Now the Children Can Go to School
Twelve months ago The Guardian committed to an ambitious three-year aid project: to raise £2.5m to help change the lives of 25,000 people in Katine, Uganda -- and document the progress on a website to allow donors to see what their money was doing. So is it working?
Madeleine Bunting
(The Guardian, London, November 7, 2008)
"Rural Africa is a graveyard cluttered with projects launched on idealism and ignorance, so The Guardian stepped warily into the ring a year ago when the paper's editor, Alan Rusbridger, launched a three-year commitment to raise £2.5m and work with the African aid agency, Amref, to improve the lives of the 25,000 people of Katine, eastern Uganda, who had suffered civil conflict and floods. But this was an aid project with a difference: every step of the way would be blogged, reported or filmed on a dedicated Guardian website. For the first time, a donor could follow exactly what happened to the donation -- see the budgets and the progress reports. This would be a project that the world could watch. Perhaps they could also help…Amref has built a simple two-roomed office -- one of the smartest buildings in the area -- and brought in a team of 16 Ugandan professionals, expert in delivering different parts of a project that integrates health, education, water/sanitation, governance and livelihoods. Their two white 4x4s have become a regular feature in the district and with them have come huge expectations and a tangible sense of excitement. Managing both becomes a task in itself. Can Amref mobilise the community to engage, signing up for the training and the organising groups on which the project depends, while at the same time ensuring that the expectations are not inflated beyond all hope of fulfilment? Every day, the Amref team in Katine wrestle with such questions as they tackle the enormous task of rebuilding the community's capacity to run itself, so shattered by the trauma of conflict and natural disaster. The level of need in places such as Katine is so vast -- according to Amref's survey last March, the poverty is worse even than it had believed -- that this project, despite its £2.5m budget, can only ever be the first step on the road to recovery. There are always individual gut-wrenching stories we report that will receive little or no direct help."
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Village Education
Editorial
(The Guardian, London, November 10, 2008)
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Ceci Connolly
(The Washington Post, November 12, 2008)
"Two of the Senate's most influential leaders are working separately behind the scenes on legislation that would dramatically alter the way Americans get health care, hoping their early efforts -- including the release today of a position paper -- will push President-elect Barack Obama to move rapidly on the issue and spare the incoming administration some of the missteps that killed Bill Clinton's health reform initiative in 1994."
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Noam N. Levey
(Los Angeles Times, November 11, 2008)
"Groups representing retirees, business and labor call for comprehensive healthcare reform in the new administration's first 100 days. Four leading advocacy groups representing business, labor and retirees are starting a campaign today to press Barack Obama to enact comprehensive healthcare reform, upping the pressure on the president-elect to tackle the issue quickly after he takes office…'Addressing skyrocketing healthcare costs is a critical component of stabilizing household, national and global economies,' the letter said. 'Inaction undermines the economic security of our families; limits the productivity of our workforce; stagnates job creation and wage growth; and threatens to crowd out investments in energy, education and infrastructure.' Obama made healthcare reform a central plank of his presidential campaign, pledging a sweeping effort to expand coverage and lower costs."
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Lisa M. Krieger
(San Jose Mercury News, California, November 11, 2008)
"A dramatic rise in the use of the medical imaging tools like CT scans are increasing health care costs and patients' exposure to radiation, according to a new study. The provocative conclusion by a University of California-San Francisco research team challenges the more-is-better conventional wisdom of many consumers and their doctors. The use of innovative imaging tests like computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which offer doctors a highly detailed view of the body's inner workers, nearly doubled over the past decade, rising from 260 to 478 tests per thousand patients, according to research led by Rebecca Smith-Bindman, an associate professor of radiology at UC-San Francisco."
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Kay Lazar
(The Boston Globe, November 11, 2008)
“Precisely how many assaults take place in emergency rooms is an open question. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which regulates hospitals, does not track assaults on healthcare staff members. The state's hospital association also does not track incidents, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal government's monitor of workplace injuries, counts only assaults resulting in injuries serious enough to miss one or more days of work…However, a 2004 nurses association study found that half of all members surveyed reported being punched at least once in the previous two years, and more than 25 percent said they had been frequently pinched, scratched, and spit on, or had hands or wrists twisted.”
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Bernadette Tansey
(San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 2008)
"Biotechnology industry advocates didn't wait for election day to rehearse arguments against the broad policy changes they expect the Barack Obama administration to propose. Obama's victory, and the Democratic party's commanding control of Congress, are expected to put tough pressure on drug prices as the new president tries to realize his campaign vision of expanded health care coverage for Americans at substantially lower cost. The new regime could also bring policy reversals at the Food and Drug Administration, an agency that became a political battleground during the Bush administration."
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Mary Otto
(The Washington Post, November 9, 2008)
"Pain hides in these green mountains. Diseased hearts and clouded lungs, aching teeth and anxious minds. But for three days a year, more than 800 volunteer doctors, dentists, nurses and other health-care workers come from all over Virginia and beyond to this isolated place in Appalachia to provide free medical care to those who cannot afford it. Sick and hurting people by the hundreds gather and wait for the gates of the Wise County Fairgrounds to swing open -- their presence a testament to the country's health-care crisis."
