Ebola!

http://www.naturalnews.com/046275_Ebola_victim_air_transport_continental_USA.html
Click the above link for maximum LOLs.

So, there's a lot of fear flying around about this big Ebola outbreak that's going on in west Africa, and it's only gotten worse since the transport of an infected American doctor back to the US. The popular thing seems to be preparing for a massive stateside Ebola outbreak, which, once you learn a little about Ebola, you will see has a laughably abysmal chance of happening. How about we fly some facts back with him?

First, let's start with a question: What is Ebola, anyway? Ebola is a virus, meaning that it requires a susceptible host cell to be 'alive' and replicate, it is otherwise inert in the environment. That also means that Ebola is affected by antibiotics about as much as it is by Benadryl (see also: not at all), as antibiotics only affect bacteria. Ebola has various strains that are recognized by the US CDC, not all of which are pathogenic in people (Ebola Reston). The virus typically arises in human populations due to an introduction from a wild animal, and is classically native to central Africa; though some non-pathogenic strains have been identified in animals from the Philippines. The virus can transmit person to person, but historically, this has always been by fluid transmission, not airborn transmission (airborn transmission has been noted in pigs and monkeys with Ebola Reston). The virus also has a very lengthy incubation period, making it highly susceptible to public health measures like quarantine and isolation. The severe virulence combined with the fact that the virus spreads by fluid contact means that most outbreaks since we started keeping track in the 70's have simply burned themselves out in one hundred victims or less.[1] Note that in the first two outbreaks, the case load was quite severe, in part due to the fact that nobody knew much of anything about Ebola at the time.

Second, what makes Ebola so dangerous? That's a difficult question to answer, because the exact mechanism of the hemorrhagic part of the hemorrhagic fever isn't known yet, at least to my knowledge. Also, some strains are more virulent (cause worse disease) than others. The basic answer, though, is that in some- not all- patients, the virus causes severe internal bleeding, and the patient dies of hypovolemic shock. To an individual, an Ebola infection is a life threatening event. To a population, however, the story is a little different. The outbreak of Ebola Zaire in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leon has been recognized since march. As of 7/28, there have been a cumulative total of 1201 suspected cases and 672 casualties. That's 672/1201= 55% of reported cases resulting in a fatality, which is still pretty awful, but nowhere near the slate-wiping pandemic it's cracked up to be. Also, with 1201 recognized cases, minus 86 at the time of the initial announcement divided by 120 days (four months between march and July at 30 days each, roughly) equals 9.3 new infections a day, assuming that all infections are cases (symptomatic)- which they aren't.[2] This is in countries that don't have average healthcare, good infection control standards, good sanitation, or even good public health or education measures in place. On the 2000 WHO ranking of 191 countries' healthcare systems, Guinea comes in at #161, Liberia is #186, and Sierra Leon didn't even rank.[3]

In general, the spread of Ebola is facilitated by cultural practices that aren't preformed in the first world. Family members, not trained morticians, handle the bodies and prepare them for burial, and many of these people do not have access to the kind of protective equipment or even basic clean running water and soap necessary to prevent exposure of mucous membranes and open cuts to infected bodily fluids. Another reason that Ebola spreads so easily in these countries is in part due to subpar healthcare systems, where healthcare workers also lack basic body substance isolation equipment like disposable gloves, and needles can get re-used among patients. Symptomatic healthcare workers then come into contact with other uninfected patients and may transmit the disease to them as well.

Now, to consider the case of the good doctor. He's being flown back in field biohazard containment, and he will remain in biohazard containment for the duration of his disease. We actually have a really good track record of disease containment in this country, and even if Ebola did get out, we'd be able to stop its spread fairly easily with basic public health measures such as isolation procedures and quarantines. As Ebola is not a persistent infection, he should be okay for release back into the public once his symptoms resolve. What if the plane crashes? His body, and his Ebola, would likely be incinerated in the subsequent fire. Even if there wasn't a fire and the plane magically broke apart over Manhattan, it's unlikely that the resulting aerosol would pose a hazard to anyone.

What about terrorists? What about terrorists. It's not like there's an epidemic going on in Africa where anyone could just walk in, find an infected person and walk right back- oh wait, yeah, just kidding. Also, the US isn't the only nation with stockpiles of Ebola, you can believe that the Russians have it too, and they aren't exactly known for incredible security in the early post-soviet era. It's pointless to fret about someone nabbing the doctor here in the US and using him to create a biohazard incident. Besides, if you're afraid, the terrorists win, and that's not an America I want to live in.

Why bother taking him over here? I don't know, maybe because our healthcare facilities are just a little better than what Guinea's got going on. That's just a guess, though.

How do you know if you have Ebola? You don't have Ebola, get over yourself.

Ebola's a zombie virus?! Not even kind of close. The victims are alive until they're dead, and then they stay dead. Nobody gets aggressive, nobody tries to eat anyone, people mostly just lay around and die. The video game series Resident Evil did, however, base their zombie-making T-Virus off of Ebola.

Someone told you they could treat Ebola with colloidal silver. And when did they work in a BSL-4 lab, or treat Ebola in the field? This statement is so full of shit, it could be a septic tank. Save your hard-earned money. There's no evidence to date that colloidal silver would have any effect on Ebola virions in the body, and there are no approved antivirals or vaccines available at this time, though there is one in the works. In fact, there's no peer-reviewed evidence to my knowledge that colloidal silver works on anything at all, except to turn you into a smurf.

So let me lay the cards on the table right here and now: you are a hundred a thousand times more likely to die from the emergence of a novel pandemic coronavirus or pandemic antibiotic resistant pneumonia/tuberculosis than you are to catch some magic superstrain of Ebola that somehow escapes biohazard confinement in Atlanta. Questions, comments, ragemail? Leave it here, or on our facebook page.

[1]http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/Fact_Sheets/Ebola_Fact_Booklet.pdf
[2]http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/guinea/recent_updates.html
[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems

The Environment Part One

Sorry guys, this week has been insanely busy in the personal life, so instead of a real post, I'm just going to leave this here. It's very much worth watching, and if you can kick in five dollars to their campaign, it's an easy way help make the world a better place for everyone. At bare minimum, I ask you to share either this blog post or this video with your friends.

<iframe src="https://www.indiegogo.com/project/solar-roadways/embedded" width="222px" height="445px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

If you aren't keen on watching, the summary of their proposal is this: Raise money to start replacing parking lots, driveways, roads, and highways with durable, modular solar panels that react to changing environments. Presently, the heat and sunlight absorbed by our pavement isn't doing us any good, when we could be using it to provide plentiful, cheap energy with land that's already being used instead of marring whole tracts of landscape with acres of panels.

Their campaign can be found here https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-roadways

Also worth your while: These guys want to build a modern operational version of Tesla's Wardenclyffe tower, designed for wireless transmission of electricity anywhere to anyone. Just think- never again having to suffer the frustration of downed power lines or aging electrical infrastructure!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/planetary-energy-transmitter
<iframe src="https://www.indiegogo.com/project/planetary-energy-transmitter/embedded" width="222px" height="445px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Interested in contributing to science over the long term, but not interested in repeated investments? You can contribute to the sciences of meteorology, ecology, and climatology by contributing to the Stormtag project. Their goal is to use crowdsourced weather 'stations' to monitor atmospheric conditions. It's as simple as distributing these small devices, known as 'tags', that can even be used as a keychain! The devices monitor a number of weather variables, and report their readings back to a server, where the data is stored and processed. The best part about it is that you get your own personal weather station if you contribute $20 or more! Makes a good (though late) Father's day gift!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonatherton/stormtag-a-bluetooth-weather-station-on-your-keyri
<iframe width="480" height="360" src="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonatherton/stormtag-a-bluetooth-weather-station-on-your-keyri/widget/video.html" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe>

The scary part? If it weren't for people like you on the internet, some of these great ideas would never get off the ground. Be sure to contribute or share the ideas you believe in, and I encourage you to share this post with others. Feel free to leave any questions or comments on our facebook page or on the blog itself.

Bad Habits

Okay, so we've heard it all before. Bad habits don't just annoy the people around you, they're bad for you. Sounds familiar, I'm sure. Smoking? Lung cancer, yeah, yeah. Drinking? Liver problems, yeah, okay. But wait! What if I told you that you- yes, you- that fixing your bad habit could actually be stimulating to the economy? It wouldn't necessarily be good for the healthcare sector, but their slice of the GDP is big enough.

Let's start with Obesity. The current stats, according to the US CDC, indicate that 35% of US adults (myself included) and 17% of US children are obese. [1,2] Obesity is defined as an adult with a body mass index of 30 or greater, which isn't necessarily true for everyone (some athletes meet a BMI that classifies them as overweight). The estimated annual cost of obesity in the US adults alone is $147 billion (2008 dollars).[2] That's nearly what we paid our troops in 2011, so we could use that money to double their pay, or more nearly double the budget of the Navy, assuming the money goes to the government's hands.[3] That's also enough to give every American a 30 dollar per month gym membership for a full year. The equation goes something like 147x10^12 ($ cost by obesity) / 4x10^9 (citizens) = $367.5 / 12 (months) = $30.625. It's still not enough to supply people with salads on a daily basis, though.

