Much has been going on in the world of HIV, sex and drugs in the last month or so; the US marines recruiting at gay community centers, more mysteriously disappointing study outcomes for PrEP, encouraging news about the effect of microbicide gels against herpes, a new super-easy condom with a brand name that will put [...]
It’s not that often that I sit reading the FT on a Tube full of morning communters. Even less often that the Pink Paper (no, boys, not THAT Pink Paper) carries full page ads from the Purveyors of Porn. The ad is pimping a new internet domain ending: .xxx (Slogan: Coming, now!) The porn industry [...]
It’s no surprise to anyone that I’m interested in viruses. Many know of my on-going affair with Indonesia. Some will have heard me obsess recently about using art to make people think differently about science. And a handful will know of my growing interest in digital media. Conveniently, Icelandic singer Björk has brought all those [...]
First PReP worked for gay men, and we were happy. Then it didn’t work for straight women, and we were sad. Now, two big studies in heterosexuals have shown it can work for straight couples, and we are deeply confused. Or at least I am. Taking anti-HIV pills every day cuts the risk of infection [...]
Do we really need research to demonstrate the blindingly obvious? Yes, if you believe that people who call the political shots will change their mind on the basis of a published study (something about which I am skeptical) So here we have it: research published in the International Journal of Impotence Research shows that guys [...]
For some time now, I’ve been waltzing around casting doubt on the “treatment is prevention” mantra, the idea that putting people infected with HIV on meds sooner will reduce new infections, despite pretty good observational evidence that people on treatment are less likely to infect their partners. If I had been praying at the altar [...]
Just as we were getting all excited about giving people antiretorvirals to protect them against HIV infection, a large trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PReP) in women is being shut down because the pills are unlikely to prevent HIV. It’s a huge disappointment to those who were hoping that the pill-a-day-to-avoid-a-pill-a-day solution might drag us out [...]
It wasn’t until Eve ate the apple proffered by the snake in the Garden of Eden that she became ashamed of her nakedness. But a couple of recent decisions by Apple have made me wonder whether their censors are the real snakes. The screen shot above shows a small corner of Filth Fair, a new, [...]
Wiping out diseases: it’s a seductive goal. And like many of the best serial seducers, it’s ultimately hard to pin down. The eradication fashion item for this season is polio, the Lothario sporting it is Bill Gates. Mr. Gates says we can eradicate polio in two years; that just a fifth of the time that [...]
Today, the world of public health research changed for ever. Or so I hope. The institutions that fund most health research in developing countries (and a good deal of research in rich countries too) have finally launched an assault on Data Hugging Disorder. They are pushing the scientists they fund to put any data they [...]
Year-end tends to be quiet on the work front: the time all those neglected peer reviews float to the top of the To Do list. Like so many others, I review out of a sense of duty. That same sense of duty often obliges me to say horrid things about papers or grant proposals that [...]
At a conference in Mexico recently, I ran into Wired editor Chris Anderson. His essay on the petabyte age, published a couple of years ago, sounded the death knell for scientific method. I was seduced by the argument at the time, as well as by the beautiful graphics that accompanied the piece. Visualising Big Data [...]
It´s official. Taking antiretroviral drugs when you don´t have HIV cuts the risk that you´ll get infected. It´s exciting news, if not unexpected. But it´s going to be a major headache for politicians. The results of the iPrEx trial, were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine (with pdf but not the supplementary [...]
Can you protect your nation from HIV by testing immigrants for the virus? Even the United States now thinks that’s a daft idea; it finally dropped its HIV testing requirements for immigrants earlier this year. Now South Korea has followed suit, sort of. The country will drop HIV testing for some, though it has announced [...]
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this wonderful pastiche of science writing. For a slightly more “scientific” view, there’s a paper in PLoS Med investigating whether trained science journalists are worth their salaries. Question: is Martin Robbins’ piece all the training we need?
Because I run a course to help mid-career scientists get their papers published in peer-reviewed journals, I’m always on the look-out for really good papers, and for really bad ones. I also keep my eyes open for bad science reporting. It’s depressingly easy to find the latter, but it just got easier. Tom Scott has [...]
The New York Times is a bit of a supertanker; it takes a while to get going on a subject. So by the time they run a drum-rolling front page story about some world-changing trend, you can be pretty sure that the trend is close to becoming the new status quo. I’m hoping that’s true [...]
I have a confession. Behind all the sex and drugs talk, I’m just a giant data nerd. I believe that health research data collected with taxpayers’ money should be used to improve lives, not just to improve the career of a couple of scientists who got the research grant. And we’d improve lives faster if [...]
So gay guys go on having unprotected sex after they are diagnosed with HIV, a new descriptive study of gay poz guys at a clinic in Boston tells us. Nothing new there, although it’s sobering to be reminded that one in two of the men who know they have HIV choose to bareback with someone [...]
I was lucky enough to go to the TED conference in California last month. Many of the better talks are already on line. My own favourite was Sam Harris on the subject of science and morality. I may have liked it because it was squeezed in that stomach-churning moment between my breakfast with local cops [...]
