Tagged, I'm "It"

It would appear that I have been tagged with some infectious, self-propagating idea by Abel Pharmboy.

Well, I've only got five exams this week. Why not take a few minutes to answer some simple questions?

Here are the rules for the game.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

One and two are done. Six random things? You'll have to settle for six pseudorandom things since I don't feel like making a list of personal traits with more than six elements and generating random numbers to determine which things to include. Yes, settle for pseudorandomness. Settle...and suffer!

1. If you ever need to bribe me with something, I suggest a Japanese dinner. I can't get enough salmon sushi, ever, and will continue to eat the stuff until I explode. Please stop me before then so that the restaurant staff doesn't have to clean up N.B. bits.

2. My university was not my first choice school; my actual first choice was Duke University, which, in retrospect, would've been a terrible idea. Duke has no pharmacy program, so I would've needed to transfer after two years. My reasons for wanting attend Duke despite its lack of a pharmacy program? Like so many other messes guys get into, it was because of a girl. Not the most rational motivation.

3. Over the past four years I have transformed from passionately foofy-doctrineless liberal Christian to skeptic and atheist. My conversion to skepticism is actually a result of my studies of alternative medicine. I was first exposed to altmed two years ago when I inadvertently wound up at the Quackwatch website while doing a research project. Thorough investigation of the subject really improved me as a scientist; I would say that before poking into the innards of altmed that I wasn't thinking like a scientist.

Of course, skepticism in medicine led to me applying skepticism to other areas, and when I was exposed to atheism as "skepticism of religious claims" instead of "disbelief in god--as much a matter of faith as any religion" it hit me that there was no other choice than to turn the skeptical eye in the direction of my religious beliefs. They were predictably destroyed once suitably scrutinized.

4. I own a cat. True to family tradition, I didn't get the cat at a pet store, nor did I adopt her from an animal shelter; I simply picked her up off the street as a kitten (roughly 6-8 months old, by the vet's estimation). After pulling onto my street and nearly hitting the poor thing with my car I stepped out of the driver's side door and there was a tuxedo-print cat mewing at me. I did what any soft-hearted but clueless animal-lover would do and took her inside for a saucer of milk (and, when that seemed insufficient, a can of solid white albacore tuna)--all this despite the fact that my lease specifically prohibited pets. I spent the next two hours thinking "what do I do with this animal now?" until I picked my girlfriend up from the airport and informed her that we needed to stop for cat food. She'd owned cats; I hadn't.

5. I used to live in Dayton, Ohio, the so-called "birthplace of aviation" as it is home to the Wright Brothers.

6. I was a Boy Scout as a teen, but I never achieved a rank higher than First Class. I was the first member of my troop to earn a climbing merit badge; I didn't care about promotions or decorations, I just wanted to go camping. I still can't reliably tie any knots.

Tag six, you're it! Go to!

Cobalt at Secher Nbiw
James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix
Bad of the Bad Idea Blog
The Bronze Dog of The Bronze Blog
Dana of En Tequila es Verdad
and Greta Christina of the aptly-named Greta Christina's Blog!

New and Improved! Now With Even MORE Sodium!

Er, wait a minute, I'm not advertising Grandma Georgia's Lard-o-hardtack, I'm throwing Mike the Mad Biologist another set of major props.

There's just no way I could've said it better myself. Mike is nailing this healthcare thing lately.

...the key point is this: people don't want exciting 'health insurance products', they want adequate care when they are sick. Also, how are we supposed to choose the 'right' healthcare...

...none of us have any way to evaluate if the insurance we have picked will provide the healthcare we need if something disastrous (or even mildly annoying) strikes. I have no idea if something bad happens (and there are many kinds of 'somethings bad') whether my plan will provide the healthcare I need. Would I have access to the specialists I might require? Which treatments would be covered, and for how long?

Tonight, I raise my scotch glass to you, Mike, for a succinct and elegant explanation of everything that's wrong with McCain's vision of healthcare.

