Health: Kidney Donations and Transplants

Today's health story is about a kidney donation.

I can't use the real names of the people featured in this story, so I'll call them R1 and R2. They served together in Vietnam as young men forty years ago.

As young draftees, they were part of a tight-knit group that repeatedly risked life and limb in the course of duty.

Yes, we all have strong opinions about that "war" that was never declared a war, about the millions of Vietnamese peasants and farmers who lost their lives, their homes, their farms, their families, their limbs; and the 58,000 Americans who came back in body bags. But the young draftees were not to blame for any of this, even if a few of them went on to commit war crimes. By and large, they were serving in the military for a myriad of reasons and most of them conducted themselves decently.

They are now in their sixties. Silver-haired men who continue to stay in touch, forever connected by the ties that bind, watching friends and old comrades drop away due to the ravages of old age.

So R1, a man who suffered many grievous wounds in the course of service, suffered a recent insult to add to all his injuries: his kidneys started shutting down. For close to two years now, he's been on dialysis. If you have healthy functioning kidneys, you probably don't know what dialysis is. Thank your lucky stars. It's not for the faint of heart.

Essentially, because your kidneys can no longer filter harmful wastes and extra fluids out of your body, you have to go to a location (a clinic or hospital) where you get hooked up to a machine that slowly filters your blood for you. This is called hemodialysis. Because only a few ounces can be filtered at a time, the procedure takes up to five hours. And you have to do this three times a week.

In addition, you don't get to eat tasty stuff anymore. No bacon, no salt, no cheese, no ketchup, no crackers, no chips, limited quantities of potassium-containing fruit and vegetables, or items high in phosphates (like chocolate), or protein (meat, dairy products, whole grains, nuts).

Fun, huh?

In the event, R1, after suffering through this and waiting patiently for a kidney donor, was finally told he didn't have much time left if he couldn't get a kidney replaced. So he put out the word to his old buddies: can ya spare a kidney for a fellow trooper?

Unbelievably, to this old cynic, at any rate, replies came pouring in. Yes, they would spare a kidney if they could, said his brothers in arms. Dutifully, they submitted to the tests required to determine if any of them qualified — and if they didn't make a perfect match, they'd donate anyway, if they could, just to bump their old buddy up to the top of the list so he could have the next kidney that did match his needs.

There is a special deity for old soldiers, methinks, and s/he lent a hand. After much trading of insults (which, really, is just another way of saying, "Hey, man, I fucking care,") one of his brothers in arms was found to be both in good enough physical shape to spare a kidney and to be a match for R1. So R2 (the trooper with two good kidneys and a clean bill of health) signed up to give one of his to his fellow serviceman, R1.

Sometime in January, the swop takes place. R2 goes home with one less kidney, and R1 emerges with one working kidney, to a life of, hopefully, no more dialysis. Send some good thoughts their way, peeps. Just because it's so fucking heartwarming that somebody would give up a vital organ for someone else, in commemoration of bonds forged four decades ago.

The deity of old soldiers would like both these fine men to know the following information, published in Science News (175:5):

The Jan. 29, [2009] issue of NEJM (the New England Journal of Medicine) has reported that Hassan Ibrahim and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have found that kidney donors have the same probability of survival over several decades as the general population, including adequate kidney function and — surprisingly — even less risk of severe kidney disease. The data was derived from studying kidney transplants performed at U.Minn between 1963 and 2007, including selecting 255 of the donors to undergo kidney function tests. The test results were then compared with similar tests on individuals with two functioning kidneys, and donors were matched for race, gender, body weight, and age.

So, R2, for your great generosity in donating one of your healthy functioning kidneys to R1, the deity of old soldiers wants you to know that you're giving away nothing but your love, man. Power to you both, continued health and long life.

ICHC

And as for those who are all, like, supporting the troops? Consider donating an organ. Especially you rich young Republicans who don't ever plan to sign up for military service but support all wars with your mouths. Now you can show that you *really* support the troops. Sign those organ donor cards and carry them at all times. And if you have two healthy kidneys, go see if there's someone who could use one.

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Republican Party Finds New Chairman

ICHC FTW!

OK, it's been pretty depressing stuff on this blog lately, with war crimes and death to homosexuals and what all, so we figure you, dear friends and readers, are owed a little fun.

But first you have to read Michael Steele on climate change. Srsly.

See, Professor Doctor Michael Steele thinks we need to get rid of all existing climatologists/climate scientists and replace them with dudes who will help us "appreciate" climate change.

Fuck me, this is the kind of thing that drives your hosts at this fine blog to imbibe cheap rum at ungodly hours of the day. Here, in his own words, Professor Doctor Climateologist Science Dude Michael Steele:

"Let's get the smart, right scientists in place to help us understand and appreciate what's happening. I'm still trying to find the brother who told me, 'This is the temperature it should be.' So, you know, we don't know. The earth is a living organism and it changes. We all know what that is about, right?"

Jesus fucking J.H. Christ on a pogo stick, Mikey, can I be the first to slap the stupid right outa ya? Ya fucking blivet!

