Can Romance Be Reduced to Pronouns?

In the speed-dating study, Pennebaker and his colleague Molly Ireland found that couples who used similar levels of personal pronouns, prepositions and even articles were three times as likely to want to date each other compared with those whose language styles didn’t match.() The metric, called language style matching (L.S.M.), was also better at predicting who didn’t make a love connection than the individuals themselves, several of whom showed interest in a partner who did not reciprocate.() “It does better than humans themselves who are in the interaction,” said Pennebaker, author of the new book “The Secret Life of Pronouns.” “Some of the most revealing words we use are the shortest and most forgettable.”
Link

The Doctor’s Remedy: Turmeric for Joint Pain

Yet another reason to go eat some more curry!
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What the Science Shows: A study published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2009 compared the active ingredient in turmeric, curcumin, with ibuprofen for pain relief in 107 people with knee osteoarthritis. The curcumin eased pain and improved function about as well as the ibuprofen. Another study, by researchers at Baylor University Medical Center in 2008, reported that taking curcumin daily in moderate doses for up to three months was safe.
The Caveats
Because the active compound in turmeric can sometimes slow blood clotting, avoid taking it at least two weeks before any scheduled surgery, and do not mix with blood thinners like warfarin and Plavix. It may also worsen gallbladder problems, so avoid it if you have gallstones. Check with your doctor before trying it.
Link

First Results of Phase 3 Trial of RTS,S/AS01 Malaria Vaccine in African Children

Exciting news in the latest journal of New England Journal of Medicine regarding a vaccine for Malaria:
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Link
As the accompanying editorial notes this could be available in some African countries in 2015!

Link
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What does this vaccine mean for the future of the control and elimination of malaria? The considerable increase in global funding is paying dividends. In places where effective interventions (insecticide-treated bed nets, insecticides, and artemisinin-combination treatments) are being intensively deployed, malaria morbidity and mortality are falling. Several new, simple, affordable interventions, such as seasonal chemoprevention among young children in areas of seasonally high malaria transmission and the use of artesunate in patients with severe malaria, can also provide substantial reductions in mortality. The very low rate of death from malaria in this large trial (only 10 deaths directly attributed to malaria) testifies to the benefits of providing early diagnosis and effective antimalarial treatment. But there are real dangers ahead. How will the necessary funding be sustained in the face of a global economic downturn, along with a reduction in political pressure associated with declining mortality from malaria? In addition, artemisinin resistance in malaria parasites and pyrethroid resistance in anopheline mosquito vectors pose very serious threats.

The only Task is to Love

This is a profound essay on what it is like to raise a child with a terminal illness...

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Notes From a Dragon Mom: Link

Senegal Curbs a Bloody Rite for Girls and Women

Across the continent, an estimated 92 million girls and women have undergone it. But like more than 5,000 other Senegalese villages, Sare Harouna has joined a growing movement to end the practice.
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In my many discussions with people in Africa, I learned that female genital cutting is such a long standing natural tradition which makes it hard to gain ground. However, the strategy outlined in this piece from Ms. Dugger at the New York Times shows that succss is indeed achievable!
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The movement to end genital cutting is spreading in Senegal at a quickening pace through the very ties of family and ethnicity that used to entrench it. And a practice once seen as an immutable part of a girl’s life in many ethnic groups and African nations is ebbing, though rarely at the pace or with the organized drive found in Senegal.
The change is happening without the billions of dollars that have poured into other global health priorities throughout the developing world in recent years. Even after campaigning against genital cutting for years, the United Nations has raised less than half the $44 million it set as the goal.
But here in Senegal, Tostan, a group whose name means “breakthrough” in Wolof, Senegal’s dominant language, has had a major impact with an education program that seeks to build consensus, African-style, on the dangers of the practice, while being careful not to denounce it as barbaric as Western activists have been prone to do.
Link to article: here
Link to accompanying video here:

Sprinter, 100, sets record and aims for marathon

Fauja Singh, a 100-year-old British man, has run his way to eight sprinting world records and is aiming to set another, when he takes part in the Toronto Marathon.
Mr Singh broke the records for 100-year-old men in all eight sprinting distances on Thursday. The Guinness Book of World Records will be on hand on Sunday to document his attempt at completing a full marathon distance.
Link

In Some Chinese Hospitals, Violence Is Out of Control and It's Doctors Who Are at Risk

On a recent Monday afternoon, doctors at Beijing Tongren Hospital stopped working. Their hour-long protest aimed to raise awareness about what they say is a rising problem in Chinese hospitals: attacks on medical personnel. "Punish the attacker severely and give dignity back to doctors," read a digital sign set up by the staff, according to state media.
Days earlier, Xu Wen, a 43-year-old otolaryngologist at the hospital, had been brutally attacked by a dissatisfied patient.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2096630,00.html#ixzz1aZozluEO

