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30 August 2023
[worms] ‘Oh my god’: live worm found in Australian woman’s brain in world-first discovery … Oh, Dear God, Tapeworms! ‘It was a fairly regular day on the ward for Canberra hospital infectious diseases physician Dr Sanjaya Senanayake, until a neurosurgeon colleague called him and said: “Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe what I just found in this lady’s brain – and it’s alive and wriggling.” The neurosurgeon, Dr Hari Priya Bandi, had pulled an 8cm-long parasitic roundworm from her patient…’
3 August 2023
[doctors] Fad diets, midday sun and … coffee on the sofa: 12 doctors on the everyday dangers they avoid … ‘I don’t take paracetamol for a headache unless it is really bad. I see a lot of people with headaches in my clinic and they can usually be avoided by a healthier lifestyle. Quite often patients get headaches from popping too many paracetamols, or other over-the-counter medications. It is a vicious cycle: we call it an analgesic overuse headache. I try not to skip sleep. If you want to get a headache, go to bed late and get up early. Sleep and downtime are important.’
9 November 2022
[vaccines] No One Knows What’s Inside the Smallpox Vaccine … The fascinating mystery story inside our oldest vaccine. ‘Scientists call it vaccinia, and it is pretty much found only in the vaccines. No one knows where vaccinia came from in nature. No one has ever found its animal reservoir. No one knows quite what vaccinia is—even as it has been used to inoculate billions of people and saved hundreds of millions of lives. It is a ghost of a virus that has survived by being turned into a vaccine.’
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21 October 2021
[quacks] James Morrison: The Doctor Who Made His Patients Poop Themselves To Death … ‘The doctor, you’ll be shocked to learn, wasn’t too fussed about figuring out things like dosage, and here’s where things got dangerous. As far as he was concerned, if you fancied ramming down dozens of the laxatives that was fine. He even recommended that you take laxatives for the diarrhea, “so as effectually to carry off the morbid humours”, as well as dysentery. Needless to say, but this is like someone trying to treat your ball pain with successive blows to the testicles. He advised that you were likely to feel worse before you get better, and to not let that stop you from taking his extremely profitable medicine. Of course, the pills began to kill people, including one 15-year-old girl who died “in horrible distress” as a consequence of taking his medicine, as well as a little apprentice boy, among others.’
23 June 2021
[health] The Super-Soldier Cells Hiding in Your Pus … The Atlantic takes a look at one of our immune system’s most potent weapons. ‘Neutrophils are more Cylons than stormtroopers. While other immune cells creep by at speeds of just a couple micrometers per minute, neutrophils can barrel through vessels 10 times as fast, and are flexible enough to squeeze themselves through spaces that span less than an eighth of their width. They are healers that can help stitch torn tissues back together; they can wrangle tumors too, and shape the fate of the immune cells that follow them. Neutrophils also harbor one of the immune system’s most terrifying armaments: They can unspool the genetic material that’s normally packed into a tight wad at their center, freckle it with toxic proteins and compounds, and then spew it out their side like a lethal sneeze—a weaponization of their own DNA.’
19 August 2020
[covid] The Nurses Working to Save Coronavirus Deniers … How nurses cope with Corona deniers seriously ill with Covid-19. ‘What really keeps Jack up at night, though, is how this virus can cause deniers to take a bad turn so fast. One minute their babbling about the new world order, the next they’re crashing into respiratory arrest seemingly out of nowhere. “I can understand denial when people first come in; initially, it presents as pretty benign. With other illnesses, there’s a linear progression to it,” Jack says. “But these people, they go from FaceTiming with their families, to 90 minutes later, I’m shoving a tube down their throat.”’
14 August 2020
[covid] The Pandemic’s Biggest Mystery Is Our Own Immune System … A beginners guide to the human immune system. TL;DR: It’s really complicated. ‘The immune system’s reaction to the virus is a matter of biology, but the range of reactions we actually see is also influenced by politics. Bad decisions mean more cases, which means a wider variety of possible immune responses, which means a higher prevalence of rare events. In other words, the worse the pandemic gets, the weirder it will get.’