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Bob Egelko
(San Francisco Chronicle, November 8, 2008)
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won a reprieve from a federal appeals court late Friday after facing a contempt-of-court hearing for failing to come up with $250 million to begin an upgrade of California's decrepit prison health care system. The action by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco gives the financially squeezed state government at least temporary relief from a federal judge's orders to start paying for improvements to bring the health system up to constitutional standards. The system's court-appointed overseer said it also means at least a slight delay in his plans to start building new hospitals and other health facilities for 10,000 inmates and improve current installations."
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Health Care Improvements Have to Wait Awhile
(San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 2008)
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Obama's Bid for Health Care Reform Could Sink or Soar
(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 8, 2008)
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Verne Kopytoff
(San Francisco Chronicle, November 12, 2008)
"Google Inc., through its philanthropic arm, Google.org, is trying to help U.S. authorities fight the flu by introducing a new tool Tuesday that can spot potential epidemics in near real-time. Flu Trends, as the product is called, tracks the number of searches by Google's users for flu-related terms like 'thermometer and 'cold remedies.' A spike in the number of such queries may indicate a flu outbreak in a particular state as people try to find information about their illness. Last year, a test showed that Google's tool highlighted flu outbreaks about two weeks faster than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's tracking, which relies on reports from local hospitals and state health departments. Getting a quicker heads-up may allow officials to ensure that there are enough vaccines on hand in a particular area and to warn residents to get their flu shots."
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(BBC News, Online, November 10, 2008)
"Researchers have developed a system for predicting cholera outbreaks using satellite monitoring of marine environments. They show cholera outbreaks follow seasonal increases in sea temperature. This could provide an early warning system for India and Bangladesh where cholera epidemics occur regularly…Professor Rita Colwell, from the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland has been studying cholera outbreaks for over 30 years. She says the satellite monitoring holds the key to preventing cholera epidemics. 'We can use the current data taken from the satellites to predict when the onset of cholera epidemics will occur, it allows public health authorities to pinpoint exactly when to allocate resources or implement warnings about drinking the water,' she said."
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(Associated Press, November 11, 2008)
"Exercise can do a lot of good for most people, but it apparently isn't much help to those with heart failure, the fastest-growing heart problem in the United States. The study -- the largest ever of exercise in patients whose hearts don't pump enough blood -- left many doctors disappointed. Results were reported Tuesday at an American Heart Association conference. Although there were some encouraging trends and clear benefits for certain people, exercise failed to deliver on the main goal -- keeping people out of the hospital and improving their survival rates."
Opinion, Richard Smith
(The Guardian, London, November 10, 2008)
"The danger of this new trial from the New England Journal of Medicine, which was funded by Astra Zeneca, the manufacturers of rosuvastatin, is that the NHS will be pressurised to make that particular statin available to all. But it's not off patent and will be expensive. Plus everybody will have to go the doctor, have a slew of tests, and be followed up. A much more effective and cheaper strategy will be to get everybody who wants to at 55 to start taking a polypill. And the reason you start at 55 is because age alone is the best predictor of your chances of having a heart attack or stroke. Measuring weight, blood pressure, lipids, and blood sugar doesn't add much useful information, and you don't have to bother with those pesky doctors."
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Rob Stein
(The Washington Post, November 9, 2008)
"A highly anticipated study has produced powerful evidence that a simple blood test can spot seemingly healthy people who are at increased risk for a heart attack or stroke and that giving them a widely used drug offers potent protection against the nation's leading killers. In findings that could transform efforts to prevent cardiovascular disease, the study of nearly 18,000 volunteers in 26 countries found that a cholesterol-lowering statin slashed the risk of those flagged by the test by about half -- even if their cholesterol was normal."
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Michael Hawthorne
(Chicago Tribune, November 14, 2008)
"Looking to bolster the fight against childhood lead poisoning, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month approved a tough new rule aimed at clearing the nation's air of the toxic metal. A key part of the initiative is a new network of monitors that will track lead emissions from factories. But the Bush administration quietly weakened that provision at the last minute by exempting dozens of polluters from scrutiny, federal documents show. Critics say the change undermines a rule that otherwise has been widely hailed as a powerful step forward in protecting children's health…The federal rule was prompted by compelling research showing lead is more dangerous than had been thought. Even low levels of the toxic metal in young children have been linked to learning disabilities, aggression and criminal behavior later in life. Many scientists say there is no safe level of exposure."