Uncovering the business of child sacrifice in Uganda

A BBC investigation has discovered that many cases of child sacrifice in Uganda are not being followed up by the police and little is being done to protect potential victims.
According to a major report released by the charity Jubilee Campaign, around 900 Ugandan children have fallen victim to the practice.
The ritual, which some believe brings wealth and good health, was almost unheard of in the country until around three years ago, but it has re-emerged, seemingly alongside a boom in the country's economy.
Link (to a disturbing video)

Apple logo commemorating Steve Jobs a cyber hit

HONG KONG - A Hong Kong design student's poignant tribute to Apple founder Steve Jobs became an internet hit today with its minimalist, touching symbolism and brought a job offer and a flood of commemorative merchandise using his design.
Link

The Limits of Empathy

David Brooks has had a series of excellent editorials on empathy and social justice. This is the latest. 
But if you subscribe to the New York Times it is worth reviewing his past month or two of columns on this subject.
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The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.

n the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards sometimes wept as they mowed down Jewish women and children, but they still did it. Subjects in the famous Milgram experiments felt anguish as they appeared to administer electric shocks to other research subjects, but they pressed on because some guy in a lab coat told them to.

Empathy orients you toward moral action, but it doesn’t seem to help much when that action comes at a personal cost. You may feel a pang for the homeless guy on the other side of the street, but the odds are that you are not going to cross the street to give him a dollar.

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Moreover, Prinz argues, empathy often leads people astray. It influences people to care more about cute victims than ugly victims. It leads to nepotism. It subverts justice; juries give lighter sentences to defendants that show sadness. It leads us to react to shocking incidents, like a hurricane, but not longstanding conditions, like global hunger or preventable diseases.

Nobody is against empathy. Nonetheless, it’s insufficient. These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them.

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People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.

Twitter Study Tracks When We Are :)

Drawing on messages posted by more than two million people in 84 countries, researchers discovered that the emotional tone of people’s messages followed a similar pattern not only through the day but also through the week and the changing seasons. The new analysis suggests that our moods are driven in part by a shared underlying biological rhythm that transcends culture and environment.

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The pair found that about 7 percent of the users qualified as “night owls,” showing peaks in upbeat-sounding messages around midnight and beyond, and about 16 percent were morning people, who showed such peaks very early in the day.

After accounting for these differences, the researchers determined that for the average user in each country, positive posts crested around breakfast time, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.; they fell off gradually until hitting a trough between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., then drifted upward, rising more sharply after dinner.

To no one’s surprise, people’s overall moods were lowest at the beginning of the workweek, and rose later, peaking on the weekend. (The pattern of peak moods on days off held for countries where Saturday and Sunday are not the weekend.)

The pattern on weekend days was shifted about two hours later — the morning peak closer to 9 a.m. and the evening one past 9 p.m., most likely because people sleep in and stay up later — but the shape of the curve was the same.

Making Change Happen, on a Deadline

I like the concept of a 100 days goal!

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Like many companies in AIDS-wracked Ethiopia, PreFabricated had an AIDS policy, which included extra pay for its H.I.V. positive workers so they could buy more food.  In March, 2008, the company decided to do more.  It set a goal of persuading 70 percent of its employees — 700 people — to get tested for H.I.V. in 100 days.

This was a startling idea.  “Employees do not like to get tested at work because of privacy concerns,” said Seife Mergia, the company’s head of planning and information.  Most of the employees did not work at headquarters, but were scattered around various construction sites.  They were mostly contract day laborers — a workforce few companies invest in.  Yet by day 40 the company had built a clinic. It set up a lab and hired a technician.  It gave people credible evidence that their H.I.V. status would be confidential.  At the 120-day mark, 900 people had been tested for H.I.V.

PreFabricated surpassed its goal using a strategy called Rapid Results, in which a group of people choose a project and carry it out in 100 days.  Companies in Addis that used Rapid Results got their H.I.V. testing rates up to about 75 percent — triple the norm.   The same method has been used in Nicaragua to help pig farmers raise fatter pigs and to improve dairy farms’ milk quality.

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Rapid Results is an eccentric idea.  Nadim Matta, a management consultant who is president of the Rapid Results Institute in Stamford, Conn., likes to say that what’s missing to turn poor places into rich places isn’t more information, money, technology, workshops, programs, evaluation or any of the other things that development organizations normally provide.  What’s missing are motivation and confidence.

At first glance, this seems crazy —  can we cheerlead our way into the middle class?

What Matta means is that usually the obstacle to development is not that we don’t have the tools, but that we don’t use the tools we have. People drag their feet. The next step is someone else’s problem.  

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The deadline creates an ethos of doing whatever it takes.  