Also, Chuck Dupree, a commentor on Paul Krugman's blog, has hit the nail on the head and driven it through the board with one swift stroke:

Add me to the list of those who can’t figure out why we’re talking about insurance. I don’t want insurance. I want health care, and I don’t see why insurance companies should be involved.

A Semi-random Thought

I wonder if Orac of Respectful Insolence(TM) knows that he shares his name with a commonly cited assay used by woo-meisters to promote the health benefits of their products?

Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) is a method of measuring antioxidant capacities of different foods...correlation between the high antioxidant capacity of fruits and vegetables, and the positive impact of diets high in fruits and vegetables, is believed to play an important role in the free-radical theory of aging.

Thank You, Orac, or: A Little Knowledge

This is what happens when people who know absolutely nothing about how to do science get their hands on a little bit of scientific data. An excerpt from Orac's post:

According to Mrs. Janak, less than one milligram of histidine is going to cause nausea, vomiting, and irritable bowel syndrome. Mrs. Janak needs to learn some units before she embarrasses herself by posting such burning stupid to the web. But she's just getting warmed up. She fixates on an observation that histidine is involved in the regulation of of trace minerals and concludes that getting all that histidine (remember, 0.78 mg worth, to be precise!) must somehow mess up the body's metabolism of heavy metals and cause heavy metal poisoning.

Orac, know that if I could, I would have your children. You've probably already found someone else to do that by now, assuming you want them, and I lack the essential plumbing, but the offer stands in some sort of metaphysical context.

Rumours of My Death...

...have been greatly exaggerated.

I've been lurking in the blogosphere the whole time, but I haven't been saying much, mostly because I've been busy and I haven't made blogging a priority. But fear not! Loyal readers, assuming I have any at this point, know that I intend to return and get back on some sort of regular posting schedule.

What Hath Science Wrought?

I'll tell you what, or rather, Decrepit Old Fool will.

Just one more kick in the head to people like Ben Stein who want to throw us all back into the good old Stone Age--without giving up the perks of modernity that they find personally convenient, like cell phones, cars, or antibiotics.

A Brief Personal Update: Plus, Insulin By Mouth? (Kinda)

After several panic-filled weeks of last-minute cramming for final exams, N.B. is finally "free" for the summer (aside from all those lick-and-stick hours at the local pharmacy where he earns his keep). The goal at this point is to finally find things I enjoy doing--like blogging--instead of shoving medicinal chemistry into my head so that I can pass the semester-end exam.

It also gives me time to do less academic (but arguably no less cerebral) things to do, like finally beating Metal Gear Solid 2 on the "extreme" difficulty. Preferably without using hundreds of continues. No, I haven't done it yet, but it's a by-end-of-summer goal.

In any case.

This particular story apparently isn't breaking news--and if you've been following it, it's a saga that has dragged on for several years, reportedly with the intervention of Big Pharma trying to shut down Little Biotech, or at least buy them out. But here's the exciting news for patients and investors alike. An oral insulin spray is still in development and has apparently performed well in trials. The medication is approved for use in Ecuador and India, and it is currently undergoing phase III trials in the U.S., suggesting that we may see some sort of release in the states in the next one or two years.

Buccal administration is a complicated-sounding way of giving medicine by having it absorb through the cheek. The cheeks and area underneath the tongue have a rich blood supply and fairly thin barriers between the bloodstream and the outside world, permitting specially-formulated drugs to cross easily. While a lot of buccal drugs are used for their local effect (like anesthetics), some are intended to effect the whole body, like the opioid pain-reliever fentanyl, which is available as what amounts to a sucker.

Another major advantage of buccal administration is that it bypasses both the stomach and the liver, preventing the drug from being broken down before it enters the bloodstream (in the case of the liver, this is called first-pass metabolism). Protein drugs, such as insulin, cannot normally be taken by mouth because the stomach and intestine will digest them like any other protein, rendering them inactive. To prevent insulin from being reduced to useless amino acid bits, it must normally be given by injection.

The reason inhalation was considered as a route of administration for insulin was because it, too, bypasses the breakdown that takes place in the stomach. Theoretically, the rectal route partially bypasses first-pass metabolism (it actually depends how far up you insert the suppository), but I can't imagine rectal insulin would be very popular, and there are other complications.

