Sex and Emergency Contraceptives

Cora Collette Breuner, MD, a professor of pediatric and adolescent medicine at the University of Washington dismissing concerns that access to emergency contraception make kids more sexually promiscuous, via Healthland:

“We have no data showing that.”

In fact we have no data at all.

Air Pollution and Autism

Innocent Party Fun or Bouncy House of Horrors?

Heather Volk, PhD, MPH and assistant professor of preventive medicine at USC chatting about her study showing higher rates of autism in children exposed to more smog and other airborne toxins, via Healthland:

“We’re not saying that air pollution causes autism. We’re saying it may be a risk factor for autism.”

We absolutely think air pollution causes autism.

Oh I’ll get the right data someday.

Fetal Alcohol Exposure and Brain Development

Andrzej Urbanik, MD, chair of the Department of Radiology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland reminiscing about the results from his brain scan study showing metabolic and structural brain changes in children exposed to alcohol in the womb, via Science Daily:

“In individual cases, we found a high degree of metabolic changes that were specific for particular locations within the brain.”

It’s bad. Really bad. Trust me.

The Significance of Fetal Yawning

Lead researcher, Dr Nadja Reissland, of Durham University’s Department of Psychology, ponders the import of her 4-D imaging study showing fetuses yawn by 28 weeks old, via Science Daily:

“Unlike us, fetuses do not yawn contagiously, nor do they yawn because they are sleepy. Instead, the frequency of yawning in the womb may be linked to the maturing of the brain early in gestation.”

Or to the maturing of 4-D fetus brain imaging techniques.

Bouncy Houses and Childhood Injuries

The authors writing about the value of a study finding a 15-fold increase in the number of ER visits attributable to bouncy houses and other inflatable bouncers from 1995 to 2010, via Pediatrics:

“Relatively little is known about the epidemiology of inflatable bouncer–related injuries in the United States.”

This is serious. Seriously. Stop laughing.

Go ahead, say it out loud. Inflatable bouncer–related injuries. The epidemiology of inflatable bouncer–related injuries.

I might have stayed in academic research if I’d been able to write such gems. I’m not sure why science gets such a bad rap. Seriously, the lab offers up so much entertainment. There’s no way the doctors writing up the bouncy house study did not giggle when they wrote inflatable bouncers. No way. Someone email them and get back to me.