February 2011
11 posts
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Thanks All
Just quickly - didn’t feel I could post fluff like this without a ‘proper’ post before it.
Thanks to all the new followers over the last couple of days, We’re now over double of what I was hoping to writing for when I set this up (not going to say numbers, in true tumblr terms it’s pitifully small).
But thanks again, and if anyone wants a particular subject in a new...
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Snake Bites - Using poison to cure. (Post 2 of 2)
Venomous snakes are present in every part of the world, with hundreds of different proteins in each venom, with the sole purpose of immobilising and/or killing prey. I know what you’re thinking here:
‘God! What an amazing source of new drugs for heart disease!’
No? You aren’t? The rest of us all were, honest…
Why can we use venoms to cure rather than kill? It’s because of how they alter our...
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Doesn't get more global health than this... →
On the cambodian-thai border lies the Preah Vihear temple; a place of current conflict and also where we’re seeing drug resistance to malaria start to appear.
Thanks to the combo, we may see more and more cases of Malaria where even our newest drugs cannot cure it…
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BIOBABE.: White blood cells, helping create... →
biotech:
Information found: Here.
People always say to wear sunscreen because the UV rays could cause damage to your skin cells that could potentially cause cancer.
Most recently a singular type of skin cancer has been on the rise, Cutaneous Melanoma. A type of cancer that is difficult to treat and…
The biggest news is this bit
However, this interferon lets the tumors grow because...
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“It [Female Genital Mutilation] is torture. It is inhuman. It is degrading...”
– Ms Berhane Ras-Work, director of the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children.
Article Source
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Over 100 million girls and women worldwide have... →
(This is far more global health than it is tropical medicine stuff, but still…)
This is NOT something you can chalk up to ‘cultural differences’. Maybe I’m being too much of an imperialist westerner but still, it’s assault in my mind.
The custom comprises a range of procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitals or other injury to the...
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TIL, Neil Gaiman created anti HIV comics.
That’s right, Safe sex advice from Death (from Sandman) and John Constantine…
Nice to see Constantine get embarrassed about something though (the good old, condoms on bananas demo)
http://io9.com/#!5750398/neil-gaimans-1994-safe-sex-psa-starring-death-from-sandman-and-john-constantine/gallery/1
January 2011
17 posts
4 tags
I'm listed in Tumblweeds under medicine, science,...
I’m listed in Tumblweeds, a user-generated community directory that rates Tumblr bloggers by their number of followers. Find me listed in #medicine, #science, #health
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Malaria Vaccine Trials – getting under fives to...
So the malaria vaccine mentioned last time (RTS) has been a long time coming (since around 1987) and no-one’s pretending it’s ‘here’ yet. But a paper released earlier this week suggests that it could have a pretty decent role in protecting children in malaria endemic areas.
Quick recap as to why that’s far bigger news than I just made out:
Malaria is responsible for around two million deaths a...
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Delays...
Oops. I know I said the next post on the Malaria vaccine would be coming up yesterday, but turns out I’m trying to fit far too much in my day…
But it’s like 80-90% done… and I’m planning on doing more of the second snake bite post over the weekend.
Anyway, I remember back in my first post saying I should only be aiming for a post a week. Looks like any form of...
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Malaria Vaccine Showing Promise
Extremely tired, so will write about this properly tomorrow, BUT. Here’s evidence for a step further to a fully effective malaria vaccine (RTS,S/AS01E). Yup, that’s right, a malaria vaccine. Maybe not the holy grail of vaccines (thinking HIV here) but definitely impressive.
The efficacy doesn’t seem fantastic yet (45%ish), but then, there’d be a lot of herd immunity as...
Case Notes →
releasethetourniquets:
I’ve been brought up on a healthy diet of Radio 4 listening, and I’d recommend the programme ‘Case Notes’ to any budding medics out there.
Each week they cover a different topic in a half-hour programme - from Autism to Biomechanics
Note: Although part of the BBC World-service, it may not be available outside the UK.
As another Radio 4 geek, another good programme is...
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“If the committee does not consider that it is reckless to prescribe magic water...”
– Tracey Brown - Sense About Science
(see http://everythingversushost.tumblr.com/post/2828743422/ )
http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/574/
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Pharmacists who knowingly put lives at risk get...
Yesterday it was announced that the Royal Pharmaceutical Council of Great Britain has dropped two cases, both against pharmacies that were recommending homeopathic ‘treatments’ to prevent malaria.
This wasn’t alongside recommending seeing a doctor or travel clinic before heading abroad. The advice of a few magic sugar pills was all that was given to a reporter, who had said they...
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Interesting in a terrifying kind of way. Think...
The New Scientist has an article out today that’s possibly the most unsettling thing I’ve read about an already, quite unsettling disease.
Turns out mice, exposed to aerosols containing brain tissue from scrapie infected mice, catch the disease.
Now, that may not sound creepy, or even surprising, but there’s a wider context to this.
It connects to diseases created by...
