Day: August 10, 2000

Putting CJD Increase In Context

    Readers who just scanned the headlines announcing the dramatic increase in CJD deaths in Great Britain might have had good reason to be alarmed. “CJD deaths ‘quadrupled since 1995′” the BBC headline read; CNN tagged their story with “Human form of mad cow disease on the increase.” But is the latest look at CJD rates in Great Britain really cause for alarm? Probably not.

To its credit, the BBC (unlike most other news reports), actually reproduced the data on CJD cases and deaths since 1994 which is reproduced in the table below:

Year

New CJD Diagnoses

CJD
Deaths

First, the obvious thing to note is that the number of cases of CJD in Great Britain have remained relatively stable over the 5-year period of 1995-1999. The BBC spun this by saying that “the number of reportec cases of vCJD has increased by an average of 23% each year since 1994,” which is true, but this is the same as saying that on average over the past 5 years an average of 12.5 people are diagnosed with CJD each year.

Of course a prevalence rate of 13 or so people a year isn’t as compelling as CJD deaths quadrupling. Neither would it be much fun, if you’re a BBC reporter, to point out that in any disease where the number of new cases remains relatively constant, the total number of deaths will by definition at least quadruple over a 4-5 year period. Yet, I don’t remember the “Malaria Deaths Quadrupled” or “Cholera Deaths Quadrupled” stories, although in fact the number of total deaths from these diseases did quadruple over the period 1995-1999.

Second, the biggest problem with the statistics is it is very hard to put them into any sort of long-term context. Diagnosing CJD is a very time consuming and difficult business. According to the CNN report on the increase in cases and deaths, “The disease can only be confirmed by examining the brains of victims after they have died and scientists have only been able to establish the onset of infection by asking the victims’ relatives when symptoms first occurred.”

Since the Mad Cow scare started in the late 1990s, of course, physicians and others have been much more circumspect about such inquiries and examining the brains of suspected victims, but of course prior to the furor over the Mad Cow infection there was nowhere near the awareness about and throughness to uncover cases of CJD. As a result, it is extremely difficult to know whether the fact that there were no reported cases of CJD nor no reported deaths from CJD is a result of there simpy being no CJD or rather there being little or no effort to look for it (in fact there has been speculation that a considerable number of people who were diagnosed with alzheimer’s and alzheimer’s like diseases might instead have been misdiagnosed CJD sufferers).

CJD deaths ‘quadrupled since 1995’. The BBC, August 4, 2000.

Human form of mad cow disease on the increase. CNN. August 4, 2000

WHO Wants High Cigarette Taxes?

    The World Health Organization and World Bank want governments around the world — especially in developing countries — to act as nanny’s and raise taxes on cigarettes by at least 10 percent to discourage people from smoking. A study commissioned by the two organizations, “Tobacco Control in Developing Countries,” claims about 42 million smokers would kick the habit if taxes were raised by 10 percent.

    The WHO/World Bank is especially imperious when it comes to smokers in the developing world, with the authors of the report nothing that since people in the developing world generally have less money, the tax would hit them especially hard and provide a big incentive to stop smoking. As the spokesman for British American Tobacco told the BBC, however, a more likely result would be widespread smuggling of cigarettes. Smuggling and underground economies are already a staple in developing countries (and more power to them), and adding another highly taxed good to the mix would only encourage more smuggling.

    Ultimately, though, as the study puts it the whole point here is control. The WHO thinks people shouldn’t smoke and it is more than willing to use the power of the state to enforce their views about personal behavior.

    An amusing twist to the story was added by Prabhat Jha, co-author of the study, trying to defend against claims by the tobacco industry that raising cigarette taxes would cost jobs. Jha told the BBC, “As people don’t spend money on cigarettes, they will spend money on other goods. They will buy popcorn, they go the movies. These generate alternative jobs and also alternative revenues.”

    The only problem with that picture, aside from using the threat of state-sanction forced to arrive at it, is that the WHO has also been going on over the past couple years about obesity, and it is just a matter of time before it starts to recommend higher taxes on fattening foods like popcorn and sedentary activities like watching movies. After all if we had higher taxes on those, people would spend more time eating granola and jogging on the beach.

    The PR flack for the tobacco companies, Dave Betteridge, got it right when he told the BBC, “It should be for adults only, but provided that you are aware of the health risks — and it is hard to think that there are people who are not aware of these — if you want to smoke then you should be free to smoke.”

Global plea to raise smoking taxes. The BBC, August 9, 2000

Microfiche on Steroids: The Rosetta Disk

I am extremely paranoid about data loss. I have multiple back-up copies of
my document files, on different media and in different formats. I also try to
maintain back-ups at different physical locations to guard against fire or theft.
So when I first heard about The Long Now Foundation’s
plans to create a next generation Rosetta Disk, my first question was “When
can I get one?”