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David Adam
(The Guardian, London, November 14, 2008)
"An environmental campaigner today won a landmark victory against the government in a long-running legal battle over the use of pesticides. The high court ruled that Georgina Downs...had produced 'solid evidence' that people exposed to chemicals used to spray crops had suffered harm. The court said the government had failed to comply with a European directive designed to protect rural communities from exposure to the toxins. It said the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) must reassess its policy, and investigate the risks to people exposed...Downs said the government had failed to address the concerns of countryside residents ‘who are repeatedly exposed to mixtures of pesticides and other chemicals throughout every year, and in many cases, like mine, for decades’. People were not given prior notification about what was to be sprayed near their homes and gardens, she complained."
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Juliet Eilperin
(The Washington Post, November 14, 2008)
"The Environmental Protection Agency's scientific advisers have warned the agency that it should delay final action on its decision not to set a federal drinking-water standard for perchlorate, a chemical in rocket fuel, because the computer model underlying the decision may have flaws. In a letter last week, the heads of EPA's Science Advisory Board and its drinking water committee urged EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson to extend the public comment period on its preliminary determination to not regulate perchlorate. That decision is set to become final next month. Perchlorate, which is present in the water systems of 35 states, accumulates in the body from consuming water, milk, lettuce and other common products and has been linked in scientific studies to thyroid problems in pregnant women, newborns and infants."
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Andrew Jacobs
(New York Times, November 13, 2008)
"A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations…For those who breathe the toxic mix, the impact can be deadly. Henning Rodhe, a professor of chemical meteorology at Stockholm University, estimates that 340,000 people in China and India die each year from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases that can be traced to the emissions from coal-burning factories, diesel trucks and wood-burning stoves. 'The impacts on health alone is a reason to reduce these brown clouds,' he said."
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California Economy Loses $28 Billion Yearly to Health Effects of Pollution
(Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2008)
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Opinion, Nora Eisenberg
(The Guardian, London, November 11, 2008)
"Unfortunately, the dangers of modern war extend far beyond weapons. As Iraqis know only too well, areas of Iraq today are among the most polluted on the planet -- so toxic that merely to live, eat and sleep (never mind to fight) in these zones is to risk death. Thousands of soldiers coming home from the war may have been exposed to chemicals that are known to cause cancers and neurological problems. What's most tragic is that the veterans themselves do not always realise that they are in danger from chemical poisoning."
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Opinion, David M. Johnson, Ed.D., is CEO of Navos, formerly Highline West Seattle Mental Health
(Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November, 10, 2008)
"A 2004 study of 6,000 military men and women involved in ground combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan found that of those whose responses indicated a mental health problem, only 23 percent to 40 percent sought psychiatric help. Many who did not seek treatment cited fear of being stigmatized as a reason. For veterans such as those from Washington who return home with physical and mental scars, their wounds can present particular challenges for years to come. The wars rarely make front-page news these days, but the wars still loom large for families left behind during tours of duty and dealing with the war's aftermath in the form of veterans returning with posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and substance abuse."
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Pam Belluck
(The New York Times, November 11, 2008)
"A new study finds striking evidence that children who are obese or have high cholesterol show early warning signs of heart disease. The study, presented Tuesday at the American Heart Association conference in New Orleans, found that the thickness of artery walls of children and teenagers who are obese or have high cholesterol resembled the thickness of artery walls of an average 45-year-old. The study, which has not yet been published, was small, involving 70 children ages 6 to 19, and several experts said the results would need to be replicated to be considered conclusive. But they said the method used to measure artery wall thickness was considered a reliable indicator of heart disease risk, usually more reliable than cholesterol levels or other measures."
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John Carvel
(The Guardian, London, November 10, 2008)
"Nine areas with high levels of obesity are to become 'healthy towns' where the NHS and local authorities will use commercial marketing techniques to reward people who adopt healthier lifestyles, the government said today. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, allocated £30m to trial innovative ways of changing people's behaviour to avert an epidemic of obesity, which he described as England's 'biggest health challenge.'"
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Sarah-Kate Templeton
(The Sunday Times, London, November 9, 2008)
"Hard-hitting adverts showing the danger of fat gathering around people’s internal organs will be used in a £275m government anti-obesity campaign. Research by the Department of Health has found that the public perceives obesity to be a vanity problem and does not regard cakes, biscuits, burgers, chips and crisps as unhealthy. The research did, however, find that people were disgusted by the idea of fat building up around their organs. The Change4Life campaign, to begin tomorrow with the backing of junk food companies, will use this insight in its adverts to show the public that body fat is putting it at risk of serious illness including heart disease and diabetes."
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U.K.: We're All Getting Fatter and it May be Contagious, Claim Economists
(The Observer, London, November 9, 2008)
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(Reuters, November 12, 2008)
"British scientists have figured out why some women develop resistance to the most commonly used breast cancer drug, something that raises the risk their tumors will return, according to a study published on Wednesday. The findings could lead to new tests to determine which women are not likely to benefit from tamoxifen and who should be given other drugs, said Jason Carroll of Cancer Research UK in Cambridge, who led the study published in the journal Nature. 'We can use this information to predict which patients will respond to tamoxifen and more importantly which ones won't,' Carroll told reporters in a telephone briefing. 'More importantly it gives us an idea of what we should be making drugs against.' Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among women worldwide, according to the American Cancer Society. The group estimates about 465,000 women died of breast cancer globally in 2007, and 1.3 million new cases were diagnosed."
