Kyle Hopkins of McClatchy follows up on the question of how we learned from the Exxon Valdez disaster about long-term health effects experienced by cleanup workers. In short, we have no peer-reviewed studies on this important topic, even though occupational health experts called for long-term monitoring of workers. Hopkins writes: Exxon has consistently maintained that […]
For the first few weeks after a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on January 12th, Haiti seemed to be on everyone’s mind. Six months later, many of us think little about the quake survivors who are still struggling. In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive of Haiti and Bill Clinton, co-chairs […]
Back in March of 2009, President Obama delighted advocates of scientific integrity when he signed a memorandum that stated: The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed […]
ScienceBlogs has made a distressing move: they’ve given PepsiCo a blog. It’s called Food Frontiers and will feature content written by PepsiCo scientists. For now, I’m not going to get into PepsiCo’s contribution to public health problems or what kind of content we might expect to see on the blog. Instead, I want to focus […]
The ScienceBlogs Book Club continues the discussion on Mark Pendergrast’s Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service. In my post this week, I look at how Congress influences federal agencies’ work on public health – an issue that crops up throughout the book. Here’s an excerpt: Congress’s creation of federal […]
It’s Zombie Day on ScienceBlogs! Scicurious at Neurotopia kicked things off, and Joseph of Ataraxia Theatre (whose other projects include the GearHead roleplaying game) provided the cool zombie illustrations. Thanks to the DC Department of Health’s excellent disease surveillance system, a recent outbreak of zombies in the nation’s capital was detected quickly enough to allow […]
Mine explosions in China and Columbia in recent weeks have killed a total of 120 mineworkers. An explosion in a coal mine in Antioquia, Colombia, killed 73 mineworkers; a total of 160 were in the mine at the time of the blast, and 90 escaped. Gas accumulations prevented rescue and recovery teams from entering the […]
The ScienceBlogs Book Club continues the discussion on Mark Pendergrast’s Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service – come on over and join in! In my post today, I look at the difference between solving disease puzzles (figuring out what the agent is, how it’s being transmitted, etc) and solving […]
New Solutions: The Drawing Board is a monthly feature produced by the journal New Solutions. Read more about it here. By Richard Clapp The President’s Cancer Panel report released on May 6 had some strong findings and recommendations on ways to reduce the cancer burden caused by workplace exposures. This is welcome news to U.S. […]
If you haven’t already, go read Katy Butler’s powerful New York Times Magazine piece about her aging father’s years of decline and the hard decisions she and her mother had to make about his care. Butler’s father suffered a stroke at age 79, and she writes of its effect: