Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- Review: The wrong treatment
- How medical science has changed in the last 50 years
- Teenage alcohol and drug use: At best, parents know about it only…
- Local News | News for Charlotte, North Carolina | WCNC.com | North…
- Heavy drinking can hasten the progression of the simian immunodeficien…

Review: The wrong treatment
Times Online - Sep 24, 2006
The participants are therefore required to engage in daft, quasi-mystical exercises of no discernible medical benefit, shedding dignity as though it were unwanted cellulite. Despite its back-to-nature posturing, the show’s primary stylistic influence appears to be Mission: Impossible, the high-tech espionage caper franchise. The eponymous squad are specialist operatives who, each week, assemble at a mysterious HQ to receive whiz-bang, split-screen briefings about their latest challenge. Here, however, it’s the unhealthy volunteer rather than the tape that threatens to self-destruct. The squad leader is Sheana Keane, the chirpy flibbertigibbet who also co-hosts the supremely dimwitted The Afternoon Show. Keane has no apparent medical expertise, but she can patronise guests with the aplomb of a top consultant… A flame-haired wood sprite from central casting, Ward specialises in treating what she sees as infirmities of the spirit rather than the body. Crystals are her stethoscope, chakra stones her thermometer. She advocates homeopathy, reflexology and innumerable other forms of alternative comedy, sorry, medicine. It was she who advised Ed to swathe himself in make-believe sunbeams and to vent his frustrations by barking like a lunatic in a public park. A 59-year-old diabetic with a beach-ball belly and voracious appetite for fried food, Ed is understandably more worried about the disrepair of his body than his spirit. Six months before seeking the services of the Health Squad, he suffered a serious heart attack, from which doctors did not expect him to recover. Despite the gravity of his condition, however, he was subjected to Ward’s dippy witterings as well as the more practical counsel of Mee and Murphy.

How medical science has changed in the last 50 years
abc.net.au - Sep 24, 2006
1956 wasn’t a very big year in science, compared say to 1953, when the structure of DNA was announced, or 1957 when the space era began, with massive ramifications. But 1956 was significant, as every year is for science: research is always going on and it’s the public statements that are remembered, such as the Nobel Prizes (coming up in a couple of days’ time, by the way) and the publications and the journals. But nature, and investigations, are continuous. It is possible to pick out turning points though, and that’s what Dr Jack Carmody will do for us this morning, ranging from physiology to computing. He’s as wistful as I am about the passing of time. Jack Carmody: Can it really be 50 years since those idyllic summer afternoons when my brother and I played table-tennis after school while listening to the ABC radio broadcasts of the Olympic Games in Melbourne? Yes, it is, and that truth is a reminder that every year time passes faster, the most unsettling aspect of relativity! But 1956 was more important for scientific reasons and a retrospective venture should be a reminder of how much our biomedical thinking has altered in that twinkling of an intellectual eye. No less important, 1956 was significant for me, too, and not remotely because of the beginning of television… Then three years later, as a medical student, I encountered physiology, the study of how the healthy body functions, and under the guidance of the charismatic Professor Budtz-Olsen I learned that the same principles apply to medical science. I was beginning to realise that science is our attempt to understand the physical and biological world which we inhabit by careful observation and measurement, together with thorough analysis of what we find. I came to recognise, too, as I have emphasised to my medical students ever since, that clinical medicine and science have precisely the same intellectual basis. We perceive or are presented with a question or a problem, and then we gather as much data as we can before attempting to formulate a diagnosis or hypothesis. Each is provisional and must be subjected to further tough scrutiny. Anything less is sloppy and dangerous. It must all be thoroughly and truthfully documented of course, in patients’ and laboratory records; it must be written and published as journal articles and books.

Teenage alcohol and drug use: At best, parents know about it only…
EurekAlert - EurekAlert (press release) - Sep 24, 2006
The answer? Not much. Results are published in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. “‘Externalizing’ disorders such as ADHD and ODD have behaviors associated with them that are obvious and affect others,” explained Laura Jean Bierut, associate professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine. “For example, a child who cannot sit still or focus on his or her work at school and is disruptive in the classroom, or a child who argues with his or her parents or refuses to do the things that they ask. However, the symptoms associated with ‘internalizing’ disorders such as depression can be much more subtle and not as easily recognized. Things like feelings of worthlessness or loss of interest in favorite activities can be very troubling to a child, but they don’t necessarily impact others and might go unnoticed unless the child chooses to talk about them. ” Bierut is also the corresponding author for the study… Our conclusion is that parents do not provide valuable information about their children’s use of alcohol and drugs because they simply don’t know about it. ” She added that researchers may want to reconsider using time and resources to question parents at all when it comes to issues of adolescent substance use, abuse or dependence. The take-home message, said Bierut, is two-part in nature: research clearly indicates that teens are using alcohol and drugs. “Parents who were surveyed, however, were largely unaware of this. Although as parents we might like to think that our children are not reflected in these percentages, it is important to realize that our kids do have access to substances and might very well be using them. ”
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Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (ACER) is the official journal of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism. Co-authors of the ACER paper, “Teenagers Are Right - Parents Don’t Know Much: An Analysis of Adolescent-Parent Agreement on Reports of Adolescent Substance Use, Abuse and Dependence,” were: Kathleen K.

Local News | News for Charlotte, North Carolina | WCNC.com | North…
WCNC - WCNC (subscription) - Sep 24, 2006
There’s never going to be a single or correct answer,” he said. “That’s what science is about. Paul Nurse, the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine, will give the keynote speech Monday about great ideas in biology. On Tuesday, a dozen scientists will speak on topics ranging from genetics to ribosome structure to neural messengers. Also a part of Tuesday’s activities, 2004 Nobel Prize winner Linda Buck will speak about discoveries related to mammals’ sense of smell, and 1985 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Joseph Goldstein will present a lecture on solving scientific puzzles. Bruce Alberts, the former president of the National Academy of Sciences who now works at the University of California at San Francisco, said his talk Tuesday will focus on how to educate people in a way that they understand the role science can play in the world… “There’s often the misunderstanding that biomedical research has to be applied and aimed very much at trying to solve immediate problems,” Nurse said. “Human beings are really complicated, and we really don’t understand things that well. In his keynote, Nurse will give an overview of the main ideas in biology and a new one — the nature of biological organization — that he believes needs further exploration. Dzau said he expects students, faculty and members of the general public to attend the free symposium. “Whenever you get people of this caliber together, and particularly in front of young people, that kind of combustion is very exciting,” Dzau said.

Heavy drinking can hasten the progression of the simian immunodeficien…
EurekAlert - EurekAlert (press release) - Sep 24, 2006
Results are published in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. “Previous research has found that HIV-infected people are more likely to consume alcohol than the general population,” said Gregory J. Bagby, professor of physiology and medicine at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and corresponding author for the study. “One very recent study conducted in Miami, for example, found that more than 60 percent of its HIV-infected participants reported heavy alcohol use. ”
Bagby said that the protracted nature of HIV disease, along with the complex behaviors of HIV+ patients, makes the study of alcohol consumption or abuse on HIV-disease progression extremely difficult. “While alcohol abuse is known to impair immune defenses,” he said, “resulting in a higher incidence and severity of infections