Malaria: Epidemic On the Run

Emer also wants me to understand that contracting malaria is often just the beginning of one's troubles. Malaria might kill you. But if it doesn't, it may be the start of an endless cycle of illness and poverty. "Because kids get malaria, there is a lot of absence from school," he says. "So our kids don't do well. So they don't get good jobs, and they don't earn money. Then they have children, who also get sick, and the parents have to spend their little money on them instead of spending it on schools or other things — and they have to stay home to look after them, so they lose more money. Malaria keeps us poor."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2093361,00.html#ixzz1Z7crqnbl

Dalai Lama Will Name Succesor at 90 (he is 76)

All will be clear when the Dalai Lama is around 90 years old. That was the message from the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader over the weekend, as he convened a conference of various Tibetan Buddhist sects in the Indian hill station of Dharamsala. Although the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 76, is in good health, the issue of what will happen to the Tibetan struggle once he dies looms in many minds. Tibetans believe that he will be reincarnated; after all, the current Dalai Lama is considered the 14^th incarnation of the Tibetan god of compassion. But how—and if—this will happen will only be revealed in “clear written instructions” that the Tibetan leader promises to release when he reaches his ninth decade.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/26/the-dalai-lama-promises-to-clarify-his-succession%e2%80%94when-hes-around-90/#ixzz1Z7bqoEl9

Saudi Women Get the Vote but Real Power is Elusive

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and run in the next set of municipal elections, scheduled for 2015. That's good news. But not as good as you might think.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/26/saudi-women-get-the-vote-but-real-power-is-elusive/#ixzz1Z7bPBvNf

Researchers Announce a Breakthrough on HIV/AIDS Treatment

A technique that alters T cells has been shown to reduce the amount of virus in infected people.

Sangamo's approach is based on the observation that some people have a naturally occurring mutation in the CCR5 gene that protects them against HIV. Ordinarily, humans have two copies of every gene. It turns out that individuals with a mutation in both copies of the CCR5 gene cannot be infected by the most common HIV strains. In people with the so-called Delta-32 mutation in just one copy of the gene, infection rarely progresses to AIDS. In the U.S., about 1 percent of the population is thought to carry the helpful mutation, which some researchers believe arose as protection against the Black Death.

Previous evidence existed showing that CCR5-negative cells could help AIDS patients. In 2007, an American man with AIDS and lymphoma received, as treatment for the cancer, a bone-marrow transplant from a person with the CCR5 mutation. The marrow recipient has been free of both AIDS and cancer since then. Sangamo's method treats a patient's own cells, with less risk than a marrow transplant.

For The Dying, A Chance To Rewrite Life

The idea that we all tell ourselves about ourselves and our lives is a concept that has resonated. I ...the idea of using narrative as a way to create a denoument to one's life at the end seems to be a good one..
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NPR explores this here.

Reno Air Races

Reno is still recovering from the devastating crash of the 51 Mustang airplane into the crowd at the Reno Air Races yesterday...
Reno Gazette Journal link here.
New York Times link here.
I would like to commend REMSA,my fellow ophthalmologists, trauma surgeons and ER physicians, as well as ancilliary personnel who responded professionally and are continuing to care for the many patients.

My heart goes out to those who died and were injured along with their families.

Good News About Malaria

Good News About Malaria via Doc Gurley

A report by the RBM (Roll Back Malaria) agency in Geneva, Switzerland says that globally deaths from malaria have fallen by 20% in the past decade, from 984,000 in the year 2000 to 781,000 in 2009. In addition, three countries have been added to the list of those certified as malaria-free; Morocco, United Arab Emirates and Turkmenistan. The agency credits the steep ride in funding for the fight against malaria, particularly from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Funding to fight malaria has increased by 15 times since 2003 and is credited with the progress that has been made.

The increase in funding has led to a huge increase in the distribution of insecticide treated malaria nets in dub-Saharan Africa where 80% of global malaria cases arise.

Personalizing Your Hotel Search

SEARCHING for a hotel online has long been limited to plugging in your travel dates and destination and then sifting through star ratings and prices. But there are other factors involved. Is the hotel in a convenient location? Is it child friendly? Will the room have a view of a brick wall or the sea?


Now, a number of Web sites are attempting to answer these questions with tools including photo-based searches and maps that show where a town’s hot spots are.
Link

iExaminer for iPhone 4 Liberates Fundus Exams

Ophthalmoscopes are widely used to help diagnose a variety of conditions, but much like traditional microscopes they can only be used by one person at a time and sharing what one sees requires, as the old saying goes, a thousand words.

The iExaminer from Intuitive Medical Technologies in Shreveport, Louisiana is a simple iPhone 4 attachment for the popular Welch Allyn PanOptic ophthalmoscope that lets you do fundus exams and share videos and images right from the iPhone.

Link

Low-Hassle Ways To Cloud-ify Your Work

Want your files accessible online, but don't like the idea of not keeping a local copy? These tools let you sync and collaborate, but also give you offline copies and peace of mind.
Link

Cost Savings of Genentech's Avastin Gets Closer Look

The irony here is that while the President and members of Congress bemoan physician fees, they did not recognize how much money retina specialists saved the U.S. government.
 Ironically,  the fee for injection of Avastin was halved last year. 


