That was Semmelweis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

This does work in complete heartblock. They injected their adenoviral construct into the right ventricle, in fact they tested this approach in pigs with complete heartblock (as per title of the paper).

Having said that, this is not the first time (or the only approach for which there is prove of principle) to create a biological pacemaker in big animals. And there are many considerations to take into account, a basic one is the different sequence of cardiac activation and how this influences pump function. With an electronic pacemaker you can reposition the lead, program it differently (timing, pulse strength etc.), but with gene-therapy you just have to hope for the best. Also, cloning a sinoatrial node/AV-node is not a simple matter as they are both highly complex structures, composed of multiple cell types. While definitely interesting gene therapy approaches to create a biological pacemaker have a long way to go.

God Bless America

Never expected this movie to be accurate...

A quote from the accompanying editorial:

"Sleep is universal among vertebrates (9) and has been found in invertebrates (9, 10). The total number of hours of daily sleep varies from as much as 20 hours in bats to as little as 3 to 4 hours in giraffes and elephants (8, 11)—and there is currently no reasonable physiological hypothesis to explain this variation (11).Because CSF perfusion of the interstitial space is limited to the surface of the brain during waking, and brain volume increases faster than brain surface area [even with the folding of the cortical surface (12)], larger brains should have a relatively larger volume of interstitial space to “buffer” the accumulation of sleep-driving molecules, and thus might be able to withstand much longer periods of waking before the inevitable switch to the waste-clearing state of sleep occurs. If only neuroscientists could easily bring live, large-brained animals to the lab." (emphasis mine)

From there abstract (I'm not at work so I don't have access to the full text at the moment) they don't claim to have found a universal vaccine.

What is important to know is that many virusses (including influenza) have a core containing the genomic material and a protective envelop. The immune system can make antibodies to both the protective envelop and the proteins of the core. The different strains of influenza (H1N1, H5N1 etc.) are classified based on 2 proteins on the envelop of the virus (wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenzavirus_A)

The authors followed a group of people during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. They found that when healthy naive individuals got infected with pH1N1 (i.e. people without antibodies against H1N1, which is taken to mean that they have never been infected before with H1N1) indivuduals with antibodies against the core proteins of another influenza strain did not get as sick as individuals who did not have such cross reactivity of their antibodies.

This may guide vaccine development to target core proteins, but it is by no means a blueprint for a universal vaccine (and the idea to target core proteins in vaccins is not new either)

In the Netherlands every patient has a right to a copy of his medical files (it's your data!), except for 'notes' that you can apply to the patient files. These notes are however supposed to be personal and not to be shared among docters.

Furthermore if your patient is an addict you should mention it in his/her medical files. But on the other hand, in the Netherlands we don't have the whole claim culture; even if a patient files a lawsuit, if you can explain why you think the patient is an addict you'll never get convicted. There is always a risk of damage to your relation with the patient, but that is just how it is.

If you're recommending expensive tests just because you deserve to get your ass handed to you in court.

I've configured noscript (ABE to be precise) to only allow facebook.com and fbcdn.net when I'm visiting facebook.com :
Site .facebook.com .fbcdn.net
Accept from .facebook.com .fbcdn.net
Deny

I believe ghostery does something similar out of the box as well.

They did not only make assumptions about Hitler, but early on they (The French, British and also Americans) did not disagree that much with the German eugenics practice. There were even articles published in respected medical journals in which American doctors decried that they were lagging behind Germany with respect to forced sterilisation. See for example: Eugenic Sterilization and a Qualified Nazi Analogy: The United States and Germany, 1930-1945 (sadly behind a paywall)

In the eugenics program they first sterilized and later developed methods to mass murder "disabled" people. (with gas, first with carbon mono-oxide from exhausts later with the pesticide Zyclon-B) They later used the methods of the eugenics program in the concentration camps as part of the final solution.

I'm almost a doctor and as a doctor you have a moral (and depending where you live, a legal) obligation to treat people. Just because they don't agree with everything you say does not give you the right to refuse treatment. I do think it's a stupid (and amoral since you children are too young to choose for themselves) decision to deny them the benefit of modern science. However, people smoke around their kids as well and give them crappy food. Both of those have more damaging effects than not vaccinating (as long as the majority of people is still vaccinated at least) and we still give care to them. [br] In the Netherlands we have a special arrangement that in the case of parents that don't want a blood transfusion for their child because of religious beliefs and the doctor thinks the child needs it, the parents are temporarily deprived of parental authority untill the procedure is done. After which the parental authority is returned. I believe most parents are actually happy with this arrangement since their child survives and they did not decide against their religion.

One of the reasons is that almost all bacteria you ingest (by pill, normal food or special yoghurt) die when they come in to contact with the stomach acid. Which makes the pills and yoghurt quite pointless!

You forget that it's not just about wheter or not the stuff you're buying will help you, it's also about wheter or not it will harm you because of inferior quality.

Good point about the cost of medicine in poorer countries. It's all about maximizing profit...

While I agree that most effects are just fun for a couple of minutes (wobly windows, water drops etc., there are some compiz functions/plugins that I find quite usefull.
For example:
Scaled down versions of windows when you're alt tabbing
Being able to scale down a whole window (which I really like when I'm just looking for a pattern in a log file
and don't need to see the specifics
Scaling down all windows so that you can easily find the right terminal

While I don't think that most effects are very useful there are some effects that make you (or at least me) a bit more productive.