Martin Mittelstaedt
(The Globe and Mail, November 12, 2008)
"For years, the Canadian Cancer Society has argued in favour of bans on the cosmetic use of pesticides around homes and gardens. But it has remained silent on the country's biggest use of bug and weed killers: on farms. Now, the society is considering weighing in on whether these sprays pose a cancer risk to farmers, other rural residents near them, and to the wider public from eating foods carrying pesticide residues…Health Canada and the pesticide industry say that products licensed for use are extensively tested, and present no risk to farmers or consumers."
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Sarah Boseley
(The Guardian, London, November 12, 2008)
"Serious questions are today raised about chemotherapy for seriously ill cancer patients, some of whom die as a result of the drugs they are taking. An inquiry into more than 600 deaths within 30 days of chemotherapy has found the treatment probably either caused or hastened death in 27% of cases. As a result, the government advisory group on chemotherapy has brought forward its own report. Cancer tsar Mike Richards said he was very concerned about the report, which prompted him to publish today the National Chemotherapy Advisory Group report on how to improve care."
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(The Economist, November 8, 2008)
"Journalists sometimes joke that the ideal headline for a science story would be something like 'Black holes cure cancer'. Sadly, it will never happen. 'Nanotechnology cures cancer', though, is a pretty good runner-up, and that might just turn out to be true. In fact, nanoparticles…have been used to treat cancer for some time. But these treatments are mainly clever ways of packaging existing drugs, rather than truly novel therapies. Now, however, a second generation of nanoparticles has entered clinical trials."
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(The Boston Globe, November 12, 2008)
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Opinion, Sheila McLean
(The Guardian, London, November 11, 2008)
"The tragic case of Hannah Jones paints a stark picture of the tensions that can sometimes arise in decisions in healthcare, particularly at the end of life. In this case, the judgment of what was in Hannah's best interests was viewed very differently by Hannah and her parents on the one hand, and health officials on the other…These cases highlight two important aspects of medical law. First, they raise the question of when a young person under the age of majority is entitled to make grave healthcare decisions…The next questions, then, are what constitutes 'best interests' and who should decide on them? If the individual is competent (and this is not exclusively age-related), then they should be free to make their own decisions…It is arguably past time that the voices of young people are respected once they are competent."
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Jane Gross
(The New York Times, November 10, 2008)
"Washington joined Oregon last week as the second state where physicians are allowed to prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill people who want to hasten their own deaths. But the question of whether doctors should help patients die is far more nuanced than it was 11 years ago, when the Oregon measure took effect…In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide and upheld a prohibition against it. But in the ruling, the justices conceded that terminally ill patients were entitled to aggressive pain management, even if opiates or barbiturates had the 'double effect' of hastening death."
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A Medical Judgment
Editorial
(The Washington Post, November 10, 2008)
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Kay Lazar and Steven Rosenberg
(The Boston Globe, November 14, 2008)
"A proposal to cease all deliveries at the North Shore Birth Center in Beverly -- one of only two hospital-affiliated centers statewide that offer natural birth options -- has ignited a passionate protest from women across the region. With a debate and potential vote by Beverly Hospital's board of trustees expected Tuesday morning, women have been picketing the hospital, circulating fliers, writing letters to board members, blogging and organizing on Facebook, where more than 500 members have already signed on to the campaign…The controversy comes amid a larger debate in the medical and legal communities about maternity care and high medical malpractice insurance premiums paid by hospitals and doctors. Concern about malpractice lawsuits has prompted physicians nationwide to become hyper-cautious, and that has driven up the numbers nationwide of more controlled, caesarean section births."
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James Randerson
(The Guardian, London, November 13, 2008)
“Fertility treatment does not increase a woman's risk of developing breast cancer, according to a study of more than 25,000 women in the Netherlands. The large study will help to reassure patients concerned that the powerful hormone doses that are part of fertility treatment might put them at risk of developing the disease in the future. At the beginning of an IVF treatment cycle, women are given hormone drugs to stimulate their ovaries to produce more eggs so that clinicians can produce fertilised embryos in vitro. These lead to large spikes in oestrogen levels that could promote the development of breast cancer, which is sensitive to the hormone.”
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(BBC News, Online, November 12, 2008)
"The limit on the number of pregnancies that can be created from the sperm of a single donor should be raised, fertility experts suggest. Dr Mark Hamilton and Dr Allan Pacey, of the British Fertility Society (BFS), said the UK was struggling with a serious shortage of sperm donors. Writing in the British Medical Journal, they said radical reform of the current system was needed. They blamed removal of donor anonymity in 2005 for the donor shortage. Children can now trace their biological parents when they are 18. Overall, the number of sperm donors has fallen by 40% in 15 years. The experts warned that many fertility clinics have long waiting lists, or have been forced to stop providing services altogether."
