Month: July 2001

The media has often trumpeted the fact that there is a lot of health misinformation and downright quackery on the Internet, but today’s New York Times features a tragic story about a woman whose life might have been saved if medical researchers had only run a Google or other Internet search engine search.

Ellen Roche, 24, died while she was volunteering for a study on asthma being conducted at John Hopkins University. Researchers there wanted to test a theory that in asthmatics signals from the brain telling the lungs to expand get blocked somehow, keeping the lungs constricted.

To test this theory, on May 4, 2001 researchers had Roche inhale one gram of hexamethonium to cause her lungs to constrict. Shortly afterward Roche developed a cough, a runny nose, and fatigue. By May 12, Roche’s lungs were so damaged she had to be put on a ventilator. On June 2, her family gave approval to withdraw Roche’s life support and allowed her to die.

Of course it is standard procedure when designing a test like this to do a literature search for background information on the drug, but the researchers’ literature search turned up no studies on the risks of hexamethonium to lungs, even though a Google search turns up plenty of links to 1950s-era studies indicating problems with the compound (which was originally used to treat high blood pressure before being abandoned).

The third link that comes up, for example, is a bibliography of papers on the drug with titles like, “Hildeen T, Krogsgaard A R. Fatal pulmonary changes during the medical treatment of malignant hypertension. Lancet 1958; ii: 830-832.”

The review board that approve the experiment claims the 1950s studies wouldn’t have changed anything, which might be true but only because the review board failed to come close to fulfilling its due diligence to do a thorough review.

In fact so many different things were done illegally in this case, that when Roche’s family eventually wins the inevitable lawsuit against John Hopkins, hopefully administrators there and at other research facilities will get the message that skimping on review boards is lousy ethics and lousy economics.

The BBC reported that the western state of Gujarat in India has proposed an expansive set of new laws that would provide special services for families with two or fewer children, while denying many common benefits to families with more than two children.

Gujarat’s population tops 50 million, and over the last ten years the state’s population grew by 22 percent. It would become the first state in India to penalize parents for having more than two children, though the northern state of Rajastahn is considering a similar proposal that would only apply to government workers.

Under the proposed legal changes, families with two or fewer children would have access to special facilities and benefits, while couples with more than two children would lose benefits including subsidized food, free education and health care. There is even speculation that maternity leaves and medical benefits might be denied for pregnancies in families that already have two or more children.

Women’s groups and some voluntary agencies opposed the law saying improved access to health care, education and an emphasis on family planning would do more than the proposed punitive measure.

Source:

Gujarat proposes to limit family size. The BBC, July 26, 2001.

Okay, I’ve been a “Planet of the Apes” fanatic ever since I was a little kid and I used to whine and moan until my mom let me stay up past my bed time to watch that crappy TV series that lasted like five episodes (when I was 6, though, I thought it was the most inspired TV show ever!)

So then Matt Drudge goes off and puts the surprise ending of Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” film in a story headline and the folks at Aint-It-Cool-News just go ape with all sorts of profanity directed at Drudge. Now Tim Burton’s upset with the Internet for Drudge letting the cat out of the bag.

Personally, I’m not impressed with what I’ve seen of Burton’s film, so I figure what the heck — after some moron e-mailed me the ending to “The Sixth Sense” before I saw it, I figure there’s nothing that could top that.

And I was right. I won’t reveal what Burton’s ending is, but it is so stupid, as far as I’m concerned, that the main effect for me is I’ll wait for this film to come out on DVD. The whole movie, right down to the last minute rushed reshoots at the end, seems completely uninspired and not all that different from other flopped attempts at pop culture nostaligia that seem to be all the rage at the movies these days.

But that’s not the dumbest “Planet of the Apes” story. That mark goes to primatologists who actually disapprove of the POA series because it gives people the wrong impressions of non-human primates. It turns out, for example, that gorillas are not gun-toting human hating carnivores. Who knew?

Personally I’d think there’s little hope to begin with for people who look to cheesey sci-fi movies as a primary source of information on primate behavior. (I wonder if anybody’s bought the movie rights for Bonsai Kitten.)

And since I’m in that sort of mood, why do so many major studio sci-fi films just outright suck? For example, what was the best sci-fi film of the last 5 years. Okay, fine, The Matrix, but in a close second as far as I’m concerned was Cube which had basically no budget and was filmed on a single set left over from an abandoned movie project. And yet it gives The Matrix a run for its money in the psychological department (if the Cube had more guns — er, any guns actually — it might even come out on top).

Which of course meant Cube got no distribution or marketing whatsoever while absolute dog crap like Mission to Mars suckered fans out of money before word-of-mouth caught up with it (I love the opening line from Amazon.Com’s review of MTM: “If Brian De Palma directed Mission to Mars for 10-year-olds who’ve never seen a science fiction film, he can be credited for crafting a marginally successful adventure.”)

Or look at a movie like Pi which isn’t really sci-fi or horror or suspense but rather just flat out weird. But you can say whatever you want about Pi (except “it’s 3”), but at least it didn’t suck, which is more than most studio films can say.

I am an ardent supporter of a national missile defense shield, but the latest spat between the Pentagon and MIT’s Theodore Postol is yet another example of why something this important cannot be left in the hands of the Pentagon.

Postol was the researcher who proved that the Pentagon flat out lied about the effectiveness of its Patriot anti-missile system during the Persian Gulf War. Last year, Postol analyzed a publicly available report about tests of the Pentagon’s anti-missile technology, and concluded that the Pentagon and TRW, which the Pentagon contracts with, distorted data to make it look like the system could tell the difference between a real missile and a decoy, when in fact it really could not.

After Postol circulated his analysis of the Pentagon/TRW report, the Pentagon had a change of heart — it suddenly decided that the data which Postol used to debunk the claims were mistakenly declassified, and promptly reclassified the data. The Pentagon now insists that circulation of Postol’s report constitutes a breach of national security. What it really appears to constitute, of course, is yet another Pentagon coverup of a failed weapons system (and you have to wonder — do these morons in the Pentagon think they’re helping move things along toward a national missile defense system by constantly relying on these sorts of lies and obfuscation)?

Anyway, the New York Times‘ story has a quote that only a Pentagon flak could say with a straight face, with Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, telling the Times that, “Just because it is made public doesn’t mean it’s declassified.”

Source:

M.I.T. Physicist Says Pentagon Is Trying to Silence Him. James Dao, The New York Times, July 27, 2001.

Prior to its broadcast, animal rights activists were distributing angry letters and call for action against NBC’s reality-based gross out show, “Fear Factor.” Its most recent episode dared contestants to eat sheep’s eyes.

The ratings are in, and NBC’s strategy seemed to pull in the ratings with 14.12 million people tuning in to watch the sheep eye episode based on preliminary ratings figures (the show is easily the highest rated summer TV series).

Source:

NBC’s “Fear” scares ratings high again. Rick Kissell, Variety, July 25, 2001.