That's all I need, dude, is a "brother" to tell me "This is the temperature [the world] should be." This is worse than his cow-catcher remarks. Is this guy on drugs? Because if he is, and they're legit, the fucking bastard should be sharing them so the rest of us can groove on what he's saying. Right now he sounds like The Brother From Another Planet. (Inside joke: The Brother From Another Planet is a fine, fine, movie, if you haven't seen it, get off your fucking ass, already; oh, and the lead character has no dialogue at all. Not a single word.)

So this is the deal, Mikey. They're gonna replace your ass. You thought your shuckin' and jivin' would get you this gig and keep it, din'tcha? First they took away your power to sign checks for the party (you KNOW they don't trust the cullud wit' da money, fool, wha'dja think, they'd trust you? After your money scandals?). Then they rehired the people you fired, to keep an eye on the books. Now it's "Byebye, Mikey." They'll gladhand you out the door. Maybe you can get a job on the weather channel.

Or posing for pitchers wif Young Rethuglicans.

Behold the NEW Chairman of the Republican Party!

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Science: The Hubble and Redshift

Is this cool or what?



Measuring the redshift allows astronomers to figure out how fast these entire galaxies are rushing away from us.

The Big Bang — it's not just commonsense. It's the LAW!!

OK, that was gravity, but in these dark times we need to focus on science to draw us out of the bleak Armageddonish view of the future being promulgated by rightwingnuttia. Carl Sagan was right. "Billions and billions of stars ..." Just waiting for us to explore them all.

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Science: The Large Hadron Collider

in RAP! Talk about making physics cool:



Science is sexy, science is fun. Rock your science out to Higgs bosons and Higgs fields, matter and antimatter!

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Teh Funny!

Alright, alla youse who are always complaining that the denizens of La Casa de Los Gatos swear too much? Swearing is just like analgesics, only more satisfying, sez MSNBC citing an article in NeuroReport. How'dja like them apples?

Fuck it, I say. I always fuckin' knew that. And in my experience, nothing controls the pain like a good long string of expletives, and the more languages you can say "fuck" in, the better you'll feel after, say, getting your knee replaced.

As our good friend sgtg, Associate Terrorist Nun, might say, "Fuckity-fuckin' FUCK FUCK FUCK!" As far as I know, a relatively painfree life is lived in the SGTG household. No doubt thanks to the frequent invocation of these analgesic charms.

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Science: Stem Cells and Stuff!

How cool is this? Science Daily is reporting that researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia have figured out a way to treat victims of corneal disease — by culturing stem cells on a therapeutic contact lens that is placed in the sufferer's eye. Dr. Stephanie Watson, who performed the surgical procedure, described it as "simple, inexpensive," and requiring a minimal hospital stay and inexpensive lab equipment. A great breakthrough for Third World countries which cannot afford expensive techniques. Hell, it's a great breakthrough for everybody!

The procedure involves harvesting cells from the patient's cornea, culturing them in the lab, then placing them on a therapeutic contact lens. The lens is placed in the patient's eye and left in for ten days, during which time the stem cells recolonize the damaged cornea. No animal products, no invasive techniques. Shout it for SCIENCE! Yay!

Also from Science Daily, an interesting report about new drugs made from the mineral selenium, easily available at health food stores. Remember this blog's report on clostridium? Clostridium is one of the bacteria that could be thwarted by development of antibiotics that interfere with the selenoprotein process in both human and bacterial cells. Another likely candidate is Treponema denticola, which causes us to fund our dentists' annual holidays in the Caribbean. Could this be the end of tooth decay AND the superbugs? Keep your fingers crossed.

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How To Avoid Hairy Jello

And other nuggets of wisdom, culinary and otherwise.

ICHC

Didja know that hospital food is, like, the worst shit in the world? Srsly. I have no idea what they put in that stuff, but I'm thinkin' something along the lines of recycled intestinal tissue from recent surgery. It even smells bad. Like, from a mile away.

So, if you're scheduled to get schlepped into the old Bone Pit for any reason, for mercy's sake, prepare.

Put these on your list of Things To Do Before Surgery.

1. Laundry.
   
   There's nothing worse than coming home to the funky aroma of unwashed clothes, and if yo' mama didn't tell you yet, when that shit sits around in the house waiting for you to return from the Bone Pit, it miasmates (yeah, I made that word up, so what?) more richly as the days go by to produce a brew like Hell's own armpit.
   
   Yes, I did my fuckin' laundry. I'm speaking from past experience and a wild and wicked yoof.
   
   
2. Tidy up.
   
   You're going to be fuckin' frail when you get home. Srsly. They drain out your body juices and put staples and stitches and god knows what other shite in your hoomin bits. So pick up all the books and papers and what-all lying around on the floor because if it's there to trip on you WILL by gum trip on it or step on it or fall over it and hurt yourself something sucky.
   
   If you can sort the crap out and put it away, yay. If not, feck it. Put it in a large brown paper bag or a box somewhere and hide it where you won't step on it. You'll have plenty of time to take care of it as you S-L-O-W-L-Y recover from your erstwhile damage.
   
   
3. Cook plenty of nutritious, freezable meals and stick them in 1-gallon containers and freeze them.
   
   I'm not kidding about this one. Hospital food is SO the shits you'll sell your liver and your entire family for decent food by the time you come back. Your tastebuds are totally off because of the drugs (you'll know you're on the road to recovery when the hospital food actually starts tasting edible). I don't know what kind of eejits hospitals employ as nutritionists and dietitians, but most of them seem to belong to the school of "more is better." Salt, fat, calories, human hair, whatever. Stay away from everything except water, juice, fruit, salad, and clear broth if they'll let you have it.
   
   Over the next few weeks, I'm going to post recipes of nutritious, easy, freezable food. High protein content, low work ratio. Nothing like a hearty beef steak soup with tender chunks of browned meat, celery, carrots, garlic, tomatoes, and rice to keep you happy after much slicing and dicing of the old bod.
   
   
4. Clean out the fridge.
   
   Srsly. Anything that can't get et before you go to teh Bone Pit ain't gonna get et till you've been home a while. If it can stay in the freezer, fine, but really, you're better off giving it to friends and family and saving the freezer for your Real People Food for recuperation. In the meantime, give the rest away and clean out the fridge. That's how you avoid hairy jello.

For the nonce, please stay away from bubbling-hot liquids of any variety, whether it be tea, coffee, or soup, eh? Everything's bad for you, except for what kills you, yaknow.

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Happy Darwin Day!

Today is the birthday of Charles Darwin, the scientist who gave us the Theory of Evolution.

Image from Millard Fillmore's Bathtub

Darwin developed his theory as a result of his voyages on the HMS Beagle (pictured above), during the course of which he observed on various islands the pressures of natural selection and how they modified creatures that had originally shared a single ancestor. Thanks to this great man of science, we now have some understanding of our own place in the vast array of living beings on Gaia our mother planet.

Today is also the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, an odd-looking human being who surpassed the limitations of being dirt-poor and unhandsome to become the President of the United States and lead the nation through some of its toughest times. In memory of which, we extend our good wishes to his fellow-Illinoisian and our current President, Barack Obama, who himself transcended similar difficulties and is now leading us at a time when we desperately need his excellent leadership.

As for Valentine's Day, bugger that commercially-created holiday, we say. Grab your sweetie right now and give them a royal rogering all weekend long. Celebrate science! The science of smelling just right to your partner, the science of airborne pheromones that make you want to do the horizontal samba.

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Science: Debunking Creationist Bullshit

La Casa de Los Gatos is not afraid to call caca de vaca when we see it. And if there's one thing we love more than reading about science in all its varied and delightful fields, it's mocking the idiots who believe a book of stories from some obscure tribe that's over 1,000 years old and translated, passed around, edited, and rewritten in large part, accreting more myths as it stumbles along. In any event, we delight in making fun of creationists, especially "young-earth" or "flat-earth" creationists.

And it is our unmitigated pleasure to share with you all this delightful YouTube snippet, found thanks to a brilliant Digger/friend:



Excoriate them in the politest of language, we say. Throw in Monty Python clips for further amusement. But get your shovels out, folks, because these people are buried in bullshit, and you'll need a spade to dig them out. Oh, and heavy-duty waders.

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Environment: Hurricane Ike

Not being worshippers of any deity in particular, we let Seelin Cat and hir disciples/followers speak for us when we wish for the safety and well-being of all those in every country who have been affected by the vagaries of Mother Nature:

From ICHC, fine purveyors of LOLcattery to all

May everyone stay safe and as dry as possible. May Mike Chertoff's reproductive bits rot right off for FEMA's usual failure to do anything for the suffering with our tax dollars. May you be safely reunited with all your loved ones ASAP.

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A Good Sex Life

Sex is a very important part of an adult's life, don't you think? Intimacy, closeness, love, affection, warmth, appreciation, those things are all important too. But there's something about fucking someone else, preferably someone you love but in a pinch, anyone who wants to make like a bunny with you, that really gets the old happy juices (and other juices) flowing.

And if you've had the pleasure of getting it on with someone, maybe a partner, maybe a spouse, maybe just a Friend With Benefits, it's hard to accept that that part of your life may not exist any more. Or may be changed forever.

What about injured veterans? Raw Story carries an interesting article today about badly-injured veterans and their sex lives.

You (hell, all of us, except the vets) probably never thought about what injuries might do to a body's sex life. Because, let's face it, most of us go through life not expecting to get so severely injured that we can no longer get it on with our sweet patootie. Right? Who walks around thinking, "Hell, wonder what I'll do if I lose my leg/arm/half my face?" Nobody, that's who. Nobody in their right mind, anyway.

Of all the grievous harms that have come to the people who signed up thinking they would be defending their country, thanks to the lies of a small group of wealthy, powerful, manipulative motherfuckers, this has to be the worst. And you don't even have to lose an arm or a leg to be affected. You could be one of the 600,000 or so vets suffering from TBI (traumatic brain injury) or PTSD, and still find that your sex life might be fucked (so to speak) for a long time.

Psychological and neurological disorders can interfere with behaviors necessary for successful intimacy, such as experiencing and expressing emotion and understanding someone else's needs, the study noted. And anger and aggression, including domestic violence, have been associated with mental disorders.

According to the Veterans Affairs Department's National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, sexual dysfunction tends to be higher in combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder than in those without.

How do we evaluate that kind of stress and pain and suffering and loss? All we can say is, if our sex life got put on hold for reasons not within our control, we'd be one crabby motherfucker, and wherever we lived, they'd better have some damn good gun control laws.


