Strollerderby : diseases

Swine Flu - Maybe We Won't Close School

Brett Singer — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:20:00 GMT

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, specifically acting director Richard Besser, may change their minds about recommending school closings wth regard to the virus formerly known as swine flu, now known as H1N1 influenza. (Anyone else look at "H1N1" and think it should be pronounced "heinie"? Anyone? Bueller?)

Anyway, here's an awkwardly worded sentence from the Wall Street Journal: "Federal health officials are considering new revising guidelines on school closures as evidence mounts that the current H1N1 influenza outbreak is acting like the seasonal flu."

The current recommendation is that any school where a student was found to have the H1N1 virus should close for 14 days. That recommendation may change, perhaps to the method used in Seattle, "where parents are being urged to keep sick children home for seven days and having teachers and school administrators be on the look out for sick children to be sent home." (Shouldn't teachers and school administrators be on the lookout for sick kids anyway? Like, if someone is vomiting in the halls, that means they should go home. Right? Hello? Anybody there?)

To me, closing school for 14 days seems like overkill. On the other hand, if we think the CDC had a good reason to make that recommendation, why are they suddenly backing down? Perhaps because closing a school for 2 weeks would be unbelievably annoying?

As much as I admit to being concerned about this virus (or any public health scare, for that matter), I also agree that closing school for that long would be totally irritating. Still, I have to wonder how the CDC can go back and forth like this. If closing school is necessary, go for it. If not, let's not. Is it that hard to decide? Or does our 24 hour newscycle, "I need to know NOW" culture causing them to make decisions too quickly?

Bottom line: the recommendation may or may not change. Thanks. Good to know.

Check out Babble's Swine Flu Guide here.

Image: Obsessable

Source: Wall Street Journal

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5 Year Old Mexican Boy Could Be First To Have Swine Flu

Brett Singer — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

5-year-old Édgar Hernández of Mexico may have been the first person infected with the current version of swine flu, according to the New York Times.

It seems that the disease may have started in the Mexican village of La Gloria. Édgar might be the first kid to have it, although there were numerous other reported cases. Some say local officials did not react quickly enough, the officials said they did, the usual. Doesn't matter now, it's out and everyone is freaking out. (Well, I am. A little. Maybe a little more than a little.)

What I thought when I read this article was that I don't know if I would offer my child up for interviews if he might be the first one to have a disease. Who wants to be known as "flu boy"? Can you imagine the playground taunts? Unfair, yes, but kids have teased their peers for much less.

Would you let your child be interviewed if he or she were the first kid to have a disease that led to a national almost-pandemic?

Source: NY Times

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Designer Baby Born Without Cancer Gene

Brett Singer — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Pop quiz: you have a history of cancer in your family. You want to have children. Science has progressed to the point where you can alter your unborn child's genetics so that they will be born without the particular gene that causes the particular type of cancer in your bloodline. What do you do?

This is no longer a hypothetical question. A baby girl was just born in Britain without the defective BRCA1 gene, which causes cancer in 50 to 85 percent of girls, according to London's Daily Mail. That gene is rampant in this particular London family, who wisely chose to remain anonymous. (No reality TV show for those two.)

When the unborn are mucked with, controversy follows. Various Pro-Life/Anti-Choice advocates, such as James Dowson of LifeLeague, are against the practice, calling it a "slippery slope…It is designer babies. Screening for cancer is an emotive issue - my own father and grandfather both had cancer, so I know - but it is a dangerous road to go down. Today it is cancer, next year it will be IQ, and the year after that blue eyes and blonde hair."

I don't like the term "designer baby". It sounds like something you create in a lab. But isn't that what doctors are doing? I realize that I'm not offering a good analysis of the science involved here. The Daily Mail article is decent, and there is lots of information online if you want to read up on it. I'm going to stick with the more parenting-related issues that come up with this story.