I would argue that there should have been incentives to retina physicians who, based on fairly good evidence, knew that avastin was equivalent to Lucentis in terms of efficacy, and who were saving the government a phenomenal amount of money by using Avastin. Not only did the government save money, so did patients. To make it more interesting retina doctors who used Lucentis were actually more profitable in this regards, than those who exclusively used Avastin.
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WASHINGTON—Medicare could have saved more than $1 billion and Medicare patients $275 million over two years if doctors treated a serious eye disease with Genentech's Avastin instead of the company's similar but more expensive drug Lucentis, according to a new government audit.
Link

End Malaria Project

For those of you who contributed to Seth Godin's End Malaria Project as outlined in the post below, you already received an email from Seth Godin, noting that the book "End Malaria"became an instant worldwide bestseller.
Congratulations!
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That buzzing in my ear didn't mean I was about to die

Seth Godin gets it...Today is End Malaria Day and he is making an impassioned plea for us all to do something to help saving lives (in many cases children's lives). It's as simple as buying a bed net. For anyone who has spent any amount of time in Africa, South East Asia or any other malaria infested areas, you know how crucial bed nets are, not only for a good night's sleep, but also for disease prevention from mosquitoes!
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Link

Six weeks ago, at midnight, I found myself awake but wiped out from jet lag. I was in a lumpy bed, in the dark, in an obscure, $20 a night, John-Waters'-esque former country club. I was in Kitale, Kenya, near the Ugandan border.

A mosquito was buzzing in my ear. (Why do they buzz in your ear?). I had meds, of course, but what if I didn't? What if, like so many who live here, I had kids and no money for medicine?

Try to imagine that for a second before you click onto the next thing you've got on your agenda for today.

Today is End Malaria Day.

Right this minute, right now, please do three things:

1. Buy two copies of End Malaria, an astonishing new book by more thansixty of your favorite authors. In a minute, I will explain why this might be the most important book you buy this year (not the best book, of course, just the most important one). You should buy one in paperbacktoo so you can evangelize a copy to a colleague.
2. Tweet or like this post, or email it to ten friends (It only takes a second.)
3. And, visit the End Malaria Day website and share it as well.

What would happen if you did that? What would happen if you stepped up and spent a few dollars?

Here's what would happen: someone wouldn't die.

Adjusting, More M.D.’s Add M.B.A.

Under heavy pressure from government regulators and insurance companies, more and more physicians across the country are learning to think like entrepreneur.
Link

Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times

Dr. James Kuo is nonexecutive chairman of a company headed by his wife, Dr. Geraldine Kuo.

2011's Top Do-Good Design: Yves Béhar's Glasses For The Poor

I thought the one Laptop per Child XO computer was a great concept and participated in it along with many family and friends...I always wondered where the green color came from...a nd now I now--Mr. Behar. His latest effort is similarly awe inspiring!
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LINK
For the second time, San Francisco industrial designer Yves Béhar has won the INDEX Award, a 100,000 Euro prize given to five life-improving design projects by a Danish nonprofit. This year, Béhar's program "See Better to Learn Better," a system for delivering attractive, affordable eyeglasses to school-age children, has been presented with one of the awards. Béhar previously won for the One Laptop Per Child XO computer in 2007.
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With the winnings, Béhar plans to expand See Better to Learn Better to other locations, including a pilot program in Indonesia with the Sumba Foundation and another project that will take place in San Francisco in partnership with the nonprofit Tipping Point. Béhar cautions that providing proper eye care to young people is not an issue relegated to impoverished nations. "The need is everywhere, in both developing countries and the developed ones," Béhar tells Co.Design. "Getting over the stigma that kids feel when having to wear glasses is something that design, participation, and choice can do."
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In fact, Béhar sees correcting vision as a vital global issue that could radically improve the state of the planet, akin to eradicating a disease. "500,000 new kids entering school every year in Mexico need eyeglasses. Now let’s multiply this number by every country, and the numbers are staggering," he says. "That such a minute investment can change the education level of a population is a no-brainer to governments everywhere. For less than $10 -- the cost of the eye exam, custom lenses, frames, and shipping -- a child’s education level can change radically." In fact, according to a study by the University of Aguascalientes, a child that receives lenses immediately improves their reading and comprehension by 100%.

Somalia famine: UN warns of 750,000 deaths

As many as 750,000 people could die as Somalia's drought worsens in the coming months, the UN has warned, declaring a famine in a new area.
Link

BuckEye Surgeon

Some of the most compelling medical blogging on the internet comes from Jeffrey Parks, aka" Buckeye Surgeon"

Here is an example of his poignant, thought provoking writing:  Irrational Death.

Kevin Md

Kevin MD is a good source for medical blog posts---Here are a couple of the most recent:

Your 10 minute office visit needs 8 people and 45 minutes of work

 

How malpractice hurts doctors and their future patients

Esther Duflo Bribes India's Poor To Health

An excellent article on the realities of effective development work in Fast Company
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Link

Rajasthan is India's desert state, an often inhospitable place where per capita income averages around $1.77 per day. Poverty like that--understanding it and imagining ways to fix it--is what Esther Duflo lives for. Since 2003, her Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (named for a wealthy Saudi donor), or J-PAL, has conducted 240 randomized, controlled trials of specific ways to help the poor. She tests poverty solutions the way medical researchers test new drugs, which can violate the pieties of the philanthropic community. But she has earned a lot of respect along the way: In 2009, the MIT economist won a MacArthur "genius award" for bringing the scientific method to development work.

