Category: medical oddities

FDA Approves Use of Antiretroviral, Truvada, for HIV Prevention

~ Pharmer

US FDA approves first drug shown to reduce risk of HIV infection | Society | guardian.co.uk.

What happens with the anti-infectives which are used for PREVENTION, instead of treating infections?
Resistance abounds.

The FDA has approved the use of Truvada, an antiretroviral agent with two ingredients, emtricitabine (nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor) and tenofovir, (nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor). This is now recommended for use in a non-infected partner who decides to have sexual contact with an HIV infected partner. The protection rate in the most favorable African study is 75%. Other studies done in the U.S. show results which are not nearly that good. Participants in the Truvada HIV prevention studies were encouraged to also use condoms.

Hope that extra special sex is worth $14,000 per year in the U.S., the still present risk of HIV, the risk of kidney damage, as well as the risk of making HIV strains more resistant to two more drugs, and the combo cocktails which contain them.

Pharmer chalks this FDA decision up with the scores of other irrational choices to misuse drugs without consideration of the present and long term drawbacks.

Oh LOOK! He’s Recycling NEEDLES and SYRINGES

~ Pharmer

Creating and HIV and Hepatitis scare is Dr. Stephen Stein, a Colorado oral surgeon who is accused of re-using needles and syringes on different patients, for days at a stretch. The doc practiced at Stein Oral and Facial Surgery in Highlands Ranch, CO, and New Image Dental Implant Center.

Stein had agreed to stop practicing on 6/24/2011 for reasons unrelated to the recycling of needles and syringes.

Patients of Colo. dentist Dr. Stephen Stein urged to get tested for HIV, hepatitis amid reused needles probe – HealthPop – CBS News.

Canadian Researchers Conclude that Spanking American Kids Makes them Nutz

~ Pharmer

Physical Punishment and Mental Disorders: Results From a Nationally Representative US Sample.

Yawn….

You don’t have to read another poorly designed study  of unreliable data  because Pharmer has saved you the time. 

This so called study was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, by Canadian Researchers, using U.S. data

Face to face interviews were conducted by “trained lay interviewers of the U.S. Census Bureau”  with an expectation of honest answers about mental illness, substance abuse, and physical and sexual abuse.

Patients do not reliably  relate this information to their health care providers (who are legally constrained to keep it private). Pharmer is therefore  100 percent certain that the census workers were not able to obtain a usable body of data using face to face interviews. Respondents are not likely to report stigmatized or socially unaccepted conditions and  experiences with the following in mind: The government wants to know if you are experiencing mental illness, or if you were abused as a child. Your ability to be licensed for certain professions, or own a means of self defense may be affected.

You may comfortably throw away any conclusions presented from this study, and  laugh at those who present it as a means to persuade parents to  never  spank their kids on the behind as a corrective measure.

Infanticide is All the Rage!

~ Pharmer

Australia Awards Infanticide Guru Highest Civic Award – By Wesley J. Smith – The Corner – National Review Online.

Australia’s highest Civic Honor was awarded to Princeton’s  Peter Singer, who is now “Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia for his amazing contributions to philosophy and bio-ethical thought.

Pharmer Hurls!

It appears that among the intelligentsia of Australia, infanticide, health care rationing, culling the human herd, not to mention bestiality, have become highly fashionable.

One more westernized nation flushes itself down the toilet.

Commerce Secretary John Bryson Treated for Seizure after Auto Accidents

~ Pharmer

Commerce Secretary John Bryson given medication after seizure – latimes.com.

Obama’s new commerce secretary, John Bryson was hospitalized after an series of auto accidents in Los Angeles on Saturday.  He passed a breathalyzer  test.   Bryson  has since been released following initiation of treatment for a seizure which may have precipitated the driving difficulties.

Pharmer wonders  if the initial symptoms might have been manifest  in 2011, when Mr. Bryson first agreed to accept the appointment as Obama’s commerce secretary.

Prayers for his health, which possibly has taken a  serious downhill turn.

 

Women on Contraceptive Pill Should Pay $1,500 a Year More Tax – Forbes

~ Pharmer

Women on Contraceptive Pill Should Pay $1,500 a Year More Tax – Forbes.

Forbes contributor Tim Worstall has proposed that women who use birth control pills should be taxed similarly to other individuals and entities which pollute the water.   This is based on the endocrine disruption effects attributed to hormones which make their way into the general water supply from the urine of pill users.

It’s all about saving the fish from the sex altering effects of steroid hormone metabolites.  The green thing do do is to clean up the water,  and stick contraceptive users with the tab.  The profit margins from pill production are not high enough to cover the clean up so  Mr. Worstall takes manufacturers off the hook.

Unmentioned in the top linked  article is the gender bending effects that the feminizing hormones might be having on male humans.…..  This might be the impetus for the urgency to clean the water.

For NYT, Evaluating Birth Control Mechanisms is Classed as POLITICAL SCIENCE

~ Pharmer ~ 2 Comments

Science at Issue in Debate on Morning-After Pill – NYTimes.com.

