Cigarettes As Gifts Undermines China's Anti-Smoking

BEIJING, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Despite knowing all the harms of smoking, Li Pingping, who lives in Shanghai, still decided to buy two cartons of cigarettes as presents for her father back in southwest China's Chongqing.

"When you pick up gifts for the elders during festivals or anniversaries, cigarettes are a nice choice," she said.

Li will take the cigarettes with her on the three-hour-flight to her hometown Chongqing Municipality.

It's Chinese tradition to give cigarettes when meeting new friends or visiting relatives, either to show friendliness or respect.

But the tradition has long stood in the way of the government's and anti-smoking organization's efforts to discourage smoking.

Xu Guihua, deputy director of Chinese Association on Tobacco Control (CATC), said "the lack of understanding and support" has made their job difficult.

The truth is, in China, not only are the smokers exchanging cigarettes as gifts, nonsmokers are also fanning the flame by buying cigarettes for their friends and family and are unwittingly exposing themselves to second-hand smoke.

Li Pingping said her father is the only smoker in the family off our, but no one minds him smoking when they spend time together, nor do they mind when he meets with chain-smoking guests in their apartment.

"I always buy cigarettes for elders, they could send those cigarettes to their friends even when they quit smoking. It is a practical gift and, most often, they like it," she said.

But it is not easy to break the habit of smoking.

Yang Xu, doctor at the Cardiovascular Institute of Fuwai Hospital, said, "A small percentage of heavy smokers face the potential danger of sudden death as abrupt smoking cessation can cause many health disorders."

The Chinese anti-smoking authorities are aware of this problem.

Yang Gonghuan, director of the National Tobacco Control Office, has called for more effective publicity to help people understand the hazards of smoking.

And just days ahead of the Spring Festival, the Ministry of Health(MOH), the World Health Organization, and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention jointly launched a program to distribute 200,000 anti-smoking posters across the country.

"You have sent your friends both blessings and respiratory problems such as lung caner; you have sent your colleagues both respect and cardio vascular diseases such as heart disorders and stroke; you have sent your family love, care and death," a poster reads.

Non-governmental organizations and individuals are also joining the fight against smoking advertising campaigns.

Wu Yiqun, deputy director of the Think tank Research Center for Health Development, a Beijing-based non-governmental organization, often asks anti-smoking experts to write complaint letters to health authorities.

His proposals included banning tobacco companies' sponsorship in Shanghai's Formula One, smoking scenes in the popular TV series the Shanghai Grand, accentuating warning signs on cigarette packs and dissuading tobacco companies from attending quake relief charity awards.

In spite of all the endeavors made, the result is far from satisfactory.

According to the annual smoking control report by MOH, the number of young smokers are on the rise.

MOH statistics show that about 350 million people smoke in China, or almost 36 percent of the population aged above 15, and about one million die of smoking-related ailments annually.

The number of young smokers aged from 13 to 18 has hit 130 million in China.

The tobacco control difficulty is that "a nonsmoking, no cigarette-distributing and no cigarettes as gifts has not emerged in the society," said Yang Gonghuan.

"It's part of the Chinese custom to send cigarettes as gifts. Sending cigarettes is, in fact, planting dangers," he said.

Chen Wei, 36, a primary school teacher who has smoked for 20 years, is fully aware of the hazards of smoking and has heard all the discouragement from health organizations.

But he still expects his friends to send him cigarettes.

"I would still buy cigarettes anyway. And if someone gave me cigarettes as a gift, I would save some money on that."

"A lot of guys smoke around me, and it's impolite if I don't get a pack ready to give them or not to receive my friends' or relatives' cigarettes when they want to show some closeness," he said.

source: chinaview.cn

A Future for Stem Cells

As President Obama continues his welcome sprint past former President George W. Bush's policies - goodbye gag rules, torture, inattention to climate change - we'd like to pause at one destination that has a particular interest for California. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration approved a request from Geron, a biotechnology company based in Menlo Park, to begin a human clinical trial testing embryonic stem cells.

The new decision's an excellent sign for stem cell researchers and those who have been desperately waiting for treatments. Though Obama has yet to lift all of Bush's restrictions on stem cell research, and the FDA's act doesn't mean that the federal government will be immediately investing much money in it, it does mean that the United States is finally ready to move forward. But it presents California's Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) - the San Francisco-based stem-cell institution formed to disperse $3 billion worth of bond money that California voters approved in 2004 - with a challenge. Now that the federal government is ready to take up the issue of stem cells, what will CIRM do with all that money?

One thing it won't be doing is giving that money back, despite the state's dire economic situation. Since the voters approved the money, there isn't much of a mechanism to stop CIRM from spending it.

That said, CIRM's main function may turn out to be positioning California as a job center and research hub for stem-cell research. (Economic research has shown that wherever the first seeds of a new industry germinate is where the hub of the entire industry tends to grow.) And provided that they realign their mission and funding goals, there's no reason why CIRM can't be as crucial to the future of stem-cell research as the federal government will be.

Fortunately, CIRM has already started to think about the future. "We have discussed doing things differently," said Don Gibbons, CIRM's chief communications officer. "For example, the National Institutes of Health tends to fund basic research, not transitional research, and the latter is what you need in order to get your product to market. So this month and next month we'll be talking about whether or not we should reallocate some of our funding to that research, so that we can help move stem cells to therapies and patients more quickly."

Gibbons added that the institute may also consider funding more "non cell-therapy uses of stem cells" that have shown great promise, such as drug development. "Vioxx wouldn't have gotten onto the market, for instance, if companies had been able to use stem cells to test for toxicity," he said.

We're heartened to see that CIRM is prepared to change with the times, and we encourage it to leverage the generosity of the California voter to form more partnerships with private companies and, one day soon, the federal government. California needs to stay a leader in the field of biotechnology.

source: sfgate.com

Democratic Stealth Care

With the nation preoccupied by the financial crisis, Democrats have been quietly working to nationalize health care.

Tom Daschle is still waiting to be confirmed as secretary of health and human services, not that he's in any rush. Democrats are already enacting his and Barack Obama's agenda of government-run health care -- entirely on the QT.

This was the real accomplishment of this week's House vote for the $819 billion "stimulus," and is the overriding theme of Congress's first month. With the nation occupied with the financial crisis, and with that crisis providing cover, Democrats have been passing provision after provision to nationalize health care.

If Democrats learned anything from the HillaryCare defeat, it was the danger of admitting to their wish to federalize the health market. Since returning to power, they've pursued a new strategy: to stealthily and incrementally expand government control. "What no one is paying attention to in the [stimulus]," says Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, "is that Democrats are making a big grab at the health-care sector."

It began one week after the swearing-in, when Nancy Pelosi whipped through a big expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The Schip bill was Democrats' first stab at stealth expansion, unveiled in 2007, though vetoed by George W. Bush.

Initially designed for children of working-poor families, this new Super-Schip will be double in size, and even kids whose parents make $65,000 a year will be eligible. The program will also now cover pregnant women and automatically enroll their new arrivals. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 2.4 million individuals will drop their private coverage for the public program.

Still, it's the "stimulus" that has proven the real gift horse -- a behemoth that has allowed Democrats to speed up the takeover of health care under cover of an economic crisis. They initially claimed, for instance, the "stimulus" would provide Medicaid money to states struggling to pay existing bills. What in fact it does is dramatically expand the number of Americans who qualify for Medicaid.

Under "stimulus," Medicaid is now on offer not to just poor Americans, but Americans who have lost their jobs. And not just Americans who have lost their jobs, but their spouses and their children. And not Americans who recently lost their jobs, but those who lost jobs, say, early last year. And not just Americans who already lost their jobs, but those who will lose their jobs up to 2011. The federal government is graciously footing the whole bill. The legislation also forbids states to apply income tests in most cases.

House Democrat Henry Waxman was so thrilled by this blowout, it was left to Republicans to remind him that the very banking millionaires he dragged to the Hill last year for a grilling would now qualify for government aid. His response? A GOP proposal to limit subsidies to Americans with incomes under $1 million was accepted during markup, but had disappeared by final passage. In this new health-care nirvana, even the rich are welcome. CBO estimates? An additional 1.2 million on the federal Medicaid dime in 2009.

The "stimulus" also hijacks Cobra, a program that lets the unemployed retain access to their former company health benefits -- usually for about 18 months. The new stimulus permits any former employee over the age of 55 to keep using Cobra right up until they qualify for Medicare at age 65. And here's the kicker: Whereas employees were previously responsible for paying their health premiums while on Cobra, now the feds will pay 65%. CBO estimates? Seven million Americans will have the feds mostly pay their insurance bills in 2009.

The bill even takes a whack at the private market. Under the guise of money for "health technology," the legislation makes the government the national coordinator for electronic health records, able to certify what platforms are acceptable. This is an attempt to squelch a growing private market that is competing to improve transparency and let consumers compare providers and costs. In liberal-world, only government should be publishing (and setting) health-care prices.

Add it up, and Democrats may move 10 million more Americans under the federal health umbrella -- in just four weeks! Good luck ever cutting off that money. Meanwhile, the Democratic majority is gearing up for a Medicare fight, where it may broach plans to lower the eligibility age to 55. Whatever costs accrue, they'll pay for by slashing the private Medicare Advantage option.

Mr. Obama will, of course, offer his health-care reform at some point. But he's clearly happy to get what he can, when he can. Despite talk of entitlement reform, he's voiced no disapproval of this vast new health-care grab. And don't forget he chose Mr. Daschle, who appreciates stealth himself. In his 2008 book outlining his health-care reform, he offers his party two pieces of political advice: Move fast, before there can be a public debate, and write as vague a bill as possible.

Guiding all of this is the left's hope that by the time America wakes up to what's happening, it'll be too late. Democrats might be on to something.

Write to kim@wsj.com
source: online.wsj.com

Octuplets' Mother Already Has Twins, Four oother Children

By Jessica Garrison, Andrew Blankstein and Jeff Gottlieb
When she learned that she was expecting multiple babies, doctors gave her the option of selectively reducing the number of embryos, but she declined.

The woman who gave birth to octuplets this week already has six young children and never expected that the fertility treatment she received would result in eight more babies, her mother said Thursday.

Dr. Harold Henry, right, a member of the octuplets' delivery team at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower, leaves a news conference with neonatalogist Mandhir Gupta, left, and Karen Maples, chief of service for obstretics and gynecology. The doctors were peppered with questions about how the hospital handled the pregnancy. Hospital officials said the mother came to Kaiser already in her 12th week of pregnancy. They did not say where she received her fertility treatment.

The woman, who has not been publicly identified, had embryos implanted last year, and "they all happened to take," Angela Suleman said, leading to the eight births Monday. "I looked at those babies. They are so tiny and so beautiful."

She acknowledged that raising 14 children is a daunting prospect.

"It's going to be difficult," Suleman added, noting that her daughter's father is going back to Iraq, where neighbors said he worked as a contractor, to help support the expanded family.

The mother of the octuplets lives on a well-kept cul-de-sac in Whittier, where more than a dozen reporters and camera crews descended Thursday.

Neighbors said she and her six children -- ages 7, 6, 5, 3 and 2-year-old twins -- live there with her mother. Her marital status is unknown. Family members did not answer the door, but when a reporter called the home asking for Suleman, she spoke briefly.

According to her account, when her daughter discovered that she was expecting multiple babies, doctors gave her the option of selectively reducing the number of embryos, but she declined.

"What do you suggest she should have done? She refused to have them killed," Suleman said as the sound of children could be heard in the background. "That is a very painful thing."

The information about the family came amid growing questions about the medical ethics of the case and how the woman came to carry eight babies to term.

Although the successful births at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower have received worldwide attention, they also have prompted disapproval from some medical ethicists and fertility specialists, who argue that high-number multiple births endanger the mother and also frequently lead to long-term health and developmental problems for the children.

Under the guidelines of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, U.S. doctors normally would not implant more than two embryos at a time in a woman under the age of 35. After that age it is more difficult to become pregnant. The mother of the octuplets is believed to be 33, based on available public records.

The doctors who delivered the babies held a news conference Thursday in which they were peppered with questions about how the hospital handled the woman's pregnancy.

Hospital officials said the woman came to Kaiser already in her 12th week of pregnancy. They did not say where she received the fertility treatment.

Dr. Harold Henry, a member of the delivery team, said doctors counseled her regarding the options and risks -- among them aborting some of the fetuses.

"Our goal is to provide the best possible care, no matter what the situation or circumstances are," Henry said. "What I do is just explain the facts. I always talk about the risks. The mother weighs those options, and she chooses the option based on spiritual or personal makeup."

Henry said the eight children would "require quite a bit of resources. You need many diapers, bottles, car seats, food -- quite a bit."

Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel had planned for the births for months. They were expecting to deliver seven babies but discovered the eighth during delivery. It took only five minutes to deliver all eight by Caesarean section.

The births marked only the second time that octuplets had been successfully delivered in the United States.

At the news conference, Dr. Karen Maples read a statement from the mother in which she thanked the Kaiser staff for its help and support.

"We understand that you are all curious about the arrival of the octuplets, and we appreciate your respect for our family's privacy. Please know in our own time, we will share additional details about this miraculous experience," the statement said.

"The babies continue to grow strong every day and make good progress. My family and I are ecstatic about their arrival. Needless to say, the eighth was a surprise to us all, but a blessing as well."

"We thank all of you for the positive thoughts, prayers and generosity."

Already, Kaiser officials said, the mother is receiving gift baskets, sealed envelopes and flowers.

source: latimes.com

Zoloft, Lexapro the Best of Newer Antidepressants

THURSDAY, Jan. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Sertraline (Zoloft) and escitalopram (Lexapro) are the best of 12 new-generation antidepressants, while reboxetine is the least effective, a new analysis shows.

The Italian researchers reviewed 117 studies that included more than 25,000 patients with major depression to come to this conclusion.

The drugs tested in the trials were bupropion (Wellbutrin/Zyban), citalopram (Celexa), duloxetine (Cymbalta), escitalopram, fluoxetine (Prozac), fluvoxamine (Luvox), milnacipran (Savella), mirtazapine (Remeron), paroxetine (Paxil), reboxetine (Edronax/Vestra), sertraline, and venlafaxine (Effexor).

Based on their analysis, the review authors concluded sertraline and escitalopram were the best antidepressants overall in terms of efficacy and patient acceptability. Sertraline was found to be more effective than duloxetine by 30 percent, fluvoxamine (27 percent), fluoxetine (25 percent), paroxetine (25 percent), and reboxetine (85 percent). Escitalopram was more effective than duloxetine by 33 percent, fluoxetine (32 percent), fluvoxamine (35 percent), paroxetine (30 percent), and reboxetine (95 percent).

Mirtzapine and venlafaxine were as effective as sertraline and escitalopram. But the latter two drugs had the best patient acceptability, which meant significantly fewer patients stopped treatment.

The review was published online Jan. 29 and was expected to be published in an upcoming print issue of The Lancet.

"The most important clinical implication of the results is that escitalopram and sertraline might be the best choice when starting a treatment for moderate to severe major depression, because they have the best possible balance between efficacy and acceptability," Dr. Andrea Cipriani, of the University of Verona in Italy, and colleagues said in a news release from the journal.

"Sertraline seems to be better than escitalopram because of its lower cost in most countries. However, in the absence of a full economic model, this recommendation cannot be made unequivocally, because several other costs are associated with the use of antidepressants," they added.

More information
The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has more about antidepressants.

New Look at Food Safety After Peanut Tainting

By GARDINER HARRIS and PAM BELLUCK
Christopher Meunier, 7, had not been sick since he was a toddler, but in late November, he suddenly had a high fever and bloody diarrhea and started vomiting.

Christopher Meunier had salmonella poisoning last year. “He was just screaming in pain,” his mother, Gabrielle Meunier, said.

“He was just in screaming pain,” said his mother, Gabrielle Meunier of South Burlington, Vt. “He said, ‘It hurts so bad, I want to die’ — something you don’t expect to hear out of a 7-year-old’s mouth.”

Hospitalized for six days, Christopher had salmonella poisoning, making him one of more than 500 people sickened across the country after eating peanut butter or peanut products made at a Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga.

The Food and Drug Administration has charged that the company knowingly shipped contaminated products to some of the largest food makers in the country from a plant that was never designed to make peanut butter safely, causing one of the most extensive food recalls in history. The company responded that it disagreed with some of the agency’s findings and that it had “taken extraordinary measures to identify and recall all products that have been identified as presenting a potential risk.”