Meanwhile, in other news, that miserable draft-dodging "I had other priorities" POS chickenshit chickenhawk Dick "They call me Dick for a reason" Cheney had the gall to tell Coast Guard graduates today, about the war into which he and his millionaire buddies dragged us:

"The war on terror is a lengthy enterprise, but it does not have to go on forever [,..]".

[...]

"More than that, quitting would be an act of betrayal and dishonor. And it's not going to happen on our watch."

Do these fuckwits have even the first notion of shame?

Crossposted over at Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus

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Science: Cephalopodophilia

Image courtesy of NOAA/MBARI 2006

Brian won't admit to his secret passionate love for squid of every variety, especially Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas). La Casa de Los Gatos wants the world to know we love squid, having been raised on Pon Pon, aka "The Chewing Gum of the Orient" &mdash squid marinated in sugar, salt, and chilli and pounded well before drying, which gives it a rubbery, chewy texture. A single pack of Pon Pon affords hours of stinky chewing fun.

Today, Brian sent us a link to a squid story over on Science Daily, featuring Humboldt squid. The story cites UC Santa Barbara researchers on an interdisciplinary study of squid beakage. It includes quotable gems such as these:

Humboldt squids, or Dosidicus gigas, are about three feet wide and can injure a fish with one swift motion. According to the article, ... "a squid beak can sever the nerve cord to paralyze prey for later leisurely dining."

"Squids can be aggressive, whimsical, suddenly mean, and they are always hungry," said Herb Waite, co-author and professor of biology at UC Santa Barbara. "You wouldn't want to be diving next to one. A dozen of them could eat you, or really hurt you a lot." The creatures are very fast and swim by jet propulsion.

[...]

Waite noted that squid muscle is available in locally made sandwiches, often called "calamari steak sandwiches."

The article itself is fascinating, if cephalopods happen to be your thing. As a cephalopodophile, however, I have to take exception to the last sentence in this quotable snippet:

According to Waite, the researchers were helped by the fact that squid seem to be moving north from areas where they have been traditionally concentrated, for example deep waters off the coast of Acapulco, Mexico. Recently however Humboldt squid have been found in numbers in Southern California waters. Dozens of dead squid have recently washed up on campus beaches, providing the researchers with more beaks to study.

On behalf of Humboldt squid (future calamari steak sandwiches or Pon Pon) everywhere, we would like to point out to UC SB's eminent researchers that Humboldt squid are not mere providers of beaks.

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Health: Snippets

Photograph from Auntie Beeb

Gulf War veterans everywhere should thrill to hear that Auntie Beeb says there is evidence linking chronic health problems suffered by Gulf War veterans to exposure to pesticides and nerve agents, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One-third of veterans of the 1991 war experienced fatigue, muscle or joint pain, sleeping problems, rashes and breathing troubles, the article says.

A US Congress-appointed committee on Gulf War illnesses analysed more than 100 studies in the research.

It found evidence linking the problems to a particular class of chemicals.

These were an anti-nerve gas agent given to troops, pesticides used to control sand-flies, and the nerve-gas sarin that troops may have been exposed to during the demolition of a weapons depot.

Dr Beatrice Golomb of the University of California, San Diego, the committee's chief scientist, has basically stated that the reason some people were affected, and not others, is due to genetic variance. We strongly believe that sooner or later U.S. health insurance companies will use genetic testing to deny health care claims to those unfortunate enough to have exposure to toxins that sicken them.

"Convergent evidence now strongly links [...] acetyl cholinesterase inhibitors to illness in Gulf War veterans," Dr Golomb told Reuters.

[...] unlike the most recent conflict in Iraq, the ground conflict during the 1991 Gulf War lasted only a few days, she added.

We're guessing that's a polite way of warning that the fit will hit the shan and there is a vast store of as-yet-undetected, undiagnosed, or unreported illnesses that will result from Dumbya McFuckwit's Excellent Adventure in murdering Iraqis and Americans alike.

En route to the Little Shop of Horrors (the dentist) today, we had the much-maligned opportunity to sit in traffic for lengthy periods, inhaling fuel exhaust. Preferring nitrous with our oral torture, we returned, somewhat addled and pained, to research just how good pollutants are for the functioning human brain, and, surprise! Auntie Beeb asserts that they are not!
According to researchers at Zuyd University in the Netherlands, humans who spent as little as an hour in a room filled with exhaust from a diesel engine came away with not just headaches, but altered brain functions as well. The findings were published in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology.

Scientists have known nanoparticles reach the brain when inhaled, but this is the first time they have been shown to affect how we process information.

The volunteers were wired up to an electroencephalograph (EEG) and monitored during the period of exposure and for an hour after they left the room.

After about 30 minutes, the brains of those in the exhaust rooms displayed a stress response on the EEG, which is indicative of a change in the way information is being processed in the brain cortex.

This effect continued after they were no longer in the room.

"We can only speculate what these effects may mean for the chronic exposure to air pollution encountered in busy cities where the levels of such soot particles can be very high," said lead researcher Paul Borm.

