UH OH: Bird flu is evolving

CDC report that the virus is changing.

Human infections with Asian H7N9 virus were reported from more provinces, regions, and municipalities in China during the fifth epidemic than in the previous four epidemics combined. Because of antigenic variation between the Yangtze River Delta lineage viruses, the newly emerged high pathogenic Asian H7N9 viruses, and 2013 candidate vaccine viruses, new candidate vaccine viruses have been produced.

What are the implications for public health practice?

These candidate vaccine viruses, as well as others being developed by other World Health Organization Collaborating Centers for Influenza, could be used for vaccine production, clinical trials, stockpiling, and other pandemic preparedness purposes, based on ongoing public health risk assessment. CDC has partnered with China CDC, and other China government organizations, United Nations organizations, and surrounding countries to enhance surveillance and laboratory capacity to detect and respond to Asian H7N9 in animals and humans.med

uh oh: 1918 redux?

this also has implications to the chicken growing farmers, who supply cheap eggs and meat to urban populations.

so far our outbreak hasn't spread to humans, and the gov't has killed hundreds of thousands of birds.

Quality of life: Whose decision

I haven't been following the story of an infant who the doctors and the imperial courts have decided should die, but GetReligion (a blog that examines the journalistic handling of religious issues) has a summary of the dangerous legal precdent behind the story: they quote from the nytimes story:

Judges in the case have acknowledged that the case highlights differences in law and medicine – and an American willingness to try anything, however unlikely the possibility of success – but have held that prolonging the infant’s life would be inhumane and unreasonable.

it's not the money (the parents have raised the money for treatment).

it's not the ethics or religious reason (under Catholic ethics, removing extraordinary treatment is optional, nor is it necessary to use treatment that only will prolong dying, but it also means the patient or his family have the ethical option to do everything possible for the child).

This is not about ethics: It's about who decides your life is useless so you are better off dead. It's about the docs deciding the kid's quality of life is not good enough for them, so they are removing treatment to end the life.

So the courts sided with the doctors and (unlike other "futile care" cases in the US) have denied the parents the right to find an alternative place to care for the child, either in another hospital or even letting them take him home to be cared for so he can die in a loving environment...

But is the case "hopeless"? For in this case, they are denying permission to take the child to the USA where there is a possible treatment that will help their child.

Arturito has a similar mitochondrial depletion syndrome to Charlie and was the first person in the United States to receive the experimental and pioneering nucleoside therapy. It’s the same therapy Charlie’s parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, are fighting for their son to receive. Yesterday, a High Court judge agreed with doctors at Great Ormond St Hospital that Charlie should not have the treatment and should be allowed to “die with dignity

Ah yes: Dignity at all costs, never mind the alternatives are available.

This reminds one of the Terri Schiavo case, where the parents were not allowed to take her home and care for her there, because in both cases the decision is that the person's quality of life is bad, so they are better off dead.

From GR:

Thus, government officials and doctors are defending tiny Charlie's right to choose death over suffering through further medical treatments? Did I read that right? That appears to be the bottom line, in mainstream news reports about the case.

Now, if journalists are open to digging deeper into the religious elements of this case, I would recommend them reading a First Things essay by conservative Wesley J. Smith, author of "Culture of Death: The Age of 'Do Harm' Medicine."

wikipedia page 

Augusto Odone, call your office.

Stories below the fold

Another day, another typhoon. It's in the Visayas, but supposed to go straight north and avoid our area.

we are still in the midst of harvesting rice, and it has rained nearly every afternoon  but not continously, so we can harvest and now that we have our own drier, get the rice dried before it deteriorates from mould.

-------------------------------
Illegal logging? We haz that. Yes, there are laws, but they aren't enforced.

--------------------------------


Private charity giving has long been part of the American landscape, and those who are hyperventillating over Romney as a tax cheat  because he gives a lot to charity need to check their history LINK 

One trivia question about rich folks who don't pay taxes ignore how one rich heiress (and step cousin of Jackie Kennedy Onassis) actually had congress pass a bill to lower her tax payments. Full story here.

Katharine’s charities outstripped her considerable fortune, especially after the introduction of the federal income tax, which at one point was gobbling up a third of her income. In a move that would be hard to imagine with today’s Alternative Minimum Tax, Congress in 1924 passed a bill providing that any person who had given at least 90 percent of their income to charity for the preceding 10 years would be exempt from federal taxes. The bill was widely understood to include no one but Katharine Drexel.

In contrast, the Obama administration will force charities to pay a huge tax penalty because they won't fund contraception/abortion pills, denying that these organizations have anything to do with religion.Maybe he needs to read the IRS pamphlet that I linked to above.

-------------------------------------
Speaking of Charity: The charity sweepstakes and now the push for Casinos to bring in money is not getting approval of the old leftie (now retired) Archbishop Cruz. He has a couple of articles on his blog against...gambling. Catholics are not against gambling per se, but sees the pushing of casinos and games of chance in the name of "charity" is merely a way for politicians to get rich while corrupting the poor.

The casinos now being pushed have other "added attractions" for corruption, such as prostitution, including the exploitation of young boys and girls, and of course selling "shabu" and other illicit drugs.

----------------------------------------

Related item: A priest remembers Martial Law in the Philippines under Marcos.

-------------------


The NYTimes suggests that if you eat a diet that gives you kwashiorkor, you will not die of heart disease. Why do I say that? because our patients in Africa villages ate that diet, and we didn't see heart disease (which only was seen in those eating a European diet).
However, they died of infection, their wounds didn't heal, and we saw a lot of B vitamin deficiencies,  toxemia or pregnancy, and of course, the high fiber diet led to deaths from Sigmoid vovulus...

--cartoon from Paleohacks
---------------------------------
Here is how to lower your stress level:

-----------------------------------------------




Peter Jackson reports the first hobbit movie will be "only" 2 hours and 3 minutes long, says TORN, and he posts this new poster of a fairly vicious looking Bilbo.

Medical news

China reports a second bird flu death of someone who didn't have direct contact with birds.

and, although it should have been obvious to those of us who worked there, maybe one of the reasons for the high HIV rate in sub Saharan Africa is that infections with schistosomiasis. more HERE.

Ranting about Stuff below the fold

You might be reading warm and fuzzy stories of this Jailed liberal and attractive American woman who was pardoned and allowed to visit home.

Ghost in the story:

Her parole sparked anger in Peru, still reeling from its 20-year conflict which ended in 2000 after some 70,000 lives were lost. Headlines across the country labeled her a “terrorist.”

Nah, most of those massacred horribly were merely defenseless Peruvian peasants and don't count, whereas the woman was a liberal who believed in the revolution, (so she is a heroine?)

as this BBC podcast notes: the term is not heroine but "useful idiot"

-------------------------------
In contrast: Speaking truth to power: Vaclav Havel's revolution.

“Living within the truth,” according to Havel, is an inherently moral enterprise. It requires sacrifice, which presupposes a “sense of responsibility” for others — a belief in love, friendship and compassion. In the company of John Paul II and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Havel believed that political renewal starts in moral and personal renewal. In one letter from prison he wrote, “But who should begin? Who should break this vicious circle? The only possible place to begin is with myself. . . . Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.”

Ghost in the article: Havel was secular, and the revolution didn't start in his country, but in Poland, spurred on by a pesky bishop who built a church in the Marxist paradise of Nowo Huta and backed Solidarity...which is why the story tends to be ignored.
-------------------------------------


Should scientist publish a "how to make Captain Trips" type articles in scientific journals?

The NYTimes says no.

Ghost in the story: A lot of folks already know how to do it.
Second ghost in the story: Anyone using birdflu or other infectious disease to kill their enemies would end up dead themselves. That's why anthrax, which is not spread person to person, is a better candidate for bioterror...

-------------------
NGO's pushing social changes in the third world: ignore the real problems of poor countries and let's push for gay rights and aborting babies.

Yup. sounds like the Philippines. and Obama is linking these PC items with foreign aid...

No trained birth attendents for one third of the births, but never mind...

The decrease in the birth rate here suggests that the wholistic approach (using prolonged breast feeding, NFP (used by 20 percent of the population), and including using the pill or Depo, which are already used by one third of the population, and used by Catholics for medical reasons) is working...the average number of children is now 3, not 6 as in the 1960's....and falling...

You need a wholistic approach, where the object is not population control but healthy moms and healthy children. This means midwives in rural areas (who don't ask for extra "gifts" to deliver your baby), well child clinics, protein supplements, and encouraging prolonged breast feeding...there are a lot of poor kids in this area with the reddish hair of mild protein malnutrition...

For example, the huge decrease in maternal deaths in Afghanistan is a result of this multipronged approach...

--------------------------
Feminists are angry they feel compelled to care for their mothers.

Why did we fight so hard for sexual liberation, birth control and abortion rights, new models of childbirth, respect in the workplace and child care — only to become demure good girls in middle and old age?

Yeah, they want the government to do it all so they aren't burdened...If you don't see where this is going, you haven't been paying attention.

----------------------------

Stuff below the fold

BoingBoing has the really important insider stuff on Wikileaks,
if you want to know which great leader uses botox, just go there and find out.

---------------------------

The LATimes says one million Chinese got HIV via transfusions. So much for condoms....it's the corruption stupid.
rant moved HERE.
it reminds me of the Canadian Hepatitis C epidemic, which got little coverage in the US because it involved a certain Arkansas governor....
-----------------------------
a wonderful gift : a HelloKittyFetus

--------------------------------------------
Leslie Nielsen has died.
Trivia factoid: He was the captain in the original Poseidon adventure, but later became someone who gave us many laughs, including this classic line:



==============-

Headlines below the fold

Sarah Barracuda making waves again...
Fox interview via Drudge...

-----------------------
Censorship story number ONE: Mayor Nagin, in quarantine, is having his phone calls censored "for his own safety".
Yup. Flu germs spread via telephone lines.

-----------------
Censorship story number two: The Pirate Party won a seat in the EU Parliament...
no, not Somalia, the guys from Sweden who let us Pinoys enjoy all the latest movies.

----------------

TehranPhotoBlog has photos of ordinary folks sporting green ribbons in Tehran...

“Green Wave ” in Iran and specially in Tehran is growing, because the most people are becoming supporter of Mir-Hossein Musavi (Iranian 2009 Presidential Elections Candidate).
"
------------------
Rotavirus vaccine now back on the market...a viral diarrhea that causes hundreds of thousands of kids to die in poorer nations.
wait til Oprah spreads the tin hat rumors on this one...

What, me worry?

The world is worried about swine flu....8000 cases so far...

but what about Dengue?

essay on stopping Mosquitos and DDT moved to bloggernews...

Headlines below the fold

When the press finally got around to visiting the deteriorating Walter Reed Army Medical center, I predicted wait til they "discover" the problems with the VA...
So they did, and the NYTIMES puts a political spin on it of course...

However, no mention that thanks to Bush funded commission that decided Gulf war syndrome more disability claims will have to be processed...

One of these days, they will figure the slowness is mainly the system...And if you think the VA is slow, wait till Hillary nationalizes all health care.

US State Department at work, supporting dictators.Charles Taylor is being prosecuted for war crimes, both in Liberia and Sierra Leone. ..in defense of the state department, the choice was between bad and worse, but this time the bad turned out to be almost as bad as anarchy that he stopped.

Porn industry going broke? Blogfather explains...

President of Iran gives another speech saying Israel will be destroyed...
His supporters have argued Ahmadinejad's words were mistranslated and should have been better translated as "vanish from the pages of time" — implying Israel would vanish on its own rather be destroyed.
Yes, like the six million European Jews who just vanished somehow...

Despite violence, more still think it's better or the same as when under Sadam? Polls here.

Pajamas media has a link to the "bee die off"expert...but I remember when Brother Karl
died...he became interested in finding hybrid bees to restock his beehives after the 1916 die off.

And if you think living together is sinful, why don't we just legalize "temporary unions"...an old Shiite custom being revived in Iran...

And did you know about the two German tourists kidnapped in the Philippines? Well, seems the MILF guys were freelancing, and their leaders got them released already...and if you scroll down you will see how Australia and China is helping the Phil. military

Headlines

An ElReuters Reporter breathlessly talks about a "new weapon" that the Taliban are using against NATO troops: Suicide bombers.
Funny, my uncle was killed by a suicide bomber back in 1944. The difference, of course, is that back then the reporter didn't spend half the article complaining about all the innocent Japenese civilians who were killed by anti aircraft fire from the evil American navy.

The NYTimes belatedly notes Israel's bombing of "civilian targets" in Lebanon might have been due to Hezbollah hiding among civilians and because reporters counted Hezbollah fighters who were killed as civilian casualties.

Better late than never. But the report only "reports" that Israel offered photos proving that the press reported Hezbollah's lies, but doesn't withdraw or correct their own inaccurate reports.However, their business section has a good article on the inaccurate AP reports from Iraq link (headsup LGF

I have an article about Malaria on BNN LINK.