For the pharmacologists in the audience, now I'm trying to imagine what sort of formulation barriers might exist to insulin suppositories. Base incompatibility? Temperature/storage problems? I've never even heard of a protein drug being given by that route. But I digress.

The product that the article I linked is talking about is a spray--think something like breath spray--that is applied to the inside of the cheek. The spray would be metered to provide a precise dose, but fine-tuning might be difficult unless the spray can be "dialed" to spray different amounts of insulin. The details are still fuzzy, but the research is still very exciting.

Patient compliance--the ability and willingness of a patient to properly use his or her medications--is a huge obstacle for patients with diabetes. Anything that makes administration of insulin easier for adults and children alike is definitely a good idea, assuming of course that there are no long-term drawbacks and that the system is practical (inhaled insulin turned out not to be). I'm looking forward to seeing where this research goes.

Blog Plug: Why We Can't Solve "The Mysteries"

Overcoming Bias is rapidly becoming one of my favorite blogs. In particular, I'd like to point to a relatively new post:

If you demand magic, magic won't help.

One of the occasional complaints against a rationalist/materialist worldview is that choosing to use empiricism as a standard for beliefs destroys some notion of "wonder" or "imagination." Eliezer Yudkowsky argues that the people who are most drawn to the "wonder" of magic would not, in fact, pursue magic if we lived in a fantasy world like those commonly depicted in literature. If magic were real--more importantly, if magic were commonplace--the people chastising scientists for being too preoccupied with testable reality would be just as disappointed with magic in that hypothetical world simply because of its common nature.

In fact, the people who would study magic and become its most skilled practitioners are likely the people who in this world are scientists; those driven to explore the world through observation and experiment and willing to spend years of their lives studying, especially if magic required any significant amount of work to master.

This, in some sense, can be generalized to medicine, but not in the sense of the end-user. The victims of this "love of fantasy" are the practitioners of faith-based medicine systems.

Let's face it. Medicine is hard. It takes years of rigorous study to become a professional at any level of the trade--nurse practitioner, pharmacist, physician, whatever. By comparison, chiropractic is easy. At the most basic level, a chiropractor only needs to know how to do one thing--crack spines. Being a homeopath is easy because there's no reason to believe that you can make mistakes; the worst thing that will happen is your patients aren't satisfied. No one can accidentally overdose their child on homeopathic teething tablets. Sure, people can die during alternative medicine treatments. Yes, there are risks. But the draw, both for practitioners and for patients, is that alternative medicine is easy. "All diseases can be traced to a nutritional deficiency."

The draw to fantasy, like the draw to alternative medicine, is the fact that it is a shortcut around lots of effort.

I Got Meme'd

So a few days back PalMD slapped me with a meme--and who am I to defy the will of the blogosphere by resisting the viral transmission of ideas? Of course, I hadn't really planned on getting around to participating until after exams for the week were done, but I found myself getting a bit of a breather.

1. Go to page 123 of the nearest book.
2. Find the 5th sentence.
3. Write down the next 3 sentences.

Note to fellow bloggers. Don't do this when your significant other is in the room, lest she hand you the nearest book.

"And even though the residual soul welcomes the invader, something in it always recognizes the particular soul of which it was once a part. It will choose that soul if there is a battle. And even a bewildered soul can make a powerful attempt to reclaim its mortal frame."

The Tale of the Body Thief, by Anne Rice, book four of the Vampire Chronicles.

Do you really expect me to analyze this? I certainly hope not.

I think I'll have to tag pharmacy colleague Abel Pharmboy and Bad of the Bad Idea Blog.

The Heart of the Problem

Commenter Bunc on Mike the Mad Biologist's ScienceBlog has succinctly put his finger on the real reason why the whole evolution debate is such an issue. If I may paraphrase:

Part of the problem is that this is seen as atheist evolutionists versus theistic creationists. The fundamental issue is not this--it is scientific literacy versus ignorance.

