Stand Up for Women’s Rights
Amanda at Pandagon has some thoughts on how. Jane at firedoglake is thinking smart on this issue, too. Oh, and as she also asks, when are we going to ban in-vitro fertilization?
Continue reading →Category Archives: Health
This is bad, potentially very bad
I was unhappy when I learned that a deadly flu virus had been sent around the world by mistake. When that happened, it seemed inevitable what would come next: Two-thirds of flu virus shipments destroyed, but 3 still missing: WHO GENEVA-Health experts have destroyed two-thirds of the specimens of a killer influenza virus sent as part of routine test kits around the world, but were still trying to trace three shipments that were supposed to go to Mexico, Lebanon and Chile, UN officials said Friday. The World Health Organization has been urging thousands of labs in 19 countries that received … Continue reading →
New AIDS strain emerges
and it’s more virulent than the one we have now. The new strain was found by doctors in New York, and seems to be resistent to three of the four most commonly used AIDS drugs. Plus, instead of taking years to develop from an HIV infection into full blown AIDS, it takes only three or four months. I was already concerned about the possibility of a bird flu pandemic, but this is another sign that the microbes continue to fight back.
Continue reading →Stem cells in baby teeth
In October there was a conference on stem cell research, held in Australia. One finding presented at the conference was that children’s discarded baby teeth, when carefully preserved, can have more stem cells than an embryo, and those cells may be more versatile as well. If further work bears this out, it provides a way out of the ethical dilemma stem cells pose. The conference also reported on the use of stem cells to cure diabetes in mice, while elsewhere stem cells taken from an umbilical cord have been used to cure spinal injuries. It’s essential that we move ahead … Continue reading →
More on the pandemic
Today’s New York Times has more on the potential for avian flu to cause a global pandemic.
Continue reading →Whooping cough returns
I actually had whooping cough as a kid. I was pretty sick, too, though not as sick as when I had rubella. And scarlet fever wasn’t fun either. We think of those diseases as something out of the dark ages, but they were not that uncommon within my lifetime. Now it seems that whooping cough cases are on the rise, and adults who get it may not even realize they have.
Continue reading →Flu pandemic “inevitable”
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the World Health Organization issued a report which said a global flu pandemic is inevitable, probably in the form of a mutated bird flu virus. The WHO fears that as many as seven million people could die in a widespread flu outbreak, and urged all countries to prepare, especially those in Asia where bird flus spread most easily. As for the U.S., this administration has shown itself to be incompetent even in preparing for ordinary flu, so if a deadly virus reaches us, we could be in big trouble.
Continue reading →Flu vaccine
I was one of the many people who couldn’t get a flu shot this year. Since my husband and I both have asthma, I was unhappy with that. I was even more unhappy when I learned recently that the FDA knew about Chiron’s problems over a year ago, and did nothing about it. They didn’t even let the company know about sanitation problems they had detected. I don’t even know what to say about such stunning incompetence, in an area of public health that is life and death for many people.
Continue reading →Assault on abortion rights begins now
Before the new Congress is even in session, abortion foes are being handed a gift, attached to a must-pass spending bill. The provision assures that health care providers who refuse abortion services will still receive federal funds, and it’s clearly a payback to the religious right for their help in re-electing Bush. Barbara Boxer, who received more votes than Kerry in California and who is an unabashed liberal, has vowed to fight the measure.
Continue reading →Don’t even say the words
“reproductive rights”. You never know whether the FCC might be listening.
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