2 March 2020
[death] 17th Century Death Roulette ☠️ … How would you have died in the 17th Century? ‘In the week of September 12th, 1665 you died from Canker.’
25 September 2019
[health] The Most Overhyped Wellness Promises, Debunked … ‘Meditation isn’t always soothing – For some people, it can lead to hyper-arousal, sensitivity to light and sound, and intense negative emotions.’ [ Previously]
15 February 2019
[sleep] How to Sleep. .. A doctor advises on how to sleep well. ‘ Could soldiers be trained to function in sustained warfare with very little sleep? The original studies seemed to say yes. But when the military put soldiers in a lab to make certain they stayed awake, performance suffered. Cumulative deficits accrued with each night of suboptimal sleep. The less sleep the soldiers got, the more deficits they suffered the next day. But as with my own residency experience, they couldn’t tell that they had a deficit. “They would insist that they were fine,” said Dinges, “but weren’t performing well at all, and the discrepancy was extreme.” This finding has been replicated many times over the intervening decades, even as many professions continue to encourage and applaud sleep deprivation.’
12 February 2019
[sleep] The best thing you can do for your health: sleep well …
‘Strikingly, all it takes is one hour of lost sleep, as demonstrated by a global experiment performed on 1.6 billion people across more than 60 countries twice a year, otherwise known as daylight saving times. In the spring, when we lose one hour of sleep, there is a 24% increase in heart attacks the following day. In the autumn, we gain an hour of sleep opportunity, and there is a 21% reduction in heart attacks. Most of us think little of losing an hour of sleep, yet it is anything but trivial. Sleep disruption has further been associated with all major psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety and suicidality. Indeed, in my research over the past 20 years, we have not been able to find a single major psychiatric condition in which sleep is normal.’
11 February 2019
[health] The unbearable wrongness of Gwyneth Paltrow … another satisfying take down of Gwyneth Paltrow and her health and wellness business. ‘It’s strange. One week, Paltrow is claiming she’s found the perfect diet. The next week, she says she needs to detox to undo damage from whatever she’s been throwing into her body. For a brief moment, while reading through every ridiculous diet Paltrow has put her body through (or put through her body), I felt bad for her. Nevertheless, Paltrow’s dieting advice now borders on the pathological. Her quest for health began when she sought out the advice of Dr. Alejandro Junger, a Dr. Oz acolyte who says you can cleanse the toxins from your body by avoiding gluten, nightshades, soy, peanuts, dairy, sugar, and alcohol — you know, basically all food. Junger’s battery of bullshit tests told Paltrow that it was in her best interest to eat this way (and, likely, purchase the doctor’s $475, 21-day diet program) to restore her health.’
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8 February 2019
[drinking] ‘Hangxiety’: why alcohol gives you a hangover and anxiety … ‘Another key cause of hangxiety is being unable to remember the mortifying things you are sure you must have said or done while inebriated – another result of your compromised glutamate levels. “You need glutamate to lay down memories,” says Nutt, “and once you’re on the sixth or seventh drink, the glutamate system is blocked, which is why you can’t remember things.”’
16 August 2018
[coke] BREAKING: Man Who Drinks 5 Diet Cokes Per Day Hoping Doctors Working On Cure For Whatever He’s Getting … ‘It makes sense because medicine is already so advanced that in 15 to 20 years, when I finally experience the full onset of whatever the hell freaky illness is slowly gestating inside of me with each sugar-free can of this shit, there’s bound to be at least one cure. And I hope they start working on it soon, too, because I’m not feeling so great.’
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3 April 2018
[health] What do doctors say to ‘alternative therapists’ when a patient dies? Nothing. We never talk. … Fascinating article from a Doctor regarding alternative cancer treatments … ‘I have little expectation that someone who would sell false hope to a vulnerable patient would talk me through their reasons why. I once ran into a licensed doctor who oversaw $500 vitamin infusions for cancer patients. The moment when we discovered what the other did was awkward to say the least. My expression asked, “Why?” I saw him struggle with the answer before he said, “Because patients want it.” There was no common ground for a conversation and we slid away into the crowd.’
