“I wondered if he saw me for what I feared I had become — a drug rep with an M.D. I began to think that the money was affecting my critical judgement.”
- Dr. Daniel Carlat

How many doctors speak for drug companies? We don’t know for sure, but one recent study indicates that at least 25 percent of all doctors in the United States receive drug money for lecturing to physicians or for helping to market drugs in other ways. This meant that I was about to join some 200,000 American physicians who are being paid by companies to promote their drugs.

… I found myself astonished at the level of detail that drug companies were able to acquire about doctors’ prescribing habits. I asked my reps about it; they told me that they received printouts tracking local doctors’ prescriptions every week. The process is called “prescription data-mining,” in which specialized pharmacy-information companies (like IMS Health and Verispan) buy prescription data from local pharmacies, repackage it, then sell it to pharmaceutical companies. This information is then passed on to the drug reps, who use it to tailor their drug-detailing strategies.

- Dr. Daniel Carlat @ The New York Times: link.

“In an online game called World of Warcraft, an unexpected error in the software has provided a ready-made laboratory for studying the effects of an epidemic.”

The discovery, revealed in next month’s issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, has been hailed as a significant step forward in understanding how a deadly virus could break out.

… In September 2005 what was intended as a minor hindrance for a small group of characters spiralled beyond the control of program-makers into a full-blown epidemic.

A new villain, a winged serpent called Hakkar, originally designed as a challenge for only the strongest characters, started transmitting its “corrupted blood” virus down the ranks until it affected almost every area and every player in the game.

[S]cientists were able to monitor how quickly the disease spread and where to, while assessing the players’ individual responses to the outbreak. The particular features of the game, such as the many hours players around the world dedicate to it and the emotional investment they put into their online alter egos, offer scientists a tantalisingly close match to real social conditions.

As the virus spread, very real challenges emerged, such as the failure of quarantine measures, further transmission by character’s pets and the existence of “immune” characters, who act as carriers, passing the virus to others while failing to succumb to symptoms.

[Times Online: Link]

Epidemiology @ Wikipedia

World of Warcraft @ Wikipedia.

Article @ BBC

Abstract @ Lancet (free registration required)

Post @ Boing Boing.

Re-thinking the war on micro-organisms

Antibiotics underpin all of modern medicine. Alarmingly, we are nearing the end of the antibiotic era. Bacteria and viruses are evolving faster than scientific innovation. Trivial infections we hardly think about now will once again become fatal.

The Race [Michael Burton] proposes that we must now join the race to evolve with them. It also presents a mirror to ourselves to question personal and societal lifestyle practices and our self-perceived superiority over other organisms. Who do we think we are?

A first project is concerned with maggots which have been used throughout medical history as a painless way of treating wounds because they remove dead and infected tissue, while leaving healthy tissue intact. But they fell into disuse when antibiotics were first introduced in the 1940s.

Medics now recognise that maggots have advantages over more recent forms of treatment, as they kill the bacteria that cause infection, including the so-called antibiotic-resistant superbugs. There is also some evidence that maggots also stimulate the wound to heal. Their re-introduction in hospitals could therefore enable NHS to save millions.

Maggot Cohabitation encourages us to invest in the symbiotic relationship pre and post treatments. You are encouraged to keep at home special portable receptacles that would allow you to follow the life cycle. The maggots would be delivered as larvae to your home and you carry them to the hospital. At the end of the treatment, you’d release them as flies, and they would take your genetic material with them as they fly away which is much more poetic than the current practice which consists of incinerating the maggots once they have finished their healing job.

[we make money not art]

See Also

Maggot calculator for wound size

ZooBiotic Ltd (medical sterile maggots)

Thought for today …:

Ars longa, vita brevis is part of an aphorism by Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, usually truncated to its first two statements, art is long, life is short. (See also List of Latin phrases.)

The full text in Latin is:

Ars longa,
vita brevis,
occasio praeceps,
experimentum periculosum,
iudicium difficile.

The full text is often rendered in English as:

“Life is short, [the] art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult.”

Also:

“Life is short, art [of medicine] is long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decisions difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.”

(from Aphorism, section I, no. 1)

[Wikipedia]