Archive for Learn with BioMedware

Ebola and “R naught”

There is a certain amount of false information regarding how infectious the Ebola virus is, see, for example, some of the statements by certain Congressman. Mathematical epidemiologists use something called "R naught",​ the basic reproductive number, to quantify how...

Drugs recalled by New England Compounding Center: The tip of the iceberg?

As hypotheses are tested and rejected, the remaining hypotheses are those that plausibly might explain the observed pattern. But how often do we include medications contaminated with foreign agents — fungus, bacteria, or otherwise — in our set of explanatory hypotheses? Until now, rarely, if ever. What we are learning from the New England Compounding Center is that contaminated medications largely explain the observed outbreak of fungal meningitis.