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14 March 2018
[science] The Brighter Side of Rabies … A brief look at how scientists are using the rabies virus for research into the brain. ‘Ian Wickersham, a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who helped Callaway engineer the modified rabies virus eight years ago, is now at work on another version. The original, Wickersham told me, “kills infected cells quite quickly: by about two weeks after infection, they’re all either dead or in dire shape.” This meant that the scientists had a limited time to observe the virus’s movement in the brain. His goal, he said, is to make the rabies virus “innocuous, so infected neurons are completely healthy,” which might enable scientists not only to see how individual neurons are connected but also to watch the connections form. In other labs, different modified viruses are being used to target cancer, enhance food safety, and cure certain forms of color blindness. A modified strain of H.I.V., Callaway noted, is often used in labs to transfer genes between organisms.’
28 April 2015
[health] Yes, You Can Catch Insanity: Reviving the debate about the immune system and mental illness. … a look at the connections between the immune system, inflammation and mental health … ‘Nothing cemented the link between body and brain quite like syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum. Before antibiotics, a syphilis infection could be a slow-motion death sentence. In addition to ravaging the body, late-stage syphilis victims often escalated into what doctors at the time called neurosyphilis, a sort of manic, delusional state, before edging over into paralysis and death. It was a clear, common case of an infection causing psychosis.Syphilis was so common it was called “the disease of the century.” Most patients were middle-class men; according to one estimate, 10 percent of patients in turn-of-the-century asylums were there because of neurosyphilis.’
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29 October 2014
[flu] Experts: If You Don’t Get A Flu Shot, You’re Stupid. And A Dick … Leigh Cowart on why you should get a flu shot. … ‘Everyone six months of age and older should get vaccinated for seasonal influenza, especially those at high risk of developing serious flu-related complications. According to Dr. Damania, those most at-risk for developing flu-related complications include the very young, the very old, those with immune system problems like HIV and cancer patients, and sufferers of other chronic diseases such as diabetes, COPD, and CHF. However he is careful to note that during the H1N1 outbreak, they saw “young, healthy people dying all over the place from the flu.” So everyone should get immunized, unless they have a severe chicken or egg allergy, have had a severe reaction to an influenza vaccine, or a history of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, or are under six months of age. These unlucky folks can’t get immunized and will just have to hope that everyone else gets a flu shot, giving them a chance to cash in on some community immunity.’
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11 July 2014
[disa] Nature’s Most Perfect Killing Machine… a profile of the Ebola virus… ‘I first read Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone when I was 11 years old or so, and have since been in the habit of weighing every potential catastrophe against “death by Ebola virus disease.” The book is lurid and dramatic; the iconography of a dying patient crying blood and shitting out their intestines is, I admit, compelling. Terror-inducing as it may be, though, it’s perhaps not the most accurate portrait of the threat this particular monster poses…’
28 January 2014
[health] How do vaccines cause autism? … a useful website for anti-vaxxers.
8 November 2013
[health] Setting the Record Straight: Debunking ALL the Flu Vaccine Myths … With flu season’s arrival this is a very timely debunking of myths about Flu vaccines … ‘Myth #18: If I get the flu, antibiotics will take care of me. (No, they can’t.) Influenza is a virus. Antibiotics fight bacteria (anti = “against”; biotics = “of life,” referring to living bacteria, not to viruses). All the antibiotics in the world won’t help you fight off a flu infection.’
27 March 2013
[funny] The Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense … ‘In my gross over simplification the vast majority of the multitude of evidenced-free beliefs at large in the world can be crudely classified into four basic sets or bollocks. Namely, Religion, Quackery, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal.’
25 January 2013
[health] What Doctors Won’t Do … Doctors discuss which medical treatments they would avoid … ‘I would never avoid having my children vaccinated. Several years ago, I volunteered with Médecins Sans Frontières and spent six months in Angola. I’d expected the poverty, but it was the arrival of kids suffering from severe illnesses that should never have occurred – illnesses easily prevented elsewhere, like measles, or tetanus – that saddened me most. That, and the quiet humility with which families would queue for hours under a scorching sun to receive their vaccines.’
