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Friday Evening Poolside BBQ and Beer Fest

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Friday, July 11, 2014

Gather round and welcome to the first Friday Evening Poolside BBQ and Beer fest where off topic is on topic. You will want to save this since it will be famous someday and at least 1 million people will say they attended. Make a comment and you will have proof you were here.

Here are some topics to get the conversation up and running until we get the keg tapped and the brats off the grill.

Let’s begin with health which has been in the news this week:

(1) Bad news about HIV. The Utah People’s Post is reporting:

Three years ago there was a huge breakthrough in the treatment of HIV for children born with the HIV virus. A young girl (18 months) infected with the virus was cured by an aggressive drug treatment and was virus-free. The medical news took the world by storm and the doctors involved with her treatment and therapy had hoped that this would be the beginning of a new treatment for those born with the HIV virus. Unfortunately it has been revealed today that the girl who is now 4 years old is again HIV positive.

The Mississippi girl had stopped taking her medicine after the doctors couldn’t find any trace of the HIV virus in her system. During a routine checkup it was discovered that the HIV was back, or more accurately put it was detectable. Also, she had a decreased white blood cell count and HIV antibodies; both of these are the tell-tale signs that HIV is present and replicating inside the human body.

The good news is that her doctors put her back on antiretroviral therapy which appears to be working without any side effects.

She was got the virus from her mother who did not know she was infected.

The research for a cure continues.

(2) Bad news about Ebola. Al Jazeera is reporting,

Ebola continues to spread in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, with a combined 44 new cases and 21 deaths between July 6 and 8, the World Health Organisation has said.

This brought the total in West Africa’s first outbreak of the deadly disease to 888 cases, including 539 deaths since February. It is the largest and deadliest so far, the UN agency said.

“The epidemic trend in Liberia and Sierra Leone remains precarious with high numbers of new cases and deaths being reported,” the WHO said on Friday.

The good news is that only one new case has been reported in Guinea where the outbreak began.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified how it spreads (via contact with blood and other bodily fluids, including sweat and diarrhoea) and the most common circumstances in which it spreads (traditional burial practices including washing a victim’s corpse, dense populations in and around the capitol cities of Guinea and Liberia, and regional trade across porous borders.

Since an infected person can be symptom free for 2-21 days before flu-like symptoms appear, he or she potentially could travel anywhere in the world before experiencing the onset of symptoms.

(3) In the oops-careful-with-that-box-Eugene category we have this report in USA Today,

Following a string of public-safety scares, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be shutting down two research labs, temporarily stopping all transfers of samples from high-level biosafety labs and strengthening its laboratory safety precautions, the CDC announced in a report Friday.

The new precautions came following an internal review of the CDC after three separate incidents of possible exposure to dangerous diseases at CDC labs and an FDA lab at the National Institutes of Health’s Bethesda, Md., campus, all disclosed in the past three months. The latest, reported for the first time on Friday, involved the cross-contamination of an animal flu strain with a highly dangerous strain of bird flu.

(4) With antibiotic use increasing around the world by 36% this year and antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria evolving faster than scientists can develop new vaccines to eradicate them, medical researchers turn their attention to our vanishing tropical rainforests for new cures. Here’s Crane-Station’s article from Wednesday with a great 21-minute video on why they are searching in the rainforests.

Water is fine. Come on in.

Marco?

What’s on your mind tonight?

This is our 1130th post. If you appreciate what we do, please toss some money into the hat. We need it to keep the lights on.

Thank you,

Fred



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