Am I the only one out there who feels like a total loser for not following AMC’s Breaking Bad? Honestly, with five kids, a busy pediatric practice, and a blog to write, I haven’t found the time to watch a television series start to finish since Sex and the City wrapped. (Don’t judge.) I’m still saving up vacation hours to binge-watch The Wire, and after that I’m planning to feign a back injury to catch up on Mad Men.
Based on all the buzz, I’ve decided I definitely need to watch Breaking Bad all the way through. But do me a favor, though, okay? No spoilers! All I know now is that it’s about a high school teacher who goes bald and wears yellow jumpsuits. That, and it’s even funnier than Malcolm in the Middle. I can’t wait!
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Catchy!
Scientists must get a little frustrated when they work their whole careers to prove something, and then people who really don’t know anything go, “Yeah, I don’t believe you.” Evolution, global warming, gravity, there’s always someone out there who’s done some research on the Internet that says it’s all a big hoax. But the thing about the laws of nature is, they don’t care if you believe in them.
Which brings us to the great California whooping cough epidemic of 2010, when more than 9,000 people contracted pertussis, more than in any year since 1947. It doesn’t take a PhD to tell you that the rise in pertussis just might be related to a vaccine refusal rate that jumped from 0.77% to 2.33% in the preceding decade. No, it takes 4 PhDs, 1 MD, and 5 MPHs, led by Jessica E. Atwell, MPH, at the Department of International Health at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore.
To prove their point, they asked a question that’s simple, provided you have a powerful computer and a small army of statisticians: Did children living in school districts with higher rates of non-medical vaccine exemptions suffer more whooping cough than would be predicted based on the known properties of pertussis outbreaks? After all, it’s not like those 2.33% of people not vaccinating their children were evenly spread throughout the state; some schools reported that 84% of their students were not vaccinated.
Spoiler alert: It was Kristin Shepard who shot JR Ewing! Oh yeah, and children who attended schools with lower vaccination rates were 2.5 times more likely to get whooping cough. Science: It’s not just good, it’s good for you.
Eternal flame retardant
Is there anything about polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) that doesn’t sound like they would be perfectly healthy for pregnant mothers? These chemicals, used as fire retardants until they were phased out nationwide in 2005, turned out to cause brain damage in fetuses and thyroid disease in children and adults, which is a shame, because they were pretty good at delaying fires. And while 2005 seems like a long time ago -- Hannah Montana hadn’t even aired its first episode and “twerking” was considered a spelling error -- it’s a short time in the life of the crumbling, PBDE-infused upholstery foam.
Researchers in California figured it was time to check pregnant women’s bloodstreams and see how much levels of PBDEs had fallen, since that state was early to adopt job-killing environmental regulations against the chemicals. They were concerned, since the first testing period in 2008 and 2009 demonstrated women in the state to still have the highest blood levels of PBDE reported anywhere in the world. The good news? By the 2011-2012 testing period, levels had already fallen by around 2/3. The bad news? Pregnant women in California are now at their highest risk in decades of spontaneous combustion.
Breaking worse
If watching Breaking Bad makes you wonder who exactly thinks, “Methamphetamine? Sure, I’ll give it a go!”, then you’ll be even more confounded by the newest drug to hit American shores, “Krokodil.” This homemade concoction of codeine, iodine, paint thinner, and gasoline is just as benign as it sounds, earning its street name in Russia, where users first watched their skin turn green and crack.
Users of krokodil (or desomorphine) almost inevitably die, but first they suffer festering abscesses, rotting mandibles, and blood poisoning, all for a high that’s shorter than heroin’s. I know life sometimes imitates art, but I much prefer to think that it only happens with Sex and the City.
David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro (AAP Publishing, 2012). He is also vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C., and adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and as an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television, and Internet outlets.