MARIJUANA IN PREGNANCY

fetal alcohol syndrome is a terrible problem, but now we see marijuana use in early pregnancy soaring, and it is worse because some women seem to be using it as a "treatment" for morning sickness in the first trimester, when fetal development is most sensitive to chemicals.

CDC report here.

It is important to include accurate information about the health risks of using marijuana for a mother and her baby. Some important ideas to convey include, marijuana use during pregnancy may increase your baby’s risk of developmental problems; the chemicals in any form of marijuana may be bad for your baby (this includes edible marijuana products such as cookies, brownies, or candies);
marijuana use during pregnancy may negatively impact your baby after birth (research shows marijuana use during pregnancy may make it hard for your child to pay attention, learn, or do well in school and these issues may only become noticeable as your child grows older); and if you’re using marijuana and are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, talk to your doctor.

Good news of the year: Measles deaths are decreasing dramatically

NYTimes:

For the first time in history, annual deaths around the globe from measles have fallen below 100,000, the World Health Organization announced this year. As recently as the 1980s, measles killed 2.6 million people a year.

it is a killer of malnourished children. Some cynics suggested that since measles only killed malnourished kids, whose IQ from malnutrition was low anyway, we should not bother to vaccinate the kids in rural Africa, since they would probably die of something else or end up as low IQ workers.

This was 40 years ago, and gives you an idea of how apartheid's Nazi links morphed into other nearby countries.

Indeed, many of our malnourished kwashiorkor (protein malnourished children) died of measles. Our solution was to encourage spacing of children, to improve the length of breast feeding, measles shots, protein supplements, and have our village health workers weigh children and refer them to our nutrition village to feed up and show moms cheap high protein food (e.g. hybrid chickens who both had the disease resistance of local chickens and the high egg volume of imported varieties. We also taught how to keep them in cages, so the eggs would not be lost).

But even in the US, I saw measles encephalitis.

the problem with history: The Plague

CDC article for later reading: dangers of non critical reading of historical plague data.

 Plague outbreaks in Europe, 1347–1760. Map produced on the basis of data from Biraben (2,3). Map provided courtesy of Yue et al. Navigable rivers facilitated the spread and recurrence of plague in pre-industrial Europe. Sci Rep. 2016;6:34867 (6).

technical and mainly bookmarked for later reading.

Hooah pneumothorax

“HOOAH!” A Case of Pneumomediastinum in the Military Training Environment; Hamman’s Sign 71 Years LaterMilitary Medicine, Volume 176, Number 3, March 2011 , pp. 352-355(4)

headsup Improbable research

Pneumococcal Pneumonia: History of medicine

Once upon a time, pneumococcal pneumonia was a killer, mainly of the old but also the young.

And in the 1930's, the big breakthrough was anti serum.

Then came sulfa, and later penicillin.

LINK
In 1892, William Osler famously wrote of pneumonia, “It is a self-limited disease, and has its course uninfluenced in any way by medicine.”3 One year earlier, however, the first attempt to treat pneumococcal pneumonia with rabbit serum (generated through inoculating rabbits with pneumococci) had taken place in Germany.4

By 1913, after 2 decades of mixed results, serotherapy directed against the pneumococcus would be redefined through the efforts of Rufus Cole and his colleagues at the newly constructed Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute. Reclassifying pneumococci into 4 serological “types,”5 they argued that serologically specific pneumococci apparently called for type-specific therapy; focusing on the treatment of the lethal and prevalent type I pneumococcus with type-specific horse serum, Cole and his colleagues could report a reduction in mortality from more than 25% to 7.5%.6

By the late 1920s, type I–specific antipneumococcal serotherapy had been proved efficacious in the large hospitals of the northeast—especially if given early in the disease’s course—through one of the first collaborative controlled clinical trials performed in this country (in part funded by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which had lost more than $24 million in excess death benefits in the wake of the 1918–1919 influenza epidemic and had become one of the leading contributors to the campaign against respiratory disease in the first half of the 20th century).7

Nevertheless, at the very least, the treatment was labor intensive, expensive, and seemingly hospital dependent (to say nothing of the potential for serum reactions).

an interesting item now only remembered if one watches old time movies, but maybe with the advent of antibiotic disease, it will have a come back...

