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New York Times Links that Don't Die Three Days Later

It's been linked to before, but it's worth linking to again: You can fight linkrot with the NY Times Link Generator. Copy the link to a page on the NY Times site and it will generate one that won't break three days later when the Times puts its content into for-pay mode.


Credits: The NY Times Link Generator was developed by Aaron Swartz, and the agreement to get the NY Times to allow permanent links to their archive via RSS was forged by Dave Winer and Userland.

DEU NO NY TIMES

Hazards: All Dressed Up, Carrying Germs
By JOHN O'NEIL

Published: May 25, 2004


It's not news that hospitals are full of sources of infection. But a study released yesterday found a new one: Almost half the ties worn by doctors in a Queens hospital proved to be carrying pathogens.

By contrast, only 1 of 10 ties belonging to security guards, who have far less close contact with patients, were germ infested.

The study was conducted at New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens and was presented yesterday at a conference of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans by one of its authors, Steve Nurkin, a medical student.

Mr. Nurkin said he proposed the study when, during a rotation on the hospital's surgery ward, he noticed that the ties invariably worn by male doctors often swung close to or touched patients when the doctors leaned over hospital beds.

Other research has found that doctors' pens, cellphones and pagers can harbor potentially harmful micro-organisms.

The microbes found on 20 of 42 ties included strains that commonly cause in-hospital infections, although none were of the drug-resistant kind that cause the most concern.

Mr. Nurkin acknowledged that the study showed only that ties can harbor diseases, not that they transmit them. But he noted that it might not occur to doctors to wash their hands after handling their ties. And unlike white coats, ties are often worn many times between cleanings.

Mr. Nurkin, who is now attending medical school in Haifa, Israel, said his findings had elicited many suggestions, among them making bow ties a medical fashion and bringing back tie pins to keep ties from swinging down.

Or, he said, American doctors could imitate those he sees in Israel, who never wear ties.