Feeding the World
If Words Were Food, Nobody Would Go Hungry
"This [past] week, the world -- in the guise of 60-odd heads of state including the pope -- held the first United Nations food summit since 2002. As the world’s attention turns from the receding financial crisis, it is switching to one emerging in agriculture. The UN conference on food security took place at a point of relative calm between two storms. The first occurred in 2007-08, when world food prices experienced their sharpest rise for 30 years. Food riots swept through three dozen countries and two governments (Haiti’s and Madagascar’s) were overthrown by the events that the price rises set in train. The next storm is likely within a few years and everyone fears its arrival. The price spike of 2007-08 was the result of structural imbalances in the world food chain, not just temporary fluctuations like bad weather or government mistakes. These imbalances have not gone away: food demand is still rising because of changing appetites and rising incomes in emerging markets; biofuels are still competing with food crops for available land; yield growth in cereals is declining. In 2008-09 food problems were masked for a while by the financial crisis. But as Jacques Diouf, head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said this week, 'when the recovery picks up, we will be back to square one'…According to the FAO, the number of malnourished people in the world rose to over 1 billion this year, up from 915m in 2008…Has anything been done to prepare for future food shocks? Certainly, say most governments. Money is starting to pour into agriculture after 30 years of neglect. There has been a spasm of institutional reform. And public and private sectors are doing more to help farmers than ever…At their meeting in L’Aquila in July, the Group of Eight (G8) large rich economies promised to increase spending on agricultural development by $20 billion over the next three years…Agriculture and food security have become 'the core of the international agenda,' as the G8 called it…But the latest crisis has not spawned any institutional children, mainly because the UN food agencies -- FAO, IFAD and the World Food Programme --spent too much time bickering…The most important activity, though, is taking place at the national level."
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Related stories:
Georgia: Fighting Poverty, Hunger Constant Task
Opinion, Sarah Beth Gehl, deputy director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 23, 2009)
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Hunger on Rise Across America
Editorial
(The Tennessean, November 22, 2009)
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Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?
Andrew Rice
(The New York Times, November 22, 2009)
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Wisconsin: Hungry in Milwaukee
Opinion,
Sherrie Tussler, executive director of the Hunger Task Force in Milwaukee
(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 21, 2009)
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How to Feed the World
Editorial
(The Economist, London, November 21, 2009)
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Kevin Sack
(The New York Times, November 24, 2009)
"Although statistics are elusive, there is a general sense among bankruptcy lawyers and court officials…that the share of personal bankruptcies caused by illness is growing. In the campaign to broaden support for the overhaul of American health care, few arguments have packed as much rhetorical punch as the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God notion that average families, through no fault of their own, are going bankrupt because of medical debt. Bills in both houses would expand eligibility for Medicaid and provide health insurance subsidies for those making up to four times the federal poverty level. Insurers would be prohibited from denying coverage to those with pre-existing health conditions. Out-of-pocket medical costs would be capped annually. How many personal bankruptcies might be avoided is unpredictable, as it is not clear how often medical debt plays a back-breaking role. There were 1.1 million personal bankruptcy filings in 2008…and more are expected this year. Last summer, Harvard researchers published a headline-grabbing paper that concluded that illness or medical bills contributed to 62 percent of bankruptcies in 2007, up from about half in 2001. More than three-fourths of those with medical debt had health insurance. But the researchers’ methodology has been criticized as defining medical bankruptcy too broadly and for the ideological leanings of its authors, some of whom are outspoken advocates for nationalized health care."
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Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane
(The Washington Post, November 23, 2009)
"The Senate voted along party lines Saturday night to overcome a Republican filibuster and bring to the floor a bill that would overhaul the nation's health-care system. After days of indecision, the last two Democratic holdouts -- Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (La.) -- joined their caucus in supporting a motion to begin debate. The 60 to 39 vote marks a milestone in the decades-old quest for health-care reform, President Obama's top legislative priority. 'The road to this point has been started many times,' Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said before the vote. 'It has never been completed.' The debate is expected to last weeks. Reid is aiming for final passage by Christmas."
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Public Option at Center of Debate
Shailagh Murray
(The Washington Post November 23, 2009)
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Opinion, Derrick Z. Jackson
(The Boston Globe, November 21, 2009)
"In making a fool of President Obama, Big Pharma has turned itself into a poison pill of health care reform. In the summer, the drug companies offered $8 billion a year over 10 years in drug cost cuts, as long as the government did not ask for further reductions in what Medicare provides them. Obama proclaimed this a huge breakthrough, given the drug industry’s prior attacks on reform…Big Pharma has taken the savings off the table. A new AARP analysis has found that drug companies raised their prices for prescription drugs by 9.3 percent over the last year, amounting to $10 billion in new revenues. That is $2 billion more than the promised annual cost cuts. The New York Times reported that the analysis for the advocacy group for Americans 50 and older mirrored that of Credit Suisse, which found that the eight largest US pharmaceutical companies jacked up prices by an average of 8.7 percent. It is the highest rash of rises since 1992, when the drug makers feared serious reform under President Clinton. The Obama administration cannot claim it was blindsided. Obama repeatedly hailed the drug companies as new partners even as they continued old practices of wildly raising prices in anticipation of legislation."
