Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis at an all-time high

WHO reports this week that multi-drug resistant tuberculosis has reached unprecedented levels worldwide: one in four in some places! Meanwhile here in the US, we’re in a snit over a few modest reforms for health insurers. I have a new article coming out at e360 on how wanton overuse of antibiotics contributes to the spread of resistant bacteria. E.g. much of the antibiotics we feed to our livestock and douse our bodies with are excreted into the environment unchanged, deposited into waterways, spread on crops as fertilizer. When bacteria in the water and soil are exposed to this stuff, it selects for resistant strains….which can then trade genes with other, more pathogenic bacteria (they do that, those bacteria!) You’d be surprised to know the huge proportion of the drugs we consume actually end up in the environment, essentially unchanged. It’s not something most people think about.

Considering the scale of the health issues we face, our national snit over health insurance reform seems especially petty.

Check out the WHO report here.

New radio interview on Radio National in Australia

I had a lovely conversation with Philip Adams of Australia’s national public radio program “Late Night Live” today, about malaria, the fall of Rome, and the bother of mosquito nets. You can check it out here.

It’s finally happened. I’m an official blogger.

For Ms. Magazine. Ms. holds a place near to my heart for being the first national magazine that published my writing, way back in the early 1990s.I will be occasionally blogging for their new Ms. blog (which makes me, ahem, “Ms. Blogger”). Here’s a link to my first post, on how a Microsoft exec’s recent TED lecture exploits the suffering of millions of African women and children:

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/03/08/ted-lecturer-exploits-african-womenchildren/

Check it out, make a comment, let me know what you think!

We Are The World: Where is Bono?

Ok, I know this video is already appearing everywhere but here it is, again. I’ve always found these quite moving, although I’m not sure if it is the fact of seeing so many  peacocks and divas putting aside their egos to be filmed singing side-by-side chorus style or the sentiment that “we are the world.” It is a lovely notion. But the idea that “we are the ones”–that is pop consumers and donors–who singlehandedly make the world better? Not so lovely. Final question. Where is Bono?

NYT features malaria slide show

Woodcut from Hortus Sanitatis, 1491

The Malaria Consortium is putting on a 8-week exhibition of photographs featuring malaria at the UN headquarters in New York in advance of World Malaria Day on April 25. This weekend, the New York Times featured a selection of the photos, with a brief article on the history of the scourge. Check it out here.

The captions on the photos are the best part. Note that the mosquito-catching technique featured in slide 5 is pretty controversial. Using humans as live bait for malarial mosquitoes can certainly endanger them. I also found the quote on slide 9, which pictures two Nigerian children recovering from malaria (mostly naked, on a shorn mattress), quite telling. The father of the children describes their illness and treatment and then says, “It is not that we are not concerned, it is just normal.” A hint of the social reality of malaria in Africa, where people think of malaria the way we think of the flu–completely  undermined by the story told by the dark, shadowy photograph alongside it.

My review of Harrison Ford flick, “Extraordinary Measures”

Harrison Ford, who stars in "Extraordinary Measures" with Brendan Fraser

The Lancet published my review of “Extraordinary Measures,” a paean to the wonders of for-profit drug development, this week. “Compared to, say, espionage or alien warfare, the drug development business rarely appears on the big screen, and its few cinematic portrayals generally involve sinister white-coated characters doing shadowy experiments. In that sense, the new film Extraordinary Measures , in which a desperate father and biochemist race to develop a cure for a rare gene marks a refreshing departure…”

Northfield, MN

February 18, 2011. 10:50 am. “The Fever: how malaria has ruled humankind for 500,000 years.” Lecture followed by informal discussion and book signing. Free and open to the public. Carleton College, Northfield MN

Malaria killed King Tut, among other ancients

Tutankhamen

Add King Tut to the list of famous personages felled by malaria. Tut died at age 19 in 1324 BC. According to a new study in JAMA, scientists have found genetic evidence of Plasmodium falciparum lurking in his mummy.

Tut’s a famous guy but he isn’t malaria’s earliest known victim–not by far.

Tut died some two thousand years ago. In 1994, scientists found antigens to plasmodium parasites  in 5,000-year-old Egyptian and Nubian mummies. Check it out here. References to malaria have also been found in 4,000-year-old Sumerian and Egyptian texts. But we know malaria’s been a much older scourge than that, thanks to molecular clock techniques that analyze the parasite’s genome. We’ve probably had it since we descended from apes.

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New piece on pesticides and wildlife die-offs

My new piece on pesticides and wildlife die-offs is now up on Yale’s e360. Grist.org calls it a “must-read report“. Check it out here, and let me know what you think!

Coming soon–new article on pesticide exposure and wildlife die-offs

My latest article, on the role of pesticide exposure on emerging new wildlife diseases–including white nose syndrome in bats, chytrid fungus in amphibians, and colony collapse disorder in bees–is coming soon on Yale’s e360. Stay tuned for the URL!