The new edition of the Health Wonk Review is out, hosted for the first time by the Health Talent Transformation page. It includes a video in honor of the UN’s new ambassador to outer space.
Such a move clearly qualifies for an Ig Nobel award, but the alien ambassador will have to wait until next year. The 2010 Igs will be announced tonight. Too late to get a ticket to this live send-up of silly science, but you can watch a live webcast or read more about it here or on the Ig website.
Last week’s NYTimes Op Ed by a lawyer questioning the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome did not have a form for comments. So Commonhealth over at WBUR ended up fielding a lot of the angst over the piece.
If you recall, 1997, a British nanny working for a Newton family was convicted of manslaughter after prosecutors said she killed her infant charge by shaking him too hard. Still a touchy subject, apparently.
Last week, CommonHealth linked to a provocative Op-Ed piece in The New York Times on the abusive shaking of babies. Written by law professor Deborah Tuerkheimer, it said that “experts are questioning the scientific basis for shaken baby syndrome. Increasingly, it appears that a good number of the people charged with and convicted of homicide may be innocent.”
In fact, according to one child-abuse expert, Dr. Daniel Lindberg of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Tuerkheimer “systematically distorts the scientific consensus.”
Feelings run so high on this issue, a UK skeptic was barred from testifying in one case, according to New Scientist:
A PATHOLOGIST in the UK who argues that the trademark triad of symptoms of “shaken baby syndrome” (SBS) can have an innocent cause has been prevented from testifying in court as an expert witness. The restriction could stand until January 2012.
Yet, according to researchers and lawyers contacted by New Scientist, there are serious doubts about the safety of many shaken baby convictions. This is despite the fact that the triad of symptoms has been taken as evidence of murder for 40 years.
We can’t take credit for putting Boston on the health and science map. But over that Nature Network Boston, we can take credit for mappping health and science in Boston. Check out our Google map with the regions’s hotspots.
William Lazonick, director of the UMass-Lowell Center for Industrial Competitiveness writes in yesterday’s Huff Po that the private sector, not the government, is driving the high cost of health. He begins his piece by noting opponents to the health reform law who keep saying they want to keep government out of Medicare — the government-run program that covers just about everyone over 65 in the country.
Where is SNL’s Emily Littela when you need her to say — Nevermind.
The United States clearly has a problem of out-of-control health care costs. The problem resides, however, in the business component of costs, not in the government component. What Americans should be worrying about is how to regulate the businesses that get rich when we get sick.
Also, see the Globe for a story about the possible closure of two Caritas hospitals — St. E’s and the Carney. Maybe Dr. Lazonick can explain how a company hoping to buy the Caritas chain plans to squeeze profits out of a failing non-profit hospital group.
Stephen Kay, Chair, BIDMC Board of Directors, sent this memo to the board yesterday in response to the issues raised by SEIU and NOW. (See post below.) In addition to the rally, the campaign features radio spots and full-page ad in the Globe
We have become aware of an advertising campaign sponsored by the SEIU and the NOW (National Organization of Women) attacking the governance of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and urging us to fire Paul Levy. We are told they will run the ads heavily through Thursday evening, the night of our Annual Meeting.
As you know, the BIDMC Board of Directors has completely reviewed all matters relating to Paul and has taken actions we believe are in the best interest of the medical center, including a unanimous conclusion that he is the person we want to continue to lead our hospital. So what is this ad campaign all about?
It has been known for years that the SEIU has mounted a corporate campaign against BIDMC and the Board, in the hope that we will adopt procedures that would make it easier for them to unionize the hospital. This advertising campaign is just the latest step in their action plan. The SEIU is spending tens of thousands of dollars on TV, radio, print ads and billboards.
As for NOW, we admit to being somewhat baffled by their involvement in this crusade against BIDMC and Paul, given that their organizational ideals are so closely aligned with BIDMC’s reputation and Paul’s track record. Women make up 70 percent of Paul’s senior management team and our total employment. We celebrate and serve a diverse population, and are known as a very welcoming care provider for the LGBT community and other minorities. Over the years, Paul has restored this wonderful institution to health, and last year, Paul led the medical center’s efforts to protect the lowest wage health care workers when we went through temporary financial difficulties.