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Melba Newsome
(TIME, November 30, 2009)
"Companies have long promoted healthier behavior by subsidizing gym memberships and smoking-cessation classes. But several private and public employers have started tying financial incentives to their health-insurance plans. North Carolina this year became the second state to approve an increase in out-of-pocket expenses for state workers who smoke and don't try to quit or who are morbidly obese and don't try to lose weight. Alabama was the first to pass what critics call a fat fee, in 2008, and several state insurance plans have started imposing a $25 monthly surcharge on smokers. There's even a push in Congress to let employers further link lifestyles to insurance premiums…Nationwide, employee insurance premiums have increased 131% over the past decade, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And it's well documented that smoking and obesity are associated with higher medical costs."
Renée C. Lee
(Houston Chronicle, November 22, 2009)
"[P]ediatric palliative care is fairly new as a medical subspecialty and it's beginning to gain momentum. In the last three years, a number of hospitals…have either created or are developing programs. About 55,000 children die each year, more than half of them from a life-threatening condition or illness, said Dr. Kaci Osenga, associate medical director of Children's Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota, a palliative care training site. Palliative care can help ease the burden on patients and families during the course of the illness. It's a holistic approach that focuses on the physical, spiritual, cultural and psychological needs of the entire family. The goal is to improve the patient's quality of life, regardless of how long it might be, by managing pain and symptoms and relieving family distress, experts said. A common misconception is that palliative care is hospice; it is not. Patients who receive hospice care are anticipating death within six months and must terminate treatment…Such care involves a care team…that works closely with the child and family. It's a relationship that ideally starts at the time of diagnosis and continues through death and bereavement."
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Liz Kowalczyk
(The Boston Globe, November 22, 2009)
"Massachusetts’ largest hospitals say they have significantly cut the number of patients who acquire painful, costly, and sometimes deadly infections in their operating suites and intensive care units, suggesting that pressure from government regulators and patient groups, as well as a shift in doctors’ attitudes, is starting to make medical care safer… National studies estimate 90,000 patients a year die from infections they contract while in hospitals or other medical facilities, and thousands of others require follow-up operations or treatment with intravenous antibiotics for weeks - which can cost the health care system $50,000 to $100,000 per case. Physicians long saw such infections as unavoidable, but in part because of rising public anger and tougher government oversight, they now recognize most cases are the result of preventable medical errors. State public health officials, consumer groups, and patient safety organizations said they were cautiously optimistic about hospitals’ reports that infection rates are falling, but noted that they have not verified most of the data, and that it’s hard to sustain such improvements."
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Kevin Sack
(The New York Times, November 21, 2009)
"Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta…a taxpayer-supported safety-net hospital that would provide dialysis to anyone in need, even illegal immigrants with no insurance or ability to pay…changed [their policy] on Oct. 4, when the strapped public hospital closed its outpatient dialysis clinic, leaving 51 patients -- almost all illegal immigrants -- in a life-or-death limbo. For Grady, which has served Atlanta’s poor for 117 years, it was an excruciating choice, a stark reflection of what happens when the country’s inadequate health care system confronts its defective immigration policy. With limited exceptions, illegal immigrants are ineligible for public insurance programs like Medicaid and Medicare and often cannot afford private coverage. When major illness strikes, they have few options but to go to emergency rooms, which are required by federal law to treat anyone whose health is deemed in serious jeopardy. Officials at Grady, which will provide more than $300 million in uncompensated care this year, estimate that as many as a fifth of its uninsured patients are illegal immigrants. Although the numbers are elusive, a national study by the RAND Corporation concluded that illegal immigrants account for about 1.3 percent of public health spending."
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Tim McGirk
(TIME, November 30, 2009)
"PTSD wasn't recognized as an illness until the 1980s, but it has been around for as long as men have been killing one another. Its symptoms include the abuse of alcohol and other drugs, an overall emotional numbness punctuated by outbursts of rage, severe depression and recurring nightmares. In extreme cases, it can lead to suicide or murder. One military doctor described PTSD's symptoms as 'going from zero to combat speed in nothing flat.' The incidence of PTSD is on the rise as two wars drag on. In April, a Rand Corp. study concluded that 1 out of almost every 5 military service members on combat tours -- about 300,000 so far--returns home with symptoms of PTSD or major depression. 'Anyone who goes through multiple deployments is going to be affected,' says Dr. Matthew Friedman, director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD. But nearly half of these cases, according to the Rand study, go untreated because of the stigma that the military and civil society attach to mental disorders."