In Rajasthan, Duflo has been exploring whether incentives might help get more young children vaccinated.
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Bribing the poor is a notion that could offend just about anyone. We all like our philanthropy pure: Give the money, volunteer at the shelter, act with good intentions, and things will just get better. That's not a mode of thinking that allows the less fortunate to have human motivations, and it's certainly not a mode of thinking that encourages us to reflect on our own flaws. But be honest--you'd probably offer your own child a piece of candy as a reward for taking her shots. If we really want to make change, we have to discard what Duflo calls our "car­toon visions" of the poor. Doing good means engaging with what people really need and getting it to them by any means necessary

Infecting Mosquitoes With Bacteria To Keep Them From Infecting Us With Dengue Fever

Dengue fever affects 50 million people, with no cure in sight. But maybe prevention could work instead: Scientists have found a way to get mosquitoes sick with a bacteria that prevents them from carrying the disease.
Link

Study: Foods To Lower Cholesterol

Eating more plant-based fat and protein lowered cholesterol more than eating a diet low in saturated fat, according to a study published Tuesday.

The report offers further evidence that low-fat diets aren't the most effective way to improve heart health.

Link
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Experts have been moving away from the notion that simply cutting dietary fat is most effective. Instead, evidence has grown that replacing sources of saturated fat, such as red meat and dairy products, with sources of healthy fats like nuts and soy products has greater benefits than replacing them with carbohydrates, according to Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, who wasn't involved in the study.

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Over six months, 351 adults with high cholesterol were told at doctor visits to follow either a vegetarian diet, or a low-fat diet focused on low-fat dairy, whole grain cereals, fruit and vegetables. Both groups increased fiber and cut back on saturated fat. Those who ate largely plant-based foods had significantly greater reductions in LDL.

Schooling Kids to Wash Hands Cuts Sick Days

Kids will be heading back to school soon and that means colds, flu and other easily shared infections are bound to pick up. But illness and school absenteeism can be significantly reduced through a program of mandatory hand hygiene, according to a recently published study in the American Journal of Infection Control.
Link

Malaria Gets the Foil-in-a-Microwave Treatment

What wacky idea has the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put $1 million into now?

A plan to treat malaria by sticking the patient into a microwave.

O.K., not the whole patient. Probably just an arm or a leg. And not just any microwave oven, but one set at very low power and with the frequency of its electromagnetic field tuned very precisely.

Link

Feeding the youngest famine victims

(CNN) -- Millions of people are suffering in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa, but help is on the way thanks to relief groups from around the world.
One of them, Mary's Meals, is focused on the youngest victims of the crisis. Founded by Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, a 2010 CNN Hero, the organization is providing food to 24,000 children a day in northern Kenya.
MacFarlane-Barrow recently spoke to CNN's Danielle Berger about his organization's efforts.
Link

The whole focus and mission of Mary's Meals is about meeting the immediate needs of the hungry child by providing them a meal in a place of education -- so that we draw them into our schools or nurseries in the belief that education can be their ladder out of poverty. On average, we can feed a child for an entire school year for $15.

Phone Messages Improve Care, Study Finds

Using cellphones to broadcast text messages reminding health workers in Kenya how to treat children’s malaria increased the number of cases handled correctly, a new study has found.

The study, done by researchers from Oxford and the Kenya Medical Research Institute and published recently in The Lancet, involved 119 health workers who saw 2,269 children with malaria symptoms. The workers randomly chosen to receive twice-a-day reminders handled 24 percent more cases correctly. Six months later, they were still better at it.

Medicaid Pays Less Than Medicare for Many Prescription Drugs, U.S. Report Finds

WASHINGTON — Medicaid gets much deeper discounts on many prescription drugs than Medicare, in part because Medicaid discounts are set by law whereas Medicare prices are negotiated by private insurers and drug companies, federal investigators said Monday in a new report.
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The study comparing Medicare and Medicaid was required by the new health care law.

Drug companies oppose the type of discounts required by Medicaid, seeing them as government price controls. Drug makers say they prefer Medicare’s market-oriented approach, in which discounts are negotiated by drug plans and manufacturers.

Two Democrats, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, recently introduced bills that would require drug manufacturers to pay the higher Medicaid rebates for drugs provided to Medicare beneficiaries who are also eligible for Medicaid. President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission has endorsed the proposal, saying it could save $49 billion over 10 years.

Alex and Jillian Newlywed!

One of the highlights, if not the highlight, of 2011 for me was attending the wedding of Alex Abboud and Jillian D'Amico in Connecticut.
Here is a link to coverage of their wedding in the New York Times.
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Jillian Elizabeth D’Amico and Alexandre Bishara Abboud were married Saturday in Greenwich, Conn. The Rev. Rolando Torres, a Roman Catholic priest, performed the ceremony at St. Mary Church, where he is parochial vicar.