Smoking? What kind of blogger would I be if I didn't at least touch on smoking. From 2009 to 2012, smoking cost the US $289 billion, including $156 billion in lost productivity.[4] That works out to about $96.3 billion a year. The NFPA estimates there are 30,125 fire departments in the US[5], and with an average new fire engine coming in at about $500,000, that's enough money to buy every fire department in the US six brand new fire engines. The math looks something like 30125 x 500000= 15,062,500,000. Then, 9.63x10^10 / 15,062,500,000 = 6.393... That's a lot of big red trucks. I can also tell you on an informal basis that it would reduce the demand on Fire, ER, and EMS systems for smokers with heart and lung diseases such as COPD and congestive heart failure- which means that we get to you faster when you need us.

Of course, bad habits wouldn't be complete without good old Alcohol. The CDC webpage on Alcohol states that there are 1.2 million ER visits, 2.7 million physician office visits (nearly 4 million total), and $223 billion spent on excess alcohol consumption every year. That's almost as much as spent on obesity and smoking combined! [6] That's enough to buy 18,580,000,000 grand slam sluggers- that's two solid weeks of grand slam sluggers three times a day for every American- with a $4 tip (you're going to tip, right?) at Denny's, though that kind of brings us back around to the obesity problem. $223 billion is also thirty-seven times San Francisco's 2008 budget (here), and it's about thirty times what we spent in discretionary spending on AIDS research. [7]

Aside from the incredible economic damage caused by these three readily preventable behaviors, there's an undeniable human cost as well. Excess alcohol intake is associated with more health problems than I frankly care to list here, is involved in two thirds of all assaults per victim surveys, contributes to risky behavior (such as drunk driving or starting fights you can't finish), and outright kills 88,000 Americans each year.[6] Smoking tobacco is a contributor in almost 500,000 deaths (the population of Wyoming or Fresno) each year.[8] So what's to be done?

There's several public health measures that have been shown to be effective. The first draws from the model of seat belt implementation, in which officers can ticket motorists for not wearing seat belts, on top of automakers making seatbelts readily available and public health information campaigns sharing the importance of seatbelt use. Seat belts alone cut motor vehicle accident mortality by half, and with 2.3 million people going to the emergency department for motor vehicle accidents in 2009, that's a lot of lives saved.[9] Another strategy is to impose a tax, which has been shown some limited efficacy in deterring people from excess tobacco use.[4] Also, you can check out this cool, free website with all sorts of helpful resources for cutting back on risky behavior and making lifestyle changes, including those affecting obesity.

Personally, I think the best solution is to look at all the wasted money and think of the gym memberships, think of the firefighters, THINK OF THE DENNY'S!

and support science, too!


1. http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html
2. http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#cite_note-9 (under budget for 2011)
4. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/economics/econ_facts/index.htm
5. http://apps.usfa.fema.gov/census/summary.cfm
6. http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm
7. http://www.aids.gov/federal-resources/funding-opportunities/how-were-spending/
8. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm
9. http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html

Death Camps

It's come to my attention that this post may come across with a political charge. This is not intended, and the fear blog does not stand behind any party except science, including history. Please bear this in mind while reading. 

Genocide is not a new phenomenon to mankind. Records exist of genocides occurring well before World War I, including a German genocide of an African population with explicit orders to either shoot them all or drive the population into the desert to die. The definition has a little play because argument exists as to how direct an act must be to constitute a genocide; for example, some people argue that involuntary introduction of disease into a population while offering no medical assistance qualifies as a genocide. The definition also has play when it comes to quantity of people killed since there's no set number or percentage that must be reached first to qualify. Going with Wikipedia's list (take it for what you will), 39 separate genocides have been identified during and since WWI. Of those, few or none were completed in total secrecy, typically with some government policies that were known- sometimes even lauded- publicly.

In many cases, governments utilize propaganda against whatever people they intend to eradicate in order to maintain public support. A popular propaganda technique for these governments is a process known as pseudospeciation, commonly employed in military institutionalization, which teaches the subject population to believe that the targeted group is some other species, something less then human, or even outright animal. Pseudospeciation relies on exaggerating the differences in appearance, behavior, thought, language, diet, history, and culture of a given group to demonstrate to the public how different the target group is in order to scrub the public of any sympathy for that group on a human level. In other cases, the offending government preforms the genocide under the guise of re-locating a population or helping the public at large (such as segregating the Jews into the Ghettos, or the trail of tears to re-locate the American Cherokee population from the Southeast US to Oklahoma). Even in political genocides, there is a understanding that there is a real danger in speaking your mind, backed with real, publicized actions on the government's part, such as during the Stalinist purges that occurred in the 1930's USSR.

So, you can imagine my surprise when multiple people suggested that I cover the alleged FEMA death camps on the blog. Apparently, the source of the circulating 'knowledge' of the camps hails from YouTube- source of all things that are good and true in this world. People who share this information with me often speak of DHS strike teams that arrive at homes that have mailboxes marked with orange stickers to drag unwitting Americans off to FEMA internment camps where they are subsequently gassed en masse. Nevermind that local police can't have a SWAT operation without local media taking extreme interest, nevermind the simple solution of getting a PO Box (problem, government?), nevermind that I've yet to have a specific group consistently identified as being the targets of these internments (the answers range from Republicans to Veterans to gun owners to Christians to anybody at all). So, request accepted.

Honestly, I've wondered 'Why FEMA'? I think it's because they're an easy target for conspiracy theorists, since their popularity tanked in the face of the fiasco in post-Katrina New Orleans. I figure that if FEMA had handled that well, we would today be discussing USPS death camps. I'm not suspicious for an ongoing genocide of the US citizenship by its government for several reasons. First, some claims include witnessing shipments of something on the order of a half million coffins, but I notice a glaring deficit of people asking where their friends and family have suddenly vanished off to. Assuming the 500,000 wasn't a one-time event, I'm sure somebody would've noticed the entire population of Wyoming (or Fresno, CA) disappearing. I'm sure somebody would've seen the armored vehicles, gunfights, and people being forcibly taken out of their quiet suburban neighborhood. Second, when asking what the Department of Homeland Security needs with millions of rounds of ammunition, I would posit that the US Coast Guard is under the DHS, and crazy things tend to happen when departments of government have to use all of their budget or else get the excess cut next year. For those who point to alleged satellite photos of FEMA camps, I will point you to an excellent popular mechanics article on the matter that can be found here. The article points out that one of the alleged camps is legitimately a labor camp, but for North Korea, not the US. The irony should be striking for any Christians in the readership, since the North Korean government is legitimately persecuting its Christian population through incarceration.

Which leads me to what you should be scared of. Genocides happen, and they're still happening today. They've claimed millions of lives, and they're easily among the most heinous of human atrocities. Go look in a mirror. You, who carry and spread the rumors of death and devastation in our Homeland; you who are a capable, thinking, adult human being; you who are, in some cases, armed. If you honest to God believe that this is happening, there is no argument I could make to convince you that these FEMA camps are an outright hoax. It's too easy for you or the internet to say that I've been deceived, or I'm in the pocket of the government- it's too easy just to write me off as a naysayer. If you really believe this, though, why do you sit idly by and chat about it with the same dull tone as one might discuss last night's TV programming? How can you live with yourself, doing nothing while you honestly believe that there are people being killed en masse on your land? If you can accept these conspiracies as just another fact of life, all while in the same breath heralding the merits of the second amendment, you need to take some time for some serious soul searching. If you don't honestly believe it, then why are you spreading this crap? Of the millions dead by genocide, the burden of their death not only hangs from the necks of those who committed the atrocities, but also from the necks of those who knew better and still did nothing.

The simple truth is that while this bullshit entertains, it's simply a passing fancy that only serves to distract from real horrors that are really happening right now in other parts of the world. You don't have to make this stuff up, it's out there now, you just have to care enough to look. Right now, North Korea is intentionally starving its population, throwing people in prison camps indefinitely for saying one cross thing about their leader, or even for being Christian. So if you're really serious about wanting to do something about genocide and government atrocities, pay attention to the world beyond what you're bombarded with on a daily basis, learn something educate yourself, and share your knowledge instead of your youtube videos; support humanitarian organizations like the UN, US Military (believe it or not, a large contributor to humanitarian causes across the world) and the Red Cross; of course, support science and the men and women doing it that are helping to bring us closer every day to world where war and human suffering is no longer necessary.

As always, feel free to leave questions, comments, concerns, and suggestions here on the blog, or on our facebook page.

Deadly Bites

 

So this is probably what you're thinking, right? Maybe you're thinking something along the line of dogsbite.org's dramatic slogan "Some dogs don't let go". Perhaps you're thinking of lions, tigers, and bears. While all of those can do a lot of damage in a short period of time, and they all call out to a primal terror hidden in all of us, they're not at all the most likely to kill you from a bite.