Melissa Healy
(Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2009)
"[As] many as 1 in 30 Americans -- roughly 7.3 million adults -- are at the center of a psychiatric debate over whether and how to recognize binge eating as a mental disorder. A decision on the matter is expected early next year, as the American Psychiatric Assn. updates the diagnostic manual that guides the mental health profession. In light of new research and a seemingly growing population of patients who fit the broad description of binge eaters, psychiatrists must decide whether 'binge eating disorder' should stand alongside anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa as a separate psychiatric condition -- identifiable by a distinct set of symptoms, a recognizable pattern of progression and a track record of response to certain treatments…A 2007 study by researchers at Harvard University-affliated McLean Hospital found, in a national survey of adults, that the set of behaviors widely agreed to define binge eating are present in 3.5% of women at some time in their lives and 2% of men…Many mental health professionals point to those numbers and to the distress that plagues many binge eaters as compelling reasons to recognize this complex of symptoms as a new disorder…To many skeptics, however…some suspect that the diagnosis is a sneaky way to sweep an entire nation of overeaters under psychiatry's umbrella -- and possibly into the marketplace for new drugs."
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Binge Eating: Is it a Form of Addiction?
Melissa Healy
(Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2009)
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Alexandra Topping
(The Guardian, London, November 23, 2009)
"Up to 80% of crime in the UK is committed by people who had behavioural problems as children and teenagers, according to a report published today. Early-intervention programmes for young children could significantly lower crime levels, according to a study by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. The cost of crime related to 'conduct problems' -- defined by the report as problems such as disobedience, lying, fighting and stealing -- is £60bn a year, said Sean Duggan, joint executive of the centre…The most effective prevention schemes -- including those aimed at pre-school children -- can reduce future offending by more than 50%, according to the study. 'Over time, nothing would have a bigger impact than making these programmes much more widely available than is presently the case,' it states. Childhood mental health problems can result in poor educational achievement, unemployment, low earnings, teenage pregnancies and marital problems as well as criminality, said the report, which assessed data from every child born in one week in 1970, as well as comparing other studies from around the world."
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Kim Hone-McMahan
(Chicago Tribune, November 22, 2009)
"Grandma's memory isn't as good as it was a decade ago. She's convinced some of her prescription meds are missing. You pass it off as old age, and your teen agrees. But stuffed inside the pocket of your boy's skinny jeans are Grandma's blood pressure and dementia pills. Tonight he will share them with his pals. He will be the life of the party, or maybe the death of it. Children in particular aren't knowledgeable about all of the dangers of prescription drugs. 'Kids tend to view it as being safe because it was prescribed by a doctor and comes in a nice bottle,' explained Dr. Laura Markley, a pediatrics and child psychiatry specialist at Akron Children's Hospital in Ohio. 'I think they get a false sense of security and think it's not as bad as marijuana or cocaine. And if a doctor says it's OK, how could it possibly kill me?' Most parents don't believe their children would get high on prescribed drugs. But Markley warns, 'there are a lot of smart kids who do dumb things.'"
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Rebecca Lewis
(The New Zealand Herald, November 22, 2009)
"Super-strong imported beers are fuelling New Zealand's binge drinking culture and a surge in violent behaviour, alcohol watchdogs warn. Brews with alcohol content of up to 12 per cent are on the shelves of supermarkets and bottle stores, prompting calls for higher taxes and prices. Alcohol Advisory Council chief executive Gerard Vaughan said he had noticed high-strength beers in supermarkets much more in the past month…Alcohol Healthwatch director Rebecca Williams said there were no regulations to stop beers getting even stronger -- much like ready-to-drink beverages have. The concern comes as New Zealand and Australian police unite for a pre-Christmas clampdown on drunken violence on December 11 and 12. It follows a Law Commission consultation paper on how the Government could reform liquor laws to bring down alcohol-related crime."
Alison Lobron
(The Boston Globe, November 22, 2009)
"Since 1978, the year a British woman gave birth to the first 'test-tube baby,' millions of eventual babies have been conceived in petri dishes. Since the 1980s, millions of embryos have been cryo-preserved, or 'frozen' in liquid nitrogen, allowing patients a further chance at pregnancy if a first embryo transfer doesn’t work or if they want another child or children some years down the road. Massachusetts, one of the few states to mandate insurance coverage of infertility treatments, has the highest per capita usage rate of in vitro fertilization in the nation. Currently there are about 8,000 treatments begun here annually, and local clinicians estimate that 30 to 40 percent will result in at least one cryo-preserved embryo; one clinic reports it recently banked 22 embryos for a patient. According to numbers from the clinics, it is safe to assume that there are at least 20,000 embryos in storage around the state."
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Sadia Latifi
(The News & Observer, North Carolina, November 22, 2009)
"As health departments battle the H1N1 flu virus, health workers worry that another epidemic may be brewing -- one for a sexually transmitted disease that had almost disappeared from North Carolina 10 years ago. Cases of syphilis in the state have nearly doubled in the past year: 684 in the first nine months, compared to 359 cases for the same period a year earlier. Numbers are up across almost all age and racial groups, including teenage girls and blacks -- groups already disproportionately affected by STDs. 'I have to be honest: This is pretty bad,' said Evelyn Foust, director of the communicable diseases branch of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. 'We are in the middle of a really serious syphilis outbreak, and we're very, very, very concerned about it.' The trend mirrors national statistics, which show syphilis and other sexually transmitted disease rates rising across the country."
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Rachel Grunwell
(The New Zealand Herald, November 22, 2009)
"With nearly two unborn (or very newly born) New Zealand babies dying every day, more money needs to be invested in keeping pregnant women and their babies healthy, a maternity expert says. Cindy Farquhar, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Auckland, says the number of babies who are stillborn or die within four weeks of birth is higher than New Zealand's road toll, yet funding is minimal compared with the millions of dollars poured into road safety campaigns. Farquhar chaired the Perinatal and Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which this week released a report showing one in four unborn baby deaths remain unexplained."
Editorial
(The New York Times, November 22, 2009)
"The national effort to reduce death and injuries from drunken driving has received a major boost from New York State. Gov. David Paterson signed a law that made New York among the first states to make it a felony to drive while intoxicated with a child in the vehicle. The new law also made New York one of a dozen states to require all convicted drunken drivers to use an ignition interlock device that prevents them from driving their cars if they are drunk."
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Sam Grobart
(The New York Times, November 21, 2009)
"In 2008, 918,000 hands-free systems were installed in cars, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. By the end of 2009, the industry group estimates, that figure will climb to 1.6 million systems…Manufacturers of such systems argue that their products make driving safer. As proof, they point to a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study published this summer that concluded that hands-free conversations were only a minor distraction to drivers. But not everyone agrees that this technology is the safest option. Studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, for example, show that drivers are four times more likely to have an accident if they are talking on the phone -- hands-free or not -- while driving. The reason, researchers say, is that drivers often become engrossed in their conversation, rather than focusing on driving, even if their hands are on the wheel. 'Once a conversation begins, we don’t see a difference between hand-held and hands-free,' says Adrian Lund, president of the institute. The insurance industry is starting to put its thumb on the scales of which approach -- blocking calls or hands-free talking -- is safer."
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Related story:
Driven to Distraction Series
(The New York Times)
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Rob Stein
(The Washington Post, November 24, 2009)
"After a lethal bird flu virus emerged in Asia, U.S. officials launched an intense effort to build new defenses against a pandemic, including replacing an antiquated vaccine system, which depends on millions of chicken eggs. But six years later, as Americans from Washington to California line up to get inoculated against the swine flu, the slow progress toward developing better ways to make a vaccine has become glaringly obvious. This lag and the shortage of H1N1 vaccine have focused attention on the status of government efforts to develop state-of-the-art techniques to make flu and other vaccines, including those needed to protect against bioterrorism, and the nation's dependence on a process that is notoriously slow and unreliable…While several companies are trying to ready their new techniques in case the H1N1 pandemic worsens, most of these remain years away from contributing significantly to the world's capacity to respond to a deadly new pathogen."
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Betsy McKay
(The Wall Street Journal, New York, November 23, 2009)
"The current wave of swine flu may have peaked in most of the U.S., but the illness remains widespread and the threat of another wave remains, officials said Friday. The news came as officials in Norway reported a mutation of the flu virus in two patients who died and one who became severely ill. The mutation, while seen before, appeared to make the H1N1 virus cause infection deeper in the respiratory system than the regular swine-flu virus, a possible explanation for the more-severe cases, Norwegian scientists said…The WHO and CDC said the mutation has been seen since April in six other countries, doesn't always cause severe disease, isn't widespread, and responds to vaccine and the antiviral medications."
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Patricia Anstett
(Detroit Free Press, November 21, 2009)
"[No] matter how often a company tells workers to stay home, many employees go to work sick because they don't want to miss getting paid, or even fear losing their jobs. Nearly four of 10 U.S. workers working at private firms do not receive sick pay, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, though some can take vacation or personal leave days. Nancy Baum, doctoral candidate in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, conducted four focus groups last year in southeast Michigan about flu concerns and the workplace. She found that most were fearful about their job security if they stayed at home sick too long or had to take care of a sick child."
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(Associated Press, November 25, 2009)
"The virus that causes AIDS is now spreading fastest in China through heterosexual sex, a trend demanding new strategies to stave off a rebound in the epidemic after years of progress in containing it, a United Nations report said. Data show that 40 percent of new HIV infections diagnosed in China were acquired through heterosexual contact, with homosexual sex accounting for 32 percent and most of the remainder related to drug abuse, which was previously the main source of infections and the government's main focus for prevention. The rate of infections through heterosexual sex in China tripled between 2005-2007, according to the report released Tuesday in Shanghai by UNAIDS. Since 2007, the number of infections through homosexual sex has more than doubled…The government remains sensitive about the disease, regularly cracking down on activists and patients who seek more support and rights."
(Associated Press, November 24, 2009)
"The number of people worldwide infected with the virus that causes AIDS -- about 33 million -- has remained virtually unchanged for the last two years, United Nations experts said Tuesday. Officials say the global epidemic probably peaked in 1996 and that the disease looks stable in most regions, except for Africa. Last year, HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 72 percent of all 2.7 million new HIV cases worldwide. Daniel Halperin, an AIDS expert at Harvard University, said it was good news the rate of new infections was dropping and that access to AIDS drugs was helping to cut the death rate. Earlier this year, the U.N. announced there are now 4 million people on lifesaving AIDS drugs worldwide, a 10-fold increase in five years…With the U.N.'s confirmation HIV is now declining in most countries, some experts said the report should change the spending habits of international donors."
Tina Rosenberg
(The New York Times, November 22, 2009)
"Of all the mysteries posed by AIDS, perhaps the deepest and most damaging is a human one: why have we failed so utterly to stop its transmission? Most people with H.I.V. in the world, including a vast majority of the 22 million who are infected in sub-Saharan Africa, caught it from a sexual partner…We know that abstinence, sexual fidelity and consistent condom use all prevent the spread of H.I.V. But we do not yet know how to persuade people to act accordingly. Then there is another way that H.I.V. infects: by injection with a hypodermic needle previously used by an infected person. Outside Africa, a huge part of the AIDS epidemic involves people who were infected this way…Drug injectors don’t pass infection only among themselves. Through their sex partners, H.I.V. is spread into the general population. In many countries, the H.I.V. epidemic began among drug injectors…Though it has been scorned as special treatment for a despised population, AIDS prevention for drug users is in fact crucial to preventing a wider epidemic."
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Canada: How to End Child Poverty: Tax the Rich
Opinion
Ed Broadbent, former leader of the federal New Democratic Party
(The Globe and Mail, Toronto, November 23, 2009)
"Why is it that Finland, Sweden and Denmark have almost wiped out child poverty, and we have not? Why do more than 600,000 Canadian kids wake up hungry and go to school trying to read, write and think on an empty stomach? First, we should have no illusions about where our poor children are to be found. Most are in families with two adults. Most poor adults work. Most of them have incomes so low that they can't afford housing and can't adequately feed or clothe their kids. If kids are members of aboriginal or immigrant Canadian families, the odds are even much greater that they will be poor. Second, this poverty was not inevitable. Mostly it is the product of governments that have neither shared nor cared. As a Unicef report last Friday pointed out, Canadian politicians have failed our children…On the 20th anniversary of a noble parliamentary resolution, let's acknowledge our failure. And then reverse course. Instead of an income-tax policy favouring the rich, let's do the opposite. For a start, let's get our poor, hard-working families what they need immediately: more money."
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Editorial
(The Japan Times, November 22, 2009)
"Almost 9 million children die every year before the age of 5 -- or nearly one child every three seconds. Just under 4 million of these children die within their first month, nearly 3 million of them die within the first week and nearly 2 million of them die on their first day of life. These are just a few of the sobering statistics in a new report released last month by the international organization Save the Children titled 'The Next Revolution: Giving Every Child the Chance to Survive.' Although progress is being made -- in 2006 the annual under-5 mortality fell below 10 million for the first time since record-keeping began and the figure dropped to 8.8 million last year -- the international community must not allow its efforts to flag in the struggle to save children's lives."
Opinion
Lewis A. Lipsitz, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and codirector of the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife
(The Boston Globe, November 25, 2009)
"One thing that is lost in the health care debate is how to care for the elderly. It’s ironic that at a time when thousands of Americans are struggling to find appropriate care for their failing parents, the field of geriatric medicine appears to be vanishing. For geriatricians, one distinguishing feature of the specialty -- and one that most threatens its future -- is the in-depth conversations about care between doctors, their older patients, and their families. Critical issues covered include treatment options, the efficacy of treatments, and the impact of these treatments on quality of life. It takes time to manage multiple interacting medical, social and psychological problems, weigh the risks and benefits of various interventions, and discuss goals of care with patients and their families. The problem is that geriatricians are not adequately compensated for the time they take to address their patients’ complex medical, psychological, and social needs. Consequently, the specialty is not attracting enough physicians to care for our rapidly expanding elderly population."
