Pigging out on the flu

Global media have been on a fear-feeding frenzy these past few days over reports of swine flu cases scattered throughout the world.

It is good that relevant agencies, such as the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Homeland Security, are taking these reports seriously. (Check out this new ASIL Insight on the international law of disease control, by our colleague David P. Fidler.) Good too that government in the site most affected so far, Mexico, is taking extra measures.

As for the media and other global actors, however, it's hard to shake a sense that the subtext of many of their warnings is about something other than saving lives.

Consider:

► A WHO flyer makes clear that eating properly prepared pork poses no swine flu risks. As long as the meat's cooked to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, as it must be for other food-safety reasons, no problem.

So why the "pork bans"?

► As of yesterday, CDC had confirmed 40 U.S. cases of swine flu, contained within 5 of the country's 50 states. That number's less than a third of the students I teach in class on any given day. No deaths had been reported. Indeed, although this strain of influenza is highly contagious, although its symptoms are as acute as those one sees in other severe flus, according to the WHO, "mortality is low (1-4%)."

So why a European Union advisory to avoid travel to the United States?

"This is a rapidly evolving situation," CDC advises, and of course everyone should take care that conditions don't change for the worse. At-risk persons, like the elderly or already ill, should be on special guard. But for the rest of us, for now at least, a bit of sanity coupled with ordinary sanitary measures -- washing hands frequently, staying home if sick, and calling a physician if very sick -- would seem likely to do the flu-fighting trick.

Ovarian Cancer Awareness

Among women in the United States, ovarian cancer is the 8th most common cancer, and 5th most common cause of cancer deaths. Although far less common than breast, colon, or prostate cancer, ovarian cancer has a much higher death rate. Why? Because there is no screening test, and most women experience few symptoms until they have advanced stages of the disease. The combination often proves deadly.
According to the National Cancer Institute, more than 21,000 women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2008, and more than 15,000 will die. Worldwide there are more than 190,000 new cases of ovarian cancer each year, accounting for around 4% of all cancers diagnosed in women. Incidence rates vary considerably, with the highest rates in the USA and Northern Europe and the lowest rates in Africa and Asia. The World Health Organization has recently launched a campaign to reduce incidence and mortality of cancer worldwide.
As with many other cancers, early detection greatly enhances ovarian cancer survival rates, but without a reliable early detection technique, many women are only diagnosed at a relatively advanced stage. Pap smears do not detect ovarian cancers. The Centers for Disease Control information sheet on ovarian cancer is available here.
Once diagnosed, women too often do not get proper treatment. In 2006, the National Cancer Institute announced that a combination of intravenous paclitaxel and intraperitoneal cisplatin following surgery was the preferred treatment for advanced ovarian cancer. This IV/IP treatment has prolonged survival rates by more than a year. At the time, experts predicted that the cancer institute action would lead to widespread changes in treatment. Increadibly, two years later, only a small percentage of newly diagnosed women are given IV/IP treatment. This despite the more than $2 billion spent annuany on treating ovarian cancer.
But the news is not all bad. At the April meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, a Yale Medical School team led by Dr. Gil Mor (left) announced that they had identified, characterized and cloned ovary cancer stem cells, and demonstrated that these stem cells are likely responsible for recurrences and resistance to chemotherapy.
There is currently a petition to convince the US Postal Service to issue an Ovarian Cancer Awareness Stamp. I am not sure how that will help, but I guess anything that raises awareness is a good thing.

(Cross-posted on BioLaw blog)

On December 23, ...

... 1867 (140 years ago today) , Sarah Breedlove was born to former slaves still living on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana. Orphaned at age 7, she worked cotton fields with her older sister and married at age 14; by age 20 she was a widow with 1 small daughter. A scalp ailment led her to hair products made by Annie Malone, for whom she became a sales agent in 1905. After marrying a St. Louis newspaperman, Charles Joseph Walker, and renaming herself "Madam C.J. Walker," she used $1.25 in capital to launch what would become a cosmetics megabusiness, based in Indianapolis. Walker was, as her New York Times obituary noted, a philanthropist:

She said herself two years ago that she was not yet a millionaire, but hoped to be some time, not that she wanted the money for herself, but for the good she could do with it. She spent $10,000 every year for the education of young negro men and women in Southern colleges and sent six youths to Tuskegee Institute every year. She recently gave $5,000 to the National Conference on Lynching.

... 1982 (25 years ago today), the United States' Centers for Disease Control recommended that all the 2,000 residents of Times Beach, near St. Louis, leave their homes on account of dioxin contamination. The Environmental Protection Agency had just confirmed the problem, attributed to the city's spraying 10 years earlier of waste oil, which unbeknownst to anyone contained the killer chemical, onto unpaved roads. The U.S. government ended up purchasing the land, cleaning it at a cost of $200 million, and opening it in 1997 as a state park.