Pharmer is immensely amused by the NYT Political Science article purporting that Plan B, levonorgestrel (a progestin – synthetic progesterone analog) delays ovulation but has no effect upon post fertilization mechanisms. This claim certainly has a relationship to political ideology, but not to pharmacological science.

There is the suggestion that Plan B can operate to impede ovulation even when taken 72 hours after intercourse.

The usual life of sperm is 48 hours, and The usual lifespan of secondary oocytes (eggs) is 1 day. The most fertile time for a woman is the day of, and the day after ovulation.

Laughably entertaining is the suggestion that there is no time for levonorgestrel to affect thickness or receptivity of the uterine lining, but there is time for it to always work by delaying ovulation. Scroll back up to the lifespan of the gametes and THEN ponder that it takes about 7 days for the early human embryo to travel down the fallopian tubes into the uterus and implant in the uterine lining.

Seven days is not long enough for the morning after pill to affect feedback inhibition, transport, endometrial tissue, and implantation processes, yet 48 hours is claimed to be long enough to exert a perfect 100 percent mechanism for delaying ovulation so that sperm and ‘egg’ don’t meet.  (Remember when a woman is most fertile, the day of and the day after ovulation?)   It’s pathetic when leftist ideology replaces scientific analysis and inquiry in such a blatantly obvious manner.

James Trussell (population controller of Princeton) has changed his tune about the efficacy of Plan B. Now he wants to say that the pill is ridiculously ineffective, so that condoms, rhythm, and withdrawal are far superior in efficacy as birth control. This is what he needs to admit in order to claim that the Plan B doesn’t work if a woman has ovulated.

Progesterone hormones have multiple mechanisms of action. Progesterone receptors are found in various tissues, and their preponderance and activity undergo cyclic changes. These hormones largely affect gene expression. These effects are not instantaneous. The physiological effects of progestins on reproduction vary with the timing of their use. The morning after pill’s modes of action will vary depending on when in the cycle and how long after intercourse they are used.

One cannot prescribe progestins to patients to mitigate hypermenorrhea (excessive bleeding), and at the same time claim that they don’t affect the uterine lining.

Progestins given on a scheduled basis fail to prevent ovulation in about half of patients. This has been attached to the labeling of progestin only pills, which have been used to control excessive bleeding, as well as to prevent pregnancy.

Plan B is a progestin. Ella is a selective progesterone receptor blocker (like mifepristone, RU456). Each one will affect the reproductive processes in different, dose dependent and time dependent ways. Political Science author Pam Belluck needs to consider the drugs separately when attempting to evaluate them mechanistically.

Plan B, levonorgestrel, like ALL hormones, operates on many physiological processes, by many different means.

If the leftists ever manage to develop effective birth control drugs which operate ONLY by preventing the union of sperm and egg, we may proceed with the constitutional amendments to accurately define human life with no further impediments.

More at Jill Stanek’s place. and right HERE.

Specsavers’ Optometrist spots brain condition after doctor misses signs – Telegraph

~ Pharmer

Specsavers' optician spots brain condition after doctor misses signs – Telegraph.

The UK Telegraph story linked above illustrates a couple of points: One is that the physicians are not able to spend enough time with patients to give thorough evaluations, and have lost physical examination skills. The other is that the media reporters and editors use the terms optometrist and optician, (the person who dispenses lenses for vision correction), interchangeably and apparently don’t understand the difference.

Katie Burns diagnosis was missed by her general practitioner, to the extent that she was given the generic “it must be a virus” diagnosis, and did not get a referral to a specialist. She had frequent and worsening headaches. A friend suggested that she visit an opTOMOtrist, (the guy who examines and diagnoses eye problems, and prescribes vision correction). Dr. Faheem Hassan spotted an abnormally bulging head of her optic nerve, and directed her to a hospital, where she received a lumbar puncture to relieve pressure on her brain.
Ms. Burns is said to have been suffering intracranial hypertension, and has since had procedures to install a stent to assist with “brain drainage” to relieve pressure.

Norovirus: Oh LOOK!!! They’re RECYCLING!!

~ Pharmer

Case study: Norovirus spread among girls soccer team..

The Journal of Infectious Diseases carries a story about the 2010 Beaverton Bug Fest, in which a mini-epidemic of norovirus spread itself among an adolescent girls basketball team as they traveled to Seattle for a tournament. Norovirus causes gastrointestinal distress, cramping, vomiting, diarrhea and all sorts of things you want most on a road trip.

The virus was said to be spread by means of a REUSABLE grocery bag containing cookies which the girls were sharing.

No one really knows which came first: the sickness among all the girls or the ‘buggs’ on the RECYCLABLE grocery bag. But the fact that it made the news might be causing a reconsideration of the virtues of those reusable bags. The epidemiologists are suggesting bleach, which would make all bags white.

Pharmer says those plastic grocery bags from Walmart (the ones banned in San Francisco) are pretty good barf bags.