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Dakshana Bascaramurty
(The Globe and Mail, Toronto, November 23, 2009)
"Adults over 60 who are taking mood-altering medications and sedatives have an increased risk of falling, which can lead to serious injuries and even death, according to a new report authored by scientists at the University of British Columbia. The review article, published Monday in Archives of Internal Medicine, suggests some medications can boost seniors' chances of falling by nearly 1.7 times. The authors analyzed 22 studies published between 1996 and 2007 and found that among various medications commonly prescribed to seniors, antipsychotics, antidepressants and sedatives were the ones that increased the risk of a fall most dramatically. Many of these drugs can leave patients feeling sleepy, dizzy and light-headed, which makes them more susceptible to falls. As well, because they have more difficulty than younger people in metabolizing medications, the drugs can hit their bodies harder."
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Donald G. McNeil Jr.
(The New York Times, November 23, 2009)
"Federal health officials are trying to shift supplies of the seasonal flu vaccine away from chain pharmacies and supermarkets to nursing homes, hoping to counter a shortage that threatens to cause a wave of deaths this winter among the nation’s most vulnerable population. The extent of the shortage is still unclear, but Janice Zalen, director of special programs for the American Health Care Association, which represents 11,000 nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, called it 'a very big problem.' Ms. Zalen said that of 1,000 nursing home managers who responded to a survey of the association’s 11,000 members, 800 reported they could not get enough vaccine. Dr. Carol Friedman, head of adult immunization at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she did not have a figure for the size of the shortage, but added, 'It’s a problem, and it’s all over the country.'"
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Editorial
(The Sacramento Bee, November 25, 2009)
"California, the great cornucopia of the United States, has much to be thankful for when it comes to food production...Overall, our food supply is very safe…But even with the strength of the state's safety net, there are still some holes to be mended
. In recent years, deadly E. coli and salmonella outbreaks originating here have killed and sickened consumers. As state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter (Kern County), chairman of the Senate Food and Agriculture Committee, has said, ‘With each new outbreak -- almonds in 2004, spinach in 2006, peppers in 2008 (and now beef this past summer) -- we find cracks in our food safety and regulatory systems.’ If California wants to maintain a global reputation for having the safest food grown anywhere, the state must take more of a leadership role in ensuring food safety."
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Lyndsey Layton
(The Washington Post, November 25, 2009)
"Despite a new law that bans six chemicals from children's products and lowers the lead limit for them, a public interest group has found a number of toys at major retailers that contain the chemicals and illegal amounts of lead. In a report released Tuesday called 'Trouble in Toyland,' the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) found that while many manufacturers and retailers are complying with the new law, a handful are not, and it is hard for consumers to tell the difference…For 24 years, U.S. PIRG has released a report about toy safety at the start of the holiday season. This is the first report since Congress approved broad changes to consumer safety laws in 2008, in response to dangerously high levels of lead in thousands of toys imported from China in the past several years."
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Natasha Singer
(The New York Times, November 23, 2009)
"A new study published Monday in Archives of Internal Medicine offers an ambitious proposal to determine a drug’s risks sooner than they might otherwise become evident. The authors propose a system to examine widely prescribed drugs through safety analyses that would pool data as they emerge from various clinical trials of a medication and aggregate the information for a fuller picture of a drug’s harms and benefits. As policy makers in Washington push for various forms of evidence gathering to determine the safety and effectiveness of medical treatments, the study proposes a broad model for monitoring drug safety that would consist of detailed publicly available data that independent researchers could freely analyze. Such a database could be continually updated and aggregated with new information, as the results of new studies were published, to calculate a near real-time balance sheet of a drug’s risks and benefits. Dr. Joseph S. Ross, the lead author of the study, said the objective of the researchers was to determine whether this kind of sequential cumulative analysis could serve as a new model for monitoring the safety of drugs after they enter the market."
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Related graphic:
In Combination Studies, Earlier Warnings
(The New York Times, November 24, 2009)
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Karl Vick
(The Washington Post, November 23, 2009)
"The same day they rejected a gay marriage ballot measure, residents of Maine voted overwhelmingly to allow the sale of medical marijuana over the counter at state-licensed dispensaries. Later in the month, the American Medical Association reversed a longtime position and urged the federal government to remove marijuana from Schedule One of the Controlled Substances Act, which equates it with heroin and cocaine. A few days later, advocates for easing marijuana laws left their biannual strategy conference with plans to press ahead on all fronts -- state law, ballot measures, and court -- in a movement that for the first time in decades appeared to be gaining ground. 'This issue is breaking out in a remarkably rapid way now,' said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. 'Public opinion is changing very, very rapidly.'"