Ken Donaldson, professor of respiratory toxicology at the University of Edinburgh, calls the study "very interesting, and potentially important." The article also referred to a study of dogs in Mexico. Apparently, those who lived in highly-polluted Mexico City had brain lesions similar to those seen in Alzheimer's patients, while those who lived in much less-polluted rural areas showed a much lower rate of damage to the brain.

We would like to take this opportunity to indulge in a little baseless speculation regarding the overwhelming increase in Alzheimer's disease, as revealed by anecdotal yawp by those of our acquaintance. We note, together with Brass and Ivory, that MS, which is the central topic of that worthy (and newly-discovered) blog, also results from lesions in the brain.

If you, or anyone you know, has MS, you might consider frequenting Brass and Ivory for support, information, and the sense of spiritual well-being that comes from knowing that you are not alone, and no, it's not "all in your head." In a manner of speaking.

In the spirit of further indulgence in baseless speculation, let us also point out that Listeriosis, commonly contracted from contaminated food, may not kill you but it will give you summat in the way of lesions of the CNS (central nervous system) and brain. Listeria monocytogenes is often found in milk, which is an excellent medium for bacterial growth, and the bacterium thrives under refrigeration. It is associated with listeric mastitits in cows, which in turn is associated with administration of BGH (bovine growth hormone).

Anyone ever had a kidney stone? Any of you, that is. We haven't, and hope, by the imbibing of the product of the noble vine coupled with humongoscads of our good clean local water, to avoid any such unpleasantness. We're reliably informed by sources that the experience is sort of like popping one's first sprog, but we're not able to offer a comparison of pain.

Good news for you lot, though. Researchers at Boston University just conducted a study on the possibility of using Oxalobacter formigenes, a naturally occurring bacterium, as a "probiotic" treatment for kidney stones. Results are available in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

It is not always clear what causes kidney stones, although they tend to be more of a problem in hot, dry places. In some people, they form naturally and recur at every opportunity.

They range in size from a grain of sand to a pearl. They can be smooth or jagged, and are usually yellow or brown. They can block the urinary tract, cause infection or severe pain, and even lead to kidney failure, sometimes even before the stone can be identified. They will afflict between five and fifteen per cent of the population, but seem to target people aged 20 to 40.

Up to 80% of kidney stones are predominantly composed of a compound called calcium oxalate. O. formigenes breaks down oxalate in the intestinal tract.

Don't celebrate just yet. According to a urologist interviewed for the article, clinical trials of a probiotic are still a ways off.

Meanwhile, Raw Story warns us that one in four teenage girls has an STD (sexually-transmitted disease). And the way the mainstream media has picked up on this story makes you wonder how much teenage cooter these people are indulging in; no wonder the American public has no idea how many have died in Iraq. The media's busy telling them all about teenage pussy, instead. Pertinent excerpts:

A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls aged 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls — nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

About half of the girls acknowledged ever having sex; among them, the rate was 40 percent. While some teens define sex as only intercourse, other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some infections.

Media peeps, the interest in this article wouldn't have anything to do with the drug giant Merck developing a handy-dandy little vaccine named Gardasil, would it? Being as how they're practically trying to force it up the snatch of every pre-teen child, and all?

Fortunately, we have no children, so we don't have to make this judgment call, but it must be tough. To the best of our knowledge so far, the effectiveness of Gardasil has been studied in a mere 20,000 women between 16 and 26 years of age, with follow-up lasting between 2 and 4 years. It does not protect against all types of HPV, of which there are over 100; Gardasil protects against four. It does not protect recipients who might already have been exposed to any of the four types of HPV against which it is effective (in other words, it is not a treatment). It has not been tested in the age group (11-12 years) for which it is being recommended. Two to four years is a very short follow-up for any vaccine, let alone a recombinant-DNA type vaccine.

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) points out, among other things, that "At least 15 oncogenic HPV types have been identified, so targeting only 2 types may not have had a great effect on overall rates of preinvasive lesions." Which is a more scholarly way of saying that it only protects against two types of HPV that can cause cancer, and there are 15 such types. Moreover, the number of women who actually get cervical cancer from these particular types of HPV virus appears to be small, and it is not clear how effective the vaccine is against viruses that cause the type of lesion that leads to invasive cancers.

Please read the NEJM article, if you can. If you have a preadolescent daughter, do the research. The day has yet to dawn when Big Pharma aggressively pushed a drug whose sole value lay in its lifesaving properties.

We, meanwhile, will amuse ourselves with wondering why it is that no one is bothering to study the incidence of STDs in teen boys. After all, those sexually active little girls had to get their STDs on with someone, and let's hope it was a teen boy and not some repulsive aged, flabby, haggard old fart.

Meanwhile, researchers over at the Medical University of South Carolina are telling us that adding a glass of wine to your daily sup has shown a quick heart-protecting effect. We could've told them that, but we're just as happy for them to be backing this up with some hard, non-anecdotal evidence.

Regrettably, although your daily sip will reduce what the researchers euphemistically term "cardiac events" while improving your HDL cholesterol levels, they added a sentence in the article that makes us long for another glass of wine to deaden its effect:

There was no difference in deaths over the four-year follow up.