 

In fact, last year there were only ten fatality shark attacks worldwide, out of seventy-two unprovoked attacks[1]. Unprovoked attacks are those situations where there shark was undisturbed in its natural habitat, and attacked an unsuspecting human. That's actually fewer than the number of people killed by jellyfish in the Philippines alone every year (roughly twenty to forty). [9]Nobody sees jellyfish as the horrible monsters they really are by comparison to sharks, but getting sent into heart failure and drowning feet from shore because you brushed a jellyfish seems almost as terrifying to me as getting tasted by a shark. At least trauma care in the US can do something about shark bites, but it's suspected that many Jelly poisonings are mistaken for heart attacks, and not treated as they should be. [9]

 

When it comes to data on dog bites, other than the CDC for raw injury data, dogsbite.org seems to be the go-to place to get information on the internet. They're the second google hit when you search 'dog bite statistics', coming in ahead of the CDC, and behind a lawyer's 'wanna sue somebody?' page. Their website heralds themselves as a public information site, but I feel that they're about as informative as the National Vaccine Information Center, or other fearmongering sites with a bias to preach. They mention Pit Bulls in specific nineteen times on their front page alone as of the time of this writing. Their site is smattered with distorted statistics (such as using a nine year period of dog bite records to be able to say that pit bulls killed 176 people), and relies heavily on anecdotal, not empirical, accounts to strike fear and sorrow into the reader's mind- a tactic that is frequently used by organizations that have no or weak evidence to support their stance. The studies they cite as being significant are frankly pretty limp (or have nothing to do with bite epidemiology), such as this one which only notes a 0.63 events per 100,000 people a year reduction as a result of breed specific legislation. Their article on pit bull owners, which can be viewed here is nothing short of offensive. The kicker is that they have a directory of dog bite lawyers on their site, for your legal convenience.

 The reality when it comes to dogs is that, on a yearly basis, we have 32 deaths from dog bites in the US (still more than sharks globally, and less than Jellyfish)[2], a total of 4.5 million reported bites, 885,000 of which are deemed to require medical attention. Of those, 27,000 require reconstructive surgery.[3] According to the American Humane Association, breed specific legislation is ineffective at reducing dog bite total incidents. [10]According to an American Veterinary Medical Association  report cited on the CDC's dog bite statistics page, it isn't useful to single out one or two breeds for control. The reason is multifaceted, but essentially boils down to dog bite statistics actually being pretty poor.

"Dog bite statistics are not really statistics, and they do not give an accurate picture of dogs that bite. Invariably the numbers will show that dogs from popular large breeds are a problem. This should be expected because big dogs can physically do more damage if they do bite, and any popular breed has more individuals that could bite." [11, page 2/18]

 So how do we effectively reduce dog bites? The numbers don't lie, unaltered dogs bite more. In fact, 92% of fatal dog attacks involved male dogs, 94% of whom were unaltered. Supervise your kids around unfamiliar dogs, teach them that harassing any animal- especially a dog- is going to get them hurt. Don't approach any unfamiliar, chained up, or stressed out animals. It's that easy; Get your dogs altered, teach your kids, and practice a little common sense.

"But Curt!" You say. "This is the fearblog, and you have made me not afraid!" Well, if the very existence of dogsbite.org wasn't enough for you, I won't disappoint. Here's the bite you should really be afraid of:

The mosquito. In and of themselves, mosquito bites aren't deadly, everybody knows that. Mosquitoes, as ectoparasites, are themselves parasitized by smaller organisms that are deadly and disabling to us. Dengue virus infections cause around 22,000 deaths on an annual basis. [5] West Nile Virus caused 286 US deaths, and 5,674 cases in 2012. [6]Yellow fever was at 200,000 cases, and 30,000 deaths last year. [7]Elephantiasis, while causing few or no deaths, has left 40 million disabled and disfigured. [8] 623,357- that's the number of American lives claimed in both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the War on Terror combined according to Wikipedia. Every single year, Malaria causes 627,000 deaths, and 207 million clinical episodes. [4]The most efficient method of knocking out these diseases is by knocking out the vector, since the mosquito is a necessary stage in all of these diseases' life cycles, but it's a messy, multi-faceted problem that is unlikely to be solved in the near future. Maybe if we spent as much time and effort and killing mosquitoes as we spend on hunting sharks and attacking pit bulls, there'd be a real glimmer of hope.

So what can you do? Well, you can donate to this cause, which aims to provide better malaria care by tackling the huge problem of counterfeit or watered-down anti-Malarials. Not only is it deadly to people, namely children, who need the medications, it's also contributing to anti-malarial resistance in the parasite population by attacking the parasites with subtherapeutic doses. You can also use an insect repellent of your choosing to protect yourself and your loved ones from mosquito bites. As always, you should support those who support science. Seek to grow your own knowledge, and share what you've learned here (on person, or on facebook, just saying). Please feel free to leave any questions, comments, or concerns here on the blog or on our new facebook page at www.facebook.com/thefearblog

Till next time, kiddies, stay spooky.



[1]http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sharks/ISAF/2013Summary.html
[2]http://www.dogsbite.org/pdf/dog-attack-deaths-maimings-merritt-clifton-2013.pdf (questionable)
[3]http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Dog-Bites/index.html
[4]http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/impact.html
[5]http://www.cdc.gov/dengue/epidemiology/index.html
[6]http://www.cdc.gov/westnile/statsMaps/finalMapsData/data/2012WNVHumanInfectionsbyState.pdf
[7]http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs100/en/
[8]http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs102/en/
[9]http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/jellyfish/textonly/biology_sting.jsp
[10]http://www.americanhumane.org/animals/stop-animal-abuse/fact-sheets/dog-bites.html
[11]https://www.avma.org/public/Health/Documents/dogbite.pdf

MERS

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

 

MERS IS COMIING! BUST OUT YOUR DISASTER KITS, IT'S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE, KIDDIES!

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/15/health/mers-outbreak-netherlands/

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mers-mystery/second-mers-case-shows-hospitals-are-ground-zero-mers-n104601

 

Welcome back to the blog! As some of you may have heard, SARS' cousin, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) has made landfall stateside. MERS-CoV has been the subject of much media speculation and, in some cases, fearmongering since its identification in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Most people don't know much about MERS, except that it's kinda maybe bad to get it, so I'm going to give you a brief rundown.

 

According to the CDC, MERS infection has a lethality rate of about 30% of cases. Since its discovery, we've noted a little over 500 cases, which is relatively few for a new infection. Human-to-human transmission has been observed, but only in limited numbers, usually from an isolated case to family or healthcare workers (that is, generally people who spend extended periods in close proximity to the patient). Typically, new infections of MERS fizzle out within one or two transmissions- not unlike H4N1 avian influenzas. It's unlikely that humans are a reservoir for MERS, since the infection is not persistent, and isolated cases are observed with no detectable chain of transmission. We have pretty good evidence suggesting that Dromedary Camels (those with one hump, as pictured) are the reservoir, but nothing completely solid. There is no antiviral or approved therapy for MERS as of the time of this post, but we do have a reliable test for it. [1]

 

The cases that made stateside were imported from overseas[1], and seem to be sticking to the pattern of little to no interpersonal transmission. Is it possible the virus could mutate to become stable in humans? Of course, MERS has an RNA genome, which means that it's going to have relatively high mutation rate, but I'll wager that the risk of the virus mutating to become stable for interpersonal transmission is minimal. I'm basing my logic off of a similar virus that some of you may remember panicking over at some point earlier in the millennium, the H4N1 Avian Influenza. Like bird flu, MERS is an RNA virus that causes respiratory symptoms, it has a high kill rate, and relatively poor interpersonal transmission (spreading only to those with close, extended contact with the patient). The exact route of transmission for MERS isn't known for sure, but I'd wager that, like Flu, it takes the respiratory route. Of course, there was always the remote possibility of H4N1 gaining the ability to have sustained chains of transmission in people, but it never happened. If it was going to happen, I'd say that with 500 cases spread out over several different countries, there should've been enough exposure to slightly variant strains that it would've happened by now.

 

So, what can you do? First, remain calm, which is different from complacency. That is to say, don't get scared, but be prepared. Wash your hands, limit your contact with people showing signs and symptoms of respiratory disease, wash your hands, stay home if you're sick, wash your hands, don't kiss any camels, WASH YOUR HANDS, keep some N95 masks in your home for you and yours in case it does begin to spread, and don't wait until you're too sick to walk to seek medical attention. Pay attention to news reports, mainly from the CDC at their outbreak reporting page here. Also, support science, and those who support science. Spread the knowledge you've gained here, and do your own research to learn more. Also, sharing the blog page (NEW AND IMPROVED!) won't hurt my feelings. Feel free to leave any questions, comments, or suggestions here, or on our new facebook page at www.facebook.com/thefearblog


ALSO! WE DID IT! The proposed legislation to block the NEIDL was shot down, thanks to all the signatures on that petition.




[1]http://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/faq.html

Hiatus

My my, we've come a long way. I'm actually pretty surprised we've made it this far, and I want to thank my readership for sticking with me and checking in now and again. Unfortunately, with finals season upon us, I'm going to have to take a little bit of a hiatus to help my significant other with her studies. When I have free time, I'll continue to work on the blog, and we'll be resuming regularly scheduled content by 5/16/14, so be sure to check back in by then. As I head into the break, I'd like to take this opportunity to step outside of my typical bounds and share some thoughts; no evidence, no citations.