8 January 2013
[disease] Charlie Brooker On The Norovirus: The fascinating pitter-patter of stomach contents against the back of your teeth as a fearsome torrent of spew erupts from within like a liquid poltergeist fleeing an exorcism. The impressive way your backside emits high-pressure jets of hot fluid, like the Hulk squeezing silty boiled water from a Fairy Liquid bottle by clenching it abruptly in his fist. The searing aftermath, as your throat rages as though sandpapered and your anus screams like a scalded button. This is nature in all its raw majesty. Film it in HD, get David Attenborough to record the soundtrack, and you’ve got a Sunday evening treat for millions.’
6 May 2011
[comics] How 2000AD artist and MS sufferer John Hicklenton chose to end his life … …he decided to finish the battle on his own terms. Even when we went to Dignitas,” Lavis recalls, “it was, ‘I’m pulling the pin on the hand grenade. I’m murdering MS. It’s not murdering me.’”
24 January 2011
[health] How Does Homeopathy Work? … ‘Please note that corrections will not be accepted unless accompanied by robust, peer-reviewed, scientific data.’
19 November 2010
[health] The Launch Of Bipolar Disorder … fascinating look at the marketing of Bipolar Disorder in the 1990’s … ‘Once the medical elites were bought and sold on the new disease, armies of industry representatives descended on clinicians, to ‘educate’ them and teach them how to recognise the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Bipolar patient advocacy groups sprang up, generously supported by pharmaceutical companies; freelance journalists were hired to write magazine articles on the latest advances in psychiatric science; websites were created…’
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8 August 2010
[brains] Brain Drain … the New Yorker takes a look “neuroenhancing” drugs … Alex remains enthusiastic about Adderall, but he also has a slightly jaundiced critique of it. “It only works as a cognitive enhancer insofar as you are dedicated to accomplishing the task at hand,” he said. “The number of times I’ve taken Adderall late at night and decided that, rather than starting my paper, hey, I’ll organize my entire music library! I’ve seen people obsessively cleaning their rooms on it.”
1 August 2010
[health] On Being Sane In Insane Places … long disturbing
report on a now classic experiment where a number of mentally healthy people pretend to have mental ilness to enter a psychiatric hospital and once they are in return to their normal behaviour and then report on how they are treated … One tacit characteristic of psychiatric diagnosis is that it locates the sources of aberration within the individual and only rarely within the complex of stimuli that surrounds him. Consequently, behaviors that are stimulated by the environment are commonly misattributed to the patient’s disorder. For example, one kindly nurse found a pseudopatient pacing the long hospital corridors. “Nervous, Mr. X?” she asked. “No, bored,” he said.
30 July 2010
[comics] My Favourite Medical Graphic Novels … a list of comics exploring health and medical themes … On Epileptic by David B: ‘In Epileptic there are no happy endings, no miracle cures, but we are left with a deeper understanding of how illness can affect a family. Not recommended for newly diagnosed epileptics. An upsetting masterpiece.’
5 July 2010
[science] The Undead Henrietta Lacks And Her Immortal Dynasty … Adam Curtis has posted his BBC documentary on the story of Henrietta Lacks on to his blog … ‘Henrietta Lacks’ cells are immortal.’
30 June 2010
[comics] Homeopathy … another comic on health and science issues from Daryl Cunningham … 
17 May 2010
[history] Scott and Scurvy … a long wonderfully written look at the history behind the treatment of scurvy and how the was cure was misunderstood and forgotten at the start of the 20th Century … ‘They had a theory of the disease that made sense, fit the evidence, but was utterly wrong.’
2 April 2010
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24 July 2009
[health] Kill or Cure? … a website analysing The Daily Mail’s cancer coverage… ‘Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it.’
