On today’s Morning Edition, Russell Lewis reported on the memorial service held in Jackson, Mississippi for the 11 workers who died when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20th. Host David Greene noted that they’ve been called the “Forgotten 11,” because so much attention has been focused on the oil leak rather than […]
A study published in the open-access journal BMC Immunology suggests an intriguing hypothesis: The explosion of spread of HIV in Africa and then worldwide in the 1950s might be partially explained by the eradication of smallpox and the discontinuation of smallpox vaccination campaigns. The researchers – Raymond S. Weinstein, Michael M. Weinstein, Kenneth Alibek, Michael […]
The New York Times’ Clifford J. Levy reports on violence against at journalists investigating corruption in the Moscow suburbs: Mikhail Beketov had been warned, but would not stop writing. About dubious land deals. Crooked loans. Under-the-table hush money. All evidence, he argued in his newspaper, of rampant corruption in this Moscow suburb. “Last spring, I […]
This week is Bike to Work Week, and tomorrow is Bike to Work Day (the League of American Bicyclists lists events here). I wouldn’t have realized this if it weren’t for this Washington Post article; cyclists are common enough here in DC that I’m not sure I’d notice a small uptick in their numbers. What […]
It’s only right that BP bear the cleanup costs in the Gulf – but their cleanup responsibilities shouldn’t interfere with federal agencies doing their jobs. Two recent news accounts paint a disturbing picture of federal employees taking orders from the multinational corporation that’s turned an already hard-hit part of our coastline into a disaster zone.
Although most of us are focusing on BP because of the oil rig explosion and gushing well in the Gulf, it’s also important to consider the company’s safety record at its refineries. Because I keep track of workplace disasters, I knew that BP had earned the distinction of having the worst refinery death toll in […]
For several years, health professionals have been concerned about the rise in infections from methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA – a bacteria that’s resistant to several of the antibiotics generally used to treat staph infections. CDC estimates that in 2005, there were more than 94,000 MRSA infections in the US, and more than 18,000 […]
We’re delighted and honored to be joining the ScienceBlogs community. It’s a bittersweet occasion, because we’re starting out here just as the Reveres are folding up their stellar public health blog Effect Measure. It’s fair to say that The Pump Handle probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the Reveres; they inspired us to launch […]
Earlier this month, the DC City Council passed the Healthy Schools Act, which will raise nutritional standards for school meals, increase the amount of physical and health education students receive, create school gardens, and do all kinds of other commendable things. The difficult part is that it’ll cost $6.5 million annually, and we’re in the […]
We keep writing about the risks involved with nanotechnology, so it’s nice to be able to highlight a potential benefit. Andrew Schneider reports for AOL News that researchers from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have developed a “nanopatch” that can deliver vaccines more effectively than intramuscular injection: