SanLuisObispo.com: Health

Medical association backs health system reform

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:07 PST

By By MONICA RHOR and LINDSEY TANNER -- The American Medical Association on Monday rebuffed dissident members and voted to stick with support for ongoing health reform efforts, while reiterating wariness over proposals that threaten doctors' pocketbooks and independence.

The action at the group's semiannual meeting in Houston could be seen as a vote of confidence for AMA leaders who voiced support for the $1.2-trillion, 10-year bill the U.S. House passed Saturday.

Several dissident doctor organizations within the AMA had urged the group to reverse its position and come out with a strong statement opposing Democrat-led reform efforts. Some urged the AMA's 544-member House of Delegates to vote to oppose any health overhaul that includes a public insurance option and Medicare payment cuts to doctors, and that excludes tort reform.

UK starts study on using human DNA in animals

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:42 PST

By By MARIA CHENG -- British scientists begin a new study on Tuesday to consider how human DNA is used in animal experiments and to determine what the boundaries of such controversial science might be.

Though experts have been swapping human and animal DNA for years - like replacing animal genes with human genes or growing human organs in animals - scientists at the Academy of Medical Sciences want to make sure the public is aware of what is happening in laboratories before proceeding further.

"It sounds yucky, but it may be well worth doing if it's going to lead to a cure for something horrible," said Robin Lovell-Badge, a stem cell expert at Britain's National Institute for Medical Research, and a member of the group conducting the study.

Scanning invisible damage of PTSD, brain blasts

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:02 PST

By By LAURAN NEERGAARD -- Powerful scans are letting doctors watch just how the brain changes in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion-like brain injuries - signature damage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It's work that one day may allow far easier diagnosis for patients - civilian or military - who today struggle to get help for these largely invisible disorders. For now it brings a powerful message: Problems too often shrugged off as "just in your head" in fact do have physical signs, now that scientists are learning where and how to look for them.

"There's something different in your brain," explains Dr. Jasmeet Pannu Hayes of Boston University, who is helping to lead that research at the Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD. "Just putting a real physical marker there, saying that this is a real thing," encourages more people to seek care.

WHO: AIDS leading cause of death, disease in women

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:48 PST

By By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER -- In its first study of women's health around the globe, the World Health Organization said Monday that the AIDS virus is the leading cause of death and disease among women between the ages of 15 and 44.

Unsafe sex is the leading risk factor in developing countries for these women of childbearing age, with others including lack of access to contraceptives and iron deficiency, the WHO said. Throughout the world, one in five deaths among women in this age group is linked to unsafe sex, according to the U.N. agency.

"Women who do not know how to protect themselves from such infections, or who are unable to do so, face increased risks of death or illness," WHO said in a 91-page report. "So do those who cannot protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy or control their fertility because of lack of access to contraception."

Nobel-winning Russian physicist dies at 93

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:37 PST

By By MANSUR MIROVALEV -- Vitaly Ginzburg, a Nobel Prize-winning Russian physicist and one of the fathers of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, has died in Moscow. He was 93.

Ginzburg died late Sunday of cardiac arrest, the Russian Academy of Sciences said Monday.

Ginzburg won the 2003 Nobel Prize in physics with two other scientists for their contribution to theories on superconductivity, the ability of some materials to conduct electricity without resistance.

Lawmaker wants probe of E. coli and school lunches

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:52 PST

By By LIBBY QUAID -- The chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee wants an investigation into the risk of deadly E. coli getting into school lunches.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., is worried about a recent outbreak that killed at least two people and sickened about two dozen others in 11 states.

The E. coli outbreak was linked to ground beef produced by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, N.Y.

W. Africa's last giraffes make surprising comeback

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:21 PST

By By TODD PITMAN -- A crisp African dawn is breaking overhead, and Zibo Mounkaila is on the back of a pickup truck bounding across a sparse landscape of rocky orange soil.

The tallest animals on earth are here, the guide says, somewhere amid the scant green bush on one side, and the thatched dome villages on the other.

They're here, but by all accounts, they shouldn't be.

Prized mushroom collection returns to China

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:35 PST

By By DAVID WIVELL -- A Chinese scholar persecuted during the Cultural Revolution for smuggling a rare collection of mushrooms out of China before World War II was honored Saturday when the collection was returned more than 70 years later.

At a ceremony at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Cornell University President David Skorton handed over the collection that had been meticulously gathered by scholar Shu Chun Teng.

Teng studied mycology at Cornell University in the 1920s, then spent the next decade traveling on horseback gathering molds, lichens, yeasts, rusts and morels in the forests, fields and marshes of his homeland.

Seattle team wins $900,000 in Space Elevator Games

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:00 PST

By By JOHN ANTCZAK -- A Seattle team has collected a $900,000 prize in a NASA-backed competition to develop the concept of an elevator to space - an idea spurred by science fiction novels.