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Katherine Ellison
(The New York Times, November 21, 2009)
"Several Bay Area doctors who recommend medical marijuana for their patients said in recent interviews that their client base had expanded to include teenagers with psychiatric conditions including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder…Because California does not require doctors to report cases involving medical marijuana, no reliable data exist for how many minors have been authorized to receive it…Bay Area doctors have been at the forefront of the fierce debate about medical marijuana, winning tolerance for people with grave illnesses like terminal cancer and AIDS. Yet as these doctors use their discretion more liberally, such support -- even here -- may be harder to muster, especially when it comes to using marijuana to treat adolescents with A.D.H.D."
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Stephen Smith
(The Boston Globe, November 23, 2009)
"In a world of uncertainty, it seemed like a sure thing: When you turn 40, the medical mantra for women went, have a mammogram. And then do it the next year, and the year after that. So when a federal science panel declared last week that mammograms appear to do more harm than good for women in their 40s, a frisson of anxiety crackled. There were allegations of politics at play and warnings that the lives of women were being sacrificed at the altar of cold-hearted scientific number-crunching…Since the recommendations from the US Preventive Services Task Force emerged, questions have ricocheted across the airwaves and the cyber landscape. Here are some answers."
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Tracking Breast Cancer
(The Boston Globe, November 23, 2009)
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Early Screening Still Saves Lives
Editorial
(The Boston Globe, November 22, 2009)
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Jill U. Adams
(Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2009)
"It's such an appealing idea -- catch breast cancer early, treat accordingly and your patients will live. So perhaps it's no wonder the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force -- a panel of primary care physicians -- caught major flak when it revised its guidelines to say most women don't need mammograms until they turn 50, and thereafter every other year…But other doctors say that it's about time there was a clearheaded analysis weighing the benefits and risks…Somewhat lost in the fracas is the fact that the task force was not suggesting all women under 50 eschew mammograms: The recommendations did not apply to women at high risk for breast cancer."
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Emily Dugan
(The Independent, London, November 22, 2009)
"Exposure to asbestos is now the biggest killer in the British workforce, killing about 4,000 people every year -- more than who die in traffic accidents. The shocking figures are the grim legacy of the millions of tons of the dust shipped to Britain to make homes, schools, factories and offices fire resistant…The exposure to asbestos in Britain is largely historical but the death toll is alarmingly etched on our future. Asbestos fibres can lie dormant on victims' lungs for up to half a century; deaths from asbestos in Britain will continue to rise until 2016. Nor is it confined to Britain. The World Health Organisation says asbestos currently kills at least 90,000 workers every year. One report estimated the asbestos cancer epidemic could claim anywhere between five and 10 million lives before it is banned worldwide and exposure ceases."
(Associated Press, November 23, 2009)
"Parents who thought their preschoolers were spending time in home-based day cares, taking naps, eating healthy snacks and learning to play nicely with others may be surprised to discover they are sitting as many as two hours a day in front of a TV, according to a study published Monday. When added to the two to three hours many parents already admit to allowing at home, preschoolers in child care may be spending more than a third of the about 12 hours they are awake each day in front of the electronic baby sitter, said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle and a researcher at the University of Washington. That's double the TV time he found in a previous study based on parental reports of home viewing, according to findings published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. The study is the first to look at TV watching in child care in more than 20 years."
Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan
(Chicago Tribune, November 23, 2009)
"Dr. Carlos Pardo was trying to head off trouble. The Johns Hopkins neurologist and his colleagues had autopsied the brains of people with autism who died in accidents and found evidence of neuroinflammation. This rare look inside the autistic brain had the potential to increase understanding of the mysterious disorder. It also, he knew, could inspire doctors aiming to help children recover from autism to develop new experimental treatments -- even though the research was so preliminary the scientists did not know whether the inflammation was good or bad, or even how it might relate to autism. So when Pardo and his colleagues published their paper in the Annals of Neurology in 2005, they added an online primer that clearly explained their findings in layman's terms and sternly warned doctors not to use them to develop treatments. 'We were concerned that the study would raise a lot of controversy and be misused,' Pardo said. 'We were right.'
Over and over, doctors in the autism recovery movement have used the paper to justify experimental treatments aimed at reducing neuroinflammation."