The resolve of our board to do what is best for our patients and staff remains strong and will not be influenced by a high-cost advertising campaign.
Those bagpipe-playing punks, the Dropkick Murphys have produced a new song and video in support of 1199′s effort to unionize local hospital workers. Seems like a much better tactic than demonizing the hospital. And maybe that sailor in the song “Shipping up to Boston” song can get a replacement for his peg leg out of it.
This evening, the hardball tactics resume. The Service Employees Union/1199 and the National Organization of Women — which is angry about charges of sexism and hanky panky at BIDMC– will rally at the hospital’s downtown board meeting. The groups are calling for the removal of CEO Paul Levy — who was recently chided and fined for an inappropriate relationship with a female employee.
This from the groups’ press release:
BIDMC had as few as three women members amongst the board of 15. BIDMC currently counts only one woman among the chiefs of its 14 major clinical departments. Two women chiefs have left under Levy’s tenure, and one – a 30-year veteran stripped of her title while on sabbatical – has filed a gender discrimination lawsuit naming both Levy and BIDMC.
That lawsuit by Dr. Carol Warfield alleges that she was forced to endure “sexist rants and demeaning conduct… and the insistence on the part of the Hospital’s CEO [Levy] that she tolerate such misconduct as part of the price of being Chief.” The hospital has expended significant resources to defend Levy, fighting unsuccessfully against Warfield’s right to sue for discrimination all the way to Massachusetts’ highest court in an attempt to deny her and other employees their civil rights and the full protection of anti-discrimination laws.
Against Levy’s objections, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) both backed Warfield’s right – and that of other employees at BIDMC – to full legal protection against discrimination.
The hospital released a statement yesterday in response to the rally and a accompanying ad campaign Or pop SEIU into Levy’s “Running a hospital” blog for his response to the union’s ongoing campaign again BIDMC.
The Ig Nobel Awards would be the highlight of the Boston sci/med social season – if there were such a thing. For 20 years, the editors of the Annals of Improbable Research — live on stage, and now via webcast– have honored scientists whose work makes people laugh, then makes them think. This year’s ceremony gets underway Thursday, Sept 30 at Sanders Theater.
Click here for the webcast link. Also check out the Improbable web site for a constant stream of scientific humor.
Click here for more details and a video preview on Nature Network Boston.
For a sense of the Ig-style, here are a few 2009 winners:
MEDICINE PRIZE: Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for more than sixty (60) years.
PHYSICS PRIZE: Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, USA, Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University, USA, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, USA, for analytically determining why pregnant women don’t tip over.
BIOLOGY PRIZE: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu, and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan, for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas.
All the news that’s fit to filch.
Boston’s Bay State Banner, a publication focusing on African-American issues, is coming out with a new quarterly “lifestyle” magazine. Exhale, which is already on-line, officially launches on Oct. 1. Much of the focus is on health. The current issue offer stories on the mind-body link, healthy eating and Vitamin D.
The Banner’s health page also offers a story on African-Americans and Vitamin D deficiency. The story features Dr. Douglass Bibuld, the medical director of Mattapan Community Health Center
The Center is now part of a collaboration with the American Public Health Association to develop a national policy on vitamin D.
From what the Center has seen, the numbers are alarming in the black community. With the assistance of Dr. Holick, they found that in 2007, 85 percent of their patients tested for vitamin D levels had scores of below 20 ng/mL — well below the recommended minimum of 30, and, worse, the average score was about 13 in the winter months.
Dr. Bibuld understands part of the problem — at least among blacks — is that higher levels of melanin makes it more difficult to process ultraviolet B rays. Melanin tends to block rather than absorb the sun. That process is worse for the elderly whose bodies are unable to produce vitamin D as easily as in their younger days.
More here from Tufts on African-Americans and Vitamin D deficiency.
Tinker Ready’s report on a Massachusetts heroin “overdose prevention” program aired Thursday (today) and will air again Sunday on “The Health Show” out of WAMC in Albany: 3 p.m. Sept. 16 and 6:30 p.m. Sept. 19.
Boston Health News: Overdose prevention radio report
or
Online at http://healthshow.org/: Fighting Drug Overdoses With Drugs
Megan Goughan, a former counselor at a Cambridge homeless shelter, explains how to u Narcan, an overdose antidote now available to active heroin users.