(Associated Press, November 12, 2008)
"The odds of having a premature baby are lowest in Vermont and highest in Mississippi. The March of Dimes mapped the stark state-by-state disparities in what it called a 'report card' on prematurity Wednesday -- to track progress toward meeting a federal goal of lowering preterm births… More than half a million U.S. babies -- one in every eight -- are born premature each year, a toll that's risen steadily for two decades. The government's goal: No more than 7.6 percent of babies born before completion of the 37th week of pregnancy."
James Randerson
(The Guardian, London, November 11, 2008)
"Using frozen rather than freshly collected embryos during IVF treatment reduces the risks of stillbirth and premature delivery, according to three separate studies published yesterday. The findings, from the US, Finland and Australia, suggest the act of stimulating a woman's ovaries with powerful drugs and then collecting the extra eggs she produces temporarily disrupts any IVF attempt conducted shortly afterwards. The researchers said the results argue for more IVF cycles to be completed using frozen embryos, which goes against current practice."
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(BBC News, Online, November 10, 2008)
"The sheer physical effort involved in breastfeeding may leave babies with stronger lungs well into childhood, researchers suggest. A study of 10-year-olds on the Isle of Wight by UK and US scientists found much better lung function in those breastfed for at least four months. The different mechanics and duration of sucking may be partly responsible, they said, in the journal Thorax. If so, changes to the design of bottles could mimic this effect. Studies have established that breastfeeding protects babies from respiratory problems early in life, but the relationship with lung power later in childhood is less clear-cut."
Sarah-Kate Templeton
(The Sunday Times, London, November 9, 2008)
"A sterile woman is to give birth to the world’s first baby conceived after a full ovary transplant. The 38-year-old was rendered infertile when her ovaries failed at the age of 15, causing her to suffer an early menopause. After receiving an ovary transplanted from her twin sister, the woman, who lives in London, is expected to give birth this week. The pioneering surgery will give hope not only to more than 100,000 British women who suffer an early menopause, but also to those undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer. They could now freeze an ovary before beginning the treatment."
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Andrew Pollack
(The New York Times, November 10, 2008)
“A new antibiotic being developed by a small San Diego company fared well in a clinical trial, holding promise in treating an intestinal superbug that is commonly spread in hospitals and is becoming more deadly. In the trial, the drug developed by Optimer Pharmaceuticals to treat a bacterium, Clostridium difficile, worked better than the only approved drug on the market. The bacterium kills thousands of Americans a year, and that number has been rising sharply, in part because a more virulent strain has emerged.”
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(Associated Press, November 11, 2008)
"A nasty, sometimes deadly stomach bug is at least six times more common than was thought, researchers said Tuesday, based on a survey of hundreds of U.S. hospitals. The germ, Clostridium difficile, is resistant to some antibiotics and has become a regular menace in hospitals and nursing homes. Doctors say it plays a role in hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations each year, and that number has been growing. The latest study estimates that more than 7,100 hospital patients are infected with it on any given day. That number is between 6.5 and 20 times greater than previous estimates, according to the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. Researchers from that group presented their findings Tuesday at a medical conference in Orlando."
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John Keilman
(Chicago Tribune, November 14, 2008)
"Want to stop people from drinking too much? Forget earnest public service announcements. Just make alcohol more expensive. A study released Thursday by the American Journal of Public Health found that when the tax rate on alcohol went up, deaths caused by drinking went down. University of Florida epidemiologist Alexander Wagenaar and his colleagues compared Alaska's alcohol tax rate over a nearly 30-year period with deaths due to alcohol-related diseases such as cirrhosis. They found that when the tax rate shot up, deaths plunged as much as 29 percent. Their study suggests that raising the price of booze could be a more efficient way to address the deadly toll caused by drinking than building new clinics or starting new programs."
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Vanessa Ho
(Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 13, 2008)
"More people are dying from prescription painkillers than ever before in a national epidemic that's eclipsing past drug scourges, including heroin overdoses in the '70s and crack cocaine deaths in the early '90s. The trend, reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is more pronounced in Washington state, health officials said Thursday. Two years ago, local poisonings -- mostly drug overdoses -- surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death by unintentional injury. The main reason: a skyrocketing number of overdoses by prescription opioids."
Ian Sample
(The Guardian, London, November 11, 2008)
"Scientists reported yesterday the discovery of a gene that increases the chances of becoming hooked on the drug. Addicts were 25% more likely to carry the gene variant than people who did not use cocaine, a study found. The discovery is unlikely to lead to a treatment for cocaine addicts, but scientists hope it could be used to screen for those most likely to have problems kicking the habit if they ever try the drug…Genetic factors, scientists believe, account for 70% of cocaine addiction, making it as heritable as schizophrenia and other mental health conditions. Studies of twins suggest alcoholism is about 50% genetic."