Working as a Paramedic, I, along with my co-workers, see people living at the very extremes of life. A common day for us involves several worst days of other people's entire lives, be it simply due to back pain, or due to a stroke permanently disabling a loved one in one swift, unpredictable moment of terror. I'm getting very near to my four year anniversary working in this field, and I feel that's long enough to be able to share some thoughts and observations on the field.

The list of observations could, if allowed, occupy several posts, elaborating on various phenomena such as the observation that it's only ever the bad guys that want a hug after something goes down. I could speak about all the people that imagine our jobs as being as bloody and violent as a frontline deployment (really, it's best described as hours or boredom peppered with moments of sheer, unadultered terror), the people who ask me if I've ever seen people die, or simply assume that I see it on a daily basis. Today, we're only going to focus on one, the one that I, personally, find the scariest- silence.

A lot of people imagine our scariest scenes being those that are filled with flames, screaming, and blood. The truth is that, in general terms, if you're healthy enough to be screaming and writhing in pain, you'll live to see the hospital. Really, there's a profound terror that can be found in walking into a scene that should be loud, people should be screaming at you, but they're silent. Imagine, if you will, a little old lady gasping for air, and making no sound; a child hit by a truck, not screaming, but moaning; a middle aged man, complaining of chest pain earlier, now silent and slumped forward on the couch; approaching a middle aged woman involved in a car crash who's silent and not moving. These are all just tastes of the kind of terror that silence can bring in the prehospital field.

Sometimes, it's not the presence of something that serves to terrify, sometimes it's the absence. On that note, we'll see you back here on 5/16. Feel free to leave questions, comments, and concerns here, I'll be happy to read them.

Don't fear the NEIDL

The National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory (NEIDL) is a $200 million dollar public health laboratory in Boston, Mass, operated by Boston University. They preform research on multiple pathogens of significant concern to public health, including Tuberculosis, which is a mounting problem in the face of the HIV and antibiotic resistance epidemics. The only problem with their laboratory is that a whole section of it- the Biohazard Safety Level 4 (BSL 4) lab- has never operated in its designed capacity due to multiple legal hurdles the NEIDL had to clear in order to prove that it was safe. First, they were required to prove that their operation was safe, and their security and biosafety measures were deemed effective by an outside company. After that, the NEIDL won a legal suit, in which a judge deemed that their biosafety measures were adequate for safe operation in south Boston. For a better idea of their security and biosafety measures, you can watch a video tour of the BSL-4 facilities at link [1]. At a glance, however, this should give you some idea of their security- if there's a fire, the fire department doesn't get in without being stopped at the gates and individually ID'd and cross-referenced to their list of Boston city firemen. If the power goes out and the negative pressure system fails, all air from the lab is drawn through multiple custom HEPA filters to remove any particulate. On top of the security and engineering controls, the facility operates under the direct supervision of the Boston Public Health, and the CDC.

Now, having cleared all other hurdles, the NEIDL is coming under fire from Boston city council member Charles Yancey, who wants to pass a city ordinance banning BSL-4 research. After all, who wants that sort of research going on in their back yard? What if there's a release? Of course, this sort of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) fails to account for other sites, such as the CDC campus in downtown Atlanta, that have successfully operated BSL-4 facilities for years without a single problem. In fact, there are six BSL-4 labs in operation across the country right now, with seven more planned or under construction, with no reportable incidents yet. In fact, with about 3,000 Americans dying every year from foodborne illness, you're roughly 3,000 times more likely (more than that, since the number of BSL4 releases in the US is actually zero, not one) to be killed by a pathogen from your local fast food operation than you are to be killed by some exotic disease that somehow managed to slip through the NEIDL's biosafety measures. [3][4]

What's more is that Mr. Yancey is calling for this ban without accepting multiple offers on the NEIDL's part to give him a tour. So, the next question is, could Mr. Yancey actually succeed here? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. In 2002, shortly after the 9/11 attacks and Anthrax bioterrorism incidents, UC Davis attempted to get permission to build a BSL-4 laboratory. This attempt was subsequently rejected by the community, and the attempt was shut down for little more reason than unfounded fear, much like the situation in Boston. [5]

So what do we lose if the NEIDL is shut down? We lose out on another BSL-4 facility that could preform vital, life-saving research on emerging and clinically important pathogens in a safe setting. If we already had two dozen of these labs, it wouldn't be too big of a deal, but the fact is that we've only got six in operation now, so a seventh lab could actually mean a significant increase in clinical progress in treating globally important infections. Tired of big government waste? You're looking at it right here- a multimillion dollar public health lab being threatened because some politicians think these viruses are scary, not for any reason that's evidence based. So, what can you do? You can share this article with your friends (PLEASE share, if you ever share one of my articles, let it be this one), spread the word about what's going on in Boston, and sign this petition. http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/let-the-bsl-4-lab-open

Together, we can save the NEIDL. Together, we can save SCIENCE!



[5]http://daviswiki.org/Biosafety_Level_4_Laboratory
[4]http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/cdc-and-food-safety.html
[3]http://www.fas.org/programs/bio/research.html
[2]http://www.bu.edu/today/2014/researchers-cite-experts-findings-of-neidl-safety/
[1]http://www.twiv.tv/threading-the-neidl/

Tapeworms

Right now, you're probably picturing a long, white, segmented, flat worm burrowing into the side of someone's intestines. Some of you probably picture hapless campers eating undercooked fish, or yuppies who don't know any better eating Sushi. Others among you may, perhaps, think that the worms are obtained from eating undercooked beef or pork. Some of you probably even imagine these worms burrowing into someone's brain. None of you are wrong- but then, you're not exactly right, either.

You see, there's not just one tapeworm that can get into people, each with their own special life cycle and possible pathogenic effects. Some of the most common tapeworms found in people are: Bovine tapeworm, Porcine Tapeworm, Fish tapeworm, and Dog tapeworm. The Bovine tapeworm is actually benign in Humans (though quite pathogenic for cattle), except in rare cases where bowel obstruction may occur- the worm, "knowing" that it's in a human, sits in your upper small intestine and simply takes a very small portion of your meals to sustain itself. You won't lose weight, contrary to popular myth, and you will likely never know if you are infested. Occasionally, a worm segment will detach and be shed from your body, ideally shedding the egg-filled segment in a grassy area where the eggs will subsequently be consumed by a cow. Once in the cow, conformational changes in the eggs occur as they pass through each of the cow's four stomachs (which is what prevents them hatching in a human) which cause them to hatch. The juvenile worms then proceed out through the intestinal wall and burrow into the cow's various bodily tissues, including muscle, organ, and brain. Once there, the worms remain dormant until the cow is slaughtered and consumed- in this case, by a human who failed to cook the meat thoroughly enough to kill the juvenile worm- completing the life cycle.[1]

As creepy as Bovine tapeworms are, they're the most benign of the various tapeworms. The next worm we'll look at is the fish tapeworm. As with the cow tapeworm, the fish tapeworm infests its host through ingestion of the juvenile stage in undercooked meat. Disease from the fish tapeworm is rare, but it can cause bowel obstruction and, in very rare cases, liver and gall bladder disease. Also, this is the largest among the tapeworms that can infest humans, growing up to thirty feet in length. Sushi lovers need not despair! The fish tapeworm has only ever been found in freshwater fish, and can be readily killed by freezing the meat. Just cook your freshwater fish, and you'll be fine. [2]

The dog tapeworm is a special cycle, where infestation of humans is a complete accident, as far as we can tell. Taenia Hydatigena, which sheds an infectious stage in canine stool, can be ingested by various mammals- typically sheep- and people. Once consumed, the worm leaves the intestine, and forms a large cyst in the abdominal cavity, where it produces more larvae and hides from the intermediate host's immune system while it's waiting for the host- and therefor, the cyst- to be eaten by a dog. If the cyst is ruptured prematurely, such as by abdominal trauma, many thousands of larvae can be released into the abdominal cavity. In Humans, the immune system can recognize the worm from the initial, infectious encounter, which can lead to the sudden onset of anaphylaxis and death subsequent to the worms' release into the abdominal cavity. Failing the rupture of the cyst, you could live a full and healthy life with this worm and be none the wiser. [3]

The Piece de Resistance here is the porcine tapeworm- Taenia Solium. The intent of the porcine tapeworm's life cycle is suspected to be much like that of the bovine worm's, in that the worm exists as a cyst-encased juvenile stage in the various tissues of a pig's body, waiting for consumption by a human. Once consumed, the juvenile develops into a fully fledged worm in the intestines of a human, and sheds eggs to be consumed by pigs. The really scary part about this worm is one of the few things that we'll go over here that's genuinely terrifying- the worm's eggs cannot tell the difference between a human gut tract and a porcine gut tract. If you were to eat bovine tapeworm eggs, no disease would develop. If, however, you were to consume porcine tapeworm eggs because, say, a restaurant chef who is infested didn't wash their hands after they had a stool, the eggs would hatch, and you would develop Cysticercosis (the juvenile stage of the worm in your various tissues). One famous form of this is Neurocysticercosis, where you actually develop juvenile stage worm cysts in your brain, potentially with pathogenic effects, including seizures, headaches, confusion, excess fluid on the brain, difficulty maintaining balance, and death (severity dependent on the number of cysts). What makes it scary is that its epidemiology is subtle and hard to avoid- it's not somebody sneezing, pouring blood out of every pore, or eating undercooked meat; it's as easy as someone else not washing their hands.[4][5][6]

So what can you do? WASH YOUR FILTHY MEAT HOOKS. Washing your hands regularly and after you use the bathroom is how you can help prevent the spread of almost every transmissible disease. There are medications you can take that will treat tapeworm infestation, so see your practitioner if you suspect that you're infected. Make sure that you cook all your meat thoroughly before consumption. As always, you can help by sharing what you've learned here (and sharing the facebook post it rode in on), doing your own research, and supporting those who support science! If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to leave them on the blog here, or ask me on the facebook post.






