Bloggasm

George Ouzounian, better known by his internet handle Maddox, penned a post offering one of his readers a chance to give him swine flu. Titled “I hope I get swine flu,” the post argues that “it only takes a few minutes to look up the symptoms, mortality rate, and treatment to realize that [swine flu] no different from the common flu (which kills way more people and by extension is way more awesome).”

To prove this, he’s offering one of his flu-infected readers a chance to sneeze on him. The conditions?

Contest Rules:

# One lucky person will get the opportunity to fly me out to where you live* for one night**, and you get to sneeze in my face.
# Winner must provide a proof of having swine flu (signed doctor blood test or something along those lines).
# Winner must not have any other bullshit diseases. I don’t want your herpes, even though I can’t get them.

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Google to HMOs: pay us and we’ll defuse “Sicko”

Google’s “Health Advertising Team” is trying to sell the health industry on buying ads to be shown opposite searches for “Sicko.” The idea is to counter Michael Moore’s amazing, enraging, must-see indictment of the health industry’s grip on American society by running ads over search results for Sicko.

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I don’t have health insurance.

The newspaper I work for offers a plan, but I’ve been putting off signing up for it in favor of saving a buck. I have rent and other expenses every month, and like millions of other Americans in their 20s, I’ve been arrogant and put health insurance at the bottom of my priority list just so I can feel comfortable with my expenses.

NY Magazine has published an article about people like me: A Generation Uninsured, and it’s scary. It begins with an anecdote about a person named Andrew Ondrejcak who wakes up with a sharp pain in his side, and rather than going to see a doctor, he tries to ride it out. It describes his own mental agonizing over how to find a doctor while uninsured, how much it’s going to cost him, and the hassle of having to eventually be rushed to the hospital.

Like I said, as someone who could very well be placed in his situation, it’s scary. I think at the end of this month I’m going to make it a priority to join up with the company plan finally and get it over with.

I remember a few years back, a gay blogger jumped down my throat because I noted a correlation between gays and the HIV virus, and he started quoting untrue statistics that he’d heard at some kind of AIDS awareness conference. After I linked him to sites with true stastistics that show a definite correlation, he disappeared and didn’t bother responding. At some point over the last few years, some gays have tried to distance themselves from the disease by emphasizing that straight people were able to get the disease as well. I understand why they do this in some ways, it’s a natural reaction against right-wingers who use the HIV stastistics against them as an excuse for homophobia, but at the same time they’re kicking themselves in the foot by not addressing the higher risk they face. Well, one gay rights group is addressing the issue:

One of Southern California’s most influential gay institutions has launched a controversial ad campaign
declaring HIV to be a “gay disease.”

The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center, which has for 20 years vigorously fought the contention that HIV/AIDS is a ‘gay plague,’ says it now wants to target gay men who have become complacent about the illness.

The message “HIV is a gay disease” and the tag line “Own It. End It” is set to appear in magazines and on billboards across L.A.

Proponents of the campaign say the current AIDS awareness focus on minority women and other groups has left gay men — who still represent most of those infected in the U.S. and Western Europe — feeling a false sense of security.

I remember a gay friend of mine telling me that now that there are HIV cocktails, that some gay people don’t even take the disease seriously anymore. In fact, there have been reports of some gays who actually go out of their way to get the disease, they think of it as some sort of initiation. Now that’s scary.

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I’m not sure what the point of this is, but in some cases, patients are allowed to tour the medicine factories that produce the drugs they use. This article claims that it’s because the companies rely on word-of-mouth rather than mass advertising since they only treat rare diseases.

She was among 70 patients, relatives and support group organizers from around the country who took up Talecris Biotherapeutics on a rare, all-expenses-paid invitation: Tour the Clayton plant where Talecris makes treatments for immune disorders, hemophilia, burns and severe blood loss…

But company officials had good reasons to hold the open house. Talecris avoids mass advertising on television or in popular magazines because its customers are small groups of patients with rare diseases. Instead, the company relies on word of mouth and occasional advertisements in medical journals.

Hopes are that the open-house guests will spread the word about Talecris and its blood-based medicines in tight-knit patient communities. The company is considering turning the visit into a regular event.

I’m not sure exactly how this causes word-of-mouth advertising. For one, there’s no positive experience that’s causing the word-of-mouth. Showing someone where the drugs are made doesn’t really do anything.

It is fascinating, however, because it mentions “tight-knit patient communities,” which reminds me of the beginning of Fight Club where Ed Norton visits grief sessions for the terminally ill. But if the diseases are so rare, what are the chances that there would be lots of others within driving distance of you that have the disease?

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I think the list of things that wine can supposedly cure has sky-rocketed in the last ten years. Everyone repeats the idea that drinking a glass of wine a day is good for your heart. Well, add one more to the list: Red Wine May Prevent Alzheimer’s:

Red wine might put a cork on the formation of brain proteins tied to Alzheimer’s disease, a new study shows.

But don’t raise your wine glass to celebrate yet. The study only included mice. It’s too soon to know if the findings apply to people.

Still, the data deserves further study and support the theory that one daily drink of red wine for women and two for men “may help reduce” Alzheimer’s risk, write the researchers.

Ok, so it has only been tested on mice. But at least now you know how to prevent Alzheimer’s with your pets: pour red wine into their water bowl every night.

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A boy from Uganda named Peter Byakatonda suffered from a condition that causes severe pressure to his brain. In a series of surgeries, his cone-shaped skull was taken apart and put back together:

“Rebuilding his skull into a more natural shape with restorable plates was like solving a jigsaw puzzle,” Dr. Raul Barcelo, a member of the five-man team craniofacial plastic surgeons who conducted the procedures on Byakatonda, told ABC television Channel Eight News in Dallas, United States of America recently.

The pressure on his brain is already gone; his body functions that we feared had been lost forever have miraculously returned, and for the first time in his life, he can close his eyelids while his eyesight is gradually coming back,” Barcelo said.

The decisive operations on Byakatonda were headed by Dr. Kenneth Salyer, an international craniofacial plastic surgeon at the Dallas-based Medical City Children’s hospital in Texas.

The boy will have to go into more surgery when he’s 18-years-old in order to balance his face and eyes. The condition he suffered from was called Crouzon’s Syndrome. Apparently, the problem is typically fixed early in childhood, but this particular boy had to go through these tortures:

“Because of my strange appearance and abnormal shape of my head and eyes, I was constantly beaten, insulted and called a monster or a devil. I used to feel very bad but I had nothing to do.”

When I went to Kiteredde Primary school in P.1, master Byekwaso sent me away after I had spent only three days in class. He claimed that whenever I tried to read or write, my tears dampened and stained papers.

“I was also never allowed to sit with my fellow classmates because teachers said my facial appearance frightened the children away from school.”

Jesus, somebody needs to write a book or make a movie about this kid’s life.

Extra bonus quote from the article:

“Cows became my good friends because they never abused and did not care how I looked. They provided me company when my peers rejected me,” Byakatonda said

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