HIV and ID Observations

December 16th, 2017

CDC Receives List of Additional Forbidden Words and Phrases

Right on the heels of prohibiting certain words or phrases in the Centers for Disease Control’s budget documents, the President’s Office of Financial Services has issued a second list. Now, not only must CDC officials avoid using words such as “vulnerable”, “diversity”, “fetus”, “transgender”, and “evidence-based”, they also have to steer clear of several other words or phrases. […]

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December 10th, 2017

Injection Drug Use-Related HIV Cases Increase in Massachusetts — Is This the Start of a Trend?

Recently the Massachusetts Department of Public Health sent out this concerning notice: The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) has noted an increase in newly diagnosed and acute HIV infections among persons who inject drugs (PWID). To date in calendar year 2017 (through November 21), there have been 64 HIV infections reported among individuals who inject […]

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December 3rd, 2017

Why, Even with Depressing Predictions About Flu Vaccine Effectiveness, We Should Still Recommend and Get It

Each year, the print and broadcast media round up a bunch of experts on influenza and ask them to predict the severity of the upcoming flu season. Most of the time their responses are noncommittal — predicting how bad the flu season will be year to year is tricky business, akin to picking stocks, making 12-month […]

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November 26th, 2017

Should Medical Students Bring Laptops to Lectures?

You can file this under, “Old man yells at cloud,” but here goes. Twice a year now for over a decade, I’ve been lecturing the senior medical students in a therapeutics and pharmacology course. It’s an elective, but it’s very popular — most of the class takes it. Not surprisingly, my topic is Treatment of HIV (duh) […]

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November 19th, 2017

Some ID/HIV Items to Be Grateful For, 2017 Edition

It’s late November — the days are shorter and colder, and the trees have abandoned their bold plan to keep their leaves this winter. We can forgive them their optimism — it was a historically warm October. This time of year also brings us Thanksgiving, easily my pick for the best national holiday. Family, friends, food, a […]

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November 12th, 2017

Poll: Adventures in Buffet Dining — Is It Time to Get Rid of Those Food Tongs?

My friend Joel Gallant wrote this provocative post on his heavily trafficked Facebook page: While standing in line at the cafeteria today, it occurred to me that it was once acceptable to use your fingers to pick up a bagel, a piece of bread, or a cookie from a tray, but this is now viewed as […]

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November 5th, 2017

More Fun With Old Medical Images!

Sometimes we clinicians, researchers, teachers, and medical administrators need a break from our grueling work schedules and responsibilities. With that in mind, I offer a second installment of Fun With Old Medical Images! — which I’ve cleverly entitled, More Fun With Old Medical Images! With an up-front thanks to the National Library of Medicine — who are truly putting […]

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October 29th, 2017

Cellulitis, Lyme, VZV, MRSA, TB, Tdap: Great Questions from ID in Primary Care

We’ve just finished our annual course Infectious Diseases in Primary Care, and once again our attendees — all busy clinicians — asked some excellent questions. Below, a small sample: What is the drug of choice for cellulitis in outpatients who are allergic to penicillin? Importantly, this is about cellulitis — not abscesses — which means most are […]

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October 22nd, 2017

Price’s “Quarantine” Comment a Startling Example of Remaining HIV Stigma and Ignorance

In case you missed it, Betty Price, a Georgia state representative, said the following last week: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFTGZyVnzo0] If you head over to the Youtube page with the above video, and read the comments (yes, I know, wading in such waters can give one a dim view of humankind), you’ll see she’s hardly alone in holding this […]

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October 15th, 2017

The Best Antiretroviral Therapy for Pregnant Women? The Controversy Continues

There’s considerable controversy in an area of HIV medicine that one would think should be all but solved by now. It’s what HIV treatment we should give pregnant women. The issue isn’t how to prevent the virus from being transmitted to the newborn — suppress the virus in mom, baby doesn’t get it — it’s what’s safest […]

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