Antivaccaloon learns lesson the hard-ish way; luckily kid survives

Via the New Zealand Herald:

A boy who almost died of tetanus before Christmas is home and on the mend, but his parents are desperate for others to vaccinate their children after they did not.

Auckland couple Ian and Linda Williams thought they had made an informed decision against immunising their three children because of concerns over adverse reactions.

But they regretted their decision when middle child Alijah contracted the potentially fatal disease just before Christmas, and was put in an induced coma on life support at Starship hospital.

They immediately immunised their other children and wrote to Alijah’s school to warn parents who had not vaccinated against the disease and others such as whooping cough.

“It was me that put my son in this situation,” Mr Williams said.

Yes, yes it was. Don’t let it be you who does the same, people. Vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate.

h/t: bengoldacre

So…doping in cycling has kind of a history.

I barely have to change the leadin for this reposting. Last time I said “Sports doping is in the news again this week.” It was a previous round of Lance-fest. Well, he’s finally confessed to doping through his 7 TdF wins and a lot more besides.

Doping has been with cycling since forever.

I put this up at the original DrugMonkey blog on 8/21/2007.

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We’ll start off our discussions on sports doping with the classic psychomotor stimulants, the amphetamines. You know, good old “speed”. A class of drugs primarily considered indirect dopamine agonists because they bind to the dopamine transporter with good affinity (dopamine reuptake inhibitor) and also act to facilitate dopamine release from the terminal. As with similar compounds they also tend to have some affinity for other monoaminergic transporters and will thus modulate norepinephrine and serotonin. Nevertheless, the major action usually under discussion is to increase dopamine levels in the synapse.