Gulf war syndrome and ALS

One of the terrible things done to veterans of the first Gulf war was the coverup of Gulf war syndrome, claiming no disease here, folks, just move on.

after many years, the VA made it a diagnosis, so now Vets can get help from them.

but still, most claiming this disease are being denied disability benefits.

From 2010 to 2015, the VA approved 17 percent of claims – or 18,000 of 102,000 -- for health care and disability compensation for veterans suffering from Gulf War Illness, which is an umbrella term for certain medical conditions common in some of the 1 million servicemembers who deployed to Southwest Asia in the past 27 years. 

Besides claims getting denied more often, veterans seeking benefits for Gulf War illness are having to wait four months longer on average to hear back from the VA, the GAO found.

There’s confusion among VA staff about how to handle the claims, the report states. The Government Accountability Office also found VA medical examiners, who are key in providing information for veterans’ claims, lacked training on Gulf War illness. As of February, 90 percent of medical examiners had not been trained on how to conduct exams for Gulf War illness. The VA made the training optional. 

However, the VA attributes the low approval ratings to the complexity of Gulf War illness, thought to be caused by toxic exposure. There’s not a single definition for Gulf War illness, which includes a cluster of different conditions, as well as nine infectious diseases.

 toxic exposures? Some conspiracy sites claim heavy metal poisoning from non radioactive uranium, others to the experimental anthrax vaccine. See report here.

, but docs who served there claimed it was due to exposure to Saddam's nerve gas in low doses that interacted with an anti nerve gas prevention used by the soldiers, causing an autoimmune disease. Most soldiers know of scuds exploding or times when they were destroying Saddam's weapons, and the nerve gas alarms went off, yet no symptoms occured: meaning it was detecting low levels of gas that meant you didn't have to put on your protective gear, or else a machine malfunction.

Veterans affair office has this article about the controversy.

the only "good" news in all of this is the actual rate of the disease is low:

Among approximately 2.5 million eligible military personnel, 107 confirmed cases of ALS were identified for an overall occurrence of 0.43 per 100,000 persons per year. 

CDC article on ALS. They are establishing a registry for patients, to help figure out the cause and what treatments would help.

ALS disproportionately affects whites, males, and persons aged 60–69 years (9); the reasons for the increased incidence among whites and males is unknown (9). Military veterans, particularly men, are at higher risk for developing ALS than are those who have not served (10). Veterans who served in the first Gulf War were twice as likely to develop ALS as were veterans who served during the same period but were not deployed to the Gulf (11). The reason for the increased risk among veterans is not known, but it might be related to selective environmental exposures (9,10).

Generics from Canada

I am old enough to remember when importing cheap generic drugs from Canada into the US was a big political controversy.

I am posting the stories below just for my own information, in case there is a conspiracy behind these deaths:



Read this story in the UK telegraph: Canadian pharmaceutical founder and wife dead in suspicious circumstances.

This old 2010 story at the NYTimes notes that their generic medicines have problems with quality control. One of their products is a fentanyl patch without gel: presumably not as easy to abuse.

and a 2014 story says they were suing Canada for not letting them import their drugs that were made in India.

and this older article notes they were helping supply cheap HIV medicines to Africa but found the red tape was so expensive they didn't plan to continue. More here about the problem of intellectual property and trade rights in the Canadian generic drug companies trying to supply medicines to third world charities.

or is it because they are in trouble for stealing trade secrets from another drug company? Philly.com has the story of the big lawsuit over this.

WtF: Information on smoking a non-gel Fentanyl patches?... I was aware of the abuse but not that the powers that be allowed addicts place these discussions on the internet.

medical article on the problem.

so for conspiracy folks, we have sex, drugs and, well maybe not rock and roll but business shennanigans.

And of course, mentioning HIV drugs to Africa being in the conspiracy of Arkancide.

Yes, I am being sarcastic.

substandard, contaminated, and even counterfeit drugs are a big problem here, so I will keep an eye on it.

Baby Body parts

But one of the more serious undercover journalism by non professionals was the publicity about the lucrative market of selling baby parts from abortions: Something that is illegal.

Didn't get much publicity, of course.

and no one in the Obama administration justice Dept gave it glance (although the FBI might now look into it ).

But I did run across this article: The company making huge profits on the illegal scam got shut down by... the local Orange County district attorney in California!?

