... or Technology Phobia Can Be Fatal
[This post is perfectly safe for work, but may not be safe for lunch, as it mentions poop more frequently than you may find appetizing.]
This post is an update about the E. coli food poisoning outbreak in Germany that I posted about two weeks ago (link 1 below). If you didn’t read that post, please do, as it explains some important terms like hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC). Using these phrases at ...
More
FDA Warns of Risk of Highest Zocor Dose
What’s the difference between a medication’s intended effect and its side effects? Is there some physiologic difference between the beneficial effects of a medicine and the annoying or even toxic things that it does? Not really. All medications have lots of different effects on the body. The intended effect is simply the one that the patient (or doctor) hopes to achieve. The rest of the effects are by definition side effects. The difference lies purely in the intention of the patient and physici...
More
Germany Struck by Major Food Poisoning Outbreak
Since May Germany has been plagued with a particularly nasty outbreak of food poisoning. There have been almost 3,000 people who have become sick so far and 27 deaths, with a small number of cases in other countries.
The bacterium causing the outbreak has been identified, but the name of the bacterium is so convoluted that it needs explaining. The outbreak is caused by shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O104:H4 (or STEC O104:H4). Got that?
Please let me ‘splain. Escherichia co...
More
Cellphone Users Have a Higher Risk of Getting Annoyed at the World Health Organization
This week all the buzz is about cellphones and brain tumors. Who would possibly link cellphones and brain tumors? The World Health Organization, that’s WHO.
This week, an agency in WHO announced that it was declaring cellphone use to be “possibly carcinogenic”, adding it to a group of substances which include lead, engine exhaust, chloroform, coffee and pickled vegetables.
First, let’s make sure we understand what this does not mean. This does not mean that cellphone use is known to c...
More