Top 7 BioPharm Blog Stories of 2007

Well, I debated for a while as to whether I should do a “top stories” article of 2007. I was going to base it on a comprehensive review of blogs and news articles out there, picking and choosing those stories I agreed with and posting them here. However, with over 50 articles written here since its inception, I thought it would be fun and interesting to review the articles that have been written here in 2007 and pick and choose the ones I liked best. This wasn’t an easy task; obviously every topic on which I chose to write a post was of interest to me, otherwise I wouldn’t have written about it in the first place.

Now…why I chose seven as opposed to 5 or 10 stories. Well, it’s 2007, so it went along well with the year. 7 is also a nickname I have for my wife and sevenz is what we called my son before he knew he was a boy. Additionally, there are other blogs and news web sites out there that have used 7 as their basis for top stories in 2007, so I suppose there’s a precedent. I just happen to like the number, so I guess that’s the best reason for the selection.

So without further ado, the top 7 stories of 2007. Click on the title to open up the story in a separate window:

7) Allergy Season: Finding Relief – I picked this because it was one of the first posts I ever made. There wasn’t anything particularly earth-shattering about this blog, but I did manage to record some information that I’ll find useful come spring 2008, specifically some advice that I managed to gather up from the Mayo Clinic to avoid high exposure to allergens. If you suffer from seasonal allergies check it out!

6) Schizophrenia with a Technology Twist — This was my first foray into the uses of virtual reality to treat real diseases. In it, I explored the work being done by Janssen Pharmaceuticals to educate medical professionals and others of the effects of schizophrenia through a 3D virtual environment called MINDSTORM, allowing participants to experience the sights, sounds and smells of a few moments for a person suffering with the disease. I additionally got to explore the online virtual world of Second Life, where Dr. Peter Yellowlees of the University of California at Davis has built an environment in which he can convey some of the symptoms of schizophrenia more readily to students than he could with descriptions alone.

5) Call the Guy with the Green Thumb — Inspired by a news article I saw on this topic, I found out about a project called “Botanicalls,” a New-York based research team from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Through using technology they developed for a project at school, this team figured out a way to get plants to communicate with their human owners by using the telephone. Imagine your plants calling you when they need water, or need a sunnier spot, or simply to say, “thanks,” when you’ve been doing a good job taking care of them. The research proved to me that scientific exploration into solving oddball problems can be interesting, educational, and most of all, fun.

4) This Year’s Flu Vaccine: A Shot in the Arm — This was just plain fun to write. Granted, I pretty much poke fun at myself throughout the entire article, but I’m still not a big fan of needles, and any hope that writing about it would ease my fears has quickly been squashed. I did show it to my in-laws after it had been posted, and they got a chuckle out of it.

3) The Vaccination Debate — Probably one of the most read and most commented articles on the site. Everybody has an opinion about vaccinations in children and their links, real or imagined, to incidences of Autism in this country. I was inspired to write this after watching an episode of the Oprah show on which Jenny McCarthy appeared to discuss her own experience with her son and his manifestation of the condition at around his second birthday. It also prompted me to become more knowledgeable about the vaccinations out there and what kind of questions to ask my doctor as my son builds his immunities through use of these drugs.

2) Do Pharmaceuticals Drive Medical Knowledge? — This post was based on some eye-opening information I read from the Chronicle of Higher Education about how many pharmaceuticals drive disease treatment based on research they’re doing for the products that they sell. It begs the question of whether doctors are prescribing medication based on their own independent research as to how well the drug works, or if their recommendations are simply regurgitations of the data provided to them by the big pharmaceutical companies.

1) The Ann Myers Medical Center: Part 1, Part 2 — So, when I wrote part 1, I don’t think I had any idea I was going to write part 2. These 2 posts are based on my experience in Second Life with the Ann Myers Medical Center, a virtual medical center with a purpose of education and collaboration without physical distance as a border. The first part is an interview with the 2 directors of the center, Dr. CC Carnell and Dr. Ann Buchanan (both aliases) in which they describe their purpose for the center, their hopes for its expansion and their desire to make it a center for a new kind of education with the help of their partnership with the Sprott-Shaw College of British Columbia, Canada. The second article explores the center further, this time through a group meeting in partnership with the Avelient Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Meetup. We were given the opportunity to meet people in the virtual world who use the center every day to help solve real-world problems and promote an environment where students can engage virtual patients to give them more experience in their chosen field of study.

And those are my picks for 2007. 2008 is a whole new year, and will present a whole new slew of topics to discover. I thank you for coming with me this far, and I hope you enjoy the blog enough to venture with me into the new year and new biotechnology and pharmaceutical discoveries that are sure to accompany it.

What did you think of my picks? Would you have chosen differently? Is there something you think should be on the list? Is there something you think that should be left off? I’d be interested to know!

Happy New Year!