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Showing posts from April, 2008

The UN-news season is upon us but BEWARE of Sun Screens!.

Just in time for the "silly season" news cycle we have had our first shark-scare story. It was predictable. It was inevitable. It was essentially meaningless except for the individuals touched by the tragedy - it means nothing more than a story about someone being killed by a lightning strike which is much more common than shark kills. It is too soon to know if this will be the big "scare" story theme for this Summer. It could still be the Red Tide; people stealing cars from vacationers just to get the gas in their tanks; but we know there will ALWAYS be a big and, critically important, a scary story running through the Summer to keep people watching the TV news. A perrenial story is that of the need for sun screen. The TV always gets this wrong. Sun screens, like window glass, filter out half of the UV. Unfortunately the blocked part (UVB) is the part that generates Vitamin-D. UVA, passed by glass and most sun screens, actually destroys Vitamin-D, perhaps explainin

Bird flu

As if the current flu epidemic isn't bad enough, the H5N1 bird flu is still out there, still mutating, still killing people. The deadly bird flu is spreading in Korea and China (site of this year's Olympic Games) and most scientists are taking it very seriously. The PM of Great Britain and his science advisors sees the H5N1 threat as inevitably spreading and potentially more dangerous than the Black death of the middle ages - certainly a much bigger threat than terrorism. Nothing to panic about (yet) but definately something to make plans for. -- www.newmedicineonline.com The trouble with learning things the hard way is that sometimes you only get the one fatal lesson. - jm