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6 July 2009
[swineflu] Pig Death Flu Apocalypse Virus … Tom Reynolds — a London Ambulance Man — on Swine Flu … ‘Our call rate has gone from the normal 4,200-4,500 calls per day to around 5,200-5,700 in the last few days. This is an increase of around 26% Rather obviously this is having us run ragged.’
13 January 2009
[health] The Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project … ‘A blog following the Daily Mail’s ongoing mission to divide all the inanimate objects in the world into those that cause or cure cancer.’ [via Mondo a-go-go]
30 December 2007
[house] It Could be Lupus — a compilation of House lupus moments. And remember: It’s not Lupus, it’s never Lupus. (more…)
17 November 2007
[dna] 23AndMe Will Decode Your DNA for $1,000. Welcome to the Age of Genomics — from Wired … ‘We will, counterintuitively, face even more pressure to conduct our lives carefully, strictly, and cautiously; we’ll practice the art of predictive diagnosis and receive a demanding roster of things to avoid, things to do, and treatments to receive — long before there’s any physical evidence of disease. And, yes, we will know whether our children are predisposed to certain traits or talents — athletics or music or languages — and encourage them to pursue certain paths. In short, life will become a little more like a game of strategy, where we’re always playing the percentages, trying to optimize our outcomes.’
12 August 2007
[tv] The Real Doctor House — I’m relieved to find out that that the real House doesn’t have a borderline personality disorder. .. ‘Unfortunately, many of the patients Bolte sees are victims of iatrogenic, or doctor-caused, illness. Simply put, they have been misdiagnosed, overmedicated to the point of sickness, or given treatment inappropriate to their conditions. On occasion, this has led to shouting matches with more conventional docs, like the dermatologist colleague who burst into Bolte’s office one day and harangued him—in front of another patient—for telling the mom of an acne-ridden teen to stop feeding her child so much junk food. There’s no evidence that diet has anything to do with acne, the dermatologist shouted. Bolte begged to differ and cited the literature. “The pharmaceutical industry has trained even doctors to believe that there’s a pharmaceutical answer to everything,” he says, shrugging.’ [via Ask Metafilter]
28 February 2007
[funny] Vita Radium Suppositories (for restoring Sex Power) … ‘Recommended for sexually weak men who, however, should use the NU-MAN Tablets in connection for best results. Also splendid for piles and rectal sores.’
8 October 2006
[futures] The Coming Death Shortage — interesting look at what happens in the near future as people live longer and longer lives … ‘Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak founded Apple in their twenties; Albert Einstein dreamed up special relativity at about the same age. For better and worse, young people in developed nations will have less chance to shake things up in tomorrow’s world. Poorer countries, where the old have less access to longevity treatments, will provide more opportunity, political and financial. As a result, according to Fred C. Iklé, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “it is not fanciful to imagine a new cleavage opening up in the world order.” On one side would be the “‘bioengineered’ nations,” societies dominated by the “becalmed temperament” of old people. On the other side would be the legions of youth—”the protagonists,” as the political theorist Samuel Huntington has described them, “of protest, instability, reform, and revolution.”‘
10 May 2006
[belly] Why doesn’t my belly button heal over? — also answers the important medical conundrum: Where does belly button fuzz come from? … ‘Belly button fuzz (or lint) comes from the clothes you wear. Some fabrics shed more than others. Some shapes of belly buttons are better collectors. A hairy belly button will collect fuzz better than a hairless one.’
26 March 2006
[gross] My Eyeball Just Fell Out of Its Socket — What should you do? … ‘The treatment for globe luxation is pretty simple: Doctors apply some topical painkillers, hold back your lashes, and poke your eyeball into its socket by pressing on the white part with gloved fingers. (In some cases, they’ll use a simple tool like a bent paperclip to shoehorn it back into place.)’
3 March 2006
[ukblogs] On The Power Of Blankets — Tom Reynolds on why a blanket is like a E.M.T’s towel … ‘Doing CPR on the floor for an extended period of time can be wearing on your knees – a folded blanket makes a nice cushion to rest on while pounding away on some dead person’s chest.’
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