This week in science: Heart shaped box

February is heart month, and Feb 14 is a special heart day of its own. Don't forget to take of either one!

The CDC has designated February as American Heart Month and that brings up a fascinating scientific debate. The traditional view of myocardial infarction, the technical name for a heart attack, is a build-up of plaque in the main coronary arteries, typicaly associated with well-known risk factors like smoking. Eventually a wayward blood clot comes along and Ka-Boom! Heart attack. But some cardiopathologists are now investigating another risk factor:

Inflammation is not complicated -- it is quite simply your body's natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process,a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

The idea that inflammation and the body's response to may contribute to higher risk of early heart disease is far from ironclad. But if that research is eventually borne out or eliminated, you better believe it matters to me and millions of others: I inherited a chronic inflammatory disease called AS.

• When it comes to the anti-science movement, most pandering politicians cannot be persuaded, they are unwilling to compromise. But they can sure as hell be fired by ballot box:

  I suspect that means it's going to die the slow silent death of neglect. That's good, but how about if you Missourians take the next step and make sure the author of the bill, Rick Brattin, and his partner in crime, Andrew Koenig, don't get elected anymore?

• Some anti-science numbskulls, probably fresh off renting Amityville Horror, offer up "proof" Obama is a demon incarnate: the flies, the flies!
• We didn't build that, but we sure as shit killed it!
• An asteroid large enough to wipe out a city will buzz earth with little room to spare in a couple of weeks. There's no chance of impact, but two objects roughly the same size that did strike left an impressive scar 50,000 years ago in the southwest U.S., the other wreaked havoc in Siberia in 1908.
• We could debate what caused my unexpected heart attack last month all day. But this week a friend of mine died from a heart attack and there's no debate over what saved my life and probably cost him his. Hint'it will come as no surprise to regular readers here on Daily Kos.