by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure Yesterday New York reported two more swine flu deaths (a 41-year-old woman from Queens and a 34-year-old man from Brooklyn). CDC and just about everyone else who knows anything about influenza have been telling people to expect this. The influenza virus kills people all the time. We don’t know […]

Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (aka the Waxman-Markey bill), which sets up a cap-and-trade system to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050. It also includes other provisions to promote renewable energy, energy efficiency, and green jobs. As […]

Alison Bass directs our attention to the tragic story of Denis Maltez, a 12-year-old Miami boy who died of serotonin syndrome after being given two anti-psychotic medications (Seroquel and Zyprexa) plus an anti-seizure drug and tranquilizer. Serotonin syndrome occurs when a combination of drugs causes the brain to produce excess serotonin. Denis had severe autism […]

Remember when California tried to set tighter limits on vehicles’ CO2 emissions than what the federal government required? (They petitioned for a waiver to set their own pollution standards, which they’re allowed to do under the Clean Air Act if they get federal permission.) The Bush administration EPA kept insisting that the Clean Air Act […]

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure Five more schools in the New York City borough of Queens have closed because of suspected swine flu cases. Eleven schools have now been closed there and hundreds of students are down with a flu-like illness. Parents are understandably concerned, the more so because not many days ago Mayor […]

The number of confirmed swine flu cases continues to rise: 4,298 in the US, 2,446 in Mexico, and a total of 7,520 worldwide in 34 countries. Much of the increase is just because labs are working through the samples that had been sent to them previously, but recent news from New York shows that the […]

Three Indiana men – Stoney Powell, 45 and Roy Mathis, 60 of Wheatfield, and William Decker, 48 of Scottsburg – were killed near Searcy, Arkansas on Wednesday, May 14 in an explosion at a fuel storage facility.  The three men worked for the Kentucky-based firm C&C Welding.   Losing a loved one is difficult in any circumstance, but […]

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure The spate of swine flu articles in The New England Journal of Medicine last week included an important “Perspective, The Signature Features of Influenza Pandemics — Implications for Policy,” by Miller, Viboud, Baliska and Simonsen. These authors are familiar to flu watchers as experienced flu epidemiologists and analysts of […]

We were delighted in March when President Obama issued a memorandum on scientific integrity, stating, “Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues.” The memorandum gave the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy 120 days to “develop recommendations for […]

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure Breathing easier, may be an apt phrase for an almost audible collective sigh of relief. So far, the incipient swine flu pandemic is not extremely nasty. Is this perhaps premature? The world’s premier scientific journal, Nature, and many flu scientists, suggest it is: