And Speaking of Pharmaceutical Companies... [The Corpus Callosum]. This is pretty sickening:

Drugs firm blocks cheap blindness cure
Company will only seek licence for medicine that costs 100 times more

Sarah Boseley, health editor
Saturday June 17, 2006

A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.

Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin [link added] into the eyes of patients with wet macular degeneration, a common condition of older age that can lead to severely impaired eyesight and blindness. They report remarkable success at very low cost because one phial can be split and used for dozens of patients.

But Genentech [link added], the company that invented Avastin, does not want it used in this way. Instead it is applying to license a fragment of Avastin, called Lucentis, which is packaged in the tiny quantities suitable for eyes at a higher cost. Speculation in the US suggests it could cost £1,000 per dose instead of less than £10. The company says Lucentis [link added] is specifically designed for eyes, with modifications over Avastin, and has been through 10 years of testing to prove it is safe....

Sometimes, reports such as this are exaggerated.  I just saw this, and have not looked into any more than just reading the news article.  But it appears to convey a valid, serious, concern.

Read the comments on this post... By Joseph j7uy5 none@example.com. [ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed]

Sometimes pharma just shoot themselves in the foot. There is probably a better explanation for the 100 fold increase in price than sheer greed but they do not seem to have provided that reason. So all the media feeds the story that pharma companies are out to rip off the patients. Macular degeneration is a horrible disease and anything that can fight it will be used. But to raise the price 100-fold will seem like price gouging.

Both Avastin and Lucentis appear to be antibodies to VEGF, a protein that is involved in blood vessel formation, a key component of macular degeneration. Lucentis is a fragment of the whole antibody, so it is smaller and may be able to penetrate tissues that the full antibody structure can not. But it does not appear that Genentech has done a head to head comparison between Avastin and Lucentis. So docs are taking Avastin, diluting it down and using it, at a cost in the tens of dollar range, rather than using the repackaged fragment, Lucentis, which is in the $2000 range.

Avastin is used as an anti-tumor drug. It is normally priced to be used in high doses. But macular degeneration is used in much smaller doses. It is a use that was probably not anticipated when the pricing for Avastin was determined. So, now it appears the Genentech might be trying to do an end run around the price differential by reformulating the drug and increasing the effective price.

Genentech had to know that simply repricing this would cause an uproar over possible price gouging. It should have prepared the market better with medical rationales for this. I wonder if the insurance companies will be as happy to reimburse for a $2000 treatment if a $20 treatment would have worked as well? Genentech may have a touch row to hoe with this. It should be interesting.  10:50:36 PM    

Measles and mumps World Cup action [Effect Measure].

The 64 World Cup soccer (fotbol) matches started a week ago in 12 German cities and will continue until July 9. Three million soccer fans are expected from Europe and beyond. Three of the cities where matches will be played, Cologne, Dortmund and Gelsenkirchen, are in the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen. So is a measles outbreak in children and young adults. The Ukraine is also experiencing a large measles outbreak, with case numbers exceeding 20,000 by the end of February. The Ukrainian National team qualified for the tournament and will undoubtedly have many fans there. Meanwhile nearby Austria is having a mumps outbreak concentrated in the 18 - 30 age group in southern Austria (Carinthia; via Eurosurveillance). A mumps case, in a 23 year old British fan has already been reported at the Nuremberg venue. The game is afoot.

Recently we posted on a measles outbreak in Boston traced to an Indian computer programmer who infected others in a high rise office building shortly after arrival. Measles and mumps are preventable diseases and vaccination has produced a substantial herd immunity in the European and American population. But because both diseases are quite contagious (high basic reproductive numbers, R₀), the immunization coverage must also be high to prevent an outbreak. The strategy of "free-riding" that depends on others being vaccinated is risky, at best. We are also unsure how long the measles and mumps vaccines provide protection. The original view it was life-long is probably incorrect.

German public health authorities have instituted a special World Cup surveillance effort. If you want to follow a different kind of action you can find an an English language infectious disease play-by-play at a special website established by the Rudolph Koch Institute.

Read the comments on this post... By revere none@example.com. [ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed]

I had not thought about the public health aspects of the World Cup but it is obvious now. What other sports events bring so many from so far together in one place? Seems to me only the Olympics is in the same league.  10:28:19 PM    

Good Math, Repeating Decimals, and Bad Math [Good Math, Bad Math].

Just saw a nice post at another math blog called Polymathematics about something that bugs me too... The way that people don't understand what repeating decimals mean. In particular, the way that people will insist that 0.9999999... != 1. As a CS geek, I tend to see this as an issue of how people screw up syntax and semantics.

And it has some really funny stupidity in the comments. 0.9999999... = 1.

One quick quote from the post, just because it's a nifty demonstration of the fact which I've not seen before: (I replaced a GIF image in the original post with a text transcription.)

Let x = 0.9999999..., and then multiply both sides by 10, so you get 10x = 9.9999999... because multiplying by 10 just moves the decimal point to the right. Then stack those two equations and subtract them (this is a legal move because you're subtracting the same quantity from the left side, where it's called x, as from the right, where it's called .9999999..., but they're the same because they're equal. We said so, remember?):

      10x = 9.99999999...
-        x =  0.99999999...
-------------------------
        9x = 9

Surely if 9x = 9, then x = 1. But since x also equals .9999999... we get that .9999999... = 1. The algebra is impeccable.

I also need to quote the closing of one of the comments, just for its sheer humor value:

Bottom line is, you will never EVER get 1/1 to equal .99999999... You people think you can hide behind elementary algebra to fool everyone, but in reality, you're only fooling yourselves. Infinity: The state or quality of being infinite, unlimited by space or time, without end, without beginning or end. Not even your silly blog can refute that.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... By Mark C. Chu-Carroll none@example.com. [ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed]

It really says something about some people that even when it is proven that 1=0.9999... they continue to deny reality. weird>  10:13:35 PM    

GreenLeaf: A Virtual Farmer's Market. By marc

Via Growers & Grocers, this is interesting:

The Internet-based business, Greenleaf LLC, gets under way this summer. [...] Greenleaf could be a virtual farmer's market that never closes.

Local farmers will be able to post what they have to sell, such as fresh produce and meats.

Buyers will be able to browse through the offerings and make online purchases from the farmers.

Greenleaf will charge sellers a fee, perhaps 2% of a sale. Buyers will pay an annual subscription fee, that hasn't been finalized, to use the service.

Buyers and sellers will be responsible for making their own arrangements for payments and deliveries. [Former Whole Foods employee Heather] Hilleren said she will stay out of the transactions as much as possible.

"It's strictly between the buyer and the seller," much like eBay, she said.

The whole story is worth reading. I wonder if this would work; while the eBay analogy is better for the press, this feels more like Etsy Foods to me. I love that.

[O'Reilly Radar]

An interesting concept. I could see small co-ops or neighbors getting together to buy directly from the grower rather than the supermarket. But will its distribution actually wrk as well as we see now.  5:26:09 PM