Apparently, if yer gonna kack, yer gonna kack. But you might want to reduce your cholesterol en route. Feh. If we're gonna kack, we'd rather have a relatively swift "cardiac incident" send us toes up, instead of dragging around with cancer or, worse yet, Alzheimer's. Disirregardless, as they say in the better schools of this fair land, we'll do it with wine, thanks, and hopefully we'll be sozzled enough not to give a good shit when it hits.

We leave you with a truly awful joke.

Doctor: Mr. X, I have some good news and some bad news, which do you want first?
Patient: Ah, give me the bad news, Doc, I can handle it.
Doctor: Mr. X, I'm sorry, but our tests show you have cancer.
Patient: Oh. What's the good news, then?
Doctor: You have Alzheimer's.
Patient: Oh, thank GOD! I was afraid you were going to tell me I had cancer!

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Environment: U.S. The New "Third World"

Brazil &mdash you heard us right &mdash now has more than five million hybrid cars on its roads, Raw Story tells us.

[...] almost nine in ten new vehicles in Brazil now run on both gasoline and ethanol derived from sugar cane, the car manufacturing association Anfavea said Monday.

Hybrid vehicles probably will comprise 52 percent of Brazil's market by 2013. In 2007, they comprised a mere 12 percent.

Last year, Brazil produced 22 billion liters of ethanol biofuel derived from sugar cane. We've blogged before about biofuel, including a link to Science News with a comparison of the efficiency of various biofuel sources. Take a look.

The saddest part of this story is, we're falling behind other countries by the day in terms of innovation, education, and achievement. Singapore and Korea are leading the global field in stem-cell research (Singapore, courtesy of our top stem-cell researchers); Europe is leading the global field in researching and developing hybrid vehicles; and now Brazil, ahead of us in yet another field, even as American multinationals are relocating their business to China, India, Eastern Europe, and Africa to take advantage of cheap labour.

Argh.
Image from Rockjumper Birding Tours

In more heartening environmental news, Raw Story reports that the Philippines has successfully rescued one of its native eagles from the brink of extinction using a breeding program based on American experiments involving condors.

Chief breeder Domingo Tadena, 60, is hoping his 30 years of captive breeding here on the lower slopes of the country's tallest mountain will soon be crowned with the first successful release of the king predator into the wild.

"We now have enough breeding stock," he tells AFP.

"The goal is to eventually release all birds that are hatched here," the breeder said as he hand-fed the chick, the 22nd hatched at the Philippine Eagle Foundation.

Drawing on lessons learned from the condor and harpy eagle conservation programmes in the United States, the foundation's goal is to set free one captive-bred bird each year.

"In the next five years I am confident that we can do this," said Dennis Salvador, the foundation's director.

Standing one metre (3.28 feet) tall with a two-metre (6.56-feet) wingspan and weighing 7.5 kilograms (16.5 pounds), the eagle with the massive hooked beak and hackles spreading out like a crown behind its head is found only here on Mindanao island.

It pairs for life and the female lays one egg every two years. Each eagle needs 17 square kilometres (6.56 square miles) of tropical rainforest to survive.

With old growth tropical rainforest being cut down at the rate of 100 hectares (247 acres) a day, only about 500 breeding pairs remain as prey and nesting sites vanish and the bird itself is pursued by trophy hunters.

Yet another excellent argument for limiting the breeding of the human species &mdash we have 6.x billion of those, insufficient resources to feed them, and too many beautiful creatures that are dying because of us.

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Science: Annual Petrol Fill-up?

Fisker Karma

Yes? Sweet?

Sweeeet! And it's a sports car, too.

The Times (UK) is telling us that you can fill this baby's tank once a year and drive it for the rest of the year with no problems. Is this car available in the U.S.? Because, with the price of gas making Chimpy McStupie's buddies spooge with delight, nobody needs this fucking thing more than the beleagured American consumer.

The makers of the Fisker Karma say that unheard-of level of fuel efficiency is entirely possible if you only drive the car up to 50 miles a day, using just the battery, and remember to recharge it at night.

The car can go from 0-60mph in just six seconds and has a top speed of 125mph - although only in "sport" mode, when the juice kicks in to help power the engine.

The four-door plug-in hybrid, launched today at the Geneva Motor Show, features a small petrol engine and a lithium ion battery pack which work in harmony to power the car using technology developed for secret US military reconnaissance vehicles. It also has an optional solar panel roof that helps charge the car and provide cooling for the interior cabin.

[...]

"It is a rear wheel drive, the car is always being pushed by the rear wheels and the electric motor so the gasoline engine never drives the car, which is the big difference to the normal hybrid of today.”

Even as recently as ten years ago &mdash well, if we hadn't had a bunch of greedy Republican obstructionists in Congress &mdash we would have been manufacturing this car and selling it to everyone else.

Now we'll have to pay for it in Euros. Hopefully, the dollar won't devalue to the point where we'll need a goddamn wheelbarrow full for the purchase price.

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Environment: Dying From The Cold

Credit
Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

Raw Story reports that Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry has issued an extreme weather warning for Siberia, where temperatures are expected to drop to -55C (-67F) this week. The extreme cold is expected to last for approximately a week (till January 21). Normally, temperatures range between -15C to -39C in the Siberian winter, so this is an unusually cold cold snap.