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Kaya Burgess
(The Sunday Times, London, November 9, 2008)
“A child under ten is admitted to hospital to be treated for alcohol-related problems once every three days in England, according to Government figures revealed today…Reacting to figures from the Department of Health, Liberal Democrat culture spokesman Don Foster is calling for a change to Britain's drinking culture, and said the Government had ‘completely failed’ to tackle the problem."
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Rhiannon Beacham
(The Independent, London, November 8, 2008)
"Frequent use of ecstasy causes memory problems, according to a new study into the effects of the drug. Ecstasy, one of the most widely used illegal drugs in the UK, causes users difficulty learning new facts, the research has found… Harvard Medical School took part in the research, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council."
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(Associated Press, November 13, 2008)
“For the first time, an expensive vaccine aimed at preventing cervical cancer in women has proven successful at preventing a disease in men, according to a study released Thursday by the vaccine's maker. The disease is genital warts -- sexually transmitted, embarrassing and uncomfortable -- but not life-threatening. Still, the results are expected to bolster a likely bid by the vaccine's manufacturer, Merck & Co. Inc., to begin marketing the vaccine to boys, experts said. Merck plans to ask the government for that approval later this year.”
(Associated Press, November 10, 2008)
"Researchers trying to create the world's first malaria vaccine are launching a massive medical trial as early as next month involving 16,000 children that could be the largest such trial ever conducted on children in Africa…Malaria, caused by parasites and spread by mosquitoes, kills nearly 1 million people every year, most of them children in Africa. The trial may start as early as next month, and should be well under way by January...The massive vaccine trials will be conducted in Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. Dr. Christian Loucq, director of the Malaria Vaccine Initiative, said the project has been working over the past year to upgrade laboratory, computer and other equipment in those countries, train technicians, and even help develop local equivalents of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ensure the trials are properly monitored."
John von Radovitz
(The Independent, United Kingdom, November 10, 2008)
"Air passengers worried about the risk of 'economy class syndrome' could protect themselves by having a flu jab, new research suggests. Vaccinations against influenza significantly reduce the chances of developing dangerous blood clots in the veins, a study has found. Researchers found that the jabs reduced the likelihood of developing a venous thrombotic embolism (VTE) by more than a quarter -- 26 per cent."
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Annys Shin
(The Washington Post, November 14, 2008)
"Federal food safety officials yesterday began holding up shipments of food from China that contain milk or milk-derived ingredients in the largest effort to date to keep products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine from reaching U.S. consumers. The Food and Drug Administration is requiring importers of the halted shipments to test for the chemical, which is used to make plastic and fertilizer but has been added to human and animal food to boost protein readings. The types of products likely to be waylaid are cookies, candies, and other goods made with milk or milk powder."
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Ian Sample
(The Guardian, London, November 12, 2008)
"The government must begin a 'major and urgent' effort to assess the safety of nanomaterials, the tiny particles commonly used in products as varied as sun creams, sports clothing and medicine, leading experts warn today. Hundreds of consumer products made with nanoparticles, which can be 100 times smaller than a virus, are already on the market, despite an almost complete lack of knowledge of the dangers they may pose to human health and the environment, according to a report by the royal commission on environmental pollution."
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James Randerson
(The Guardian, November 10, 2008)
"Magnetic interference from iPod headphones could pose a risk to patients with surgically implanted heart monitoring devices, according to a study involving 60 pacemaker and defibrillator patients. Interference from MP3 player headphones could prove fatal by temporarily deactivating a device, and the research team said patients should keep headphones more than 3cm away from their pacemaker or defibrillator…A Food and Drug Administration report concluded earlier this year that interactions between MP3 players themselves and implanted cardiac devices were unlikely. A separate study presented at the conference found that wireless devices such as Bluetooth are also unlikely to cause a problem."
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Maureen Fan and Ariana Eunjung Cha
(The Washington Post, November 8, 2008)
"How the same substance that had killed pets and was officially banned in China as an additive in food just last year wound up in baby formula and so many other food products is a story of desperate farmers, complicit chemical companies, and government officials who looked the other way. All were part of a system that allowed the network of melamine dealers to thrive. Farmers and companies involved in food and feed production said that the doctoring of their products was an open secret in the countryside but that the salesmen had told them it was harmless."
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(Associated Press, November 13, 2008)
"An increasing number of countries worldwide are making spreading HIV a crime, according to a new report from the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Health officials fear the trend could undermine gains made in fighting the AIDS pandemic and provoke a surge in cases. Globally, about 33 million people are thought to have HIV and nearly 3 million people are newly infected every year. ‘If the law is applied badly, this could set us back and do incredible damage,’ said Paul de Lay, an AIDS expert at UNAIDS, who was not involved in the report."
(BBC News, Online, November 10, 2008)
"Cells have been successfully engineered in the laboratory to overcome one of HIV's most effective defence mechanisms, say researchers. The immune system cells, created by UK and US scientists, can lock on to HIV, even after it has mutated to throw them off the scent. It is hoped the Nature Medicine study could lead to a more effective way of tackling HIV infection."
