inkycircus

Baby penguin drug pushers

I realize that I am a little behind the times with this one; excuse me, my TV watching has been excessively poor of late. I just couldn't help but share my outrage/admiration for the cartoon advertisement featuring a singing, tap-dancing, fluffy, baby penguin selling TAMIFLU TO 5 YEARS OLDS. Yes, that's right. BABY PENGUINS SELLING DRUGS.

Seems that Swiss pharma-giant Roche is backing Warner Bros. new animated feature film, Happy Feet, a musical comedy set in a colony of Emperor penguins, released just in time for cold and flu holiday season. Which is pretty cool. I mean, the chracters from Ice Age 2 were plastered all over the Regent Street Christmas lights last year in London.

But honestly, I do understand. Roche must be sitting on like a bajillion unused doses of Tamiflu since the whole bird flu craze passed over (Tamiflu, they said, was our best hope of a defense, blah blah blah, the only antiviral with any teeth, blah blah blah, and everyone who's anyone was stockpiling).

Now if this were a product placement for a flu vaccine - the only way to PREVENT the flu, as opposed to minimize symptoms - I might honesty applaud Roche. Children 6 months to 5 years old are a high risk of influenza complications and the CDC recommends they get a flu shot. But it's not an add for the flu shot. And it might confuse people into thinking that anti-virals are a suitable choice for high risk persons (the young, the old, the asthmatic, the pregnant, the nursing-homed and anyone who has loads of contact with the aforementioned).

So no matter how cute, no matter how fluffy, these are the drug-pushing-penguins-of-death.

Who needs a vet when you've got Bao Xishun?

Two dolphins were in serious danger of death this week when they swallowed some sharp shards of plastic from their pool in an acquarium in China. They were saved in the nick of time and are now recovering. Keepers at the aquarium had tried and failed to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic so they called in the world's tallest man, Mongolian herdsman Bao Xishun who stands a mighty 7 feet 9 inches tall, to reach in and remove the plastic. He has the longest arms in the world, at 41.7 inches each, so he could reach. Also, he was able to get the plastic where the surgical instruments had failed as the dolphins' stomachs contracted in response to the instruments. Some questions and thoughts spring to my mind.

1.Who's idea was it to call the world's tallest man rather than just, oh, I don't know, anesthetising the dolphins and helping them that way? 2.Why on earth was Bao to hand? What was he doing, standing by in case of a medical dolphinian emergency? 3.Ew. Who'd want to reach into a dolphin's stomach? 4.If the dolphins' stomachs contracted when they were poked with surgical instruments, why was a bloody great ARM any better? 5.WTF? Bizarre.

Via BBC News. (PHOTO: REVSPENCER)

Getting the snip

Circumcising African heterosexual men cuts the rate of HIV infection by 50%. That was the spectacular conclusion of some trials that have just been stopped early in Uganda and Kenya. The pattern had been spotted before - that transmission rates were lower when the man was circumcised - but nobody was sure if it was down to a difference in the sexual habits of circumcised men or a genuine medical difference. The results were so strong in favour of the latter that the study was terminated long before it was due to end - it was decided that it would be unethical to not offer the op to the control group of men.

The scientists involved have offered two explanations for the effect - either the skin under the foreskin is particularly sensitive and prone to bleeding (ew), or that there are specific cells in that area that are sensitive to HIV. Either way, removing the foreskin makes all the difference. They were keen to emphasise that this doesn't mean that if you're circumcised you're totally safe, and that everyone should still use condoms. But it is still pretty great news. And another thing that's great? The expert quoted by BBC News is  the director of the HIV/AIDS department of the World Health Organization, and he agreed that these results represent "significant scientific advance" but were not a magic bullet. His name? Dr Kevin De Cock.

(PHOTO: MIKEKORN)

Dr Google will see you now

Apparently, Google is almost 60% accurate in diagnosing disease. This doesn't mean that a hand comes out of your laptop, feels your forehead and shouts out 'flu'. It means that in a recent study, doctors typed symptoms into Google and analysed the resulting information, and in almost 60% of cases, Google produced pages featuring the correct diagnosis for the disease.

There are obviously pitfalls of using a search engine as a diagnostic tool like this, particularly when used by patients looking for information rather than doctors looking for corroboration. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing - even relatively simple symptoms can take on ominous meanings when they appear as features of much more serious conditions. But at the end of the day, the more information you can have to hand, the better. Various studies have shown that it can be really helpful for patients receiving bad news to have a videotape of the consultation to watch later, as it can be hard to take everything in at the time. It makes sense to assume it would be similarly helpful for patients to come with a list of questions to put to their physician when their appointment rolls around. In these days of NHS waiting lists, you might not get to see them again for quite a while - so it makes sense to wring every drop of value out of each one-on-one session.

