35.8104 years in science communication
Sciencebase news and views on health and medicine, including posts on Covid-19, bird flu, cancer, asthma, obesity, vaccines, and much more.
Somebody just made the brilliant suggestion on an anti-vax discussion group that doctors, instead of injecting chemicals, should inject a tiny bit of the virus so that the body can build up natural immunity to the disease…
…basically, they just “invented” vaccination.
What do the antivax brigade think doctors are injecting now? Fairy dander and unicorn tears?
When it comes to penis size, there is probably not a man on the planet who has not worried about it at some point in his life. Moreover, there is probably not a single person on the planet who has not received at least one spam email announcing some way of increasing length, girth, or both.
So, what is the truth about penile enhancement? Is it possible? Is there even a grain of truth in any of those spams and even if there is does it really matter how big your p3n!s is? Are all those spam subject lines merely empty promises: “Reliable method of natural pen!s enlargement!”, “GretaSizeableMembr!”, “Special offer for your little willy!”, “All Natural Enlargement Add Inchees”, et ceteeeeera.
The simple fact of the matter is surgery is the only way to increase penis size, but surgeons will point out that it can be painful, involves a lot of heartache, can go seriously wrong and will not increase the size of your penis by more than a few millimetres even in a best-case scenario.
But, what about all those other techniques, pills, and remedies mentioned in billions of spam messages, surely some of them work? Well, clinical trials are limited, but there is absolutely no definitive evidence that suggests any of them work at all, there may be a marginal placebo effect that boosts a man’s confidence a little without actually boosting his dimensions, but that’s as far as it goes. Anecdotes, by the way, are not medical evidence.
So, there you have it. The truth about penile enlargement is that it cannot be done safely. More to the point though, unless you are suffering from the medical condition known as micropenis, you really shouldn’t worry about it, after all the human penis is proportionally much bigger on average than that of a gorilla!
Actually, now that I mention gorillas you may not wish to read on if you really are worried about your size. Gynaecologist Edwin Bowman explains in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior that humans evolved a proportionally larger penis in parallel with the evolutionary widening of the birth canal as our brains got larger.
Males with a larger penis would have fared better in natural selection as they had more chance of ejaculating during sexual intercourse and so more chance of mating resulting in a pregnancy. “I have had many occasions to discuss penile size with women,” Bowman says, “In general and within reason, women prefer larger penises. The preference is ingrained in our culture and probably has been so since prehistoric times.”
It sounds like nonsense to me, given that the average aroused vagina is only about 4 inches long and the average aroused penis about 5 to 6 inches. More to the point, surely a widening birth canal would only select for a thicker penis rather than a longer one.
Bowman, E. (2007). Why the Human Penis is Larger than in the Great Apes Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37 (3), 361-361 DOI: 10.1007/s10508-007-9297-6
Dogs that can sniff out cancer have been in the science and medical news periodically over the thirty years I’ve been a science writer…but…something new is on the horizon, people who can smell whether you have Parkinson’s disease.
Everybody’s skin has a waxy substance known as sebum. It’s akin to lanolin in sheep. But, in PD, other chemicals are present that have a distinctive odour that some people can detect. These compounds are eicosane, hippuric acid, and octadecanal. A clinical test based on the presence of these chemicals in one’s sebum could be used to test for PD early on.
Ironically, one of the symptoms of PD is a change or loss of the patient’s own sense of smell.
Read the full story from my colleague Steve Down writing in the mass spec channel of spectroscopynow.com, Steve Down.
Thirty years as a science writer, covering almost every #STEM beat at some point, I just received my first antivax death threat…
“Your criminal bastard david bradley published an article lying about the benefits of vaccinations. The only benefit is for the evil criminal government bastards running this planet who need to be executed! We know vaccines are nothing but toxic bioweapons ow because of Planet X and they are designed to make people too sick and stupid to pay attention! They also spread government-created designer diseases like when they AIDS in smallpox and hepatitis vaccines. So your evil lying bastard bradley is guilty of accessory to genocide and the criminal piece of shit needs to be executed along with all the evil bastard governments!”
Classic shoddy grammar and conspiracy references from these kinds of idiot.