The team's robotic machine raced up more than 2,950 feet of cable dangling from a helicopter.

Powered by a ground-based laser pointed up at the robot's photo voltaic cells that converted the light into electricity, the LaserMotive machine completed one of its climbs in about three minutes and 48 seconds, good for second-place money.

World leaders needed at talks to cut climate deal

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:30 PST

By By KATY DAIGLE and ARTHUR MAX -- After two years of tough U.N. climate talks often pitting the world's rich against the poor, negotiators said Friday a new global agreement now rides on industrial nations pledging profound emissions cuts next month in Copenhagen.

Negotiators from industrial nations, including the United States, said eleventh-hour promises are possible and a global warming pact can be reached.

But developing countries complained that pledges so far were nowhere near enough to avoid a catastrophe, and that world leaders need to take part in the 192-nation conference on Dec. 7-18 to cut a meaningful deal.

In Europe, most swine flu shots by invitation only

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:56 PST

By By MARIA CHENG -- In Britain, there are no long lines of people seeking swine flu vaccine. Doctor's offices aren't swamped with desperate calls. And there are no cries of injustice that the vaccine is going to wealthy corporations or healthy people who don't really need it.

Here, and across most of Europe, vaccine to protect against the pandemic flu is mostly given by invitation only to those at highest risk for flu complications.

"That is one of the great advantages of the British health system," said Dr. Steve Field, president of the Royal College of General Physicians. "We have a list of all the names of patients who qualify to be vaccinated."

Poll: One-third able to get swine flu vaccine

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:35 PST

By By MIKE STOBBE -- Only about a third of adults who have tried to get a swine flu vaccine have been able to get it, according to a new national poll released Friday.

That's true even for people who are at extra risk for severe complications and should be at the front of the line. The numbers are about the same for parents who tried to get the vaccine for their children, the Harvard School of Public Health poll found.

Swine flu vaccine has been available in the United States for about a month, but supplies have been limited because of manufacturing delays. However, availability is picking up, said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 38 million doses of swine flu are currently available, a one-week increase of about 11 million doses. Another 8 million doses are expected next week, she added.

New gene therapy halts 2 boys' rare brain disease

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:20 PST

By By LAURAN NEERGAARD -- French scientists mixed gene therapy and bone marrow transplants in two boys to seemingly halt a brain disease that can kill by adolescence. The surprise ingredient: They disabled the HIV virus so it couldn't cause AIDS, and then used it to carry in the healthy new gene.

The experiment marks the first time researchers have tried that long-contemplated step in people - and the first effective gene therapy against a severe brain disease, said lead researcher Dr. Patrick Aubourg of the University Paris-Descartes.

Although it's a small, first-step study, it has "exciting implications" for other blood and immune disorders that had been feared beyond gene therapy's reach, said Dr. Kenneth Cornetta, president of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.

Study: Nitrogen pollution worsens in Rockies lakes

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:00 PST

By By JUDITH KOHLER -- Airborne nitrogen pollution from vehicle exhaust and farm fertilizer is turning algae in the alpine lakes of Rocky Mountain National Park into junk food for fish, a study says.

A similar phenomenon is occurring in Sweden and Norway, according to the study of about 90 high-elevation lakes set to be published in the journal Science on Friday.

Arizona State University professor James Elser, the study's lead author, said the effect of airborne nitrogen on once-pristine lakes is greater than previously believed. The nitrogen's sources include vehicle exhaust, fertilizer used on farms and livestock feed lots and power plant emissions.

Caribbean, Gulf spared widespread coral damage

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:50 PST

By By DAVID McFADDEN -- Lower-than-feared sea temperatures this summer gave a break to fragile coral reefs across the Caribbean and the central Gulf of Mexico that were damaged in recent years, scientists said Thursday.

Unusually warm water in recent years has caused the animals that make up coral to expel the colorful algae they live with, creating a bleached color. If the problem persists, the coral itself dies - killing the environment where many fish and other marine organisms live.

"We dodged a bullet this year. The good news is that temperatures didn't get quite warm enough for there to be a large-scale bleaching problem," said C. Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch network. He was among scientists gathered in Puerto Rico's capital for a meeting of the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force.

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup got swine flu vaccine

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:00 PST

By By KAREN MATTHEWS -- Some of New York's biggest companies, including Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, received doses of swine flu vaccine for at-risk employees, drawing criticism that the hard-to-find vaccine is going first to the privileged.

Hospitals, universities and the Federal Reserve Bank also got doses of the vaccine for employees who need it the most, such as pregnant women or chronically ill workers, according to the city's health department.

In order to receive the vaccine, companies had to have their own medical staff. Distributing large doses of the vaccine to such businesses is "a great avenue for vaccinating people at risk," said Jessica Scaperotti, spokeswoman for the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.