What are arboviral diseases?

ARBOVIRAL DISEASES

Arboviral diseases are spread by the bite of an infected arthropod, such as a mosquito or tick. 

Caused by an arbovirus, symptoms are usually mild, occur 3-15 days after exposure, and last 3 or 4 days. They include headache, fever, fatigue, muscle aches, and swollen lymph nodes. Severe infections are marked by a rapid progression, headache, high fever, disorientation, tremors, convulsions, paralysis, coma or death. Infections occur most often in the warmer months because that's when mosquitos and ticks are active.

Most arboviral infections are spread by infected mosquitos, although only a few types of mosquitoes have the capability to transfer the disease and only a fraction of those will be carrying the virus. Person-to-person transmission of the arbovirus is rare. It can occur through blood transfusions or organ transplantation if the virus is present in the donor's blood or organs. Mother-to-child transmission is also rare, but can occur in infected pregnant or breastfeeding women. Infected needle exposure can also transmit the disease.

The young and the old seem to be most susceptible to these diseases, although people across all age spectrums have contracted them.

Arboviral diseases present in the United States include:

• West Nile virus
• California serogroup viruses
• Eastern equine encephalitis virus
• Western equine encephalitis virus
• St. Louis encephalitis virus

Ways to prevent arboviral infections:

• Use insect repellents outdoors in mosquito-heavy areas 
• NOTE: these do NOT have to be heavy-chemical repellents. Insect repellents with non-natural chemicals are not only harmful to the environment, but to your own health. Instead, try these:
• cinnamon oil (mosquitoes)
• lemon eucalyptus or regular eucalyptus oil (mosquitoes, ticks, and lice)
• citronella oil (mosquitoes and biting flies)
• castor oil (mosquitoes)
• orange oil (fleas)
• rose geranium (ticks and lice)
• Put screens over your windows and doors
• Remove containers that hold water and provide a breeding site for mosquitoes (e.g.) old tires

http://chemistry.about.com/od/healthbeautyprojects/a/naturalinsectrepellent.htm

http://www.vdh.state.va.us/epidemiology/dee/Vectorborne/arboviralInfections.htm

http://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/communicable/arboviral/fact_sheet.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/arbor/arbdet.htm

http://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/communicable/arboviraldiseases/Index.htm

Blogging vs. Exams - Which is more effective for learning material?

In my opinion, I feel that blogging is a much more effective way to retain information than by tediously taking notes and memorizing them before an exam. In my 15 years as a student, I have witnessed students time and time again cram the night before a test only to remember the information for a brief time and then promptly forget everything they studied. I've done this too many times I can remember. The reason we do this is not because we are lazy and procrastinators (not entirely, anyway), it's because we are given five or more courses at a time (in high school I had a 10 course load per semester) each with it's own readings and course work. Not only are we expected to keep up with all this work at once, but often times expected to be able to pick out the most important information on our own. Instead of learning the information, it becomes about memorizing it.

The problem lies within our education system itself. It doesn't teach you to think creatively or objectively. It teaches you to sit in a chair, be docile, not question any of the information you are learning, and then regurgitate the information when its time for the test. It teaches memorization and conformity. Some could argue this is brainwashing.

Blogging offers much more opportunity than this. It allows a student to do some research for themselves on the topic, taking all different sources and possible answers into account. It also allows for much better information retention in my opinion. For example, with my last blog, “Poison Squad,” I know for a fact that I retained more information on the topic whilst reading through different online articles over and over again, trying to translate the information into my own words, and proof reading it several times than I would have if I had looked at a slide for one minute on the topic and then come back to my notes three weeks later before an exam and tried to recall what I had learned.  

The Poison Squad

The Poison Squad, as it came to be known, was a human feeding experiment that took place in the basement of the Agriculture Department's former Bureau of Chemistry in 1902. The experiment was to feed twelve men food laced with various additives and poisons and monitor the results. All twelve men took oaths promising that for one year, they would only eat food prepared in the Poison Squad's kitchen. They also waived their right to sue the government for any damages to their health that resulted from these experiments, including death. 