On Twitter, Robin Davidson suggested it is a badge of honour, while Ian thought it was “really quite something”. Simon Leather noted my email client’s classification: “A real piece of junk rhetoric” and Silvia Castro offered me congratulations: “So congrats! You are doing a great job! Criminals are the one that put their kids and everyone around them in danger of being killed by a disease that can be prevented by vaccines. We all should all learn from NY Measles Emergency happening right now.”
Ryan O’Hare told me: “That’s brilliant! :) You should be proud to have risen through the ranks from science writer to “criminal bastard”. That’s another step up the ladder to “Evil Overlord”.” and posted a gif of Mike Myers as Dr Evil.
I’ve put together a menu of my favourite food myths #DeceivedWisdom and separated the fact and fiction based on the debunking of nutrition myths in a recent well-referenced feature on examine.com. Myth 10 is my own bonus myth debunked.
Myth 1: Carbs are bad for you
Fact: As long as you do not overindulge, there is nothing inherently harmful about carbohydrates.
Myth 2: Fat is bad for you
Fact: If you eat too much and don’t get enough exercise, and so stay in a caloric surplus, a low-fat diet won’t help you lose weight. You need some omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Saturated fat won’t give you a heart attack, but too much trans fat might.
Myth 3: Protein is bad for your bones and kidneys
Fact: Protein, even in large amounts, isn’t harmful to your bones or kidneys (unless you suffer from a pre-existing condition).
Myth 4: Red meat is bad for you
Fact: The risk of getting cancer from eating red meat has been vastly exaggerated. Healthy lifestyle choices, such as maintaining a healthy weight, exercising, not smoking, and drinking alcohol only in moderation is far more important to overall risk.
Myth 5: Salt is bad for you
Fact: Salt reduction is important for people with salt-sensitive hypertension, and excess salt intake is associated with harm. But drastically lowering salt intake has not shown uniform benefit in clinical trials. See Myth 4 for general comment on health risk reduction.
Myth 6: Fresh is better than frozen
Fact: There are only tiny nutrient differences between truly fresh fruit and veg compared with frozen produce. Choose to suit your taste, budget, and lifestyle, any fruit and veg is better than no fruit and veg. Some supermarkets cold store “fresh” fruit and veg for months, so in that case frozen might even be fresher.
Myth 7: You should do a ‘detox’ regularly
Fact: The concept of a detox is pseudoscience. Nothing dietary you ingest will accelerate significantly the body’s natural processes (in the liver and kidneys) of waste products. Moreover, some supplements add to the burden on the liver and can even interfere with medication, leading to more tox than detox.
Myth 8: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day
Fact: You don’t need to eat breakfast to be healthy or lose weight.
Myth 9: You won’t lose weight if you eat before bedtime
Fact: Eating late won’t make you gain fat, unless it drives you to eat more. Also, tasty, high-calorie snacks are very attractive after a long day.
Myth 10: There is a magic formula to make you healthy, wealthy, and wise
Fact: There isn’t. Eat sensibly, don’t overindulge in any one food, get plenty of exercise, preferably in the fresh air where you can hear birdsong away from traffic. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink to excess. Avoid worrying about your health and nutrition.
I just spent the weekend in another city with a bunch of people most of whom I hadn’t seen for twenty years. All-but-one-or-two of those people I met for the first time in another country when we worked together on a kids’ summer camp. It was a wonderful reunion, none of us has changed a bit…on the inside.
We didn’t stop talking at each other and laughing over the old stories (of which there were approximately 10476 or was it 10477, I lose count). We laughed and scoffed over the old photographs of us looking smooth-skinned and youthful and in the way we all know we still are…on the inside.
A word did come to mind though as we gassed and laughed and drank.
Disorientation.
Ironic really as way back then, before setting out for those foreign shores we had been coraled albeit separately in the Spring of ’88, for an orientation course by the organisers of these student jollies that told us a little about the process of getting there, working and living there and how to think about what to do in terms of travel if any of us had time and cash left afterwards.
Disorientation.
The vertiginous feeling of reuniting with very familiar faces with whom we had all had a deep friendship so long ago. Some had stayed in touch of course and there had been occasional sightings and visits over the winding course of three decades. But, this reunited group was much of the hardcore of Brits who had corresponded fervently for weeks and months and sometimes years after our American rite of passage. We were, back then, perhaps clinging on to the exuberance of that summer, trying not to admit that we were all back in Blighty and student studies had to be begun again or, perish the thought, jobs sought.