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Uzbek Children in 'AIDS Outbreak'
(BBC News, Online, November 11, 2008)
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(BBC News, Online, November 13, 2008)
"Carrying extra fat around your middle dramatically increases your risk of early death, even if your overall weight is normal, say researchers. A study of almost 360,000 people from nine European countries found waist size a "powerful indicator" of risk. Each extra 2ins (5cm) raised the chance of early death by between 13% and 17%. The New England Journal of Medicine study stressed GPs should regularly measure patients' waists as a cheap and easy way to assess health."
Stephen Smith
(The Boston Globe, November 12, 2008)
"Nearly 600 fewer Massachusetts residents have died from heart attacks each year since legislators banned smoking in virtually all restaurants, bars, and other workplaces four years ago, according to a report to be released today that provides some of the strongest evidence yet that such laws save lives. The study, conducted by the state Department of Public Health and the Harvard School of Public Health, shows that a steep decline in heart attack deaths started as Boston and most of its neighbors adopted bans. Enforcement of the statewide law beginning in mid-2004 coincided with a further reduction, the study found. From 2003 to 2006, heart attack deaths in Massachusetts plummeted 30 percent, significantly accelerating what had been a more modest long-term decline."
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Mary Engel
(Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2008)
"At least 83 cases of the most drug-resistant form of tuberculosis were diagnosed in the U.S. in the last 15 years, according to the most thorough accounting to date of the global scourge's national impact. But unlike what is happening in much of the developing world, new U.S. cases, already low, have declined sharply over that period, from a high of 18 in 1993 to two in 2007.…Tuberculosis experts hailed the trend, reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association."
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Bernadette Tansey
(San Francisco Chronicle, November 12, 2008)
"The multivitamin-size 'intelligent pill' also has a microprocessor in it and is designed to release its cargo of medicine at the specific spot in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract where it will do the most good, sparing the rest of the body from unnecessary exposure to the drug. So far it's just a prototype, but Philips is talking to drugmakers about using it on colon cancer and bowel inflammation. The iPill has a wireless transmitter, but it plays no tunes. Instead, it sends dispatches about the temperature and acidity of its surroundings to an outside receiver as it travels through the GI tract over the course of a day or two. The acidity, measured by pH, of the gut decreases as the pill gets further from the stomach, and that allows researchers to pinpoint the place where the drug is needed."
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Shankar Vedantam
(The Washington Post, November 11, 2008)
"In October, the Food and Drug Administration approved the magnetic therapy as a treatment for major depression. Many scientists believe that the technique is a harbinger of things to come. Already, researchers are probing its effects on schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder, or manic depression. The basic principle behind the treatment is less kooky than it sounds and comes not from psychiatry but physics -- specifically, the 19th-century discovery of the principle of electromagnetism."
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(Associated Press, November 10, 2008)
"The lives of nearly 8,000 black Americans could be saved each year if doctors could figure out a way to bring their average blood pressure down to the average level of whites, a surprising new study found. The gap between the races in controlling blood pressure is well-known, but the resulting number of lives lost startled some scientists. 'We expected it to be big, but it was even larger than we anticipated,' said the lead author, Dr. Kevin Fiscella of the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry. The study, released Monday in the Annals of Family Medicine, is being called the first to calculate the lives lost due to racial disparities in blood pressure control."
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(The Guardian, London, November 11, 2008)
“A cholera outbreak in a refugee camp has spread to eastern Congo's provincial capital of Goma, as humanitarian groups called for more UN peacekeepers to protect civilians caught up in the fighting between government forces and rebel troops…People have dispersed over a vast, inhospitable area without access to shelter, water, food and medicines. The fighting has severely hampered the ability of aid agencies to reach those who have fled and the outbreak of cholera was inevitable because of the unsanitary conditions.”
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(The Japan Times Online, November 9, 2008)
"The results, released Saturday, showed that 54.3 percent of the respondents believe decisions on whether the organs of brain dead patients should be donated without consent can be made by their families. The survey was carried out in September on 3,000 men and women aged 20 or older across Japan and drew responses from 59 percent. The number was 6.2 points higher than the previous survey in 2006 and exceeded 50 percent for the first time ever, the Cabinet Office said."
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(The New Zealand Herald, November 11, 2008)
"[A report] found the unit costs of hospital services had gone up by 18 per cent in real terms in the five years to 2006, while hospital productivity -- the volume of services produced per person employed -- had gone down by 8 per cent…The former minister's response to the study's findings should be regarded as unacceptable. Health accounts for 20 per cent of government spending. Ministers are accountable for getting value for money. Three separate studies now suggest this is not happening. The new minister of health should take the issue more seriously."
(The Guardian, London, November 14, 2008)
"A 'dismayed and frustrated' Gordon Brown is to press ahead with plans to liberalise the country's rules on organ donations despite the findings of a government appointed taskforce which has decided that it is too soon to change the law. The prime minister is deeply disappointed that the taskforce has failed to endorse a new system in which everyone would automatically be considered a donor after their death unless they opted out during their lifetime, or relatives objected. Brown believes that this system, known as 'presumed consent', would save hundreds of lives by overcoming an acute organ shortage."
