Archive for the tag "PLoS"

Creaming off the circumcisions? (07/06/08)

When we were trying to think of how to spend two million dollars of US taxpayers money on preventing the rampant growth of a non-existent HIV epidemic in a tiny country with no risk (East Timor), one of my colleagues suggested finding every sexually active man in the capital Dili and dipping their private parts [...]

Nerd alert: Why humans take no notice of scientists (27/02/08)

Scientists continute to agonise about why no-one takes any notice of us. Allowing the public to get hold of science by publishing important findings on line is a magnificent first step. But the wonderful, open-access Public Library of Science may have scored an own goal this week, with the publication of a paper [...]

Prozac doesn’t work: how depressing is that? (26/02/08)

Now that over 40 million people are taking Prozac and similar medication to cheer themselves up, we learn that they may as well be taking sugar-pills. Waving the Freedom of Information act as a warrant to gain access to data drug companies haven’t wanted to publish, researchers looked again at whether people popping Prozac actually [...]

Stating the obvious department: HIV kills mothers (20/02/08)

A study in Mozambique looks at what is killing women during childbirth or over the following 42 days. We tend to think of “maternal mortality” as deaths from haemorrhage or other obstetric complications, but in this case, more women died of infectious diseases than of pregnancy-or-delivery-gone-wrong. And of the infectious diseases, the biggest killer [...]