Beating The Flu

'The flu'.

The relentless flu drug.

238 men with diagnoses other than testicular cancer attending the same radiotherapy centres as those attended by the cases, and 251 hospital in-patients not attending radiotherapy departments. Logistic regrcssion analyses were performed, after stratifying by age and region of residence, to estimate the relative risks (RRs) associated with various aspects of prior medical history. The risk of te...

Rationing the flu vaccine.

In October 2004, the CDC announced that Chiron Corporation, chief supplier of inactivated influenza vaccine for the United States for the 2004–2005 flu season, would not be providing the 50 million vaccinations it had promised—half of the anticipated 90–100 million doses from all sources projected for the flu season. The resultant shortage set off a firestorm of concern. Well known to health ca...

The swine flu scam?

There is a conspiracy theory about nearly everything. So claims that swine flu was a scam come as no surprise. 'This was a pandemic that never really was' according to Paul Flynn, MP who prepared a recent report on the flu pandemic for the Council of Europe. 1 The report expresses alarm about the way the pandemic was handled. It criticizes the proportionality of the response and argues that ove...

Beating the Standard Model *

Although our beloved standard model of quarks and leptons offers a complete, consistent and correct description of most particle phenomena, lots of vexing questions remain unanswered, such as: Why are the gauge group and the fermion masses what they are? Why three families of quarks and leptons? What breaks electroweak symmetry? How about gravity? Leaving such profound meta-questions to supersy...