The Devolution

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

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Does organic food turn people into jerks?

Everywhere I go in Berkeley or San Francisco I see “organic” anything marketed to the general public. The link and story above is an interesting look about the psychology and behavior of those who eat organic food. 

As for my personal opinion about organic food - if you can afford it, great. However, for the many folks who cannot afford it (like yours truly), eating locally is more affordable and equally as healthy as eating only organic. 

Source: CNN

Filed under public health organic food psychology behavior

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I can officially add the “M.P.H.” degree to the end of my name. Congratulations Class of 2012 and a special shout-out to my fellow Infectious Disease MPHers from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. It has a been a wonderful two years in the Bay Area; now on to saving the world! 

I can officially add the “M.P.H.” degree to the end of my name. Congratulations Class of 2012 and a special shout-out to my fellow Infectious Disease MPHers from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. It has a been a wonderful two years in the Bay Area; now on to saving the world! 

Filed under graduation grad school

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The first drug to prevent HIV transmission?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee met earlier this month to hear testimony on the use of Truvada, a drug used to treat HIV infected individuals, as a potential preventative measure against HIV transmission and acquisition among high risk individuals. The advisory committee has now recommended the approval of Truvada as with the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) indication. 

I took a seminar Spring semester about the FDA and we talked a lot about the drug approval process in terms of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Getting to see this approval in my lifetime is pretty monumental considering that this is the first drug to have this indication to prevent HIV transmission (surprisingly, the use of HIV drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission is not indicated in many HIV drugs). 

This does give the public health world some things to think about. While this gives us another way to prevent HIV transmission, the use of condoms is still important - adherence to both the drugs and condom use could change, maybe for the worse. Likewise, if the person was already infected with HIV but doesn’t test positive in any diagnostic tests, taking these drugs to prevent HIV infection would promote HIV drug resistance in that infected person. 

I do believe this is a step forward in stopping HIV. But, as public health folks must know, we need to be careful about how we use this tool to prevent disease.

Source: CNN

Filed under HIV/AIDS public health fda

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"Lab-made" H5N1 influenza virus - Coming soon to a journal near you!

influenza

For those of you that has been following the story about the laboratory-strain H5N1 influenza virus paper, here’s some news. As a science and infectious disease student I’m very excited to read the paper. There is mention of a “revision” to the initial paper, however; we can only hope that the data and conclusions hasn’t been skewed in the name of “public health.” 

Source: TWiV

Filed under H5N1 influenza flu science biology infectious disease public health