The reason that many popular versions of theistic philosophy in America are "dangerous" is not because theism is a direct threat--the problem is that many prominent theists, namely American Christians, are fundamentally opposed to naturalistic theories that exclude their god from the creation of mankind (and everything else).

The interesting thing, if you ask me, is that there are well-spoken and intelligent Christians out there who don't have any problems with evolution (or science) and in fact actively promote understanding of it. If you're looking for a breath of fresh air on the subject, I recommend James McGrath's Exploring Our Matrix.

This whole issue cloaks itself as a religious debate--but it isn't. It has nothing to do with theism per se. It has everything to do with promoting ignorance over science.

When Pharmaceuticals Fail, Consider Possession as an Etiology

Bad of The Bad Idea Blog, one of my favorite sites for silly and skepticism, has posted an excellent article about demonic possession and the rising popularity of exorcisms in Europe. I am not ashamed to admit that I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. I'd quote my favorite sections, but that would spoil the article for you. So go read it! Keep yourself amused somehow while I work on part three of the diabetes series PalMD and I are co-blogging about!

Optimizing Your Caffeine Intake

This article by Chris Chatham of Scienceblogs' Developing Intelligence is worth a look. It's a fascinating read, and if you're a caffeine enthusiast like I am, it might even be practical knowledge!

I predict my intake of the world's favorite stimulant will increase significantly over the course of the week--with five exams coming up between Tuesday and Thursday, there're going to be a lot of cups of coffee and cans of No Fear finding their way down my gullet.

Skeptico: Extraordinary Claims and Extraordinary Evidence

Skeptico has posted a brilliant entry about why extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. It's a common phrase, but Skeptico has done a remarkably good job of explaining its significance.

Link courtesy of PalMD's WhiteCoat Underground, another fantastic skepticism/critical thinking blog with a medical angle.

Introducing...RxWiki!

I'd like to point you all in the general direction of RxWiki.

RxWiki is a wiki that only licensed pharmacists are permitted to edit; it's being compiled as a resource for anyone, but it's generally being directed at patients. I've been browsing it a bit myself, and I'm very impressed so far. Apparently they have a panel of pharmacists who review everything and approve articles, and they're endorsed by the APhA.

I do take serious issue with their little blurb that's currently on the front page about placebos. The information presented in the articles seems solid, though.

Check it out. I think it might just become my new source for links whenever I cite a drug name.

Just in Time for New Year's

Somebody linked this comprehensive dissection of the Left Behind "rapture novels" of the late 20th century. I've been reading, engrossed, since last night. There's a lot of interesting stuff here, most of which makes me glad I never read the books.

The War on Ignorance

P.Z. Myers has an interesting take on the efficacy of ridicule in getting people to back down on the creationism in schools front.

His point interests me mostly because I'm glad to see some progress, but let's face it. This is the worst possible way to make progress ever. It's depressing, in fact, that the only way for reason to win is for it to make the irrational look stupid until they shut up, relying on the hope that reasonable people are indeed the majority.

Call me an idealist, but wouldn't it be a billion times better if we could get the irrational to think rationally instead? Is that even possible, at least, on the scale we're hoping for? My belief that people are all fundamentally rational has been shaken a lot recently, and this really doesn't help.

Blog Around the Clock

A blogger by the name of apgaylard posted this excellent bit about homeopathy yesterday, and it's a shame I didn't see it sooner. Through some remarkable detective work, he managed to dig up several studies that were done in an attempt to refute complaints by homeopaths that the results of some homeopathy studies were "secret." These studies, particularly strong evidence against homeopathy, were supposedly hidden from homeopaths--perhaps they suspected that they weren't as damning as they thought, and that homeopathy would finally get its due if they were only exposed to the light?

Naturally, that wasn't true.

Also, a big thanks to The Bad Idea Blog for the link to my entry about Hoodia. In return, I'll have to plug his thoughts on upcoming book-turned-film The Golden Compass, a film that has raised a remarkable amount of controversy among some acquaintences of mine and spurred some very interesting discussion. Bad's blog is excellent and I regret not reading it more frequently!