I'm not sure how many doctors would appreciate each and every one of their patients coming in each time with a checklist of what they might or might not have, but if the patient's research throws up sensible questions that lead to sensible discussions, that can only be a good thing. The moral of the story is, do your own research on-line before you go to see your doctor, but do go and see them. No search engine is really a substitute for a fully trained medical professional.

Via MSNBC. (PHOTO: LUSI)

Sweet sweet tee.

Drawing a blank on what to get some peeps for xmas? Well. Look no further than this dorky fantastic t-shirt.

Enough of dating. Bring on the radiocarbon dating.

(Thanks Regan!)

I want that one

FORGET THE WII, THIS IS WHAT CHRISTMAS SHOULD BE ABOUT. FAMILY. (PHOTO: WINJON)
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and retailers near you are doing a roaring trade. Why? Because we're all such little consumerist capitalists and just cant help spending. But when did we get to be so greedy and grasping? When did we stop believing that Christmas was all about friends and family and love and affection? When we were 8, that's when. According to a team at the University of Illinois, that's when our materialistic values increased. They increased further when we were aged 16-18. More importantly, however, our capitalist tendencies are apparently influenced by our self esteem. So if your offspring are driving your crazy with their Christmas demands, try to make them feel loved and cherished and maybe they wont clamour so loudly for this year's must-have toy. It's a long shot, but you never know, it might work.

Over sexed and over here

YOU'RE NOT GOING TO LOOK SO PERKY FOR MUCH LONGER MY GREY FRIEND.... (PHOTO: CHUMNEY)
It probably seemed a good idea at the time, to bring a couple of cute grey squirrels into the country as pets. Now, however, they're viewed as somewhat of a pest. The UK's native red squirrels are being outperformed and outmanoevered by their silvery cousins, and conservationists have come up with a solution to protect them. Contraception for grey squirrels. They want to administer this contraception via injection or food. I'm not too hopeful about the injection idea, as squirrels dont tend to sit still all that much. But they're greedy little creatures so it shouldn't be as hard to feed them contraceptives in their food. It's not hard, but it does seem a little harsh...

Via MSNBC.

A tornado WHERE?

North West London is not the most exciting part of the world. Nothing terribly dramatic happens here, it's a normal, suburban part of a big messy town. So when a tornado struck at 11am this morning, people were a bit shocked. Some woman in Kensal Rise had the side blown off her house by winds reaching over 100mph (see pic), bricks were thrown around, trees uprooted, and several people injured. It's all utterly bizarre and it lasted less than a minute.

I'm not very observant, so all I noticed over in White City was that around mid morning the sky went very dark, there was one flash of lightning, one big boom of thunder, a brief but heavy rainstorm, and then the sun came out again and I forgot all about it. But then a friend emailed me and sent me a link to a newstory saying a tornado had just hit a few miles up the road, and since then it's been all over the news. Eg here on BBC News. There are a few more pictures at the BBC here, and loads and loads more news stories from around the world via Google news etc. It seems I'm not the only one to be a bit suprised by it all!

It's just so weird that it happened here. It's right on my route home from work. A friend of mine lives in the road where it happened, and he said that when he looked out of the window it looked like something out of the Discovery channel... What's up with the weather!

Forgetful felines

NO DEMENTIA HERE. JUST TAKING AN OPPORTUNITY TO POST A PICTURE OF MY BELOVED CAT BOOTS...
Scientists have discovered a key protein which appears to show that the mechanisms of feline dementia are more similar to human dementia than they'd previously thought. It's good news for us humans, as the cats' short life span (short relative to the human life span of 80+ years) will make it easier to study the effects of lifestyle factors and treatments on this form of dementia. But at the same time it's not brilliant news for the poor cats, as human dementia isn't especially easy to treat. And even if it were easy, it wouldn't be cheap, and cats don't get to join the NHS waiting list. For some reason I had no idea this happened to cats, I imagined them getting old and physically slow but still staying mentally sharp. Cats with dementia typically have sleeping problems, and wake up disorientated in the night. They also sometimes show loss of litter-box training. How tragic is that?

Via BBC News.

An excuse to slouch

Workplaces are paranoid about repetitive strain injury (RSI). I have discovered that if you even mention a hint of a stiff neck, a crick in your wrist, an ache in your spine, suddenly you find yourself with a telephone headset, a new posh office chair and a footrest. It's great. I do wonder, though, what would happen if you told the office manager that sitting upright is actually extremely bad for your back, and that you really should be reclined at a comfortable 135 degrees (from thigh to body) for maximum comfort and therefore efficiency. Go on, I dare you to try it.

(PHOTO: TEDGUY49)