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Mark Macaskill
(The Sunday Times, London, November 22, 2009)
"A new technique developed by scientists in Scotland promises to revolutionise transplant medicine by doubling the life of donor organs and cutting failure rates. Researchers at Edinburgh University have developed a new preservative solution for donor organs that could allow them to be stored for up to 48 hours. The liquid, which contains an agent which releases nitric oxide, reduces the damage caused to cells and blood vessels by oxygen deprivation, one of the main causes of transplant failures. Scientists believe the technique could pave the way for donor hearts, kidneys and livers to be flown to the UK from anywhere in the world. Currently, transplants have to be carried out within 24 hours of the organ being taken from a live donor and almost immediately if the donor is dead. A common cause of failed transplants is when the blood vessels shut down and collapse, starving the organ of oxygen."
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(Associated Press, November 25, 2009)
"Cutting global warming pollution would not only make the planet healthier, it would make people healthier too, newly released studies say. Slashing carbon dioxide emissions could save millions of lives, mostly by reducing preventable deaths from heart and lung diseases, the studies show. They were published in a special issue of The Lancet British medical journal, released Wednesday. The calculations of lives saved were based on computer models that looked at pollution-caused illnesses in certain cities. The figures are also based on the world making dramatic changes in daily life that may at first seem too hard and costly to do, researchers conceded...Instead of looking at the health ills causes by future global warming, as past studies have done, this research looks at the immediate benefits of doing something about the problem."
Tracy McVeigh
(The Observer, London, November 22, 2009)
"A UK-wide survey by the group of 14- to 21-year-olds found that one in three girls and one in two boys thought there were circumstances in which it could be acceptable to hit a woman or force her to have sex. While young women aged 16 to 24 still have the highest risk of becoming victims of aggressive crime in this country, recent statistics show that there has been a significant rise in the numbers turning to violence themselves. Youth Justice Board figures for last year show that, while overall crime rates are falling, there is a 50% rise in violent crime committed by young women. From 2004-5 to 2007-8, there was a 71% rise in the numbers of young women being electronically tagged and a 25% rise in offences committed by girls aged 10 to 17. It means girls are now responsible for around 21% of offences that reach the courts."
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Related story:
Labour Cracks Down on Teenage Violence
Jamie Doward and Amelia Hill
(The Observer, London, November 22, 2009)
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Judy Siegel-Itzkovich
(The Jerusalem Post, November 22, 2009)
"Israelis and former Israelis are behind many of the world's Internet sites that sell counterfeit or other illegal drugs involved in pharmaceutical crimes, providing useless or dangerous products to people who think they are getting the real thing. So says Mickey Arieli, director of the Health Ministry's Pharmaceutical Crime Unit, which has, with the help of the Israel Police, the Customs Authority and foreign units, caught numerous criminals. Yet Arieli and the two other professionals who constitute the unit told The Jerusalem Post in an interview that they were reaching only the 'top of the iceberg' and that these activities seriously endangered public health…Often, preparations claimed to be food supplements actually contain active pharmaceutical ingredients that could harm and even kill. He said that before the establishment of the Internet and the appearance of erectile dysfunction drugs, pharmaceutical crimes had been quite rare."
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Paul Harris
(The Observer, London, November 22, 2009)
"Human trafficking has become a major issue in the Midwest heartland of America, causing some campaigners to dub it a modern form of slavery. Figures from the State Department reveal that 17,500 people are trafficked into the US every year against their will or under false pretences, mainly to be used for sex or forced labour. Experts believe that, when cases of internal trafficking are added, the total number of victims could be up to five times larger. And increasing numbers of trafficked individuals are being transported thousands of miles from America's coasts and into heartland states such as Ohio and Michigan. 'It is not only a crime. It is an abomination,' said Professor Mark Ensalaco, a political scientist at the University of Dayton, Ohio, who organised a recent conference on the issue. In Ohio a human trafficking commission has just been set up to study the problem, while in the northern Ohio city of Toledo a special FBI task force is tackling the issue. For many local law enforcement officials, it is a bewildering new world."
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Editorial
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 22, 2009)
"Heavy-set Americans are starting to throw their weight around in the health-care reform debate. If that sounds ridiculous, it's because it is…The nation can't go on committing death by doughnut without the associated costs burying all hopes of reform. A report called 'The Future Costs of Obesity' was released last week. Based on research by Kenneth E. Thorpe, Ph.D, of Emory University, it put the extent of the crisis in stark terms. Among its findings is that obesity is growing faster than any previous public health issue the nation has faced and, if current trends continue, 103 million Americans will be considered obese by 2018. Given that, the United States will spend $344 billion on health care attributable to obesity nine years from now. But an encouragement lurks in the statistics, too: If obesity rates were held at present rates, the report says, the United States could save almost $200 billion in health-care costs by 2018, an estimated $820 per adult. The fate of health reform depends on ending this epidemic and Congress needs to reject any notion that there's nothing wrong with being fat. In fact, there's everything wrong with it."
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