FDA Approves HPV Vaccine: Science and Health Victorious

"Fortunately, we can now include the worst types of HPV and most cervical cancer in the list of diseases that no-one need suffer or die from ever again," said Alex Azar, Deputy US Health and Human Services Secretary.
NYT Article, BBC Article

"The vaccine, called Gardisil and developed by Merck & Co., was approved for girls and women ages 9 and 26. It is most useful if given to younger girls, because the vaccine is ineffective once the virus -- which is very common among sexually active people -- is already present."
Washington Post

1% of Guidant Pacemakers Defective

A failure rate of 1% for a PACEMAKER! We wouldn't let our TVs fail at this rate, much less our automobiles! And it costs as much as a luxury sedan. I see two causes for Guidant being able to get away with this for as long as they did: 1. Insurance covers the cost, so patients don't know (and don't much care) how much the unit costs. 2. A defective unit fails to prevent something (a heart attack) from happening, and we humans don't pay much attention to such secondary activity levels. All the same, if 1 in 100 toasters caught fire, they'd be recalled. Disgusting.


NY Times
"Guidant engineers projected in one analysis that 1 out of every 100 Contak Renewals could short-circuit, a failure rate considered high by experts. Guidant also suspected by late 2004 that the Renewal models would become increasingly prone to failure as the devices aged, documents indicate.

Other Guidant devices did not have the same problem, including later versions of the Renewal.

At least seven patients are known to have died in episodes in which Guidant defibrillators failed to work because of the electrical defect, five involving Contak Renewals. But many experts believe that the number is probably higher because an implanted heart device is rarely examined after a patient's death to determine if it was working properly.

A defibrillator is a life-saving device intended to sense and electrically disrupt potentially fatal heart rhythms. The Contak Renewal combines a pacemaker and a defibrillator, a type of unit that is often referred to as a cardiac resynchronization therapy device, or CRT-D. Such units cost about $35,000 each."

Airbag Chemistry

It turns out that the NaN3 (Sodium Azide) used in automobile airbags is super nasty toxic (as if wildly explosive wasn't bad enough) -- azides apparently bind with cytochrome c oxidase (the enzyme that oxidizes the iron in hemoglobin to utilize the dissolved O2) like CO does, irreversably. Don't wash it down the sink, either.

"Sodium azide (NaN3) is a highly toxic chemical that exists as an odorless white solid. Its solution in water is slowly hydrolyzed into a very toxic gas, hydrogen azide (HN3), which also forms when NaN3 reacts with a strong acid. It may react with heavy metal ions such as copper, silver or lead to form metal azides which are very unstable, easily synthesized, and highly explosive. Care should be taken when disposing of this material down the sink as it may react with the plumbing material." - Wikipedia

Teaching Science in the Lab Leads to Greater Comprehension, Enthusiasm

NYT Article about very successful University of Maryland/ Baltimore County Science Program

Stuff made from real materials not as good as theory predicts

It's nice to see that Italian physicists still work the surface between ideas and reality, unlike some of our American physicist-evangelists. When you make nanotubes, every once in a while an atom in the crystal structure will be missing, or out of place. That lowers the tensile strength of the material by 70% from the theoretical maximum, taking it below the threshold for making "space elevators." Nicola Pugno of Turin Polytechnic also points out, rightly, that micrometeorite hits and oxygen erosion of the material will cause enough damage to weaken the material to similar levels, even if the crystal structure is initally perfect (impossible, anyway.)

Here's the deal. NO MATERIAL EVER WORKS AT ITS THEORETICAL MAXIMUM! Feel free to apply this idea to everything from "space elevators" to "star wars defense" systems. Please stop throwing our taxpayer money at people who haven't thought their ideas all the way through to the reality of the materials. How about putting some of that money into education, so people can learn to think things through?

Inevitable defects in nanotubes render space elevator impossible.

Fizeau

HPV Vaccine Update

I spoke with the colorectal surgeon again; She recommends strongly that both girls and boys be vaccinated when they are 13 years old. Apparently 40% of girls get condyloma (HPV infection) on their FIRST sexual experience. Some cancers are preventable. Make it so.

See "FDA Panel Approves HPV Vaccine" post, 19 May, below.

Anti-intellectuals in intellectual positions

Bush aide, 26 year old college dropout, to attend Harvard Business School.

What kind of fetish does this administration have for drop outs? Nothing like a little anti-intellectualist cronyism to put chocks under the wheels of government.

NASA appointee did not graduate from Texas A&M. (The Scientific Activist)

Fizeau

Tech News, May 20

Nanotubes potentially as toxic to the lungs as Silica, Asbestos.
Asbestos is my analysis. Think about it; long skinny fibers of very hard material, small enough to aerosolize. Probably worse, actually, because they are made of carbon, like we are. Probably highly mobile in the body, so can damage other organs than the lungs. (See the article for brain damage to bass from 1ppm buckyball concentration.)

Congress takes up bad patent decisions by proposing to pay for voluntary training for judges in patent law.