Which Coast Are We On Again?

Following close on the heals of California's move to legalize gay marriage, a surprising second step could take place in the slow progression towards marriage equality for all Americans. It seems that New York could soon require that all state agencies recognize gay marriages performed legally elsewhere. Obviously, this does not mean that gay and lesbian couples will be able to marry in the Big Apple, but if they decide to move there after a magical Manhattan honeymoon, their San Fran wedding will carry all the legal and financial benefits of a traditional marriage.

State agencies, including those governing insurance and health care, must immediately change policies and regulations to make sure "spouse," "husband" and "wife" are clearly understood to include gay couples

This is extremely important, as the old argument that Civil Unions were "just as good" as a marriage has been proven as full of holes as the "separate but equal" argument of the 60's, precisely due to legal differences between the two terms.

It is encouraging to see more of the country begin to realize that marriage should be defined by love, not the State. Speaking for myself, I wish all the new couples in California, and perhaps in NY, good luck and all the best. And props to New York Governor David Paterson for his help in winning this important battle for equality in a nation that badly needs it.

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CIA Torture Document Almost Completely Redacted

Today the ACLU blog posted some pdf's of documents from the CIA that were just slightly redacted. This is one of the more interesting ones.
The ACLU received the documents through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit related to the treatment of prisoners in US custody overseas. That's right, the only words on the page are "These enhanced techniques include:" and "waterboard". Pretty good stuff guys...

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Clinton...Exit Stage Left

Alright Tye, I get the point.


So I return from my hiatus a hair's breadth before Tye's editorial ax falls. My apologies Readers, now successfully-resolved medical issues prompted my absence, and I fell out of my favorite habit. It has been a drab 3 weeks without my time here, and honestly, my newfound productivity at work has made my employers suspicious. Its past time to get back to it.

On to what matters.

Who is this Hillary Clinton-person and what the hell is she doing in the race at this point? I think its fairly obvious, as so many have noted, that Obama will be the Democratic Nominee, but the noise is getting a little angry. I have yet to hear a convincing argument for her remaining in the competition, and once you begin basing the success of your candidacy on the tasteless, tragic hope (can we even call that a hope?) that your opponent might be assassinated, I'm going to just say that you have lost. You are out of you mind to believe anything further she does in this primary campaign is for the benefit of anyone other than Hillary Clinton. I fear that there is nowhere else for the Democratic primary to go but down, and Hillary is definitly playing the anchor in this play. I've been hearing a great deal of rhetoric being thrown in Obama's direction, and I have to assume that it would be easier for him to battle John McBush without the point of Clinton's knife, metaphorically speaking, pressed against his back.

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What Does the Hannah Poling Case Prove?

I figured I'd take a minute to address the Hannah Poling case since it deals with a topic I've covered here multiple times; the link (or non-link) of vaccines and autism. Earlier this year the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) was sued by the Poling family under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and won. They successfully argued that vaccines Hannah had received, specifically diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), varicella, and inactivated polio, caused her to develop autism spectrum disorder.

Ok, that's a lot of medical mumbo jumbo, here's the important part; the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). This program was created in 1986 because lawyers had sued almost all pharmaceutical companies out of existence, claiming vaccines were the reason for cases of sudden infant death syndrome to epilepsy. By the time it came into existence there was only one manufacturer of the diptheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine left in the market. The government stepped in with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which included the creation of the VICP. The Act called for an excise tax on every vaccine and the VICP compiled a list of compensable injuries. If studies supported the notion that vaccines caused a negative reaction -- thrombocytopenia after receipt of measles containing vaccine -- children and their families were given a fair reimbursement quickly and fairly. The number of lawsuits against vaccine makers decreased.

Unfortunately the VICP has recently turned its back on science. In 2005 a woman successfully claimed that a tetanus vaccine caused her optic neuritis. Although there was no evidence, published or otherwise, to support her claim, the VICP ruled that if a petitioner proposed a biologically "plausible" mechanism by which a vaccine could cause harm, as well as a logical sequence of cause and effect, an award should be granted. This opened the door to compensation being given for a whole new host of conditions which have no set of data to prove or disprove the claims.

In 2006 the VICP deviated farther from its original standards than it ever had before when Dorothy Werderitsh successfully claimed that a hepatitis B vaccine caused her multiple sclerosis. By the time of the ruling, several studies had shown that the hep B vaccine neither caused nor exacerbated the disease, and the Institute of Medicine even concluded that "evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between the two." But the VICP was less impressed by the scientific literature than it was with an expert's proposal of a mechanism by which hep B vaccine could induce autoimmunity (an ironic conclusion, given that Dorothy Wederitsh never had a detectable immune response to the vaccine).

Here are some facts: Natural infections will exacerbate autism spectrum disorder in patients with mitochondrial enzyme deficiencies (what Hannah Poling has), vaccines haven't shown the same. Children with this disorder are especially susceptible to infection so it is recommended they receive all vaccines.

A belief that multiple vaccines overwhelm the immune system is floating around the anti-vax camp. But a century ago children received one vaccine, smallpox, which contained 200 structural and nonstructural proteins. Today, the 14 vaccines given to children contain a total of 150 immunologic components.

Maybe the most important point of this case is that the government has eroded the confidence in the vaccination system without any concrete evidence of mass panic. The problem with letting a few kids skip out or having parents opt out of vaccination compromises herd immunity, a pillar of the vaccination theory. Consequences should be weighed next time a decision like this is made instead of caving to media and political pressure, a precedent has been laid down.

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The Veeping Villow...Confronting the Democratic Conundrum

Welcome to our new Senior Junior political correspondent Aurash Kamkar

First off, I want to thank Tye and Deano for allowing me to join the team and throw out some great posts. Lets get to it!!

As the end of the primary season draws near, a huge question is on the horizon: Obama's VP selection. The importance of this selection cannot be understated. This decision as we all know needs to shore up Obama on several fronts. The selection has to make him more formidable on national security issues and curtail fears about his experience. By experience, I do not mean governance, I mean pulling the trigger on a daunting choice, where he truly does trail his competitors. The VP choice also needs to bridge the ever more apparent Obama/Clinton divide. I know that many are calling for an Obama/Clinton ticket. This is a very sharp double edged sword. It would unify the party behind both, in addition it would unify an ailing republican base. The strengths of a Obama/Clinton partnership are negligible while the weaknesses are apparent even to the blind. The dislike of the Clintons will overshadow the GOP's disdain of McCain.

I've looked over the literature about the different options. I firmly believe that former NATO commander Wes Clark is a perfect fit. He is experienced on the International scene along with many years of military service. He is a Clinton surrogate and more importantly he's not a career politician, he's a general, which should mitigate McCain's military virtues. A Obama/Clark ticket becomes very appealing to "upper crust" democrats as well as Midwest blue collar voters. Such a decision, should appease the Clinton wing of the party and diversify the pull of the overall ticket.

Any questions or comments are always welcome even stupid ones....
AK out

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Clinton...Exit Stage Left

Alright Tye, I get the point.


So I return from my hiatus a hair's breadth before Tye's editorial ax falls. My apologies Readers, now successfully-resolved medical issues prompted my absence, and I fell out of my favorite habit. It has been a drab 3 weeks without my time here, and honestly, my newfound productivity at work has made my employers suspicious. Its past time to get back to it.

On to what matters.

Who is this Hillary Clinton-person and what the hell is she doing in the race at this point? I think its fairly obvious, as so many have noted, that Obama will be the Democratic Nominee, but the noise is getting a little angry. I have yet to hear a convincing argument for her remaining in the competition, and once you begin basing the success of your candidacy on the tasteless, tragic hope (can we even call that a hope?) that your opponent might be assassinated, I'm going to just say that you have lost. You are out of you mind to believe anything further she does in this primary campaign is for the benefit of anyone other than Hillary Clinton. I fear that there is nowhere else for the Democratic primary to go but down, and Hillary is definitly playing the anchor in this play. I've been hearing a great deal of rhetoric being thrown in Obama's direction, and I have to assume that it would be easier for him to battle John McBush without the point of Clinton's knife, metaphorically speaking, pressed against his back.

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Open Call to Political Bloggers

Since we've lost Dean its time for me to pick up another political correspondent. If you search through the site you can see the views of the site and if its something you'd be interested in, let me know. I'm looking for someone who can put up 3 articles a week, shouldn't be more than a 2 hour commitment. Thanks for looking guys, hope to hear from some of you.

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The Birth of a Virus, a First in Science

Although it doesn't look like much, this image is a first in science. The white spots you see are individual HIV particles assembling on the surface of an infected cell. A biophysicist and a virologist from Rockefeller University used a specialized microscope that only illuminates the surface of a cell. The work was published in the May 25 advanced online issue of Nature.

First a quick look at why this is groundbreaking. Usually light microscopes work by shining light directly through the cell, illuminating everything, inside and at the surface of the cell. The researchers brought the beam's path to a steeper angle which reflected the light's energy off of the cell's surface instead of passing through it. The result is an incredibly detailed look at what is going on at the cell's surface without having to filter out all of the other things going on inside the cell. The two researchers were the first to see a real-time view of a single particle of the HIV virus. A single infectious unit of the disease that has killed over 25 million in the last 25 years. This is the first time a virion has been imaged, and it just happened to be one of the most debilitating and worrying diseases of our time. The researchers found that it takes five to six minutes to assemble a single HIV particle.

This isn't going to be life-changing (although it may be groundbreaking) but it will help to confirm some details about virion production that have been inferred through other techniques. I just like the image and think it was a pretty innovative approach for visualizing virus assembly. The experiments definitely weren't hard or complicated and the simplicity of the experiment captures the elegance of innovation. Simply looking at a familiar process from a slightly different perspective gave simple and clear images of exactly what's going on at the cell surface, pretty cool stuff.

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