Disorientation at how after 30 years we mostly all had families, some of whom were grown up. We had all taken very disparate routes to other foreign shores for long and short trips. We had all eventually got very different jobs and made some amazing career choices that might never have come to mind when we were working in 96 degree heat among those not-so-lonesome pines.
We had all constructed new circles of friends with whom we had all created strong bonds in the intervening years. But, there was this feeling when we all looked at each and talked and drank that although our heads were full of the faces of newer friends and the experiences we had all had since we last met, that this strange shared experience of a summer working on a kids camp in West Virginia had taken us down so many country roads and yet we were still in the same place…on the inside.
Strange how nostalgia hits you in the stomach and brings a lump to your throat and puts a teardrop in your eye…almost Heaven.
Oh, and one more thing, I didn’t go bare-chested at any point during the reunion…despite their endless demands, hahaha.
Afterthought: Readers will no doubt have got the feeling that we all just picked up where we left off all those years ago. It’s true. And, almost everyone has similar experiences to report when being reunited with old friends. It is amazing that it seems to work like that. I think the “Dunbar number” theory about how many people a human can “keep” in their head in terms of social connection needs to be updated. Fundamentally, there may well be a limit to the number in any single clique or group to which we belong, but I reckon there is a layer above that. We can perhaps belong to many different groups and have a large number of connections in each of those too. Well, that’s my experience.
Then, there is the disorientation one feels when those different groups overlap or meet. That whole “So….how do *you* two know each other?” syndrome. It’s a fascinating social PhD to be undertaken, I reckon.
Inevitably, I wrote a song.
UPDATE: I blitzed them in the food processor today and converted the jar of pickled chillis into a lethal cocktail for drizzling into curries and marinades etc. Thought I had better put a hazmat type sign on the bottle.
Turns out these are Scotch Bonnets, up to 400,000 Scoville units in terms of capsaicin concentration. I’ve now chopped, deseeded and blanched half a pound of them to freeze and pickle.
I wore rubber gloves, a facemask and goggles while I did so, but the house is now full of their volatiles and neither Mrs Sciencebase nor myself can stop coughing and sneezing. I just touched my face with a formerly gloved finger that I thought I’d washed thoroughly and the skin there is sizzling gently…why do we use these weapons on mass destruction in food again, remind me?
UPDATE: I was talking chillis in the pub last night with biochemist and brewer friend Mark. He reckons the best thing to do is blend them up with some salt and white wine vinegar or cider vinegar, seeds and all, to make a useful drizzle to add a bit of fire to anything you cook, as and when. He also warned against adding anything fresh and rottable, such as freshly plucked chillis to oil to make a chilli oil, for instance, as there is a significant risk of botulism with such homemade products unless you add the requisite preservatives that defeat Clostridium botulinum.
Apparently, the chilli peppers I have grown are habanero Scotch Bonnet (1000s times hotter than a jalapeno on the Scoville scale). I chopped one without the seeds into scrambled eggs for lunch and almost couldn’t breathe while they were frying…my stomach is still complaining three hours later, my nose is running, and my lips feel like I’ve been chewing wasps. I only ate the tiniest fragment and none of the seeds. Although there is usually very little capsaicin in chilli seeds its highest concentration being found in the pith that attaches them to the interior of the fruit.
My chillis are now destined for homemade chilli pizza oil, I reckon. I daren’t cook with them again. They’re weapons grade.
In case you were wondering: The Scoville scale is a subjective measure of the heat of peppers, or other spicy foods, basically acting as a proxy for capsaicin concentration. Capsaicin is perhaps the most well known of the many related pungent capsaicinoids compounds in chillis. The scale is named for American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, whose invented an organoleptic test for chilli heat in 1912. It is still discussed but high-performance liquid chromatography (HLPC) provides a more objective way of testing capsaicinoid concentration.
Capsaicin has the chemical name 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) it is a serious irritant to all mammals causing a burning sensation in any tissue with which it comes into contact, particularly sensitive parts of the body such as the eyes and nose, any part of the alimentary tract from top to bottom, and for some unfortunate chilli “chefs” who don’t wash their hands thoroughly after handling, any part of the reproductive tract too…hence the phrase – Chilli Willy – familiar to many waiters in restaurants serving spicy food.