Our sympathies to the Siberian people. We at Casa de Los Gatos, like all gatos, prefer warmth to cold. Our Russian Blue, Gojira Helen Wheels, who would rather sleep under a mountain of blankets than brave the cold, gives grateful thanks that she is not in Siberia this winter.

It is no joking matter, though. Two people have already died and more than 30 have been hospitalized with frostbite in Irkutsk, central Siberia. The bitter cold is overloading power grids so that power is down in some areas. Schools have been closed, and the ministry has warned that the extreme cold could destroy buildings in addition to stalling traffic and killing or injuring people.

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Environment: Snippets

Map of the world from MIT

Snow fell in Baghdad today, according to residents of that benighted city a thing that has not happened for nearly 80 years. The nyuk-nyuk crowd will, of course, as we previously opined, nyuk most energetically about the ridiculousness of snowfall in a time of supposed global warming.

The rest of us, who have successfully extricated our noggins from our arses (or never had them there in the first place) sigh and look to the signs around us that tell us global warming proceeds apace.

This is how rare snow is in Baghdad: the people do not have the language for snowfall.

An Iraqi who works for The Associated Press said he woke his wife and children shortly after 7 a.m. to "have a look at this strange thing." He then called his brother and sister and found them awake, also watching the "cotton-like snow drops covering the trees."

Meanwhile, in Australia, the long drought has been somewhat relieved by ... flooding.

A study by the University of Adelaide in partnership with Charles Sturt University, published in the Australian Journal of Rural Health., stated, in part:

"Australian society, especially rural regions, is becoming more vulnerable to natural disasters, at least in terms of economic costs, and these disasters are primarily climate-related."

One side-effect of the drought is that deadly snakes are being forced from the desert into the cities, and Australia has some of the deadliest snakes in the world.

Meanwhile, Japan is looking at a possibility of a five-degree rise in average temperatures as well as fluctuations in rainfall ranging from a decline of 2.4 per cent to an increase of 16.4 per cent over recorded levels since 1970. The article states, in part:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that global warming at current rates could cause more powerful storms, droughts and floods and eventually threaten hunger and homelessness for millions.

And for those who took some comfort in a British weather experts' finding that the world will cool slightly this year, hold the champagne. It'll still be one of the ten hottest years on record.

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Science: Snippets

From Science News, snippets of information found in Vol. 172:

Correction: The information that follows is actually from Vol. 171.

Caveat: The information that follows is my understanding of articles found in Science News. Limitations of space and time have resulted in a precis of the information published. For a better understanding of the information, please go to Science News online, or subscribe to their fine weekly magazine.


Researchers in West Africa have discovered remnants of a chimpanzee stone age civilization dating back 4300 years. More than 200 stone artifacts were found in Tai National Park in Cote d'Ivoire, used to crack open nuts, according to archaeologist Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary in Alberta and his colleagues. The age of the artifacts was estimated using radiocarbon measurements of burned wood in the soil. The artifacts were identified as implements in a blind test that included tools from a 5,000-year old human site and rocks from a site that had been modified by geological forces only. Starch grains extracted from the stones were shown to come from nuts typically eaten only by chimps. Archaeologist Alison S. Brooks of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., agrees with Mercader's postulation that further research may show evidence of even older chimpanzee sites, and points out that starch grains last well over 100,000 years. Archaeologist John J. Shea of the State University of New York at Stony Brook believes that chimpanzees probably invented the technique on their own rather than inheriting it from a common human-chimpanzee ancestor.


Approximately one in five patients on aspirin and warfarin due to severe narrowing of brain arteries will suffer a stroke or die of a vascular problem within two years, according to Science News. To counter such dismal statistics, scientists have adapted stents, long used to keep heart arteries open, to fit brain arteries which are smaller and more fragile than heart arteries. Jiang Wei Jian, a cardiologist at Beijing Tiantan Hospital reports that Chinese researchers have placed bare metal stents in the brains of 213 patients who had suffered strokes or ministrokes resulting from atherosclerosis which reduced the diameter of a brain artery by more than half. In the two years following such stenting, only 9 per cent of treated patients experienced a stroke.

Osama O. Zaidat, a neurologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee coauthored a study on 131 patients who had a brain artery with 82 per cent blockage who had already suffered a stroke or ministroke. After being treated with a newer, more flexible stent that springs open at the target cite, their blockage was reduced to an average size of 20 per cent.

A third study showed that only 2 out of 59 patients who received drug-coated metal stents to treat severely narrowed arteries suffered a stroke within the four months after the procedure. Almost all the stented arteries remained open, says study coauthor Tudor G. Jovin, a neurologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Researchers plan to do an efficacy trial next.


Each person who has cancer shows a particular pattern of genetic changes in their cells. These changes vary from person to person even when two individuals are suffering the same type of cancer. However, the genetic screening of tumours is expensive because current techniques sequence a single gene at a time, and hundreds of cancer-related mutations might need to be screened. Levi Garraway and his colleagues at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston have developed a way to screen multiple genes simultaenously with a degree of sensitivity hitherto unknown. The wide variety of mutations that the group found underscores the vast and poorly understood complexity of tumour genetics. Garraway expects the number of therapies targeted to specific cancers to grow rapidly in the next few years. Question: To whom will these therapies be available?


