Hat tip: Unreasonable Faith
Creepily reminds me of my time as a Sunday School teacher and regular Youth Camp participant. One of my major *crises* that led me to losing my faith was when we brought a friend along to a camp weekend, which until then, I had just considered a harmless good fun time and another useable excuse to get away from home, and my church friends converted her. Awkwaaaaard.
Next week on Wednesday (June 3rd) the University of Sydney is hosting a free lecture on synesthesia – the peculiar concept of cross-sensory stimulation.
Imagine a world of magenta Tuesdays, tastes of blue, and wavy green symphonies. At least one in a hundred otherwise normal people experience the world this way in a condition called synesthesia. In synesthesia, stimulation of one sense triggers an experience in a different sense. For example, a voice or music are not only heard but may also be seen.
Synesthesia is a fusion of different sensory perceptions: the feel of sandpaper might evoke a sensation of forest green, a symphony might be experienced in blues and golds, or the concept of February might trigger the perception of orange.
Hearing Colours, Tasting Sounds: The Kaleidoscope of Synethesia with Dr David Eagleman (Baylor) starts at 6:00pm at the New Law School, Lecture Theatre 101.
I think we are getting to the stage where it’s pretty hard to deny that the current A/H1N1 Mexican Flu is a pandemic strain of flu. This made a lot of what I was planning to blog a bit obsolete (that’s why you should blog direct).
This week in Australia confirmed cases have been pretty much doubling each day. When I was putting together my flu resources for blogging on Tuesday, it was in the 20s. On Wednesday it jumped to just over 50. Yesterday it was near 100. Ten Late News just told me it’s 209. Will it be 1000 by the end of the weekend, or maybe it’ll hit a peak by 500?
The good(?) thing about the current form of the virus is that while it appears highly infectious, it doesn’t seem particularly lethal or morbid. But it doesn’t change the fact that influenza is a potentially lethal disease – so the less people who get infected in the first place the better (that’s directed at you anti-vax wingnuts and idiots planning swine flu parties). It also isn’t reassuring that the Spanish Influenza pandemic in the early 20th century was initially mild(-ish) and became increasiningly virulent.
Some stories from the past week of pandemic emergence:
To follow the Australian governments official pandemic phase alert, visit here.
For global information – I recommend the Google-Rhiza Labs interactive map project by Dr Niman.
“Everybody likes something free.” I don’t think anyone is going to disagree with Chimonas and Kassirer there.
Drugs are expensive. And even if in a country like Australia, universal insurance may mean that vital medicines are cheap for the end-consumer, somewhere someone has pay the full price (i.e. the government).
Because drugs are so expensive, many drug companies – particularly when releasing a new product, will offer “free samples”. Now these aren’t quite like a give-away taste-test counter like at the local deli – the drugs still need to be prescribed by the doctor to a sick patient – but the principle is the same. You try it, and if it works, hopefully you’ll buy the real deal.
Sounds great! Hospitals get free medicines. Doctors learn about new treatments. Patient receives expensive treatment cheaply. And Pharma makes a friend. Everyone is a winner! What’s not to love?
Well… turns out it’s not quite the rosy picture we’d pictured. PLoS Medicine carries an investigative essay on the ramifications of free drug samples on the health care system.
Summarised points below: Read the rest of this entry »
This bit of commentary by ‘pharmacy insider’ Simon Burrow at the Croakey health blog really should have been filed under humour.
Now this may have been the story, even as close as the early 90′s, but I would just love to see someone try and slip cruise ship tour past Medicines Australia.
Now, quite possibly, Burrow could be talking about the non-prescription pharmacy market – all the front-of-store goodies including a lucrative boom of complementary and alternative supplements. And that is worrying – because these are still marketed as health products – and pharmacies are community health professionals that should take professional pride and responsibility to ensure that the products they supply are based on evidence-based claims of efficacy, not who took them to Cairns for the weekend.
The lesson I’d like to impart from this is just how well regulated the prescription medicines industry in Australia is compared to some other industries. It’s not perfect - people are always trying to push the boundaries - but there are well-intentioned guidelines put in place to protect to all stakeholders – industry, health care professionals and the patient/consumer from exploitation.
Thus reads the tabloid headlines.
Okay. Okay. Not quite.
Wall Street Journal blog actually states:
The Boston Globe got wind of the study, which found that among 20 authors of the guidelines for treatment of depression, dipolar disorder and schizophrenia, 18 had at least one financial tie to a drug maker, and 12 had ties in at least three categories, such as consulting, research grants, speaking fees or stock ownership.
It still sounds like an expose on the sinister Big Pharma Conspiracy.
Is this really worrying? Is it even surprising?
Hot on the heels of discussions about Pharma and digital media – GSK has recently launched a corporate blog More Than Medicine. They aren’t the first Big Pharma to do so, Johnson & Johnson is also present in the blogosphere with JNJ BTW.
The idea behind the blogs is to create a more comfortable dialogue between these large overarching organisations and the end-product consumers (i.e. you and me).
J&J: “Everyone else is talking about our company, so why can’t we?“
GSK: “Our goal is to encourage an open, productive discussion about a range of topics .. that doesn’t sound like it’s written in ‘legalese’.“
Already GSK has been called out for having pseudonymous bloggers – but while it might somewhat detract from their claim to broad openness, it’s hardly a rare thing amongst bloggers (ummm… does yours truly qualify?*) Relationships don’t have to be built up on a first name basis.
Already the two blogs have very different styles, and showcase positive ways in which Pharma can successfully harness this new media. Read the rest of this entry »
Lads night out, originally uploaded by waihey.
There’s 147 more scenes by flickr user waihey (© All Rights Reserved)
Wow! Or is that ShamWow! (full story at skepchick’s blog)
Thank you 111th Skeptics Circle.
One of the few *activist* style FaceBook groups I’m a part of is the Can we find 1 MILLION people that DON’T want smoking back in pubs? (apparently they have an internet competition against those weird people who do).
Really, why do people fight against smoking bans? For one, I do not know any smoker who has actually refused to go to a bar because they can’t smoke there. But yet, industry groups lobby against bans.
When the lobbying fails – its time to find loopholes. An ingenious attempt is reported in Britain – they’ve created a “smoking research centre“. All that patrons (or should that be research subjects) have to do is fill out a questionnaire and then they can puff as much as they can please.
Two things I wonder:
Big Fat Goanna 002, originally uploaded by zayzayem.
This big fat fella was found in Lane Cove National Park, the same weekend as the waterdragon I posted a while ago.
There will be more medical marketing musings over this week. There are few more articles in my backlog as I’ve been trying to work out what is and is not okay to do when engaging medical education activities.
But the final post today will be a little lazy. This was so obviously wrong.
The very recent Baker-Sanofi Plavix deal, which can be followed at Croakey. Read the rest of this entry »
Just some things I wanted to get out of my chest of unlinked links (plus I promised dolphins a while ago)
Image credit: submarinefeast ©unforgivablerealness
I’m naming this after the lead in Thank You For Smoking. I couldn’t find reference to this particular phenomenom anywhere.
I saw it twice in one day.
Here. An ad for the hippie doco Food Inc. in reference to the processed foods/factory farming industry.
And Here. A passing reference to anti-alcohol campaigns on a Radio National show.
I also here it plenty of times from the anti-vax crowd.
The law is:
As a discussion on the health effects of a product for human consumption progresses, the probability that one side will bring up a comparison to the tobacco industry approaches 100%.
Should this be grounds for forfeture of the debate?
I can definitely see myself comparing the alcohol lobby to the cigarette lobby. A “cool”, addictive, mind-altering substance associated with a myriad of ill-health effects – hell, they even have the same occasional claims of health benefit (red wine for heart disease). I suppose the main difference is there isn’t such a thing as passive drinking (is there?)
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