[1]http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2009/temanson_caro/Life%20Cycle.htm
[2]http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/diphyllobothrium/
[3]http://www.vetsonline.com/publications/veterinary-times/archives/n-43-46/cysticercosisa-a-controlling-tapeworm-in-dogs-and-sheep.html
[4]http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/taeniasis/biology.html
[5]http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/cysticercosis/disease.html
[6]http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/cysticercosis/

Humanity

The tides of real life have kept me pretty occupied lately, so instead of completely compromising on the quality of an article, I'm going to share something that I think everyone needs to watch in order to be a citizen of the world. At the time, Charlie Chaplain was trying to urge the US government to abandon its policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany with his movie "The Great Dictator", but his words remain just as applicable today. Enjoy the video, please share it with a friend, we'll see you next week.

YOUR SOUL

No, seriously. For the most part, science tends to skirt around questions of the metaphysical for a plethora of reasons. No small cause of this is the likelihood that people really won't like the answer science would arrive at, no matter what that answer may be. See the science denialism post for more on that. Another large factor in the lack of scientific research on the metaphysical is a guiding principle that science cannot ever definitively prove a negative result. No matter how much money you spend, zoologists and hunters you employ, aerial thermal sweeps your preform, and woodland cameras you set up, you cannot prove that Bigfoot doesn't exist- you can only say that there's an overwhelming lack of evidence in the face of volumes of research to support bigfoot's existence, therefor, it is highly plausible that bigfoot does not, at the time of this research, exist in the regions surveyed. Shorthand: in all likelihood, Bigfoot doesn't exist. There's an inherent trap in the science's negative result principle, in that someone could argue that Bigfoot sensed the hunters and Zoologists coming and evaded them; Bigfoot's fur insulates its heat signature from thermal scans; Bigfoot's keen sense of smell alerted it to the presence of the cameras, which were contaminated with the odor of humans, thus leading Bigfoot to avoid photographic detection. Science, stretched for resources in manpower and money, must then ask which is more likely: that an eight foot tall manbeast with senses far keener than any other North American mammal is continuing to evade scientific detection in the face of thinning woodlands, or given that the only evidence present after years of searching is purely anecdotal, bigfoot doesn't exist? The simplest, and most likely, explanation is that Bigfoot doesn't exist, and as such, science dismisses arguments to the contrary, which plead for valuable resources that could be put to other, more fruitful causes.

So, when I say that little research has been done regarding the human soul, you should have some grasp of the background behind that statement. There is a unique exception, however, that you may have heard of in popular culture- the story of the soul weighing 21 grams. In 1901, one Duncan MacDougall had a hypothesis that the human soul had measurable mass, and that one might measure this mass by detecting its departure when the body died, as conventional wisdom holds that the soul doesn't stick around once the party's over in the body. To preform the measurements, MacDougall obtained an industrial scale allegedly sensitive to 2/10ths of an ounce, or about 5.7 grams, on which to weigh terminally ill patients and their beds before, during, and after the moment of death. His sample size was pretty small- only six patients, only four of whom produced a result. Now, according to the Wikipedia page (so take it for what it's worth), the average weight loss at the time of death was about 15 grams, or roughly three times the scale's sensitivity.

To date, to my knowledge, the experiment has not been repeated, and there is no peer-reviewed data regarding weight loss at time of death in any other literature anywhere, though there were some experiments where sheep tended to increase in mass immediately post-mortem. Some initial reactions to the data include that the patients may have lost fluid due to the relaxation of various sphincters at the time of death, to which one must acknowledge that the scale was weighing the patient and bed in totality, and that the transfer of various fluids from the patient to the bed would not have affected the total weight. The next counter-argument is that the loss of weight is due to the final exhalation at time of death. Assuming complete collapse of the lungs and complete ejection of total lung capacity (very unlikely), that would be, at best, a loss of about 7 liters of air. At 0 degrees Celsius and sea level altitude, one liter of air has a mass of 1.29 grams, so that should only account for about 9 grams- not that the expulsion of air would show up on the scale, but if it did, it wouldn't account for a range up to 21 grams. More scientific attacks on the experiment tend to come from the angle that the experiment wasn't methodologically sound- and they're right. The scale wasn't as sensitive as I would've personally (and as I'm sure others) liked it to be, and the sample size was horribly small, but that doesn't mean that Dougall didn't hit on something, it just means that data could be easily anomalous or skewed. I, personally, would like to see perhaps a meta-analysis a patient weights immediately pre-and-post mortem- that doesn't seem like something that would be too difficult to preform, given that most hospital beds have scales built into them these days.

So what was being lost? Well, it's hard to say for certain, but there's been some studies that suggest that data, in the form of information stored on discs, has weight.[1] When researchers measured data storage devices, like USB drives, CDs, and DVDs loaded with white noise recordings, the devices lost weight during the deletion of the media, and retained that weight loss for a period that generally seems to be about 30 minutes. In one case, the deletion of 2 GB of data from a flash drive, the loss of weight was measured at a milligram. According to the researchers, the weight is greater than expected due to loss of water, thermal excitement, and various other physical phenomena. So, was the weight loss memory loss from a dying brain? According to a Scientific American article I found, the brain is estimated to hold around 2.5 Petabytes of data, or 2,621,440 Gigabytes. Assuming the weight ratio of weight loss of roughly 1 milligram per every two gigabytes is both constant and conserved in the human brain, and that complete memory erasure occurred at the time of death, then the total weight loss should be 1,310,720 mg- that's 1.3 Kg, or just about 3 pounds, which is considerably more than MacDougall measured. Brain cell death is not immediately total, however, and goes on for give or take ten minutes after death- at least, that's the point at which irreversible brain death and damage occurs. So the weight loss may not have manifested immediately, but some part of it may, indeed, have been memory loss due to the death of brain cells post-mortem.

Unfortunately, this is pretty much where I've hit a dead end. I've rode the conjecture train as far as it can take us without leading us over a cliff to the land of make-believe and raw, unadultered speculation. Some will probably say that I've already run too far with this, but I found it too tantalizing not to explore. One has to wonder, supposing MacDougall's results were more than just artifact, what did he actually pick up on? Could science, some day, empirically measure a soul? We'll never know unless science gets more funding! So, support those who support science in the public arena! Donate to science organizations and projects. Grow your own knowledge, do your own research, draw your own conclusions, and share what you've learned here. As always, feel free to leave me any questions, comments, or suggestions.


[1]http://www.ece.tamu.edu/~noise/research_files/Memory_weight_FNL.pdf
[2]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/

Science Denialism

Often, people contest the ideas put forth by science- and not entirely without historical merit. Once upon a time, we thought bad air caused respiratory sickness (thus, the source for Influenza- Spanish for 'influence'), we thought XMRV (Xenotropic Murine leukemia virus Related Virus) caused chronic fatigue syndrome, and we classified Homosexuality as a psychological disorder. Dissenters and critics claim that their criticism is harmless if they are incorrect, though this is contingent on the notion that mainstream science is already operating on what it believes is right. The motives are different- some people feel that some lines ought not to be crossed, while others whisper of conspiracy and profit gouging. The simple truth of science denialism, though, is that it isn't harmless.

HIV denialism, for example, is the notion that HIV is either not the causal agent for AIDS, or that HIV does not exist outright. From what I can tell, this movement seems to be the mutant husk of an honest scientific debate from the late 1980's to the early 1990's, where some scientists were not wholly convinced by the evidence presented at the time that HIV was the causal agent for AIDS. A similar skepticism- a healthy skepticism that was backed up by peer reviewed studies and not conjecture- successfully disproved XMRV as the causal agent for chronic fatigue syndrome, however, with HIV, the evidence is overwhelming. Not only does HIV fulfill Koch's Postulates to be the causal pathogen[1] (an epidemiological correlation, the ability to isolate the pathogen from a host and propagate said pathogen outside the host, and transmission from an infected organism to an uninfected susceptible organism produces the disease), but we have very strong, well-defined correlations between the use of Highly Active AntiRetroviral Therapy (HAART) and extended life expectancies of HIV infected individuals.[2] Antiviral drugs often target specific sites in specific viruses, and aren't broadly neutralizing in the same manner as antibiotics.

