Visiopoetics

In my official capacity as a Presidential Fellow, I present the FDR’s Left Eyebrow Limerick Challenge, fresh from the marvelous mini-Annals of Improbable Research (”mini-AIR”), August edition:

Roosevelt’s left eyebrow is the subject of this month’s limerick
competition. To enter, compose an original limerick that
illuminates the nature of this report:

“An Inquiry into the Nature of the Pigmented Lesion Above
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Left Eyebrow,” A.B. Ackerman and S.
Lomazow, Archives of Dermatology, vol. 144, no. 4, April 2008,
pp. 529-32. (http://tinyurl.com/lb9t4y)

The authors, at the Ackerman Academy of Dermatopathology in New
York City, report:

“Little note was taken when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was alive
and since his death of the pigmented lesion above his left
eyebrow that fulfilled clinical criteria for melanoma.
CONCLUSIONS: The failure of observers of Roosevelt, especially
his physicians, to comment on his riveting facial lesion and to
identify it as a probable melanoma speaks volumes about how
flawed were clinical criteria for diagnosis of flat and slightly
raised lesions of melanoma in the 1930s and 1940s.”

RULES: Please make sure that: (1) your rhymes actually do; and
(2) your poem is in classic, trills-off-the-tongue limerick form.

PRIZE: The winning poet will receive (if we manage to send it to
the correct address) a free, possibly arched, high-res PDF issue
of the Annals of Improbable Research. Send entries (one entry per
entrant) to:

PRESIDENT’S LEFT EYEBROW LIMERICK COMPETITION
Marc Abrahams:  marca at chem2.harvard.edu 

DUE

+ TRUE

+ DARE

———-

TRUTH

I just read this incredible thing:  “Studies for a Drawing in Red,” by A. Papatya Bucak on Brevity. 

(Artwork is oils on 12″ x 24″ stretched canvas.)

Artwork is oils on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.

NEON

+ LADEN

————–

BOUNCE

It’s no secret I have a thing for evidence-based medicine, and a thing for funky herbs.  When they come together like this, it does something magical for me.

The big news:  a Chinese anti-inflammatory immunosuppressant herbal (Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F) is better at treating rheumatoid arthritis than mainstream crap that usually becomes front-line without well-designed trials like this in the first place.

Problem:  subjects were allowed to continue Prednisone and not other immunosuppressants (yes, Prednisone is an anti-inflammatory AND an immunosuppressant).  So there’s a bit of multiple treatment inference in play, and we don’t know how many study participants were on Prednisone or whether it was controlled for through matching.  There’s also a possibility of potential rebound benefits from going OFF the other immunosuppressants.  Was this matched for?  Sure this threat seems unlikely to account for the difference in treatment outcomes, but do we really know that much about immunomodulation in contexts of notoriously unpredictable and incurable autoimmune disorders?

Also, they don’t list CRP and ESR under Table 2. Changes From Baseline in Inflammatory Markers etc.  These are basically the only inflammatory markers schmucks like me know to look for, and nothing could be worse than their .99 P-value under blood pressure.  (Why, why, why publish that?  Maybe because HDL and LDL both shot up in participants receiving the herbal?  Wait a second… Isn’t CAD significantly more lethal than arthritis?  Red flag.)

At the end of the day, I’m pretty sure it’s still a decent design, and that’s still a funky herb.

Richmond Times-Dispatch is so kind as to run a modified version of my letter to the editor on the Benlysta lupus drugs news.

In sum:  show me the data.