Younger offspring: (Singing, to the tune of “Head and Shoulders”) Head and thorax, abdomen, abdomen.
Head and thorax, abdomen, abdome-e-e-en.
Bulgy eyes and antennae.
Head and thorax, abdomen, abdomen!
Dr. Free-Ride: Let me guess: you’ve been learning about insects?
Younger offspring: Uh huh!
The first vaccine to protect against most cervical cancer won federal approval Thursday.
The vaccine Gardasil, approved for use in girls and women ages 9 to 26, prevents infection by four strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, Merck & Co. Inc. said. The virus is the most prevalent sexually transmitted disease.
Gardasil protects against the two types of HPV responsible for about 70% of cervical cancer cases. The vaccine also blocks infection by two other strains responsible for 90% of genital wart cases.
Merck is expected to market Gardasil as a cancer, rather than an STD, vaccine. It remains unclear how widespread will be the use of the three-shot series, in part because of its estimated cost of $300 to $500. Conservative opposition to making the vaccine mandatory for school attendance may also curb its adoption.
The target age for receiving Gardasil is low because the vaccine works best when given to girls before they begin having sex and run the risk of HPV infection. The vaccine may not protect people already infected and may increase their risk of the kind of lesions that can lead to cervical cancer, the FDA has said.
The national Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will decide June 29 whether to endorse routine vaccination with Gardasil. That endorsement is critical if a vaccine is to become a standard of care.
It then will be up to individual states to decide whether to add the vaccine to the list of others required before students may attend public schools.
The 36th Skeptics’ Circle, now posted at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles, begins with these gripping questions:
To readers who distrust science, knowledge found through experimentation, and the secular truths of reason in favor of simply believing – I ask you – why should affirming belief in something be a virtuous concept if it misleads? Why should demanding proof be soulless and cold if it keeps you from ignorance and victimization? And why do they always want your money?
Dr. Charles doesn’t want your money, but what he’s offering is of great value. Go check it out!
This week, the National Review Online’s media blogger revealed the secret identity of dKos blogger Armando, who says that this unwanted decloaking probably means he will no longer blog.
While I’m not heavy into the political end of the blogosphere (until someone can provide me with more than 24 hours per day), Armando’s story resonates with me because one of my favorite science bloggers, BotanicalGirl, had to stop blogging when members of her department became aware of her blog. So I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging anonymously versus blogging under one’s own name, not just in terms of the costs and benefits for the blogger, but also in terms of what the readers are getting out of (or reading into) the blog.
Near the end of the “Ethics in Science” course I teach, we read the novel Cantor’s Dilemma by Carl Djerassi. It does a nice job of tying together a lot of different issues we talk about earlier in the term. Plus, it’s a novel.
While it’s more enjoyable reading than the slew of journal articles that precede it, Cantor’s Dilemma is a little jarring for the students at first, because it contains whole passages that aren’t directly relevant to the question of how to be a responsible scientist. As one of my students synopsized: “Science. Sex. Science. Sex. Science. Sex.”
Upon reflection, though, I think at least some of the “novelistic” relationships in this novel really do have something to say about the nature of the scientific life. Explaining it is going to require some spoilers, though, so if you haven’t read the novel and don’t want me spoiling it for you, go read it before you click the link for the rest of the post!
One of the first things that happens when you get a faculty mailbox in a philosophy department is that unsolicited items start appearing in it. There are the late student papers, the book catalogs, the religious tracts — and occasionally, actual books that, it is hoped, you will like well enough that you will exhort all your students to buy them (perhaps by requiring them for your classes).
Today, I’m going to give you my review of two little books that appeared in my faculty mailbox, both from The Foundation for Critical Thinking. The first is The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, the second The Thinker’s Guide to Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery and Manipulation, both written by Richard Paul and Linda Elder.
I want to note three recent articles about science education. They may be dots worth connecting to each other, or they may not. I welcome your hypotheses, well grounded or tentative.
Hey, do you remember that oft cited Newsweek article from 1986 that proclaimed that the chances of a 40-year-old single, white, college educated woman getting married were less than her chances of getting killed in an act of terrorism? It turns out it was wrong. From a recent retraction of that article:
Twenty years later, the situation looks far brighter. Those odds-she’ll-marry statistics turned out to be too pessimistic: today it appears that about 90 percent of baby-boomer men and women either have married or will marry, a ratio that’s well in line with historical averages. And the days when half of all women would marry by 20, as they did in 1960, only look more anachronistic. At least 14 percent of women born between 1955 and 1964 married after the age of 30. Today the median age for a first marriage–25 for women, 27 for men–is higher than ever before.
It’s time for the bees in the ScienceBlogs hive to weigh in on another “Ask a ScienceBlogger” question. The question this time:
Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything we can do about it?
First, let me note that I’m in total agreement with Razib on the wording of the question:
A “drain” seems to imply a net outflow, and that doesn’t seem to be happening. But, as the parenthetical makes clear what meant is the reduction of the extent of the inflow.
The assumption, of course, is that the U.S. was counting on regular inflows of scientific talent from elsewhere. If the inflows fall off, who gets hurt and how?
Elder offspring’s Spring soccer season ended today. At the start of the season, I nervously volunteered to be the assistant coach for the team, because an assistant coach was needed and I was going to be at all the games and practices anyway. It’s not like I had mad coaching skillz; really, I was more of a sous-coach.
Anyway, at the end of the season party tonight, the players surprised us with some awesome gifts to thank us for coaching. They gave me a membership to the Tech Museum.
Awesome kids that they are, they really didn’t have to — but I’m glad they did!