Evolution at its best!
Or worst, for those who are fighting Tuberculosis. According to an article posted by ScienceDaily.com, a new study shows that a strain of Tuberculosis actually thrives in individuals treated with rifampin. This same drug is used as treatment against Tuberculosis. In fact, according to MedlinePlus.com, a website run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, “rifampin eliminates bacteria that cause Tuberculosis”.
This strain has not only become resistant to the drug, but apparently, now requires the drug for its own survival. This same drug is a “first line” drug meaning that many doctors proscribe this drug first as part of a multi-drug treatment plan. The researchers say that this dependent strain is difficult to identify in patients. This could mean that rifampin could prove useless in the fight against tuberculosis forcing health care professionals and researchers to rethink their plan of attack against the disease.
ScienceDaily.com says that “The study…conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Chongqing Pulmonary Hospital, Lanzhou University and Fudan University, will appear in the January 2010 issue of The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.”
On a darker more demented note: check this out.
12/22/09
McDonalds France Leads the way
Wow! I'm so excited for France. I hope that the United States will follow suit. We are falling farther and farther behind countries when it comes to environmental responsibility and accountability. This could have disastrous effects, not just for our environment but our economy, world status, and well being.
Take a look at McDonald's USA's environmental responsibility standards here.
Read my letter to President and Vice President of McDonald's USA, urging them to follow in the footsteps of France.
Feel free to write your own letter! This truly is the future.
12/18/09
Ignorance should be illegal
This morning one of my coworkers brought to my attention that a customer had left us a short “love note” in one of the DVD’s they had returned in the book drop sometime the previous night. The DVD was entitled “An Inconvenient Truth”. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Al Gore talks about global warming, and warns of the dangers and implications that the human presence has brought upon nature.
The customer was so moved by the film (apparently) that he/she felt the need to express his/her views. I’m assuming that their “note” was meant to be read by the following patron to check out the video. The note read this:
“This DVD is for people who like Scary Science Fiction stories and/or have Reality Deficit Disorder. Most reputable scientists disagree with Gore. To see a list of thousands of scientists who disagree with Gore go to www.petitionproject .org. or for more information about global warming read Christopher Harner’s book “ the politically incorrect guide to global warming and environmentalism”.
First off, global warming is NOT Science Fiction, but Science Fact. There are numerous papers and studies that uphold this idea of human induced global warming. But none the less, I felt the need to humor the unknown patron and check out the website he/she provided me with.
The webpage proclaimed that “31,486 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhD’s”. This was the message below the website title. The petition was put in place to “demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatologically damage is wrong”.
Well, if you have signatures from all of those “qualified individuals”, why ask non-qualified individuals to sign? What weight will their signatures carry?
I went further and found that the website touted an organization called Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. The ONLY evidence they provided was a paper published in a journal by this same organization. Just for some perspective, this same organization claims that “both official reports and the peer reviewed literature afford substantive grounds for doubting that HIV is the necessary and sufficient cause of AIDS and that antiretroviral treatment is unambiguously beneficial”(Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons V:12; N:4). Any "Medical" organization that does not believe that HIV causes AIDS should not be your "go to" organization for any information, let alone information regarding a topic completely unrelated to their so called "expertise".
Seriously, it should not be legal for groups like these to poison the minds of Americans.
The customer was so moved by the film (apparently) that he/she felt the need to express his/her views. I’m assuming that their “note” was meant to be read by the following patron to check out the video. The note read this:
“This DVD is for people who like Scary Science Fiction stories and/or have Reality Deficit Disorder. Most reputable scientists disagree with Gore. To see a list of thousands of scientists who disagree with Gore go to www.petitionproject .org. or for more information about global warming read Christopher Harner’s book “ the politically incorrect guide to global warming and environmentalism”.
First off, global warming is NOT Science Fiction, but Science Fact. There are numerous papers and studies that uphold this idea of human induced global warming. But none the less, I felt the need to humor the unknown patron and check out the website he/she provided me with.
The webpage proclaimed that “31,486 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhD’s”. This was the message below the website title. The petition was put in place to “demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatologically damage is wrong”.
Well, if you have signatures from all of those “qualified individuals”, why ask non-qualified individuals to sign? What weight will their signatures carry?
I went further and found that the website touted an organization called Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. The ONLY evidence they provided was a paper published in a journal by this same organization. Just for some perspective, this same organization claims that “both official reports and the peer reviewed literature afford substantive grounds for doubting that HIV is the necessary and sufficient cause of AIDS and that antiretroviral treatment is unambiguously beneficial”(Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons V:12; N:4). Any "Medical" organization that does not believe that HIV causes AIDS should not be your "go to" organization for any information, let alone information regarding a topic completely unrelated to their so called "expertise".
Seriously, it should not be legal for groups like these to poison the minds of Americans.
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