I'm somewhat ambivalent about the idea of genetic screening, and even more hesitant to agree with genetic manipulation. Although I'm not a scientist (I even graduated college without passing a single science class, for what that's worth) I feel strongly that doctors can't possibly know what the long-term effects are of adding and removing genes from anyone, in utero or fully-grown. Like most Jewish parents, my wife and I went through the genetic screening process when she was pregnant, but declined to know all of the information that they found. It's one thing to check and see if you are a carrier for a horrible and incurable disease such as Tay-Sachs. It's something else to find out what the chances are that your child will contract various types of cancers. We decided that we'd rather not know.

And therein lies the core of the issue – choice. If a technique is available and medically possible, it shouldn't be up to me or anyone else to decide whether or not it can be used.

My ambivalence comes from the idea of trying to create a baby with traits that you pick off of a menu of human characteristics – "I'll have the blue eyes with a hint of hazel, and a boy with a strong right leg so he can grow up to be an NFL punter like Jeff Feagles." (Hey, Jeff Feagles is one of the best punters in football. And punters can play longer than any other position in the game because they don't get hit much.) This may sound silly, but I've read enough comic books and seen enough movies to know that messing around with genetics rarely ends well. Eventually some lunatic – Hitler, perhaps – decides to create a Master Race of Super Soldiers and starts World War III. Hm, maybe it's not just a comic book thing.

As with abortion, this is a religious issue. Conservative British politician Ann Widdecombe said, "'A lot of embryos have genes in them that could lead to nothing but them turning into perfectly healthy humans. Once again this shows a worrying precedent that man wants to play God."

This is the argument that nobody ever makes when it comes to the death penalty. But that's a different story.

What do you think? Is this just another issue of personal choice and women's reproductive freedom? Or is it more dangerous? And even if it is more dangerous, does anyone have the right to tell someone not to do it?

Source: Daily Mail

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Rare Condition Makes Boy Look Like Werewolf

Brett Singer — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Ordinarily I would expect a headline referring to a child as "Wolf Boy" to appear in the Weekly World News and to be completely false. This time, however, it's real.

Pruthviraj Patil, an 11 year old boy from India, "suffers from a rare genetic disorder known as hypertrichosis - or "werewolf syndrome" - which causes a thick coat of hair to grow over every inch of his body except his palms and feet," according to the New York Post. This video from "My Shocking Story" on TLC shows other people who share Pruthviraj's pain. (Warning: it's slightly disturbing and very sad since these are real kids suffering from a rare and bizarre condition, which is " estimated to afflict fewer than 50 people on the planet," according to the Post.)

However, a group of scientists at Columbia University may have discovered a cure, which came out of their research on baldness. Pruthviraj has started on a treatment program the scientists have developed, and hopes that the excessive hair will go away. While the Post says that the boys' "friends and neighbors grew to accept him over time," he is far from pleased by his condition. "When I look in the mirror, I see that I have hair on my face and no one else does. Why is it only me?"

It's like the X-Men, except this time it's real. And no fun at all. Hopefully the treatments will help the poor kid and others like him.

Source: New York Post

Read more:

Girl being kept alive by Viagra

Brett Singer — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

I can see the ads now. "Viagra – it's not just for boners anymore."

Case in point: Natalie Archibald, a 7 year old girl from Scotland, "collapsed after opening her presents on Christmas Day two years ago." At first doctors thought she was just "over-excited," but it turns out she suffers from a condition called primary pulmonary hypertension.

After two years of treatment that yielded no results, doctors gave her Viagra.

"[Her mother] Mrs Archibald…gave up her job as a legal secretary to look after Natalie after she began collapsing or turning blue on a regular basis following the first incident in 2006… She said: 'It was so frustrating because I knew there was something wrong with my wee girl but no-one could find out what it was… It got to the stage where we had almost given up trying to find out, until a doctor new to us went back into her records and carried out some more tests and diagnosed her….Within two weeks we were down to Great Ormond Street and the drugs had started, but it was a long fight to get there."

Natalie's disease could still prove fatal, but for now, "the Viagra works by opening the arteries and improving the blood flow." That's the same thing that the "little blue pill" does for impotent men, but this usage seems much more noble.

image/source: telegraph.co.uk

Strollerderby : diseases

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