The project was started by scientists from the Bureau of Chemistry, now the Food and Drug Administration. Headed by Chief Chemist Harvey W. Wiley, M.D.. His goal was to learn “whether preservatives should ever be used or not, and if so, what preservatives and in what quantities.” Furthermore, Wiley wanted to “investigate the character of food preservatives, coloring matters, and other substances added to foods, to determine their relation to digestion and to health, and to establish the principles which should guide their use."

Wiley himself was a food purist. Soon after being hired by the Agriculture Department, he began pushing for federal regulation of additives, but lobbyists from the packing and canning industries responded with backlash, shutting down every bill Wiley proposed. This was the reasoning behind the Poison Squad program; he wanted to showcase the physical costs of food additives. Wiley hoped that these trials would act as a springboard to widespread food regulation.

Wiley began with borax, one of the most common food preservatives at the time. Used to tighten up animal proteins, it would would give the impression of freshness, as well as artificially “fix” decomposing meat. For eight months, the twelve subjects ate it with every meal. The group concluded that the preservative caused headaches, stomachaches, and other digestive pains. Wiley soon moved on to test other common additives such as sulfuric acid, saltpeter, formaldehyde, and copper sulfate. Copper sulfate, a common pesticide today, was found to cause nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, liver damage, kidney damage, brain damage, and jaundice, among other things.

Even after demonstrating the vast negative effects on human health caused by additives, Wiley still faced an uphill battle against the powerful food lobby. Corruption at it's finest, the

Secretary of Agriculture concealed several of the Poison Squad’s reports, the one on benzoic acid only getting out because of a miscommunication between him and his secretary.

Wiley's efforts finally resulted in some success when Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, although Teddy Roosevelt took full credit these acts.

Something to think about

It's important to note that not all additives in your food today have been tested in this way. In fact, many of them have not. Today's “farmers” hose our crops down with pesticides as they wear hazmat suits. While I realize that pesticides are technically (by FDA definition) not additives, if it is unsafe to be around these pesticides to the extent where hazmat suits are needed, it is really safe to put these chemicals in your body on a daily basis? Furthermore, no studies have been conducted on the long-term effects that genetically modified foods may have on the human body. These foods are required to be labeled in 64 countries, the United States absent from that list. In many cases, we do not know what the future holds in regards to side effects and health threats these additives, chemicals, and pesticides hold. Be wary of what you put in your body, for it may be killing you slowly.

Sources:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/poison-squad

http://www.toxicology.org/gp/21_PoisonSquadFDA.pdf

John Snow

John Snow (March 15, 1813 – June 16, 1858) was an English physician during the mid 19^th century. He is best known for tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London in 1854. He is considered by many to be one of the fathers of modern epidemiology and is also known as a trailblazer in the use of anesthesia.

Born in York, England, he grew up with eight siblings in a very poor neighborhood. He graduated from the University of London in December 1844. By 1850, he had been admitted to the Royal College of Physicians and had become a founding member of the Epidemiological Society of London.

Snow's groundbreaking work in the area of anesthetics, specifically ether and chloroform, allowed patients to undergo procedures without the pain that had previously been an unavoidable part of surgery and other procedures. His personal administration of chloroform to Queen Victrola when she gave birth to the last two of her nine children led to greater public acceptance of anesthesia.

The dominant theory behind the cause of cholera outbreaks before Snow's breakthrough was the miasma theory, which stated that diseases such as these were simply caused by “bad air,” as the germ theory of disease had not yet become a thought. Although Snow did not quite understand how the disease was transmitted, he began noting a link between the water supply and spread of disease. He first published this theory in 1949 in an essay titled On the Mode of Communication of Cholera.

The infamous Broad Street cholera outbreak occurred in 1954 in the Soho district of London. With the help of local residents, Snow was able to identify the source of the outbreak as a public water pump on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Even lacking sufficient hard evidence, he was able to persuade the local council to disable the well pump by removing the handle because of the constant link between disease and this water source that he had identified. This study by Snow resulting from his observations is considered a founding event in public health and the science of epidemiology.

Later discoveries revealed that this public well was dug a mere three feet from an old cesspit which was leaking fecal bacteria. 

Sources: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow_(physician)

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow.html