Ironically, capsaicin has been used as a topical painkiller (in shingles for instance) and it has also demonstrated antifungal activity. Indeed, it may well have evolved in the plants for this purpose to protect the seeds, which are dispersed in avian guano (birds don’t feel the burn).
TL:DR – Does salbutamol boost athleticism? Not really, no.
UPDATE: 2021 The GINA guidelines for healthcare workers helping people with asthma is, internationally, to avoid any use of salbutamol. If you have asthma and are still using this old drug, please speak to your doctor and mention GINA.
If you’re an athlete taking the WADA allowed 1600 micrograms of salbutamol each day that’s the equivalent of 16 doses from a standard metered dose inhaler. If you’re taking so much that it leads to you failing a drug test, then you have serious problems. Most lay people take two doses at a time to relieve symptoms, such as chest tightness, coughing, wheezing and breathlessness, so that’s still using the stuff 8 times a day.
I wonder though, whether you are an athlete or not, if you need to take that much bronchodilator each day to get relief and a decent peak flow rate, then it’s odd that you got so high up in the world of sport in the first place irrespective of how tenacious you might be. Asthma at that level of reliever need can be quite debilitating regardless of fitness.
Moreover, at that level of dosing, most GPs would’ve prescribed inhaled corticosteroid preventers to preclude the need for taking so much bronchodilator. That, of course, brings with it its own issues with respect to bone density and, of course, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s rules, even though corticosteroids are not muscle-building anabolic steroids.
So, does inhaled salbutamol actually benefit people without asthma? And thence enhance athletic performance. It’s possible. Presumably, everyone has some degree of possible expansion of their airways even if they don’t have the disorder. There was an item in the January 2016 issue of Cycling Weekly that discusses the issues in more detail and suggests that there may well be benefits. However, earlier work suggests that salbutamol does little to enhance the performance of top-level athletes. A research paper from May 2017 studying salbutamol use among professional footballers corroborated that earlier finding; that said it looked at footballers using a single therapeutic dose (2 puffs, 200 micrograms), rather than the big daily dose that represents the upper allowed limit under WADA’s rules.
Salbutamol can have a range of side effects: tremor, anxiety, headache, muscle cramps, dry mouth, heart palpitations, tachycardia, arrhythmia, flushing of the skin, myocardial ischaemia (rare), and insomnia.
Scientists have used a 3D printer to make a scaffold of a soft plastic type material known as a hydrogel. The researchers then loaded this scaffold with the egg sacs known as ovarian follicles from a female mouse and implanted it. The follicles began maturing and released eggs, which were fertilised by natural mating and the mice then went on to give birth to live young. [Laronda et al, Nature Commun, 2017, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15261].
A similar synthetic ovary might one day be used to treat infertility in women who have had cancer chemotherapy. Chemotherapy causes ovarian failure, essentially destroying a woman’s eggs of which they have a limited supply. Men, of course make sperm all their lives, but women are born with all the eggs they will ever have in immature form in their ovaries. Chemotherapy at any point in their lives will destroy their eggs, some women and girls choose to have eggs harvested and cryogenically stored before they start treatment to improve their chances of an IVF baby later in life.
The picture is quite complicated concerning what the anticancer drugs actually do to the ovary. Quoting from this research paper:
“[Premature ovarian failure and thus female infertility] results from the loss of primordial follicles but this is not necessarily a direct effect of the chemotherapeutic agents. Instead, the disappearance of primordial follicles could be due to an increased rate of growth initiation to replace damaged developing follicles.”
The current research itself is all about testing egg follicle survival and showing how they can be viable on the porous scaffold of the synthetic ovary. Moreover, the team has shown that follicles on the scaffold release appropriate hormones as they would in a living ovary and release maturing egg cells. It all looks very promising for mice. Human follicles grow much larger than mouse follicles and would bring different challenges in terms of keeping them alive in an artificial ovary, but this is a step closer.