LATimes: 2 companies reahch $7.7 million dollar settlement

translation: they got shut down, and a small fine. Where did that 7 million dollar figure come from? That's what their illegal inventory of baby body parts was worth, and now they will have to give them away for "research".

Wesley Smith points out that the deal is not perfect, but they did get shut down... and no punishment for planned parenthood who were the source of the body parts...

and of course, PP and others made a lot of money out of this: did this bias their counseling sessions for the mothers, to push abortion but no other options (something unethical in medicine)...

and of course, one doubts that any of the moms were aware that the type of abortion done (so that the body parts were easier to "harvest") was more dangerous to her health too... nor were the mothers compensated, of course (which would be a bigger ethical problems: carrying the kid to make money then killing him).

Mr Burke, call your office. Mr Hare please answer your page...Dr. Knox is on line.

Junk food diarrhea

from StrategyPage:

 switching from one's normal Asian diet to a rich western diet causes diarrhea, and this could kill a lot of malnourished North Koreans if that country gets taken over by the South or by China.

Now doctors realized that given the state of North Korean soldiers’ digestive tract because of the bad food and water, suddenly switching to South Korean snack foods and other delicacies the northerners had never had would induce diarrhea and disability until their digestive tract could adjust to the Western diet.

This problem was not unknown in South Korea. That’s because of the more than 500,000 South Korean troops who have served, individually, in U.S. Army units since 1950. ...

The KATUSAs are treated just like the American troops, living in the same barracks, eating in the same mess halls and getting the same medical care.

A common medical problem with KATUSAs was diarrhea because the KATUSA did not follow instructions and shift gradually to the very different (especially in terms of sweets, processed foods and so on) food served in the American dining halls and when troops were out in the field. The diarrhea problem was largely gone by the 1980s as the South Korean economy became affluent enough to produce local versions of the American processed and snack foods.

Personally, some of this might be because a lot of American food has ilk in it, and Asians tend to be unable to digest lactose in milk.

but you have to watch when you refeed someone who has been chronically starved or malnourished because they cannot absorb the food.

LINK Some concentration camp survivors died when fed
As did the survivors of Napoleon's Russian debacle.

My main experience is with children suffering from marasmus and kwashiorkor.

The intestinal lining gets thinner and fewer villae to absorb food, so they can't digest stuff.
And often they would just die a week or two later, probably because of nutritional cardiomyopathy. (heart muscle replaced with connective tissue, and too weak to keep beating when the person starts recovering).

Sigh

the white death: Betty Mac Donald's book

Betty MacDonald is best known for the book and movie: The Egg and I

But she suffered from TB, and also wrote a book The Plague and I.

part of it is here

DENGUE VACCINE SCANDAL

one of the problems with Dengue is that, unlike most diseases that give you immunity, if you get dengue a second time,, you can get a lot sicker: you are more likely to get the hemorrhagic form of the disease if you get a different strain of the disease.

here, Dengue kills a lot of folks and makes more sick.

So they had started using a vaccine in certain areas here: Then the drug company said: there might be side effects

NYTimes article:

The company said further clinical studies had revealed that, in those who had previously had dengue, the vaccine could prevent repeat infection. But for those who had not had dengue, and were vaccinated and later became infected, “more cases of severe disease could occur,” Sanofi said in the advisory... more than 740,000 elementary school students in the Philippines having already received Dengvaxia vaccinations, the government decided to halt the program for the time being..

the gov't defended it's use, noting the World Health Organization okayed it's use.

the Phil Inquirer has more and goes into the worries, but notes that no deaths here so far.

I laugh at the note docs need to take a history if the kids had had the disease: mild cases would never see a doc or be diagnosed since it looks like the flu or other virual illnesses.

but ddeep in the article you note this:
Health advocates are pressing the DOH to file plunder charges against those who implemented the vaccination program.
Duque refused to comment without a review of all the documents and contracts and the circumstances surrounding the immunization program.
The massive program was launched under Health Secretary Janette Garin despite staunch opposition from several medical experts who said the DOH should wait until the study on the vaccine was completed and had enough safeguards for those who would receive it.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/949224/philippine-news-updates-dengue-vaccines-department-of-health-dengue-immunization-program-dengvaxia-2#ixzz503XfG2qJ Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook