Thirty years ago yesterday, “the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMR) published a report of five young men with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia who were treated at three different hospitals in Los Angeles, California.” (see This Blog Post for details). Morbidity and Mortality Weekly is a really fun journal to read. It contains the latest reports of, well, death and serious illness as a means of disseminating information in a way that will allow quick response. So, if there are suddenly a bunch of cases of some disease scattered across the country, this kind of reporting may allow the connection to be made to an event … quite literally, like the Superbowl or a Marching Band Competition or whatever … at which the disease spread, or perhaps a region of the country where vaccinations are being skipped, or where swine-based flu has jumped the fence into a human population, etc.

In the case of this report, the disease being reported was to eventually be named AIDS and the infection that caused it HIV.

So, happy anniversary AIDS epidemic!

I just have two comments on this: First, how I found out about a certain aspect of HIV infection (which turned out to be unimportant) and second, how everybody else found out about AIDS
Continue reading HIV, AIDS, MMR, NPR and WTF? →

We were standing behind my friend Andre’s store in Isiro, Zaire, waiting for Andre to finish receiving some orders so we could sit down for some tea, or may be some beer, and do a little black market trading.

A big truck with a canvas top stretched over an iron frame was backing up to the loading dock. These loading docks had solid concrete bases set at the approximate height of a freight truck’s bed, and with a large concrete and steel canopy over the top to provide shade and protection from the rain. All this concrete and steal is normal for the region: Most houses are made of either wattle and daub or steal reinforced concrete slabbery, with nothing in between.

As it backed up, one of the workers who came along with the truck casually held the iron frame with one hand as he signaled the driver via the side view mirror to keep going, going, slower, slower, going, and just as he was about to signal for the driver to stop, the iron frame contacted the concrete overhang at exactly the point where the man’s middle finger rested.

When he looked at his hand, that finger was gone. When the truck lurched forward with the break set, the finger fell from where it was squished above him and he caught it.

He stepped off the truck onto the loading dock, down the nearby concrete steps and onto the street, and wandered, looking at his finger in his cupped hand and spewing small bits of blood, in circles.

My colleague and I spent the next several minutes doing the Bazungu thing … being efficient, concerned, active Americans among the slower moving seemingly uninterested locals. As everyone else stood virtually still, we got a bandage, got pressure on the wound, got ice (which was no small accomplishment, and in fact, I still can’t believe we managed that), and got the man a ride, sending him, and his finger (on ice) off to the clinic.

Then, we sat down and did our business with Andre.
Continue reading If your finger falls off, grab it before the dog gets it! →