The obvious question though is what was the source of the implanted follicles. The team describes how “follicles were mechanically isolated” from an excised mouse ovary for implantation. But, if a women has premature ovarian failure induced by chemotherapy, then there are presumably no follicles with which the fertility team could work unless they have been “harvested” prior to her treatment, which would be an additional (surgical) procedure the patient would have to face and a difficult choice made regardless of whether the patient is a baby, small child, teenager or adult.
You know when they say the symptoms of meningitis are commonly a headache and a stiff neck and perhaps purple blotches on the skin that don’t pale when pressed…well…it can be far worse than that and can kill. If you’re in a vulnerable group, make sure you’re vaccinated. It is highly recommended that new university and college students are vaccinated because meningitis is far worse than a spot of “fresher’s flu” (usually just a cold) and can be passed on through coughs and sneezes, close contact and kissing infected people and even just sharing kitchen utensils. If it doesn’t kill it can lead to amputation where tissues in the feet or hands have died, for instance. Graphic photos of youngster, Charlene Colechin, hospital shown on the BBC site today are fair warning!
What is meningitis?
Meningitis is acute inflammation (the itis bit of the name) of meninges, the protective membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord.
What causes meningitis?
Infection by viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms (fungi like Cryptococcus and Histoplasma), and far less commonly certain drugs, can cause meningitis (mainly non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics and intravenous immunoglobulins). Viral meningitis is fairly common but rarely fatal, while bacterial forms are less common but are extremely dangerous and can be fatal. One common bacterium that causes meningitis is meningococcus, which can lead to both meningitis and septicaemia (meningococcal disease). Some forms of meningitis occur in people with HIV, diabetes and some forms of cancer.
What are the symptoms of meningitis?
Meningitis commonly presents as fever, headache and neck stiffness, but can lead to confusion, vomiting, and sensitivity to bright light and loud noises. Meningitis in young children might present as irritability, drowsiness, and poor feeding. Symptoms usually appear after a 4-5 day incubation period following infection.
Isn’t there usually a purple, blotchy rash?
This symptom is most commonly seen in meningitis caused by meningococcal bacteria. A standard test as to whether a rash might be caused by meningitis involves gently pressing a patch of skin with the side of a drinking glass or other transparent object, if the colouration does not go away with pressure, it is more likely to be a rash due to meningitis. Other skin inflammation will pale when pressed.
How is the condition diagnosed?
A sample of spinal fluid is taken with a hypodermic syringe in a procedure commonly known as a “lumbar puncture” and tested in the laboratory for the markers of the disease, C-reactive protein, complete blood count, and blood cultures to confirm whether or not bacteria from a blood sample are present.
Can meningitis kill?
Yes. The inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord can lead to pressure on the brain as well as sepsis (which leads to a dangerous drop in blood pressure, a rapid heart rate, high or abnormally low temperature, and rapid breathing), sepsis itself can be the ultimate cause of death.
Can meningitis be treated?
Meningitis is treated as a medical emergency and patients require rapid hospitalisation as soon as symptoms arise. If the condition is detected early enough wide-spectrum antibiotics can control the worst symptoms. Corticosteroids have also been shown to improve the prognosis for many patients, particularly in the developed world and where HIV is uncommon.
What is the prognosis?
If caught early, the prognosis is good and many people survive meningitis unscathed. However, sepsis, organ damage, gangrene and rupture of the adrenal glands can all occur some even at an early stage of infection and lead to major life-changing consequences, such as amputations, hearing loss and chronic health problems.
How common is meningitis?
In 2013, 16 million people worldwide were identified as having meningitis, 303,000 of them died. In Western nations, bacterial meningitis affects about 3 people in every 100,000 each year. Worldwide, the rate is closer to 11 per 100,000, although the disease is not universally notifiable so these figures cannot be assured. The rate in Brazil is much higher, almost 50 people in every 100,000 annually, while Sub-Saharan Africa, tragically referred to as the “meningitis belt” by some can see 100—800 cases per 100,000.
Can meningitis be prevented?
The risk of getting some forms of meningitis can be prevented by vaccination, immunization, with the meningococcal, mumps, pneumococcal, and Hib vaccines. There is no vaccine to protect against all forms and different vaccines are needed to prevent forms of meningitis in different parts of the world.
Where can I find out more about meningitis?
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention also has a FAQ on meningitis as does the UK’s Meningitis Research Foundation, and of course, the NHS.