Enlarge This Image

The bride, 23, and the bridegroom, 24, met at Duke, from which they graduated

How to Beat Roaming Fees While Traveling Abroad By

LAST week’s column suggested ways to save when calling home from abroad. This week I’ll tackle data roaming fees, which wireless providers charge when customers use their phones outside their service area. With travelers using smartphones and other wireless devices abroad in the same way as they do back home (to check e-mail, to update Facebook and Twitter and to pull up online maps), the skyrocketing fees are taking many by surprise.
Link

Mistakes in Scientific Studies Surge

Since 2001, while the number of papers published in research journals has risen 44%, the number retracted has leapt more than 15-fold, data compiled for The Wall Street Journal by Thomson Reuters reveal.
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Retractions related to fraud showed a more than sevenfold increase between 2004 and 2009, exceeding the twofold rise in retractions related to mere error, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. The analyst, Grant Steen, reached that conclusion after studying 742 medicine and biology papers that were withdrawn from 2000 to 2010. He said 73.5% were retracted simply for error but 26.6% were retracted for fraud.

Another researcher, John Budd of the University of Missouri-Columbia, looked at roughly the same set of journals, though over a longer period, and also found the prevalence of scientific misconduct to be on the increase.

Link

Après le Déluge, What?

Another great essay by Peggy Noonam of the Wall Street Journal...

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Riots and flash mobs have root causes that government can't reach.

Link

The riots in Britain left some Americans shaken. In the affluence of the past 40 years, and with the rise of the jumbo jet, we became a nation of travelers. We have been to England, visited a lot of those neighborhoods. They were peaceful; now they're in flames. But something else raised our unease as we followed the story on TV and on the Net. I think there was a ping on the national radar. We saw something over there that in smaller ways we're starting to see over here.

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The denunciations were swift and fierce. Max Hastings, in the conservative-populist Daily Mail: "The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. . . . Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community. . . . Not only do they know nothing of Britain's past, they care nothing for its present."

In the left-tilting Guardian, youth worker Shaun Bailey called the rioters opportunists. "Young people have been looting the shops they like: JD Sports and mobile phone shops have been hit, yet Waterstone's [a bookstore] has been left alone. These young people like trainers [sneakers] and iPhones; they are less interested in books. This is criminality in a raw form, not politics."

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Where does that leave us? In a hard place, knowing in our guts that a lot of troubled kids are coming up, and not knowing what to do about it. The problem, at bottom, is love, something we never talk about in public policy discussions because it's too soft and can't be quantified or legislated. But little children without love and guidance are afraid. They're terrified—they have nothing solid in the world, which is a pretty scary place. So they never feel safe. As they grow, their fear becomes rage. Further on, the rage can be expressed in violence. This is especially true of boys, but it's increasingly true of girls.

Making Medical Donations Work

This is a great article about international medical aid.
Uvealblues
 “There are a slew of complex issues that make donations of any kind aside from financial  really poor practice for trying to help developing countries. When it comes to medical equipment donations, the consumables necessary to operate many of these machines, such as x-ray film, reagents, etc,  are often not considered prior to the donations; nor is life-cycle costing and maintenance and operational costing and support figured in. Subsequently we see a lot of discarded medical equipment lying around clinics, hospitals and dump sites in low-income countries we work in.”

Homira has identified a few ways that donations can go wrong.  There are plenty of others.  But you don’t have to donate cash to be useful.

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Computer Vision Sydrome

Interesting Infographic on computer vision syndrome from Mezzner Eyeglasses...via mashable
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Five (And Then Some) Tech Tips for Travel

David Pogue from the NYtimes with some good travel tips: link
One that I am happy about is that airlines are now using QR codes on a smartphone for boarding passes. No need to  print a boarding pass the night before, which can be difficult in remote hotels that don't have business centers...
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Staying Connected Overseas (Cheaply)

Great tips below...what I do is use skype over a WiFi connection--which will probably be present in your hotel, if you are staying in a hotel....
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Trust me, it’s easy to run up a thousand-dollar bill on your cellphone in a single trip if you don’t know the ins and outs. And not being in touch at all can be even more costly. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned:
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ORBIS International receives donation of USD5m and MD-10-30 aircraft from FedEx

A great reason to support Fedex!!!! They have been instrumental in the success of Orbis since inception!
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ORBIS International, a non-profit organisation dedicated to saving sight around the world, on Wednesday announced it has received a new USD5.375m commitment in the form of cash and in-kind gifts from Fedex Corp (NYSE:FDX),a logistics company.
FedEx is also donating an MD-10-30 cargo aircraft to ORBIS to be the third-generation Flying Eye Hospital. The new Flying Eye Hospital will be built on an MD-10-30 freighter aircraft and will use a modular design concept. It is said to be the first time such modular units have been designed for an aircraft and they must meet both aviation and medical certification standards.