Science News tells us that lightning flashes occur 65 times per second worldwide. Each lightning bolt releases an amount of energy similar to a quarter ton of TNT, heating the air to approximately 30,000C (five times the temperature of the surface of the sun). When lightning strikes sand, it can melt and fuse sand and other materials into masses called fulgurites. Fulgurites, according to Rafael Navarro-Gonzales, a geochemist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, when subjected to chemical analysis, can reveal details about the landscape in which they formed. For example, satellite data show very little lightning between 1998 and 2005 in the desert of southwestern Egypt. However, the fulgurites found in that desert prove that lightning frequently struck the area sometime in the past. A particular fulgurite being studied dates back 15,000 years, at which time the desert in which it was found supported shrubs and grasses similar to those found today in southwestern Niger, 600 km south.


Michael Longaker, a pediatric craniofacial surgeon at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, CA, has been working with his colleagues on a mouse gene called glycogen synthase kinase-3B (GSK-3B). Previous studies have linked this gene to palate and breastbone development and Longaker and his colleagues hoped to show how to prevent cleft palates by acting on this gene. The researchers engineered mice with a chemical tag on the relevant gene that made the protein produced by the gene degrade rapidly. Such mice, like those engineered to lack the gene altogether, developed cleft palates and malformed breastbones and died at birth. However, when a drug named rapamycin (which prevents the GSK-3B protein from degrading) was administered to the mothers of such mice throughout pregnancy, the resulting mice did not suffer from the birth defects. Most interestingly, the timing of the dosage showed different effects. In order to prevent cleft palates, the mousy mothers needed the drug between 13.5 and 15 days after gestation. To prevent breastbone defects, the mousy mothers needed the drugs between days 15.5 and 17.

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Health: Alzheimer's Reversal

PET scan of a human brain with Alzheimer's courtesy of NIH/National Institute On Aging

This is good news indeed, for those of us with aging parents, or, worse yet, those who are feeling the first touch of Alzheimer's. Nasty, nasty disease. And till now there has been no cure, or even treatment, really.

A new scientific study documents marked improvement in Alzheimer’s disease within minutes of administration of a therapeutic molecule, according to the Journal of Neuroinflammation.

The study shows how a cytokine (soluble protein) known as tumor necrosis factor-alpha(TNF), which normally regulates transmission of neural impulses in the brain, interferes with regulation when it is present at elevated levels. The brains and cerebrospinal fluid of Alzheimer's patients show elevated levels of this cytokine.

Injection of an anti-TNF therapeutic called etanercept shows improvement within minutes. Etanercept (trade name Enbrel) binds and inactivates excess TNF. Etanercept is FDA approved to treat a number of immune-mediated disorders and is used off label in the study.

The study was authored by Edward Tobinick M.D., assistant clinical professor of medicine at UCLA and director of the Institute for Neurological Research, with coauthor Hyman Gross, M.D., clinical professor of neurology at USC.

The study is titled “Rapid cognitive improvement in Alzheimer’s disease following perispinal etanercept administration,” and is available with the accompanying commentary, entitled “Perispinal etanercept: Potential as an Alzheimer’s therapeutic,” on the Web site of the Journal of Neuroinflammation.

Let's hope it helps one of our favourite authors, Terry Pratchett.

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Racism: What It Means For You

Hey! WHOA, there, pardner. When someone starts messing with our meds, we get ... concerned is putting it mildly.

Raw Story is telling us that minorities who go to the ER are less likely to get strong painkillers. WTF is that about?

Is pain less painful if you have a little pigmentation with it? Or what?

We remember gratefully the ER doctor who gave us a shot of demerol for a nasty abscessed tooth. When we showed up a day or two before, some flunky gave us antibiotics and told us to take ibuprofen. We can tell you exactly where to put that ibuprofen, ER junior assistant dishwasher. It ain't in our face, either.

After three days of excruciating pain which no amount of painkillers did squat about - and we don't like painkillers and don't like to take them, but were taking them about every two hours thanks to the agonizing pain - that shot of demerol was like instant heaven. The pain just disappeared.

Now why would anyone want to deny a suffering person relief? Eh?

Study co-author Mark Fletcher of UCSF had this to say:

... 23 percent of blacks, 24 percent of Hispanics, [and 28 percent of Asians and other groups] received [...] narcotic pain medications [...] for moderate to severe pain, compared with 31 percent of whites.

Pain management in the ER is "particularly important," said Fletcher. "Patients ... often have an acute issue with severe or new pain which really requires attention."

[...] The use of [strong pain meds] increased overall between 1993 and 2005, but the disparity between the treatment of whites vs. that of blacks and other minorities has remained stagnant.

ER physicians are often vigilant when administering opioids like morphine and codeine because of patients who are addicted to prescribed painkillers. [...]

"I'm sure this is part of the reason that patients don't always get the pain control they need," said Fletcher. "The ironic fact, however, is whites are actually more likely to abuse prescription medications than other patients are."

Dr. Fletcher says minority patients who don't get the pain relief they need should ask for it and keep asking till they get it. Great advice, doc, but let us know how that works for you when you're in the ER. We were lucky to have someone else with us at the time (the oft-mentioned spousal unit). We were too busy groaning and rolling about in pain to ask for any damn thing.

Details here.

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