 Yet, whispers of conspiracy, profit-gouging, and medical hubris echo across the internet, riding on the waves of an honest skepticism in science from years past. HIV denialists make wild claims, including the notions that vitamins may outright cure HIV where drugs would not[3], that the very antivirals intended to help reduce viral loads (AZT, namely) cause the disease. One may ask what the harm is, and who might believe such claims and act on them. I've heard various anecdotes of lives needlessly cut short because someone took what they read on the internet at face value, but the most egregious case happened in South Africa. In the year 2000, the president of South Africa invited several AIDS denialists to a closed government conference on AIDS. Shortly afterwards, the government and some of its ministers adopted denialist views and policies, causing a campaign of misinformation to the people of South Africa, and a refusal of the government to accept free antivirals. After legal suit and significant outcry from the non-industry scientific community, the South African government eventually reversed its position, but the damage had already been done. The loss of life resulting from the government's denialist policies is presently estimated at 330,000 people- or just under the entire population of Wyoming, or 180 people a day for five years. [4]

Denialism of the safety and efficacy of vaccinations has led to the resurgence of preventable diseases once eradicated from countries- such as Measles in the US and the UK. See my post on Vaccines for more information. Denialism of climate change- and the climate is changing, the only debate is whether we're influencing it or not- continues to bog down efforts to modulate weather trends back towards more favorable conditions. Denialism and fear of the safety of nuclear energy applications keeps electricity prices high, and prevents us from extending the shelf life of ripe fruits and vegetables by the closure of irradiation plants. The thing about science is that it isn't a belief system- it's a collection of observations from which conclusions are drawn. The existence of the sun and its radiation of light is not contingent on your faith in it, but basic science demonstrates that we have regular cycles of day and night thanks to the earth's rotation through observation. Ignoring facts does not cause them to cease to be, and denialism of science without sound evidence or reason to back up that denialism can be, and is harmful.

If you like this post, please share it with your friends. As always, I encourage you to do your own research, draw your own conclusions from the facts presented here. Please, increase your knowledge, and share it with those around you. Feel free to leave questions, comments, and concerns here on the blog. I'd love to hear your feedback. Until next time, stay spooked.



[4]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19186354
[3]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/may/14/southafrica.internationalaidanddevelopment
[2]http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/10/1024.full
[1]http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/HIVAIDS/Understanding/howHIVCausesAIDS/Pages/HIVcausesAIDS.aspx

Protein

Credit to primehealthchannel.com

In all of us, we have proteins. Proteins help form our cell and body structures, they preform vital functions in cells, and they're useful sources of metabolic energy in a pinch. Proteins can also kill you. Prions, also known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs), are neurologic diseases caused by proteins. This might not sound so scary, except that Prion diseases are uniformly fatal in human and animal populations (that we know of today). To phrase that another way, there is no organism that we know of today that has survived an onset of prion disease. There are five known human TSEs, and six animal TSEs (all in mammalian populations) recognized by the CDC.[1] I'm sure there are more in both populations, specifically the animal population, but we just haven't found them yet. In fact, the first people to describe prion diseases were Scottish sheep herders, who observed sheep with Scrapie that would scrape themselves against any available object until their fur, skin, and subcutaneous tissue peeled off.

How do TSEs cause disease? It all starts with a mutation in a gene that codes for a protein, which creates a slightly altered version of the naturally occurring prion. This one altered prion then goes forward, finds other proteins, and re-folds them into more prions like it through a yet undescribed autocatalytic process. Those proteins then go find more proteins, and on, and on. This isn't a very fast process at first- the incubation period of TSEs is somewhere on the order of years, varying a little for each particular prion- but once initial symptoms manifest, the patient presents with a rapidly deteriorating neurological status, going from a functional human being to dead in a matter of about four months for classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. The protein eventually chews your brain into what actually looks like swiss cheese (see the photo on top). The body mounts no detectable immune response- if I had to venture a guess, it's a combination of the fact that they're very similar to your cellular proteins, and that prion diseases generally don't demonstrate aggressive pathologies outside of the central nervous system (which is devoid of immune cells for good reason). There is no known therapy for prion diseases, and they are capable of crossing species barriers (feline TSEs are believed to be Mad Cow, for example).[3] The only real good news here is that TSEs aren't very easy to transmit, short of a medically transmitted (nosocomial) infection or consuming infected flesh. According to the WHO, the only tissues that demonstrate infectivity are the brain, spinal cord, and eye (these are the most infectious, with corneal transplants causing up to three recognized cases of CJD); As well as the CSF, kidneys, liver, lung, lymph nodes, spleen, and placenta. It's worth noting there are no documented cases of transmission from mother to fetus. [2]

The horror of prions is multifaceted. On one front, they have a higher mortality rate than any other known human pathogen- even Rabies isn't 100% fatal, we're learning. On another, while TSEs aren't readily transmissible, they are extremely hard to destroy. How difficult is it to kill a prion, exactly? The WHO's resource on Prion infection control measures states that Prions are completely unaffected by ionizing and UV radiation, boiling, dry heat less than 300 degrees Celsius (572 F), Formaldehyde, Alcohol, Ammonia, Hydrogen Peroxide, and Hydrochloric Acid. In fact, allowing infected substances to dry or be exposed to alcohol will increase the infectivity of a Prion-exposed material. Even autoclaving at 121 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes is only partially effective. The chemical of choice for cleaning seems to be Sodium Hydroxide. The WHO also recommends the disposal of non-disposable equipment after it is exposed to high and moderate infectious materials of a patient with Prion disease.[2]

Before you let this information really scare you, it's important to realize that you don't have to catch a TSE to develop one. According to the CDC, CJD arises spontaneously in the world population at a rate of about one case per million. In older people, the rate is about 4.6 cases per million. It's believed that the cause is a mutation in the prion genome.[4] Next time you get a headache, it might be worth wondering about.

As always, if you want to do something about Prions and TSEs, support science, and support those in power who support science. Share what you've learned here, do your own research, and feel free to share any questions, comments, or concerns with me.




[1]http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/prions/index.htm
[2]http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/bse/whocdscsraph2003.pdf?ua=1 (section 6)
[3]http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/prions/resources/BelayE_Annu_Rev_Microbio.pdf (page 284)
[4]http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/cjd/

Mind control

Are you ready for what could possibly be the scariest post to date on the blog? I hope so.

The human brain is widely recognized to be the world's most complex, powerful computer. It is capable of taking in external stimuli in multiple formats, interpreting them, and then making split second decisions to execute complex tasks. Your brain is a big part of who you are, it's what controls your body, and attempts to seize control of that have failed throughout history.

When suddenly, along came University of Washington. Researchers at UW managed to make a fellow researcher's hand move involuntarily over the Internet.[1] While it's more correct to call it body control instead of mind control, the implication is similar- the subject of the experiment did not will his hand to move, and compared the experience to a 'nervous tick'. It's not yet known if the researcher could have stopped the movement from happening, but I believe that it's physiologically possible to bypass his brain's will completely, possibly through the use of surgical implants high in the spinal cord, or pharmacological methods to knock down higher thought. 

A more famous article made the rounds a while back about MIT researchers managing to implant false memories. Granted, they managed to implant them in mice, but the researchers felt that the process was similar to how humans are already generating false memories for themselves on a daily basis.[2] The successful implantation of the memory was measured by a fear reaction, in which the mouse brain showed increased activity consistent with fear, while the mouse would freeze in response to a given stimuli that it had never actually experienced before, expecting a painful electric shock that was never coming. The process by which they go about generating these false memories is reminiscent of Pavlov's experiments with dogs, only a lot more high tech. While the research easily qualifies as dual-use research of concern, it isn't very portable, and no similar research has been preformed on humans to my knowledge. Can it be done to people? Maybe.

Humans aren't the only critters hijacking our brains, though. A number of parasitic organisms are also capable of tweaking our brains. Toxoplasmosis Gondii is a parasite that's gaining in fame for good reason. Typically, it's a protozoan (single-celled organism) infection with a cat as the domestic host and a mouse or a rat as an intermediate host. In mice, infection with the parasite is associated with a loss of fear response to the odor of cat urine, as well as increased motor activity. The hypothesis that comes to mind is that the parasite is trying to get the mouse eaten by the cat so that it can get into the cat's intestine, which is where it wants to be. In people, who can very readily be infected through the consumption of undercooked meat and/or fecal-oral transmission by cat feces (not that people are eating cat poop, but poor hand hygiene around kitty isn't advised by me), infection is associated with heightened apprehensiveness; Increased aggression, jealousy, and disregard for rules among men; Increased warmth, outgoing behavior, and persistence in women. Also, the parasite seems to negatively affect reaction time, and is associated with difficulty concentrating. There is also some suggestion that the parasite may be involved in increasing the rates of motor vehicle crashes.[3 for all of that] For further information on Toxoplasmosis, you can go here, to the references section, for information on possible neurocognitive effects, and to the CDC's webpage to learn more about Toxo in general.

