posted
Intriguing, but the article is frustratingly short on information. In what environment is the bioflavenoid compound effective against these viruses? Viruses are pretty fragile, and there are all sorts of things that can destroy them in the testtube, but that aren't effective in the body.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
They don't give any info on the tests used, nor the names of the researchers or anything else that might help a journal search to track down *something* on these guys. Which is unsurprising, it's just meaningless buzz.
Flavanoids are "in" right now, and you can't turn around without bumping into them. All they are are 15 carbons arranged as 2 armomatic rings with a 3 carbon bridge.
The dual aromatics make it pretty insoluble to water, but more permeable to hydrophobic things, like fat or cell membranes. The thing is, you hear about these having all kinds of different properties, they're anti oxidants, they're oxidants, they're fluorogenic, they're whatever. And of course that's the case, the basic structure of the flavanoid is a scaffold to which any number of functional groups can be attached, and its the functional groups that actually mean something.
If you wanted to make one of these that would obliterate a virus, that's no mean feat. I assure you that if I walk into a decently equipped organic lab I could whip something up. Of course, this is meaningless if you can't work out all the usual problems that face drugs. Size, bioavailability, solubility, stability, toxicity, toxic metabolites, blah blah blah.
Which isn't to say that there's nothing interesting about this class of molecule. They are *everywhere* in plants, and always fulfilling some interesting purpose. And, for whatever reason, they've gone largely unnoticed by researchers until the last decade or so, so they're pretty popular right now. There's a good chance you could discover a new one or discover something new about the creation/lifetime of a known one. The fact that they're very stable is another bonus.
In short, the only thing this news clip tells you is that Citrofresh Ltd and Retroscreen Virology just got some free press. Oh, and non scientists shouldn't report on science.
quote:It did not say whether the results had been independently verified or whether they would be published.
That sentence should tell you to either take this with the biggest grain of salt you can find, or totall ignore it altogether until something that is verifiable and proven to be effective in actual clinical trials comes out.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
The problem with trying to be clever, HRE, is that frequently your point is lost. Yes, I know what nosocomial infections are. I fail to see the connection with regards to this article.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Bob the Lawyer: Oh, and non scientists shouldn't report on science.
Point of clarification: are you saying that science reporters should have at least a BS (or the equivalent in real-world experience) in the hard sciences? Because I would agree with that. Or are you saying something more than that?
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Nothing more than that. It's always annoying to have someone who so thoroughly doesn't know what they're talking about that they can't even give me a meaningful springboard to find out more on the topic if I wanted to. You don't have to analyze the data yourself, but you should be able to pick out what points are the most meaningful so you're not reduced to being a PR mouthpiece, not to mention be familiar with the previous discoveries that lead to what you're reporting on. All it takes is an afternoon on PubMed to get the gist.
Of course, both those points seem to apply to journalists as a whole.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
BtL, there was a group a few years ago that was trying to convince newspapers of exactly what you're saying. I was following their campaign partly because at the time I was interested in pursuing scientific journalism.
I believe they faded away without having much effect (and since I don't remember what they were called I can't Google 'em).
The trouble tends to be that most such pieces are done by freelancers, or by the wire services (like this one) which seem to be uninterested/unwilling in hiring people to report on specific fields.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
It's very refreshing when you hear journalists who do understand science. The science correspondents for NPR do a decent job, though they seem clueless about environmentalism sometimes. Most mainstream news outlets tell you nothing at all you can get a handle on. That's why I like to read more technical sources like Nature, Scientific American, Sky and Telescope, etc. I wish I knew of sources that were updated more often, though. Everyone here seems to link to good stuff from New Scientist. Does anyone know of any more sites that are technically sound that also cover breaking news day by day?
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Bob the Lawyer: not to mention be familiar with the previous discoveries that lead to what you're reporting on. All it takes is an afternoon on PubMed to get the gist.
I think that's probably the biggest one. I remember once, a couple years ago, reading some article about an interesting "new" type of ear implant (or something like that).
The article presented it as some kind of major breakthrough. However, when I showed it to my mom (who is an audiologist) her response was more or less "so what, they've had those for years."
It seems incredibly irresponsible to me that someone would write a story about some "new" product without even looking at the field enough to know if there was something behind the company's claim.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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ricree, false "new" claims happen a lot. I found that with Avian Flu, some supposedly hot new breaking story would hit the news from a major news source and it would turn out to be something that had been widely known for months. I guess a whole bunch of new people found out about it that way, though. So it may be a case of better late than never. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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