This isn’t how medical privacy is supposed to work.

Pennsylvania is in love with fracking, and they don’t care who knows it. Their legislature passed a bill last month that makes it a secret what awful chemicals that energy companies are injecting into the ground in order to extract natural gas. It’s such a secret, in fact, that if somebody is poisoned by some …

Sixty people coordinated the largest-ever organ exchange.

Let’s say your cousin needs a kidney. You agree to provide one. But you’re not a match. No problem: an organ registry finds somebody who is a match for you, and somebody who’s already agreed to provide a kidney to that person is a match for your cousin. So you swap kidneys, and both people …

A private open data reference for medications.

I’m impressed by Drugcite, a non-governmental website that presents data on prescription drugs using open data sources, displaying it in a simple, easy-to-understand fashion. Today I really needed to research Coumadin, and Drugcite provided one-stop-shopping for that. It’s an open data site in the style of Richmond Sunlight, but rather than focusing on government (as …

Links for November 11th

Double-Tongued Dictionary: hoghouse"Connotating legislation that has been stripped of its original provisions and amended to accomplish a different purpose." This is a useful word. Office of Government Ethics: Executive Agency Ethics Pledge WaiversThese are the presidential appointees who were given waivers to exempt them from one or more ethics regulations, along with copies of the …

Links for September 27th

Bloomberg: Obama Lawyers Signal Likely Supreme Court Appeal on Health CareThe White House wants to end the federal appeals court rulings on the president's health care reform, and for the Supreme Court to take up the case. That's likely to bring a decision in June, in the middle of the presidential campaign. "President Barack Obama …

Links for September 6th

ThinkProgress: The Conservative Recovery Teeters Into Recession17,000 new jobs were created by the private sector last month. 17,000 jobs were eliminated by the public sector last month. Bummed by last month's flatlining of job growth? Thank a congressman. New York Times: Rep. Shelley Berkley’s Cause Is Often Her Husband’s GainShe's a strong supporter of (admittedly …

Links for April 6th

Guardian: Honeybees ‘entomb’ hives to protect against pesticides, say scientistsBees are awesome. New York Times: More Physicians Say No to Endless WorkdaysI'm glad to see that more doctors are ditching the habit of working endless hours. Though I appreciate that a small-town doctor or a specialist has an obligation to always be available, it's great …

£10k purse for proving homeopathy’s effectiveness.

A doctor and a physicist have put up a £10,000 for anybody who can demonstrate that homeopathic medicine works better than a placebo. Homeopathy is at best a placebo, at worst it’s something closer to medicalized superstition. “Homeopaths,” writes New Scientist dryly, “seem in no hurry to take up the offer.” Somebody will win that …