Food scares have become as common as Midwestern tornadoes. Cantaloupes, jalapen~os, lettuce, spinach and tomatoes have all been subject to major recalls in recent years. And a growing list of manufacturers and trade associations joined consumer advocates in begging for stricter regulations — calls that the Bush administration largely rejected.

A clutch of legislative proposals this year would offer fixes to the system, and people offering those measures expect President Obama to support them because, as a candidate, he repeatedly promised reforms.

“Far too often, tainted food is not recalled until too late,” Mr. Obama said last year. “When I am president, it will not be business as usual when it comes to food safety. I will provide additional resources to hire more federal food inspectors.”

Nearly all of the proposed legislation under consideration would require companies like the Peanut Corporation of America to lay out specific plans for manufacturing safely and testing routinely. The bills would require that test results and other records be made available to government inspectors upon demand, and would provide additional money for more intense inspections of domestic and foreign food factories. Some would also fix the patchwork system by which outbreaks are detected.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, also propose creating a food agency independent of the F.D.A. so that food would receive single-minded attention. At present, at least 12 federal agencies regulate food safety. The battle between those who would strengthen the F.D.A. and those who would break it up will be an important fight this year.

“I think I can prevail on the president to take a fresh look at this,” Mr. Durbin said. “We can no longer forgive or explain what’s happening with food safety in this country.”

Neither the White House nor the Health and Human Services Department would comment on Thursday. But the peanut case, critics say, demonstrates just how badly the system needs fixing, starting with the patchwork surveillance system that is the first indicator that something has gone wrong.

Cases like Christopher’s are reported to local health departments, which in turn are to report them to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By mid-November, the disease centers had seen enough cases of a similar strain of salmonella to be concerned.

“The numbers were not necessarily significant initially — one here, one there,” said Lola Russell, a disease centers spokeswoman. “Over time, those numbers began to grow.”

By mid-December, the Minnesota Department of Health, known as among the best in the nation, had received reports of nine people with salmonella poisoning. As a result, the department’s Team Diarrhea, a group of graduate students who work nights, started calling patients and their caregivers to ask about their food choices .

“We had a lot of peanut-butter eaters,” said Carlota Medus, a state epidemiologist. “But none of the brand names were matching up well.”

Other states were reporting similar cases, but as in Minnesota, no one could figure out the shared food. The process is fraught with uncertainty. State health officials ask people what they remember eating in the days before they became ill. Poor memories and bad records hamper these efforts, and officials are often sent on fruitless pursuits.

Delay is part of the problem. More than two weeks generally pass between the time someone is diagnosed with an illness and the result of a stool sample test is passed on to federal officials.

Last year, the F.D.A. announced a recall of tomatoes, only to discover near the end of the outbreak that the problem had actually been with jalapen~os. Tomato growers, who saw much of their crop destroyed and endured millions in losses, were outraged.

With the illnesses involving peanut butter, an initial suspect was chicken.

“The chicken was actually a red herring,” said Ms. Russell of the C.D.C., a diversion that resulted from an outbreak of illness among people who had eaten chicken at an Ohio restaurant as well as peanut butter at a school cafeteria.

Then on Dec. 22, a nursing home in northern Minnesota reported a cluster of cases. Investigating outbreaks in nursing homes is both more challenging and easier than elsewhere — easier because the facilities have set menus, harder because patients are often unable to say what menu choices they ate.

Then another nursing home reported illnesses. On Dec. 28, a Minnesota elementary school reported two children who had become ill. The holidays prevented state workers from talking to school cafeteria workers, but the health department was able to track down the school’s food supplier. Everyone seemed to be eating peanut butter.

Finally, a state health worker asked the nursing homes if they still had jars of the suspect peanut butter. One did, and on Jan. 9, that peanut butter tested positive for salmonella. The state announced that King Nut peanut butter, sold only to institutions, was the culprit. King Nut’s product was made by the Peanut Corporation of America.

The F.D.A. then descended on the Georgia plant with a team of inspectors. It used authority granted under a 2002 bioterrorism law to demand records that inspectors from the Georgia Agriculture Department, which had inspected it twice before without finding serious violations, had not been given access to.

The records showed that on 12 occasions from 2007 to 2008, tests of peanut products made at the plant were contaminated by salmonella. Each time, retests came up clean. But F.D.A. officials said the initial tests should have led plant officials to quarantine their product and clean their facility — neither of which occurred.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.
source: nytimes.com

Kidney Donors Live Just As Long As Others

People who donate a kidney live just as long and are just as healthy as those with two kidneys, according to a new study by University of Minnesota researchers that is the largest ever done on the long-term health consequences of donation.

The study provides a reassurance that experts hope will encourage more organ donations at a time when the need for such life-saving transplants is on the rise. Today there are 78,000 people on the kidney transplant list, and most will not survive the five- to seven-year wait for a kidney from a deceased donor.

Researchers tracked down nearly all of the 3,700 people who had donated kidneys at the university’s transplant center between 1963 and 2007.

The findings will be published today in the New England Journal of Medicine with an editorial that described the results as surprising and quite reassuring.

Snowy owls start to move south

Biologists say an increase in snowy owl sightings in the South suggests that the arctic species did so well in its northern breeding grounds last year that competition is driving the young ones to warmer climates.

The showy white owls of “Harry Potter” fame are rarely seen south of northern Ohio. This year, they’ve also been spotted farther south, in states where they’re rarely seen.

In Tennessee, birders armed with spotting scopes and telephoto lenses scrambled from as far away as Georgia and Alabama to see the first snowy owl reported in that state in 22 years.

Snowy owls nest on the ground in the Arctic tundra and many of them stay there year-round, while some winter in Canada and the northern United States. Biologists said that this year’s owl population grew so large, many of the young males moved farther south to stake out feeding territory.

Planet heats up, cools down rapidly

Astronomers have found a planet with a galactic case of hot flashes.

In just six hours, this planet four times the size of Jupiter heats up by more than 1,200 degrees, according to a study published in today’s issue of the journal Nature.

“It’s the first observation of changing weather” on a planet outside our solar system, said study author Gregory Laughlin, an astronomy professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to study the planet.

Normally, the planet HD80606b is a toasty 980 degrees or so. But in the few hours it whips around its sun, the planet gets zapped with mega-heat, pushing the thermometer closer to 2,240 degrees.

When it comes closest to its sun, it becomes one giant “brewing storm” complete with shock waves, Laughlin said. The radiation bombarding the planet is 800 times stronger than when it is farthest away.

Then just as quickly, the planet slingshots away and radiates the heat to the cool vacuum of space. It glows cherry red and the temperature plummets, Laughlin said.

Cold aids manatee count

Aided by a string of cold snaps, state scientists counted a record number of manatees in Florida waters this year. The annual aerial count, conducted two weeks ago, recorded 3,807 manatees, topping the previous high in 2001 by more than 500 animals, according to a report released Wednesday by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. Wildlife managers cautioned that the aerial counts don’t mean the population has suddenly boomed or the endangered mammal is no longer at risk. They amount to a snapshot, a minimum number that can vary wildly according to weather.

Study: ‘Bubble boy disease’ eased by gene therapy

Gene therapy seems to have cured eight of 10 children who had potentially fatal “bubble boy disease,” according to a study that followed their progress for about four years after treatment.

The eight patients were no longer on medication for the rare disease, which cripples the body’s defenses against infection. The successful treatment is reported in today’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Bubble boy disease is formally called severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID. The genetic disorder is diagnosed in about 40 to 100 babies each year in the United States. The nickname comes from the experience of a Houston boy, David Vetter, who became famous for living behind plastic barriers to protect him from germs. David, who died in 1984 at age 12, had the most common form of SCID. The new study involved a different form of SCID —- and one that holds a key position in medical history. In 1990 it became the first illness to be treated by gene therapy, according to the U.S. government.

Popularity in the genes?

Researchers say popularity seems to have an inherited component.

Nicholas Christakis of Harvard, along with Christopher Dawes and James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, studied 1,110 twins in a population of more than 90,000 adolescents. They measured indications of popularity such as the number of times an individual was named as a friend and whether an individual tended to be at the center or the edge of a social group.

There was more similarity between the social positions of identical twins than of fraternal twins, an indication that the measures of popularity had an inherited component, the researchers report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While identical and fraternal twins both have the same parents, identical twins come from the same egg while fraternal twins are fertilized separately.

source: ajc.com

Senate Likely to Pass Bill on Kids' Health Insurance

SCHIP Could Cover 11 Million Children

The Senate is expected to approve a bill today that provides health insurance to about 11 million low-income children, paving the way for President Obama to claim an early legislative victory and collect a quick down payment on his campaign pledge to guarantee care to every American child.

Senate Democrats, after easily defeating Republican attempts to narrow the bill yesterday, predicted they had the votes to renew and expand the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Presently, the $25 billion program covers 7 million children living near the poverty level who do not qualify for Medicaid. Under the Senate bill and similar legislation passed by the House, an additional 4 million youngsters would be eligible for discounted care at an added cost of $32 billion over 4 1/2 years. That would leave Obama about 5 million children short of his promise to ensure that every youngster in the country has health insurance.

Proponents say the need for a health-care safety net has become all the more urgent, given the dire state of the economy. Opponents argue that the Democratic legislation goes beyond the original intent of the program by including children of legal immigrants and some families with incomes as high as $60,000 a year.

Both the House and Senate versions include millions of dollars for recruiting and enrolling youngsters. The expanded coverage would be paid for by increasing the cigarette tax by 61 cents a pack.

"This bill will make a real difference in the lives of children and families across America and is a great way to start the new year," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). "I am very pleased to be a part of this and to know that we have a president who will enthusiastically and quickly sign this bill as one of his first actions."

After the final vote in the Senate, House and Senate negotiators must resolve minor differences between the two versions before it can be sent to the White House for Obama's signature.

In 2007, many prominent Republicans joined with Democrats in efforts to expand the program. Twice, President Bush ignored the entreaties of those in his party and vetoed the legislation, calling the effort a dangerous shift toward "government-run health care."

Yesterday, those same Republicans reacted bitterly to changes made by the Democrats now that they control Congress and the White House.

In particular, Republicans objected to a provision in both the House and Senate versions that would, for the first time, lift a five-year waiting period for children of legal immigrants to enroll in the program.

"This is not the bill we intended," bellowed the normally mild-mannered Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.). The Democrats' decision to "simply ram it down our throats . . . is very, very bad precedent," he said.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who had helped craft the 2007 bipartisan bills, offered an amendment that would have required states to enroll 95 percent of eligible, native-born children before opening it to immigrants.

"Our U.S. citizen children should be covered first," he said.

"Those kids come from low-income families with parents that work hard and pay taxes just like citizens," countered Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). "And, those kids need checkups and prescriptions just like all other CHIP kids."

Republicans and some conservative analysts also noted that as many as 2 million children with access to private health insurance might switch to the cheaper government-subsidized program, a trend known as "crowd out."

Baucus said the bill aims to minimize that by giving states a new option to subsidize employer-sponsored coverage for low-income children. Those subsidies would help keep private insurance affordable.

An eclectic mix of business interests, consumer groups and medical providers lobbied aggressively for expansion of the program, including the National Governors Association, labor unions, the retiree group AARP, the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

When Congress enacted the $700 billion financial bailout last fall, "we were told you've got to take care of Wall Street if you want to take care of Main Street," said Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. "Well, Main Street can never be safe if their children don't have health care."

Staff writer Perry Bacon Jr. contributed to this report.

source: washingtonpost.com

Bisphenol A May Linger in Body

By Daniel J. DeNoon
Study Shows More Than Expected Amounts of BPA May Accumulate in Americans' Bodies

Jan. 28, 2009 -- The plastics chemical bisphenol A (BPA) doesn't leave the body as easily as previously thought, a new study suggests.

BPA is everywhere: in PVC pipe, in polycarbonate drink containers, in the plastic that lines food and soft-drink cans, and even in dental sealants. It's also in our bodies. Virtually everyone has detectable levels of BPA in his or her body.

Although Canada last October banned BPA from plastic baby bottles, the U.S. FDA still considers it safe. The U.S. National Toxicology Program, however, notes "concerns" over BPA safety. Not taking any chances, several baby-bottle makers have stopped using BPA in their products.

Based on limited evidence, most researchers have assumed that most of our BPA exposure comes from food, and that the body gets rid of each BPA dose within 24 hours.

Now there's evidence that BPA might be in our water as well as in our food, and that it lingers in our fat tissues. If confirmed -- and the current findings are very preliminary -- it could mean BPA is a bigger problem than thought.

University of Rochester researcher Richard Stahlhut, MD, MPH, analyzed data on 1,469 U.S. adults from the CDC's huge 2003-2004 NHANES study. That study gave fasting people one-time BPA tests, and also collected extensive dietary data.

Stahlhut compared people's BPA levels to how long it had been since their last meal. Since virtually all BPA is supposed to come from food, and BPA is supposed to have a short half-life, he expected that average BPA levels would dwindle in people who fasted longer than that.

"After 10 to 15 hours of fasting, there shouldn't be anybody with any detectable levels of BPA," Stahlhut tells WebMD. "But it just hangs there like the London fog. You do see a subtle downward trend, but what you don't see is it falling off the map. And by 24 hours it's still there."

What's going on? The people in the NHANES study really fasted -- CDC researchers made sure of that. But they were allowed to drink water, black coffee, and diet soda.

The BPA could have come from the diet soda or other things the CDC researchers couldn't control, points out University of Miami medical toxicologist John Cienki, MD. Cienki, who was not involved in the Stahlhut or NHANES studies, says he worries about BPA. But he warns that there are too many unknowns in the NHANES data to draw any definite conclusions.

"I think we are using data here that was not designed to be used this way," Cienki cautions. "Yes, we would anticipate a greater BPA excretion if people were fasting -- if they had not continued to ingest BPA. But this study did not control for consumption of or exposure to BPA."

Stahlhut fully agrees. However, he notes that the BPA could have come from another source: tap water. Surprisingly few BPA tests have been done on tap water. And those tests did not look for chlorinated BPA, which would be the form of BPA leached from PVC pipes into municipal tap water.

Or maybe, Stahlhut says, not all the BPA was being ingested. Maybe a lot of it really lingers in fat tissues, as some studies suggest. And far from being a stored harmlessly, BPA may be a bad actor in human fat.

A 2008 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that people with higher urinary BPA levels have more medical disorders. Another intriguing study from 2008 showed that BPA -- at normal levels of exposure -- disrupts a hormone involved in insulin sensitivity and diabetes. And a 2007 study showed that obese people are much more likely to suffer insulin resistance if they have high fat levels of organic pollutants.

"Imagine if what we think is caused by obesity is actually caused by persistent organics in the fat of obese people," Stahlhut says. "If they don't have the organics, they don't have the diabetes. That would be huge."

But first things first. Stahlhut agrees with Cienki that his study is not grounds for any kind of regulatory action. He calls for rigidly controlled experiments to find out what happens to people after long-term exposure to BPA. He also urges studies measuring BPA in human fat tissues. And he thinks it's urgent to search for new, potentially important sources of BPA exposure.

Stahlhut and colleagues report their findings in the Jan. 28 online issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

source: webmd.com

Healthcare Group Eyes Fees On Small Florida Tobacco Companies

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com
With deep cuts looming in the state budget, children's advocates are eyeing a potentially bountiful source of new dollars: small tobacco companies.

As the nation's largest cigarette makers battle upstart companies that sell smokes for half the price of older brands in Florida, a new combatant with a singularly sympathetic agenda has entered the fray: mothers and babies.

Leaders of Florida's Healthy Start, which provided prenatal care to almost 196,000 Florida mothers last year, are asking Gov. Charlie Crist to levy a 40-cent-a-pack assessment on a handful of small cigarette makers that have won about 20 percent of the state's cigarette market by pricing their product well below the large manufacturers.

The money, children's advocates say, should be set aside to fund Healthy Start, which is facing a 20 percent budget cut next year, with the state's sagging economy expected to force $3 billion in trims. Currently, the program only meets about half the demand for prenatal care statewide, the advocates say.

Smoking by pregnant women is a leading cause of low birth weight among infants, a condition that can lead to myriad health problems, they note.

''The irony of this situation is that it would cost much less to provide prenatal care and education, including smoking cessation services, to every woman who needs it than to pay the intensive care hospital bills of the babies who are born to mothers who received no care,'' Healthy Start's leaders wrote in a letter to Crist Monday.

Advocates of the fee -- and of a similar proposal to raise the tobacco tax across the board to raise revenue -- face a stiff head wind with lawmakers. Though many in the Legislature have found the constant cutting of jobs and programs withering, few say they have the stomach for new taxes, even so-called ''sin'' taxes.

CRIST TO REVIEW

Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Crist, said the governor received the letter Monday, and staff will review it.

''The governor has said on numerous occasions that he is not interested in considering any tax increases,'' Ivey said.

Rep. J.C. Planas, a Miami Republican who said he needs to study the proposal before making a decision, fears the fee could siphon millions out of an already sagging economy. Assuming a smoker pays $5 a week in new tobacco fees, he said, ``that's $5 not going to Pablito's Cafe for weekly coladas.''

''In this economy, that's a problem,'' Planas said.

In 2007, Florida reported more than 1,680 infant deaths, and Healthy Start leaders wrote in the letter to Crist that the state's infant mortality rate in some counties ``approaches the rates of developing nations.''

Also in 2007, 20,767 Florida infants were born with a low birth weight. ''Maternal smoking is a leading preventable cause of low birth weight and premature babies, so it is very appropriate to hold cigarette companies accountable for the health costs they inflict on the state,'' the advocates wrote.

In February 1995, the state sued the largest tobacco companies, claiming they had unjustly enriched themselves by hiding the health costs of smoking. State leaders sought billions in damages to cover the costs of indigent health care for Floridians whose smoking made them sick.

Florida entered into a landmark $368 billion settlement with the so-called Big Four tobacco companies -- Phillip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard -- in August 1997. At the time, the Big Four held a 97 percent share of the U.S. tobacco market.

Over time, however, the smaller cigarette makers -- which can price their product considerably lower than the large companies paying the assessment -- have garnered a larger share of the market, a 2004 state Senate report said.

NEW REVENUE

Adding the nonsettling companies to the assessment could generate between $50 million and $86 million, the state Revenue Estimating Conference reported in 2005.

Sarah Bascom, a spokeswoman for Opa-locka-based Dosal Tobacco, one of the companies being targeted for the fees, accused the large tobacco companies of exploiting ''well-deserving and noble'' groups like Healthy Start by convincing them to ``do their [Big Tobacco's] bidding so they can gain market share.''

Leslie Spurlock, the Vero Beach-based president of the Florida Association of Healthy Start Coalitions, strongly denied being in cahoots with Big Tobacco. ''I'm just speechless,'' she said. ``We stand for moms and babies and health. Big Tobacco would be the furthest thing from our thoughts.''

State Sen. Michael S. Bennett, a Bradenton Republican, said he does not favor any new fees on the tobacco companies that did not settle with the state a decade ago, but could support as much as a $1-a-pack hike in the tobacco tax that hits all companies.

''To me, if you're going to tax them, tax them all,'' Bennett said.

source: miamiherald.com

Surrounded By Friends? It's All In Your Genes

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Are you a social butterfly, or do you prefer being at the edge of a group of friends? Either way, your genes and evolution may play a major role, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

While it may come as no surprise that genes may help explain why some people have many friends and others have few, the researchers said, their findings go just a little farther than that.

"Some of the things we find are frankly bizarre," said Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University in Massachusetts, who helped conduct the study.

"We find that how interconnected your friends are depends on your genes. Some people have four friends who know each other and some people have four friends who don't know each other. Whether Dick and Harry know each other depends on Tom's genes," Christakis said in a telephone interview.

Christakis and colleague James Fowler of the University of California San Diego are best known for their studies that show obesity, smoking and happiness spread in networks.

For this study, they and Christopher Dawes of UCSD used national data that compared more than 1,000 identical and fraternal twins. Because twins share an environment, these studies are good for showing the impact that genes have on various things, because identical twins share all their genes while fraternal twine share just half.

"We found there appears to be a genetic tendency to introduce your friends to each other," Christakis said.

There could be good, evolutionary reasons for this. People in the middle of a social network could be privy to useful gossip, such as the location of food or good investment choices.

But they would also be at risk of catching germs from all sides -- in which case the advantage would lie in more cautious social behavior, they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It may be that natural selection is acting on not just things like whether or not we can resist the common cold, but also who it is that we are going to come into contact with," Fowler said in a statement.

source: uk.reuters.com (Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Soaring Cancer Drug Costs May Cripple Medicare

By Catherine Arnst
A new report says laws crimp Medicare's ability to control costs on cancer, leading to a 267% increase in drug spending over seven years

Medicare spending on cancer drugs has skyrocketed in recent years, and Congress has severely limited the program's ability to do anything about it, says a report in the Feb. 7 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Although it is not the case with other drugs, Medicare must reimburse doctors or patients for virtually all cancer drug uses, even those not yet approved by the Food & Drug Administration. And it is not permitted to favor the lowest-cost treatment. As a result, says author Dr. Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, "the prices of cancer drugs appear to be rising faster than the health benefits associated with them."

Bach notes that Medicare spending on drugs administered in a doctor's office, the vast majority of which are cancer treatments, rose from $3 billion in 1997 to $11 billion in 2004, a 267% increase. Overall Medicare spending rose by only 47% over the same period. Spending on cancer drugs is likely to rise even faster in coming years since a November decision by the agency that greatly expands patient access to cancer drugs as required by law.

