Medical stuff below the fold

Medical headlines will be posted here until I get my xanga site up and running...it won't post and says it's "updating" but I wonder if someone hacked it because I wrote about the Obama administration trying to destroy catholic health care.

Must not be paranoid...must not be paranoid.

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Remember all those folks insisting that only taking stem cells from embryos (which killed the embryo) would cure Type I diabetes, (and that those who dared to point out this inconvenient fact were evil?)

Well, duh: New Approach to Treating Type 1 Diabetes? Transforming Gut Cells Into Insulin Factories

A study by Columbia researchers suggests that cells in the patient's intestine could be coaxed into making insulin, circumventing the need for a stem cell transplant...

so far it only works in mice...
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Botox works! for hyperactive bladders, that is.

so does that mean we need to sell our stocks in Depends?

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Cervical cancer rates in North Carolina are similar to the rest of the US, but why are there pockets of high rates in minority areas?

Racial predjudice? Barriers to health care? Promiscuity?

Wonder if anyone is checking if circumcision might have to do with the higher rate...

The conclusion is that they will need to emphasize HVP vaccine to school girls in these areas, since there is no way legally to force someone to get a pap smear.

as for circumcision: Post anything in favor and you get the anti-Bris police posting nasty comments on your site.
So don't tell Andrew Sullivan: Circumcision may lower your chance of getting prostate cancer.
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500 genes associated with Pancreatic cancer?
This cancer is rare (40 000 cases in one year in the US), and only a small percentage of cases are familial.

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NYTimes article discussing surgery of epilepsy producing brain lesions might lead to fewer seizures and less disability.

They've pretty well known this since I became a doc 40 plus years ago, but the taboo against brain surgery is still strong, partly because it was overused to try to control severe mental illness in the days before anti psychotic medications allowed us to empty the mental hospitals.

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Want to limit aggression? Promote self control.

Feeling angry and annoyed with others is a daily part of life, but most people don't act on these impulses. What keeps us from punching line-cutters or murdering conniving co-workers? Self-control. A new review article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines the psychological research and finds that it's possible to deplete self-control -- or to strengthen it by practice.

Yeah, another idea that's been around for 5000 years, but discarded by the "get rid of those old hangups and let it all hang out" ideas of 1960's.

Related item: the Unreal hotel (headsup the Anchoress). Yes, children, can you say "culture of death"?
don't say we weren't warned...

Related item: Druggies now have their own special interest group in California that pressures gov't to supply them with clean needles, crash pads, and of the ability to blame someone else for their own behavior:

Tall and gangly, with a drifting eye, Mr. Jackson speaks with a mumble and a dry sense of humor about losing most of the perks of a normal life — car, career, apartment — to meth, something he feels might have been avoided had a group like his been around at the time.

“If there was more information out there, I could have known how to stay safe,” Mr. Jackson said.

hmmm...has he tried self control?

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another item that confirms what we have always known:

Don't pull too hard on the unbillical cord article in the NYTimes. The review was about cutting deaths from post partum hemorrhage, and they said give pitocinto make the uterus clamp down instead of pulling the cord to hasten delivery of the placenta.

However, the problem may not be pulling the cord but a weak uterus from multiparity, malnutrition, exhaustion of the mother....
and note this article from Sierra Leone, or this Ghana news agency article about fake pitocin used by the midwife.

Mr Nuertey entreated pharmacists to advise policy makers on the best ways to tackle the menace.

He said a recent research on the potency of ‘uteronics’, a maternal delivery medicine, found that those medicines in some public facilities were either counterfeit or poorly stocked.