Healthy skepticism is obviously the lifeblood of a functioning society, yet there are moments when distrust of The Man can have dire consequences. That is too often the case in the public-health sphere, which we reckon makes sense—the notion of injecting ourselves with foreign agents is terrifying, especially since it’s so hard to observe how […]
An MIT economist argues that botched incentives, rather than scientific hurdles, are frustrating the quest for an HIV vaccine. The point that jumped out at us the most: It has become increasingly apparent that an HIV vaccine may need to be administered in combination with antiretroviral drugs, even if a stand-alone vaccine remains the ultimate […]
Given our recent, brain-bending encounter with the yellow fever vaccine, we’ve had a sharper eye for tales of preventive treatments gone awry. As a result, we just had to share this troubling tale of a Missouri Marine and MILVAX: It wasn’t a bullet or roadside bomb that felled Lance Cpl. Josef Lopez three years ago, […]
We just returned from receiving the yellow fever vaccine, with a side of polio booster. Suffice to say that the injections have knocked our mental faculties for a loop; the video above, the psychedelic trailer for Geetaa Mera Naam, provides a pretty accurate snapshot of our current state. A small price to pay, though, for […]
Tags:Bollywood·disease·Geetaa Mera Naam·movies·Philadelphia·yellow fever
We’re currently prepping for a work-related trip to East Africa, which means we now get to spend lots of time being freaked out by ominous Centers for Disease Control warnings. (According to the CDC’s literature, setting foot in half the countries on the planet appears to be a recipe for gory death.) It also means […]
Yesterday we touched upon medicine’s tendency to stick with certain treatments even when there’s a lack of credible evidence attesting to their efficacy. But there’s a flip side to that foible—some physicians’ genius for concocting cures on the fly, with no lab or patient data to assist them. Such was certainly the case with scurvy, […]
Tags:California·disease·food·James Lind·medicine·public health·scurvy·Vasco de Gama
I tend to distrust state-run news organizations, so color me skeptical upon reading this “doth protest too much” story from Russia’s RIA Novosti. It seems there have been some rumors floating about that crewmen on a Russian frigate came down with scurvy while patrolling the waters off Somalia. The official denial goes: “Reports of technical […]