The human brain's complexity and sensitivity to change has long been its defense mechanism against our tampering. One day, not too far from now, we may be able to proficiently meddle with its functions. That day, however, is not today. The MIT and WU experiments both involve tens of thousands of dollars of not extremely portable equipment, lots of time, and involved quite specific conditions. The research holds implications both in the healing arts (the WU experiment mainly holds implications for the next generation of robotic prosthetics, for example), that sounds alarming due to the potential military abuses they provide for. In science arenas, projects like these are known as dual-use research of concern, and all that means is that we need to be aware of them, and we need to be involved in how the results of these projects are applied to humanity. For example, nuclear physics research has provided both for significant improvements in our quality of living (cheap, reliable energy from nuclear power plants), as well as for weapons of incredible destructive capacity.

What can you do? Well, demanding that the research be stopped is not the optimal response. Science, being a system of observation as opposed to one of belief, is something everybody does. Elucidations and the conclusions that come of them are an inevitable part of the human condition. This research is coming from someone, somewhere, whether we like it or not. Ignoring the outcomes of these studies won't make the facts go away, so it's better to be involved in the development of their humanitarian applications, than to allow the research to be quietly developed for more subversive purposes. We're talking about the difference between a new artificial limb for a disabled veteran and a torture device. Support those politicians who support research, do your own research and draw your own conclusions when you read something alarming in the news, write to experts in the field when you have questions, and share your knowledge with others. Until next time, stay spooky, kids.

 

[3]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/

[2] http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/neuroscientists-plant-false-memories-in-the-brain-0725.html

[1] http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/08/27/researcher-controls-colleagues-motions-in-1st-human-brain-to-brain-interface/

Polio-like disease

This is a post relevant to something happening now in California. Over a period of eighteen months, we've had an increase in children how are experiencing an acute chronic, focal (isolated or localized, such as to a limb) paralysis. Described as 'Polio-like disease' because of its clinical presentation, we know that this is NOT Polio because all of the afflicted children have been vaccinated, Polio no longer circulates naturally in the US, and no Polio samples have been recovered from any of the kids. The paralysis is, as of yet, of an unknown cause, and has afflicted around twenty children.[2] Two of the children have tested positive for a Picornavirus (same family as Polio) that's been known to be circulating since the 60's- Enterovirus 68. Stanford doctors suggest that they're suspicious for this virus as the causative agent, since three children were known to have respiratory illness before developing paralysis, and EV68 is a respiratory pathogen. Also, two of the children were found to have EV68 in their stool.

Personally, I'm not convinced that EV68 is the culprit here. There've been multiple outbreaks of EV68 as a respiratory pathogen since we've known about it, with no neurological effects reported in any of them.[1] It's true that viruses mutate, but I'm sure that we would've seen neurological effects before now in some of the other outbreaks. We know the EV68 circulates naturally in California, and that the virus must be spreading through a population in order to not go extinct. No epidemiological control measures have been taken to my knowledge. What that means is that the virus should still be circulating. If the virus did mutate to become neurovirulent, we should be seeing a lot more cases of the 'Polio-like disease' very soon. I don't expect that to happen, but we'll see.

What's more is that the sample size is very small- only 20 kids- and the sample size with EV68 is even smaller- only two kids. The evidence is so circumstantial, and I think it would be almost as solid to blame influenza. Not to mention that the CDC is presently investigating, and has not spoken to the EV68 hypothesis at all. I'm not saying that it's not EV68, but I'm saying that we don't need to prematurely jump on a pathogen and end up barking up the wrong tree, especially if this does turn into a pandemic- which the numbers seem to argue against by their slow accumulation. 

Vincent Racaniello, host of This Week in Virology and Virology professor at Columbia University has had extensive experience working with Polio and Picornaviruses. On his blog at Virology.ws he argued that California normally has about 70 cases of 'polio-like disease' per year, and that the present number of cases mentioned in the alleged outbreak don't exceed the normal background caseload. For a much more informative article, his blog is worth your time, check it out. If you're concerned about this illness, watch your kids for any signs of sudden, enduring, limp limb paralysis or weakness and report to your doctor immediately if you see anything. If your kids need the polio vaccine, continue receiving it, since Polio is still out and about in the world. There are no special precautions or actions that should be taken otherwise.

As always, if you want to make a difference, do your own research, share with others what you've learned here, and support those who support funding research, science, and public health agencies. If you like what you've read here, share this on facebook or among your friends. Feel free to leave questions, comments, and concerns here on the blog, or to address them directly to me.

[3]Virology.ws

[2]http://healthier.stanfordchildrens.org/q-rare-polio-like-disease-emerges-california/

[1]http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751032_1

Labor

They're coming to take your jobs, devaluate your labor, and avoid paying taxes. Since the late 1800's, the number of Americans working in farms has dwindled. In fact, while agriculture was a major employer in the 1940's, it's been far surpassed for American employment by other industries. I'm talking, of course, of robots. That's right, robots. Two MIT professors, for example[1], insist that the automation and computerization of various industries is what's behind the de-coupling of wealth generated compared to labor put in (hint: it's not the labor that's increasing). It's happened in the past, with Detroit replacing numerous, expensive workers with relatively infragile, inexpensive machines on the factory floor. Other examples include the infamous automated phone operator to replace human phone operators, and eBay and Amazon replacing the flea market (to an extent).

It's happening now, with food and retail service companies replacing checkout clerks with self-checkout machines. Even emergency dispatch centers can run with fewer people thanks to the help of computer aided dispatching. The picture seems bleak for the near future, with Google's fleet of self-driving cars.[3] In fact, where most industries have made significant recovery since the 2008 recession, the transportation industry's unemployment rate is still hovering above 9%.[4] Drivers make mistakes, they get tired, they have to take breaks for food and rest, and they require payment, insurance, and workman's comp if they're injured. A fleet of self-driving trucks, busses, and taxis, however, would require neither recompense nor rest, save for maintenance. Ask yourself, with today's technology, is your job really irreplaceable? Is there really a good reason that a machine can't do your work? One must wonder, if a computer can drive a car, how long before we let one make a life or death decision in war-time, and if it would make the right call.

Don't worry, through. Not yet, anyway. Technology's been replacing people in the workforce since the late 1800's, with the invention of the cotton gin, followed by the farm tractor, steam engines and the electric motor. There's simply no way people can compete against machines in brute force labor and computations. Each time machines take over a sector, though, it frees up both money that was being spent on the labor force, and the labor force to move on to more meaningful, productive work. Would life in the developed world be even half as convenient and easy as it is today if a little under half of America still worked on farms[2] just to keep the country fed? I doubt it severely. The growth is a little painful at first, but it generally seems to pay out to society as a whole in the long run.


So, yeah, that's it. Sorry, folks, I ran kind of short on time, here. I'll likely re-visit the subject in the future. Please feel free to share this blog, share what you've learned, and do your own research. You are welcome to share any questions, comments, or concerns both on the blog, and on my facebook page.

[4]http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car

[2]http://www.census.gov/1940census/then_and_now/index.html

[1]http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/

Viruses

Ebola, Dengue (hemorrhagic and not), Measles, HIV, Smallpox, Polio, Influenza, Coronaviruses (SARS/MERS), Caliseviruses (Rotavirus), Hanta virus, Rabies, these are all killers. Viruses are, perhaps, the least well understood pathogens by the general public, and handily the most feared. You only need to turn on the TV to see various plots starring novel superviruses that threaten to obliterate the population, dastardly villain optional, to take my point. They're fundamental horror at its finest, an invisible agent that turns those closest to you into death machines that shed millions of patent virus particles during the course of their infection. Only very recently, with vaccines and improvements in hygiene, nutrition, and medical care, have we begun to curb the viral threat to the population.

So, what is a virus? What makes them distinct from those other, dastardly, deadly microbes, bacteria? First off, they're not generally considered to be living organisms. That's right, because living organisms have metabolic processes, they take in nutrients and put out waste, they synthesize proteins, replicate genomes, and respond to their environment. Viruses don't do any of these things- at least, not on their own. Viruses don't have a proper nucleus, nor do they come with organelles, or much more than their genetic data and what's required to get it in a cell and replicating. Outside the cell, a virus is not much more than a static particle, floating about in Brownian motion, waiting to encounter its target cell. Once inside the cell, however, the viral proteins, enzymes, and genetic data get to work hijacking the cell's transcription (sometimes, with DNA and Retroviruses) and protein synthesis machinery to do one thing: make more virus.

The scary bit is that there's evidence to suggest that the diversity of species offers a barrier against pathogen spread into human populations by offering ectoparasites (mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, etc) and other vectors choices besides people. [3] With biodiversity falling, and human populations rising, it may only be a short time before we experience our next major pandemic. There are antiviral therapies available, but acute infections are often too far progressed by the time severe symptoms manifest for the antivirals to make a difference, and some viruses can easily select for escape mutants that aren't at all effected by the pharmaceutical therapy.

How do viruses make you sick? The mechanisms vary, but for the most part, it's not actually the virus making you feel sick, it's you. That's right, your symptoms- aches, chills, fever, feeling crappy- are all the result of your immune system trying to reign in the viral infection. The only problem is that it sometimes goes a bit overboard, and ends up carpet bombing the city to catch the thief, so to speak. For example, there's a hypothesis circulating that type 1 Diabetes Mellitus is actually the product of an autoimmune response secondary to a viral infection. The hypothesis implies that the infection itself is either fairly minor (such as a cold) or completely inapparent. The immune system successfully controls and clears the virus, but, possibly due to a similarity between viral antigens and surface proteins on the insulin secreting cells of the pancreas, the immune system goes on to attack and destroy the body's insulin factory. Take it with a grain of salt, since there's been no peer reviewed research that I'm aware of that positively identifies a viral culprit, but the hypothesis is sound, in my opinion.

All viruses are bad, right? Not quite. There's evidence to suggest that roughly 8% of our genome is viral in origin.[1] That is to say that, at some point, a virus managed to successfully insert its genome into ours, and get its genetic data incorporated and passed from generation to generation. So what, you may ask. Placenta, I will answer. There's evidence that suggests that mammals gained placental function secondary to a retroviral integration event. That's right, you may have a virus to thank for not laying eggs. While it is a very good thing that we've managed to save millions of lives through successful vaccination programs, the eradication of smallpox, and the near-eradication of Polio, one can't help but wonder what they might have become in time. Given another ten thousand years, could we have gained a gene from the virus, or through the natural selection caused by the virus? It's hard to speak to anything on it past the level of conjecture, and it's hardly worth the tragic loss of life that would need to occur.

What's more is that we're moving forward with clinical trials in using genetically modified human viruses as cancer killers- and they're pretty darn good at it. The risk of the virus spontaneously mutating into a pandemic monstrosity is generally pretty low. Conjecturally, I'd reckon that it's about the same odds as Rabies becoming a toenail disease and elephants giving birth to sharks. The point is that biological entities don't easily and rapidly become things that they aren't. Nature has a collection of literature on the matter, available for free here: http://www.nature.com/mt/webfocus/oncolytic/index.html
Viruses also show promise as antimicrobials, since they already naturally parasitize bacteria. For more on phage therapy, please visit my article on evolution.

Just remember, just because you haven't found your match yet, doesn't mean you won't meet the virus that's been waiting for you its whole life with your next handshake. Happy valentines day.


[3]http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s587071.htm
[2]http://www.pnas.org/content/106/29/11827.full
[1]http://www.uta.edu/ucomm/mediarelations/press/2010/01/genome-biologist-reports.php

Disaster preparation

In recent years, 'preppers'- people who are overly zealous in preparing for whatever absurd twist will bring about the global apocalypse- have gotten a good amount of media attention. Images of secret bunkers buried in the mountains with stockpiles of guns, ammunition, twinkies, and tin foil hats are conjured when one thinks of disaster preparation. Some of the people interviewed seem absurd, their personalities ranging from the slightly unnerving paramilitary type to the outright laughable. It's so outright intriguing that National Geographic's 'Doomsday Preppers' has run for three seasons now. So let's talk about disaster- not doomsday- preparation (there's a difference). 

In 2009, only 57% of Americans identified as having set aside any supplies for a disaster. Of that, a little over 70% of the time, those supplies were only food and/or water, and were often found to be inadequate on the whole. [1]That number's going to vary depending on where you live, but that means that roughly half of the households in your neighborhood are not at all equipped for a disaster. How many people per household does your neighborhood average? What are those people going to do hours to days after a large-scale disaster? Images of post-katrina New Orleans with looting and disorder, the superdome burgeoning with tens of thousands of people, all in need of food, water, and shelter come to my mind. 

Of those surveyed, many people stated that they didn't prepare for a disaster because they felt that the established infrastructure with police, fire, and EMS, or a federal or state response will help them. As a paramedic who works in the emergency field, I can tell you from personal experience that EMS systems often operate at the verge of their capacity (and are often well below the NFPA recommendation of 1 emergency ambulance per 14,000 citizens), and even relatively small mass casualty incidents such as highway pileups can rapidly overwhelm available resources. While fire and police departments generally have more manpower and resources, they too can be readily stretched thin or overwhelmed by incidents that are much smaller than a disaster level event. Even neighboring systems may be too overwhelmed, or even unwilling to render aid, as was the case when an adjoining town blocked New Orleans residents entry at gunpoint. Federal and state level responses often take a day or more to mobilize, and may not be present if the disaster is ongoing. While public safety and government infrastructure are great resources, you have a responsibility to yourself and those around you to make sure that you can at least take care of yourself, so as not to suffer from the lack of those resources, and to avoid contributing to their scarcity. 

Having a disaster kit ready isn't hard, or all that expensive. You don't have to buy a $300, 500-piece kit to be prepared, and you don't need a bunker in the mountains. In all likelihood, you already have most of the supplies on hand at your house. Ready.gov has a list of the most important items you'll need in the event of any disaster. The most important thing about these supplies is that they must be set aside just for a disaster, and you need them in one place, in a bag or two, stored so you can grab them and leave quickly if you need to. 

The list goes like this: 

-1 gallon (or 4 liters) of water per person per day. If you're sedentary, you'll need a little under 2 liters for drinking, and the rest for hygiene. Have at least a three day supply. 

-3 day supply of non-perishable food. MREs are great, but they're far too bulky, and too expensive since the prepper fad, in my opinion. If you do use MREs, don't skip on the sugarless gum, it'll keep you regular. Dehydrated food requires that you pack extra water with which to rehydrate it. Canned or jarred goods, peanut butter and other nut products, and dehydrated or smoked meats such as jerky would be my recommendation. Don't forget salt, instant coffee or tea, some chocolate and hard candy. It'll be the little things like those that will help keep you feeling good. Also, you can trade these items in a pinch. 

-A hand-crank or battery-op radio and a NOAA capable radio. This is so you can receive instruction on where to seek shelter, get food and water, and be notified of impending dangerous weather conditions. 

- A flashlight with extra batteries. You get what you pay for. If you buy a cheap light and never change the batteries in it, expect a cheap light with dead batteries. You can use this as a weapon in a pinch, and to signal for help. 

-First aid kit. Please, please, please do not buy a pre-assembled first aid kit, especially from your local department store. '100 piece' kits usually turn out to have 99 band-aids and a set of tweezers. I would ask a friend in the healthcare field to help put one together. FEMA also has a list of recommended first aid items here 

http://m.fema.gov/first-aid-kit 

The only things I'd add is that the sterile dressings they mention should be in the form of roll gauze, pack ibuprofen, pack female sanitary pads (even if you're male, they can be used to stop bleeding, or at least make some poor lady feel a little better), and pack ACE wraps.

-A dust mask, plastic sheeting, and duct tape. The idea is to seal off your shelter in the event of a chemical or biological incident, but these can also be used to construct a makeshift shelter in the field. 

-A whistle, for signaling for help. 

-Moist towelettes, garbage bags, and twist ties for personal sanitation. I can say from personal experience that you can use moist towelettes for a dry bath in a pinch. 

-Can opener

-Local map

-Wrench or pliers

- Cell phone charger or solar charger. 

My personal recommendations extend to include: 

-A water procurement method. Iodine tablets, bleach solution, a life straw device, etc. 

-A tool/weapon of some sort. A hatchet, axe, or sturdy blade of some kind would be best, in my opinion. Firearms are good for personal defense, but generally aren't great for general utility purposes. If you want a firearm to be part of your kit, do it. My advice is that you don't turn yourself into a target by looking like a walking arsenal. 

-A good backpack in which to keep your kit. It's okay to assign extra backpacks to other family members. 

-Games, like a pack of playing cards or a set of dice. 

-Consider your region's conditions, terrain, and weather, adjust your kit as appropriate. 

-Pet food for your animal. Bear in mind that a FEMA shelter may ask you to relinquish the animal. 

Really, this stuff is all recommended to make your life easier, and keep you from becoming a victim. None of it's going to do you any good if you don't have a plan, don't know how to use it, or don't obey common sense or instruction. No amount of stuff can replace a little bit of good training and practice. No amount of post-event efforts can replace a little prevention. It really is easy to be ready for anything- if you can go camping, you can be prepared. Start getting organized today, check your house for leftover supplies that would go into your kit. Get your family and friends in on it. Go meet those neighbors you don't know yet, and learn you can rely on them for and vice-versa. 

If you want to help disaster relief efforts, FEMA recommends starting with this site: http://www.nvoad.org/states  

FEMA also recommends donating only cash, as it provides relief organizations with the flexibility they need to help those who need it. As always, you can help by supporting politicians who support disaster preparedness, by doing your own research, and by sharing what you've learned here. 

As always, feel free to leave questions, comments, concerns, and suggestions on the blog, on my google + account, or on Facebook. 

[3]http://m.fema.gov/first-aid-kit

[2]www.ready.gov

[1]https://s3-us-gov-west-1.amazonaws.com/dam-production/uploads/20130726-1859-25045-2081/2009_citizen_corps_national_survey_findings___full_report.pdf