The Long Now Foundation’s main purpose is to find solutions to preserve electronic
data. The amount of electronic data being created just on a daily basis is overwhelming,
and as many people have noted preservation of electronic data presents several
problems that are not present with traditional storage media. I have a stack
of 5-1/4″ disks at home, for example, none of which I can read because I no
longer have access to computer that accepts that disk format. Not a big problem
for me because I make sure my data is on the latest media, but I know people
who had to spend lots of time and money reconstructing documents because the
only copy was stored on 5-1/4″ floppy disks.

The other problem facing electronic record preservation is the constantly changing
file formats. Converting old files into new formats is not always possible,
and even when it is, it often takes a lot of time and the document in the new
format can be markedly different from the old document.

So what do you do if you want your data to last a long time (like several
thousand years)? The Long Now Foundation is working with Norsam
on the Rosetta Disc. About
2.5″ in diameter, NORSAM takes TIFF and other files and etches the images on
to a nickel disk using an ion beam system. To make a long story short, anyone
can then read the files with the naked eye by putting the disk under a microscope.

NORSAM says it can fit anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 images on a single disk,
depending on how high a density the user wants. The higher the density, the
more advanced the microscope has to be to read the disks. At a density of 100,000
images per disk, for example, it is going to require a more sophisticated microscope
to read the disk compared to one with a density of only 1,000 images per disk.
NORSAM also sells a bright-field optical microscope with a CCD attachment, so
if you need to you can quickly access and import the etched images on the disk
into a computer.

Since NORSAM’s microscope goes for $10,000, I am betting the cost of etching
the files is out of my price range, but give them time and future technological
innovations and maybe someday this will be an archival option within reach of
paranoid data-freaks like me. I can hardly wait.

Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Resist Malaria

    Malaria is still an enormous problem in many parts of the world. The World Health Organization estimates that every year there are 300 to 500 million cases of malaria worldwide and approximately 1 million deaths attributable to malaria (the disease is second only to tuberculosis in the toll it takes on humanity). Unfortunately the two main strategies for dealing with malaria, trying to kill mosquitoes with insecticides and treat the disease with medication, are both diminishing as pesticide-resistant mosquitoes and drug-resistant malaria strains are becoming more prevalent.

    Several scientists around the world are working on a more exotic approach — a strain of mosquito that is genetically modified to destroy the malaria plasmodium. Malaria has a complex series of vectors, and gets passed to human beings after the mosquito first picks up the disease by taking blood from another infected animal.

    Research into genetically modified mosquito strains has concentrated on adding genes that cause mosquitoes to have immune system reactions to the malaria bacteria so that the mosquitoes’ own natural defense mechanisms destroy the disease before the mosquito can pass it on to human beings. Working with the yellow-fever mosquito, researchers from MIchigan State University spliced a gene into insects that produced an antibody called defensin which was coded to go into action when the mosquito ingested blood. The genetically modified mosquitos had high levels of defensin in their blood stream for several weeks after feeding.

    But the obstacles to be overcome are still daunting. Before it was possible to genetically modify insects, researchers had long been trying to use traditional breeding methods to produce malaria-resistant mosquitoes. The problem they ran into was that the malaria-resistant mosquitoes were always less robust than the natural mosquitoes, meaning releasing even large numbers of them would be pointless since they would be quickly selected out of the breeding population.

    Dr. Jo Lines, a researcher in tropical medicine, outlined the problem for the BBC, saying “you would end up with insects that are highly inbred and devoid of genetic variability — the modified train of Aedes aegypti (yellow-fever mosquito) would come from a single egg, and that is bound to affect its competitiveness.”

    Not to mention the problems of how researchers would breed the hundreds of millions of mosquitoes needed to even have a shot at displacing traditional mosquitoes. Still, such research is certain to advance our understanding of both mosquitoes and malaria, even if it doesn’t lead to realistic near-term solutions.

Sources:

Further progress in war on malaria. The BBC, July 24, 2000.

Mosquito attacks its own problem. Jonathan Amos, The BBC, July 25, 2000.

Infant Dies After Genital Mutilation Procedure In Niger

Reuters news services reported earlier in the month that a 23-day old girl bled to death in Niger after a her clitoris and part of her vagina were removed by a traditional healer as part of a female genital mutilation requested by the parents. The baby girl died in the village of Dungass in an area where genital mutilation is common.

In Niger, genital mutilation is currently legal, although a new law will soon go into effect outlawing the practice; the new law provides for up to 3 years in jail, with 10-20 year sentences if the victim dies.

Unfortunately the law wasn’t in place soon enough to save this little girl. For more information about the horrific practice of female genital mutilation, visit Rising Daughters Aware and ForwardUSA.Org.

Source:

Baby girl in Niger dies after genital mutilation. Reuters, August 4, 2000.