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(The Independent, London, November 10, 2008)
"Patients should not place 'false hope' in promises made by untested internet miracle cures, medical experts warned today. Independent medical charity Sense About Science said many vulnerable patients are being duped by 'surreptitious promotion and misleading stories' online and spending thousands of pounds on drugs that might be nothing more than snake oil. The charity said it is worried about 'the emotional and financial costs of over-hyped treatment claims that sell false hope.'"
(The Observer, London, November 9, 2008)
“Treatment at one of Britain's leading children's hospitals is worse than that in the developing world, according to a damning doctors' report uncovered by The Observer which also reveals how parents are ‘told lies’ to cover up sub-standard care. In the document, which the head of the Royal College of Surgeons describes as alarming, consultants are scathing about the Birmingham Children's Hospital. Last night MPs called for a full inquiry into the quality of care at the hospital, where children are treated for life-threatening conditions such as liver or kidney failure, neurological problems and chronic heart complaints.”
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(The Times, London, November 8, 2008)
“The Government has announced that it has approved ‘top-up’ payments by patients for cancer drugs not available on the NHS. Cause for celebration, then, after long campaigns by patients and voluntary organisations. Or is it? If news reports have created the impression that we should hang out the flags because NHS cancer patients in England and Wales are now allowed to spend thousands of pounds of their own money on cancer drugs, do we run the risk of missing the real lesson of this story -- that no NHS patient should ever have to pay for a cancer drug? This is a point that even the Government has acknowledged, but some health organisations believe that we are in danger of letting the Government off the hook on the improvements in NHS drug supply that should benefit us all.”
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(The Washington Times, November 13, 2008)
"Federal agencies' failure to conduct adequate border inspections and share information allowed two men infected with highly contagious forms of tuberculosis to skirt security measures and travel throughout the U.S. and abroad last year, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) failed to share appropriate data, conduct adequate border inspections and employ quarantine measures for highly contagious diseases, according to a GAO report released Thursday titled Public Health and Border Security. Various factors -- a lack of comprehensive procedures for information sharing and coordination as well as border inspection shortfalls -- hindered the federal response to the two TB incidents, the report said."
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(The Globe and Mail, Canada, November 13, 2008)
"Canada's health care spending is expected to reach its highest level ever -- $171.9-billion this year or $5,170 per person -- growing faster than the economy, outpacing inflation and population growth, new figures released Thursday reveal. Health care spending represents 10.7 per cent of the gross domestic product, the highest share ever recorded in this country, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) study. 'In the context of recent changes in the economy,' says Glenda Yeates, CIHI's president and chief executive officer, 'it is important to keep monitoring these trends in order to better understand how our dollars are being spent and how we compare with other countries.'"
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(The Boston Globe, November 13, 2008)
"Perhaps most striking in the survey is the link between health and the perception of neighborhood safety. Across the state, the survey found that people who described themselves as being in fair or poor health were twice as likely to report concerns about neighborhood violence as residents who said they are in excellent health. The least healthy people were more likely to say they lacked access to basic staples of healthy living in their neighborhoods, such as a grocery offering fresh produce, a doctor's office, a pharmacy, an affordable place to exercise, and a safe park. But violence stands out as a pressing concern, with the greatest worry expressed by young adults."
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(The Detroit News, November, 10, 2008)
"No matter their age, being on dialysis is a stark reality for people with chronic kidney disease. Common knowledge is, short of a miracle, the only way to get off dialysis is to have a kidney transplant -- or die. And life on dialysis is not an easy one. The treatments can result in occasional nausea, muscle cramps or dizziness. The day after treatment, people complain about being wiped out, and up to 90 percent of dialysis patients report experiencing intense itching, according to the American Association of Kidney Patients. It's also expensive. Fortunately, almost all kidney patients are covered by some form insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid."
(The Sacramento Bee, California, November 10, 2008)
"Rising health costs and dwindling insurance coverage are driving hundreds of thousands of Americans to travel far to avoid potentially devastating medical bills…Other than organ transplants, there's little data on the safety of medical travel, but 'there is no question that it is increasing,' said Dr. Arnold Milstein, chief physician at Mercer Health and Benefits, a firm that advises companies on medical insurance. 'In the U.S., it's getting to be pretty Darwinian in terms of who lives and who dies,' said Milstein."
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Editorial
(The Baltimore Sun, November 9, 2008)
“In 2007, 11.3 infants died for every 1,000 live births here -- more than in Hong Kong, the Czech Republic or Malaysia. And the faces of the crisis are well known to Sheila Washington, a recruiter for the city's Healthy Start initiative that helps pregnant women and new mothers by providing medical care, food, furniture and other services. Since 1992, the program has enrolled more than 10,000 new and expecting mothers in an effort to reduce infant deaths in the city. And yet the infant mortality rate has remained depressingly constant over the years.”
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