New Dawn for Neglected Diseases?

I must confess that I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. No doubt, I get this from my father, who was convinced one summer during our stay in Michigan that he had contracted a case of Ebola. As it was to turn out, it was only a little case of necrotizing fasciitis (which you might recognize as flesh eating bacteria) that required some hefty antibiotics, but not, thankfully, the amputation of his left calf. So you can see how I as an impressionable young child might be prone to imagine the worst…

For all you chocolate fiends out there forced to curb your habit in an effort to eat healthier, Rawtella may be the product for you.

Like its cult-favorite predecessor, Nutella (which has such a following that a Facebook group exists in its honor), Rawtella has the same rich, chocolaty-hazelnut flavor, but without any of the saturated fat and artificial ingredients found in the former version.

Rawtella is a 100% raw, organic and vegan chocolate spread that…

Keynote scientist at ScienceWriters conference dances around the truth

Dr. Helen Mayberg, a neurologist at Emory University, had top billing at the annual Science Writers conference in New Haven Sunday to talk about her work in using deep brain stimulation to treat depression. Nearly 500 writers, editors, public information officers and students listened as she spoke of inserting electrodes into the frontal lobes of chronically depressed patients for whom other treatments (like drugs…

The “Medical Challenge” is a new column by Dr. Rohan Ramakrishn.  The cases described are based on real patients. Please leave your thoughts on this case in the comments, and check the comments again next week to learn the real explanation.

Julie laughs a lot. At six years old, she has always been regarded as the most cheerful among her two other siblings. Recently, however, Julie’s mother Sarah has noticed that her daughter seems to laugh for no reason approximately…

At a recent talk I gave on health care, the question came up: why isn’t our government negotiating with the pharmaceutical industry to lower drug prices in the US? My audience was a group of sharp-minded Mount Holyoke College alumni, and almost all of them were on some kind of prescription medicine. While private health plans (which insure most working Americans) don’t have the clout to negotiate more reasonable drug pricing, the US government, which funds Medicare and Medicaid, does….

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” says David Willman, who has nearly 15 years’ experience captaining supply boats that support oil rigs and drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. “We’re seeing pods of whales and dolphins out in the oil and lots of dead things,” he tells me. “Things I’ve never seen before coming up from the deep that look like sea cucumbers floating dead. Man o’ wars floating dead with shriveled tentacles.” Willman is captain of the Noonie G., an 111-foot supply…

Many statistical models indicate that climate change, with associated global warming, will result in increases in vector borne diseases. Such vector borne diseases include sleeping sickness which is transmitted by the tsetse fly, lyme disease caused by bites from the deer tick and malaria transmission by the Anopheles mosquito vector. Other diseases transmitted by Anopheles, Culex and Aedes mosquitoes include dengue fever, yellow fever, viral encephalitis and West Nile disease.

Malaria…

A study just published in the British Medical Journal shows no link between early childhood cancers and exposure to cell phone base stations during pregnancy.  The researchers compared 1397 children with cancer to 5588 without, linking their address at birth with proximity to cell phone towers.  They found that children born to mothers who lived close to cell phone towers were just as likely—or unlikely—to have cancer as children born to mothers who lived far away from cell phone…