards the centre of the town from eastern districts. Earlier, a Kurdish leader in Kobane said IS had entered two more districts overnight, bringing in heavy weapons.

Mr Cavusoglu was holding talks with Mr Stoltenberg and US envoys on possible Turkish action against IS. “It is not realistic to expect Turkey to conduct a ground operation on its own,” he told a news conference. “We are holding talks. Once there is a common decision, Turkey will not hold back from playing its part.”

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Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Turkey, UK, US | 1 Comment »

Jennifer Lawrence, nude selfies and glass houses

October 9, 2014

I have been amazed at the media coverage and clamour around the stealing and dissemination of nude selfies of celebrities. A boon for their publicists tasked with keeping them in the public eye. But, I find Jennifer Lawrences’s indignation and outrage quite unconvincing. She believes that those who look at her naked pictures are committing a “sex-crime”. She claims that she uploaded nude pictures of herself to the internet for private viewing by her boyfriend as an alternative to the pornography that he might otherwise have resorted to. But whether or not her selfies were in themselves some type of pornography (albeit for private viewing) does not really interest me.

The point is that she – and all the other celebrities – now displaying righteous indignation, chose the material to be stored and chose the medium of storage themselves.

Anybody who believes that the internet and especially the cloud is some secure, opaque, impregnable storage container is just plain stupid.

Hacking or leaking or stealing of nude pictures is just as – but not more or less – reprehensible than the hacking or leaking or stealing of any private material stored in the cloud. For that the internet or cloud storage provider must take responsibility – especially if they have claimed a greater level of security than they can actually provide. If a crime has been committed the nature of the material hacked or leaked or stolen does not make the crime any more or less heinous. But the type of material stored and the choice of storage provider is the responsibility of the individual.

Any householder would bear some responsibility for his house being burgled if he left the windows open and the doors unlocked. He would also bear some responsibility if sensitive or valuable material he stupidly chose to keep in an unsafe storage place was stolen.  And so with nude selfies stored in the cloud. The apparently narcissistic individuals who chose to upload the “alternative-to-pornography” pictures of themselves, and also chose the storage place for the material cannot avoid some share of responsibility for the subsequent theft and dissemination of the pictures.

The “right” to privacy of an individual cannot apply if that individual releases  – or by carelessness facilitates  the release –  of material into the public domain. And whether hacked or not, the cloud is a pretty public place. Not only is it a public storage place it is a container with glass walls.

Suppose you built a house of glass where the glass manufacturer claimed that it was one way glass and nobody could see in. Suppose further that the glass was in fact transparent and somebody took pictures of you as you danced naked inside. You might have a claim against the glass manufacturer, but you would have no claim against the peeping Tom. Only if the voyeur had broken the glass to look in would you have a claim against him but not against the crowd that gathered to gawp at you cavorting naked within your glass house with a broken window.

Stupidity does not excuse the crime but the “victims” here are not without some culpability

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Posted in Behaviour | 1 Comment »

Chemistry Nobel awarded – for development of nanoscopy (super-resolved fluorescence microscopy)

October 8, 2014

UPDATE! Well the award has gone to the development of optical microscopy beyond the limits of what was thought possible.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 to

Eric Betzig
Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, USA,

Stefan W. Hell
Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, and German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany

and

William E. Moerner
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

“for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”

From microscopy to nanoscopy.

Limits of microscopy – npl

All chemistry is physics of course. And so is medicine. Even if chemistry needs a separate language it is still the fundamental forces of physics which govern chemistry (and medicine and biology). But physics ultimately has to invoke “magic” to explain the fundamental forces of the physical world.

It is the turn of chemistry at the Nobels today.

While the predictions of organic LED’s being recognised are now probably ruled out after the blue LED recognition for physics yesterday, it could still be for discoveries which are leading to the creation of new materials.

Or , as I thought might happen last year, it could be Svante Pääbo and others who have developed the techniques for the extraction of DNA from ancient remains.

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Posted in Chemistry, Science | 2 Comments »

Effects of influensa medicines exaggerated by sponsored research

October 8, 2014

I have posted earlier about how flu vaccines tend to be over-hyped and over-promoted. A new study confirms that research sponsored by pharmaceutical companies were much more positive than those by independent researchers.

The manufacture and sale of flu vaccines is enormously lucrative. Just in the UK the program costs £120 million every year. Worldwide just influensa vaccine sales are an estimated $4 – 5 billion. The total vaccines market is expected to grow from about $30 billion in 2012 to about $40 billion in 2015! For adult vaccines the biggest growth comes from public health programs pushing influensa vaccines:

Moreover in public health programs

The names of the members of the committees which recommend wholesale flu vaccinations are often shrouded in secrecy and often  – when revealed – are found to have unhealthy ties to the manufacturers of the vaccines.

Swedish Radio reports:

In the world of research meta-analyses, reviews of research studies available, act as a quality assurance. But when Australian researchers reviewed 26 meta-analyses of so-called neuraminidase inhibitors it was apparent that researchers sponsored by pharmaceutical companies had made more positive conclusions than their independent counterparts.

The study is published in Annals of Internal Medicine, writes The Guardian.

But the phenomenon is not new in the scientific community.

“There are lots of examples of how corrupt the system has been” said Björn Beermann, former professor at the MPA.

Last spring, it was revealed through the research network Cochrane that Tamiflu in principle was ineffective and that the pharmaceutical company Roche had regularly concealed “negative” research findings. It caused a debate about Sweden’s decision to buy into a giant stock of Tamiflu for a quarter of a billion kronor. Globally the bill amounted to nearly seven billion kronor ($1 billion).

In recent years it has become more difficult to conceal studies with undesirable results. Now, all the studies that seek publication have to be notified in advance of the study being conducted.

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Alarmism, Medicine | Comments Off on Effects of influensa medicines exaggerated by sponsored research

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