In Sierra Leone, New Hope for Children and Pregnant

When I was in the maternity wards in Sierra Leone several years ago, the conditions were abysmal..it is good to hear that things are improving...
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Link

Sierra Leone is at the vanguard of a revolution — heavily subsidized for now by international donors — that appears to be substantially lessening health dangers here in one of the riskiest countries in the world for pregnant women and small children.

Country after country in sub-Saharan Africa has waived medical fees in recent years, particularly for women and children, and while experts acknowledge that many more people are getting care, they caution that it is still too early to declare that the efforts have measurably improved health on the continent.

In Sierra Leone, though, it seems clear that lives are being saved, providing an early and concrete lesson about the impact of making health care free for the very poor and vulnerable.

Planning a Vac(cin)ation

GETTING vaccinated may be the last thing on your mind when heading off on vacation, but it’s important — whether you are traveling to an exotic destination or not.
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There was also a recent article in the Reno Gazette Journal, written by Geralda Miller, in which I had some additional travel tips at this link...
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Memories distort what we see today

Images held in our working memory may skew perception of current events, new research shows.
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If I could pick patients, they would be Native American Guatemalans

Spent a sweaty week operating in a hilltop Hospital Nacional in Guatemala a while back.
A patient gave me a hat in thanks for her surgery. It’s a full-brimmed canvas safari number – I’m sure Hemingway shot a rhino in one. I’m just mature enough now to value sun protection and always grateful, sometimes to the point of pain, for gifts from those who have almost nothing. I was also given a painting of the neighboring volcano, a tee-shirt depicting a local politician, two kisses, many back-breaking hugs, and endless expressions of muchisimas graciasplus the quiche version of same.
The biggest gift of all, though, was the respect our patients gave us.
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Executive compensation and the rising cost of health care

The revelations about the huge golden parachute given the outgoing CEO of ostensibly non-profit Massachusetts Blue Cross Blue Shield induced some public discussion about the disconnect between executive compensation and the mission of health care organizations.
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Bionic Vision for the Blind

How eyeglasses equipped with cameras, LED lights, and a smart-phone-sized processor could help the blind to see.
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The Most Isolated Man on the Planet

He's alone in the Brazilian Amazon, but for how long?

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CATRA: Cataract Maps with Snap-on Eyepiece for Mobile Phones

Link

I love it-iphone technology--applied to eye care !!
There are some good videos at the link as well..


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After Years of Struggle, South Sudan Becomes a New Nation

JUBA, South Sudan — The celebrations erupted at midnight. Thousands of revelers poured into Juba’s steamy streets in the predawn hours on Saturday, hoisting enormous flags, singing, dancing and leaping on the back of cars.

“Freedom!” they screamed.

Dankam Augmented Reality App for the Colorblind

Dankam is an augmented reality app for the iPhone that helps colorblind people discriminate between colors. Named after its author, Dan Kaminsky, it helps by automatically converting colors in the image which normally can’t be differentiated by people who are colorblind to colors which can be differentiated. It is optimized for the most common form of color blindness, anomalous trichromancy, in which differentiation between reds and greens is affected, but it also allows the user to tweak the filters. It can operate directly on the camera or on previously taken images. Also, a set of test images is included. The app is available for $2.99/EUR 2.39 in the app store.

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Harnessing the Power of Feedback Loops

The basic premise is simple. Provide people with information about their actions in real time (or something close to it), then give them an opportunity to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors. Action, information, reaction. It’s the operating principle behind a home thermostat, which fires the furnace to maintain a specific temperature, or the consumption display in a Toyota Prius, which tends to turn drivers into so-called hypermilers trying to wring every last mile from the gas tank. But the simplicity of feedback loops is deceptive. They are in fact powerful tools that can help people change bad behavior patterns, even those that seem intractable. Just as important, they can be used to encourage good habits, turning progress itself into a reward. In other words, feedback loops change human behavior. And thanks to an explosion of new technology, the opportunity to put them into action in nearly every part of our lives is quickly becoming a reality.
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An African Adventure, and a Revelation

Another important and excellent article about Africa from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. It is worth reading in its entirety in my opinion for anyone with an interest in Africa.
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Link
TAKE an American student and an American teacher who have never been near Africa before, lead them on a crazed “win a trip” journey through five particularly wretched countries, and what do you get?
Well, a few mishaps. There was that angry mob in Mauritania — who would have thought our cameras would upset people that much? And that bull elephant in Niger was equally inhospitable, although the giraffes seemed amiable as they approached to gawk at the strange white humans.
We encountered plenty of heartbreak, like the baby we met in Niger who was going blind from lack of vitamin A. In some places, we felt the gnawing disquiet of insecurity. The rise of banditry and a Qaeda network in West Africa forced us to take an armed escort across one particularly lawless stretch of “highway.”
Yet my travel buddies and I also found something far more significant on our journey: hope.

