Virus on holiday

by laszlo-photo
Arenavirus: holiday in Rio:
[Via Effect Measure]

The 53 year old South African businessman arrived in Rio de Janeiro on November 23. Two days later he began to feel unwell. Today he was returning to South Africa — in a zinc lined coffin:

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Most of the illnesses such as Lassa Fever or Ebola are infectious after symptoms have become apparent. And they burn so hot that people become incapacitated before they have been able to spread the disease too far. So even air transport may not put many people at risk.

An airborne form of the virus would have huge effects but a real worry would be a non-symptomatic carrier, a ‘Typhoid Mary‘ for Ebola. As I discussed earlier, mice can act as persistent carriers of the virus, harboring it without substantial problems.

Openness for doctors

by bobster1985
Clinic to Reveal All Doctor-Drug Industry Ties on the Web:
[Via Discover Magazine | RSS]

Doctors and drug company money have gone together like peas and carrots …
[More]

Researchers in many peer-reviewed journals have had to declare their conflicts of interest for several years now. It will be good to see physicians do the same sort of things.

The Cleveland Clinic is to be commended for this. More openness in pharma/doctor relationships should be useful, eventually.

I expect there may be a a tricky transition period when real education efforts need to take place. Not many doctors can remain ‘clean’ when it comes to drug companies. One example would be free samples. Doctors get these all the time and they have been really useful because we have been able to determine if a type of medication has side effects without having to get an entire prescription.

Often the binders used by different drug companies result in odd skin rashes, etc. So we have used the free samples to narrow down to ones that actually work. Is it a conflict of interest for a doctor to use free samples from a drug company he has a relationship with?

My answer would be no but I would like to know what the relationship was and talk to him about it. Most doctors are not going to go too far down the primrose path with a drug company because there are dangers aplenty.

and details of these interactions would eventually also serve as a check on those doctors who might be tempted to take a long journey down the path.