NewsTrust - Infectious Diseases - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Tracking Risk Perception of Swine Flu As It Unfolds

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miller-McCune - By Marcel Salathé - Apr. 30 (Research) - But while the virus spreads quickly, information about the virus spreads even faster than the virus itself. By now, almost everyone with access to a news source is aware of swine flu, and people are worried to different degrees and react in very different ways. My colleagues and I who study the spread of infectious diseases would like to know what people think about swine flu, how they feel about it, and how they will eventually react. To achieve this goal, we have created an easy online (and anonymous) survey, which I cordially invite you take. Let me give you some background info on why we believe this is important.

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Stimulus and Swine Flu: Where the Truth Lies

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Michael Grabell - Apr. 30 (Opinion) - The story about Republicans cutting stimulus money to fight swine flu has spread like, well, a pandemic flu. But there’s much more to this story.

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Greg Laden's Blog : How much is the world spending on neglected disease research and development?

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ScienceBlogs.com - Feb. 04 (Opinion) - How much are we actually spending on the development of pharmaceutical tools to treat HIV/AIDS, TB, leichmaniasis, malaria and sleeping sickness?

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Meat Wars: Why Are Those Wacky Koreans Dissin' Our Beef?

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - By Mike Whitney - Jun. 21 (Opinion) - South Korea suspended the purchase of US beef in 2003 after an incident of mad cow was reported in Washington state. Many Koreans still don't believe the government's assurances that the meat is safe and they may have a point.

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Building the technologies of outbreak containment and humanitarian action

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Lunch over IP - By Bruno Giussani - Mar. 06 (Opinion) - (Running notes from the InSTEDD update breakfast at TED2008) InSTEDD was imagined as his "wish" by TED Prize 2006 winner Larry Brilliant (speech summary and video), when he said that he wanted to "build a powerful early-warning system" which would make use of the Internet and other technologies to detect disease outbreaks, early signs of famine, environmental degradation, water poisoning, bioterror, etc. His goal was to "have the earliest possible warning of all bad things" so that they could be "contained with early response". He called it INSTEDD, for International System for Total Early Disease Detection. Quite a challenge -- both technologically and socio-politically. Two years have past, and many things have happened in the meantime (including dropping the example that Brilliant had mentioned in his original speech, a Canadian system called GPHIN, and starting tech developments from scratch). Last week, Brilliant and the InSTEDD team hosted a breakfast at TED to update on the idea's progress. The lower-case "n" is not a typo: the project has been renamed Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters, becoming a tech lab for technologies in this field -- and they're working on several of them -- and since January it has been run by Eric Rasmussen, a former US Navy physician and commander with significant disaster-relief experience. (Larry Brilliant is the CEO of Google.org, which is backing InSTEDD).

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Emerging Infectious Diseases On The Rise

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Terra Daily - By Terra Daily staff writers - Feb. 22 (Advocacy) - Providing the first-ever definitive proof, a team of scientists has shown that emerging infectious diseases such as HIV, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus and Ebola are indeed on the rise.

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Pandemic Challenges For Hospitals

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Daily Kos - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - Conclusion: In the end, understanding our health system (such as it is) a little better should help folks put in perspective why health reform at every level is such a pressing need. Whereas medical care is almost always in the news, public health is often left out (well, not here, at least). And do note that strengthening the public health infrastructure to help cope with surge (as for a pandemic) helps no matter which natural disaster comes next (hurricanes, floods, etc). -- Natural disasters happen, and planning for them at the individual and family level only makes sense. Hospitals can only do so much, and depending on someone else to do 'everything', be it state or federal authorities, has been a mistake in the past. There's no reason to think that will change either in the future or anytime soon. Community efforts to improve the situation for hospitals (see CA) will work best if coupled with non-hospital community efforts to build in resilience. Planning in advance is never wasted time. Sooner or later, stuff happens.

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Food Poisoning for Profit?

Fri, 25 May 2007 23:27:12 -0700

Reason Magazine - By Steve Chapman - May. 25 (Opinion) - Does the private sector do a perfect job on food safety? Of course not -- but no system created by human beings is infallible. Government falls way short of perfection in all sorts of areas, whether it's leaving New Orleans vulnerable to hurricanes, operating crime-infested public housing projects or building bridges to nowhere.

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Gay men, blood donation and the limits of science.

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:43:15 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Bill Hooker - Feb. 19 (Opinion) - gave blood recently, and the barrage of questions asked of all donors reminded me that I'd been meaning to write this article since June of last year. At that time, Art Caplan wrote that it's time to let gay men donate blood, but he did not present much solid evidence for that position. As it happens, we can be pretty sure he is in command of considerable evidence, having served as Chair of the HHS Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability for four years, but the article was presumably written as an exercise in persuasion and contained just enough information to make me curious.

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Leading article: We have a moral imperative to act

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:15:11 -0800

The Independent - Dec. 01 (Editorial) - There is bad news and good news about the Aids epidemic whose deadly grip is continuing to spread across the globe.

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The Slut Shot

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 22:31:20 -0700

Village Voice - By Tristan Taormino - Aug. 17 (Opinion) - Conservatives are winning most of the battles over sex education. Abstinence-only programs have gained such a hold that I've lost hope of people under 18 getting honest, useful information about sexuality in a public school classroom. The right wing's refusal to teach teens or provide contraception to them is supported by flawed ideas: (1) To acknowledge that young people are sexual beings robs them of their innocence; and (2) if we give them sexual information and make condoms, latex gloves, dental dams, and birth control easily available, they will run out and have sex because we encouraged them. When the FDA approved the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine earlier this year, women's-health and reproductive-rights advocates braced for another battle engaging sexual freedom, choice, and consent.

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