(..)
With Shawn, we drove south across the Mauritanian desert to Senegal, and then flew the following day to Niger — one of the poorest and most forlorn countries in the world. In the remote town of Dogon Doutchi, near the Nigerian border, we saw with heartbreaking clarity what doctors call severe acute malnutrition.
A 2-year-old child, Alou Muhammad, was lying nearly comatose on a cot in the local hospital, his ribs protruding, receiving fluid from an IV drip. Alou’s left eye had Bitot’s spots — signs of vitamin A deficiency that lead to blindness. At least 250,000 children go blind each year for lack of vitamin A, according to the W.H.O., and half of them die within a year of going blind.
(The cost of a vitamin A tablet is 2 cents and the kids need them every four to six months! uvealblues)
This was Saumya’s report:
"The local hospital was unlike anything I had ever seen. No hand sanitizer dispenser. No faces covered with scrub masks. No supply closet. No physicians streaming down the hallway in stark white coats.
"Alou was in pain, screaming 'Mama!' between sobs. I have seen malnourished children, but this was the first time I could count each rib."
(I have seen many such hospitals in Africa--uvealblues)
(..)
When I (Nicholas Kristof)
first backpacked through West Africa as a law student in 1982, what I found most wrenching were the ubiquitous blind beggars, victims of a disease called river blindness, spread by the bites of black flies. The flies carry parasites that grow into worms whose offspring eat away at the optic nerve and cause blindness, debilitating itching and excruciating pain.
“This was more painful than childbirth,” Fatouma Oumarou, a 70-year-old woman who had gone blind from the ailment, told us when we visited her village. At the peak of the disease, she recalled, much of the land in the area was left fallow because farmers did not dare work the area. In a nearby village, Moli, in a wildlife refuge, people told us that lions had killed a 15-year-old in the fields, but added, “We are more afraid of the black flies than of the lions.”
Yet these days river blindness is gone from this region, thanks partly to heroic work by Jimmy Carter, and to vast contributions of medicine by Merck. I asked villagers if they had ever heard of Jimmy Carter, and they shook their heads doubtfully — but his post-presidency work on global health had transformed their lives.
(Merck definitely deserves credit for this initiative--uvealblues)


Here is a link to one of the videos from Kristof's article: Link

Here is further discussion on Kristof's column: Link

James Brown doing miso soup commercials

EMBED-James Brown's Japanese Miso Soup Commercials - Watch more free videos
via HolyKaw

Parasitic Worms May Offer Hope on MS

For people suffering from debilitating autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis, there is growing evidence that help may be at hand from an unusual source: parasitic worms.
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In a U.S. study, early safety tests suggested the eggs of pig whipworms have anti-inflammatory properties, reducing the size of brain lesions in MS patients. A similar trial is under way in Denmark. And in Britain, academics at the University of Nottingham are studying the potential health benefits of hookworms, another type of parasitic worm.
If these trials prove successful, treatment with parasitic worms—known as helminthic therapy—could provide a simple, cheap, natural and controllable treatment for the debilitating condition, which affects 2.5 million people world-wide.
(..)
Whipworm eggs were taken from disease-free pigs and grown in Denmark in a clean environment by a German biotech company, OvaMed GmbH. Every two weeks over the course of three months, the patients in the study drank 2,500 of the eggs mixed into a sports drink. The eggs hatched in the patient's intestines and were killed by the immune system after about a week.
Patients who took part said the liquid was salty but didn't taste or smell unpleasant.
"It was like drinking a shot of salty water—you didn't notice the worms. It wasn't like there was anything chunky in it," explains Jim, 40, the first patient recruited for Dr. Fleming's safety study, who asked not to have his surname published.
"I signed up shortly after being diagnosed and didn't have a problem with it because I was pretty scared and, for me, ingesting worm eggs is just not a big deal."
(..)
The theory behind the HINT and WIRMS studies and others like them is known as "the hygiene hypothesis." This argues that developed countries such as the U.S., Europe and Japan have higher incidences of allergies and autoimmune diseases because the population has little or no exposure to parasites or infections.

In developing countries, where people are exposed to low-level infections or infestations, the rates of such diseases are much lower.

Giving Medical Receptionists Their Due

The importance of receptionists in healthcare settings is well illustrated in this article

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While much has been written about the role of doctors, nurses and other clinicians in the care of patients and their families, little attention has been paid to those individuals who make up the very front lines of health care. In almost every clinical practice, office receptionists and the professionals who do comparable work in hospitals, the ward clerks and unit secretaries, are the first people patients see. But serious research on their interactions with patients has been sparse at best.

Now the journal Social Science and Medicine has published a new study on the work of this group of professionals. Despite the stereotype that many receptionists bear as mere “gatekeepers” or even “the dragon behind the desk,” the study found that their responsibilities extend far beyond administrative duties. Ward clerks and office receptionists are a vital part of patient care.

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Administration Halts Survey of Making Doctor Visits

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Tuesday that it had shelved plans for a survey in which “mystery shoppers” posing as patients would call doctors’ offices to see how difficult it was to get appointments.
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Having coverage is not the same as having ready access to care — a fact demonstrated in Massachusetts, which has come closer than any other state to the goal of universal coverage. A recent survey by the Massachusetts Medical Society found that about half of family doctors and internists were not accepting new patients.