Cost Gains Aren't Necessarily Treatment Gains

Medicare now allows reimbursement for an extremely broad range of "off-label" cancer treatments (meaning the drugs are used in ways that have not yet been approved by the FDA). Off-label uses are incredibly common in cancer therapy because oncologists often try a broad range of drugs against a tumor until they find one that works.

But Bach argues that the high spending on cancer drugs has brought little advantage to patients. Several studies have shown, for example, that the magnitude of the cost increase for each new drug for colon cancer exceeded the magnitude of improvement in efficacy. "It's pretty clear with many of these new drugs, their cost effectiveness is lower than previous drugs," Bach told BusinessWeek. "For each extra day or year of life they give, we're paying more than we did for the last one."

Cancer drugs, long a backwater of the pharmaceutical market, have become incredibly lucrative over the past decade as a new generation of treatments arrived with fewer side effects and better outcomes—but only for some patients. The prices of these drugs, however, are much higher than for cancer treatments in the past because there are few if any competitors for any one drug. Fifteen years ago, Bristol-Myers' (BMY) Taxol was the only commonly used cancer drug that cost more than $2,500 per month. Today, Genentech's (DNA) Avastin, Eli Lilly's (LLY) Erbitux, and Novartis' (NVS) Gleevec, all widely used, can cost $10,000 per month and up.

Medicare Could Negotiate Cancer Drug Prices

Medicare is barred by law from negotiating with drug companies on prices, but it can hold the line when it concludes that several drugs are virtually interchangeable. In that case, the agency can reimburse for the least costly alternative, no matter which drug is used, or choose a weighted average of prices for that class of drug. When it comes to cancer drugs, however, Congress requires Medicare to pay for any drug used "for a medically accepted indication," or for which the treated condition is major or life-threatening.

Bach recommends that Congress rectify the situation by establishing a center for comparative effectiveness—a concept embraced by President Obama's Administration—that would determine when a cancer drug's use is reasonable and necessary, based on clinical research. However, Bach acknowledges that patients may not be keen on this solution, as an authority other than their oncologist would end up restricting their access to some treatments. "This is going to be tough going," he says. "But that is maybe one of the trade-offs we need to make to bring prices under control."

America's Top Hospitals Cut Patient Death Rate 27%

TUESDAY, Jan. 27 (HealthDay News) The top-rated U.S. hospitals have a 27 percent lower death rate than other hospitals, according to a study released Tuesday by HealthGrades, an independent health care ratings organization.
Researchers analyzed the records of about 41 million Medicare patients treated at the nation's almost 5,000 non-federal hospitals. The study of data from fiscal years 2005, 2006 and 2007 focused on 26 common diagnoses and procedures, including heart failure, heart attack, stroke, pneumonia, angioplasty, gastrointestinal surgeries and sepsis.

Patients treated at hospitals ranked in the top 5 percent nationally had a 27 percent lower risk of in-hospital death, the report found. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, the top-rated hospitals lowered their in-hospital risk-adjusted death rates by an average of 18 percent, compared to 13 percent for all other hospitals.

The study also found that patients at the highest-performing hospitals had an 8 percent lower risk of complications for diagnoses and procedures that include orthopedic and neurosurgery, vascular surgery, prostate surgery and gall bladder surgery. From 2005 to 2007, the top-rated hospitals reduced in-hospital complication rates by more than 3.9 percent, compared to about 2.5 percent for all other hospitals.

In fact, if the quality of care at all hospitals matched that of the top-rated hospitals, 152,666 lives may have been saved, and 11,772 major complications may have been avoided during the three years, according to HealthGrades Seventh Annual Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence study.

"This study echoes others that have found distinct quality gaps between top-performing hospitals and others. Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence comprise a group of hospitals that excels across the board, not just in one or two specialties, and they should be commended for their relentless commitment to exceptional patient care," Dr. Rick May, HealthGrades senior physician consultant and an author of the study, said in a news release.

source: washingtonpost.com

Childhood Cancer Survivors Skip Breast Screenings

Many Women Who Survived Cancer in Childhood Forgo Breast Cancer Screenings Despite Increased Risk

Jan. 27, 2009 -- Women who underwent chest radiation therapy for a childhood cancer have a significantly higher risk for developing breast cancer at a younger age. Yet a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that many of them do not undergo the recommended screenings.

"Most young women at risk of breast cancer following chest radiation for a pediatric cancer, including women at highest risk (Hodgkin lymphoma survivors), are not being appropriately screened," Kevin C. Oeffinger, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and colleagues write.

About 20,000 to 25,000 women 25 and older in the U.S. have received chest radiation for a childhood cancer, according to background information in the journal report. For the past decade, experts have recommended yearly screening mammograms for women who received moderate- to high-dose chest radiation beginning either at age 25 or eight years after the treatment, whichever occurs last.

In 2008, the Children's Oncology Group (COG) updated the guidelines to include breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) along with yearly mammograms. The American Cancer Society recommends the same.

But some women in the new study had never even had a mammogram.

About 12% to 20% of women who receive moderate- to high-dose chest radiation for a childhood cancer will be diagnosed with breast cancer by age 45, but some develop the disease much earlier. "The risk of breast cancer begins to increase as early as 8 years after radiation and the [midpoint] age of breast cancer diagnosis ranges from 32 to 35 years," Oeffinger's team writes.

Oeffinger and colleagues based their findings on a 114-item questionnaire filled out by 625 female participants, aged 25 to 50, of the Childhood Cancer Survivors Study (CCSS). All the women had survived childhood cancer and had been treated with chest radiation.

The researchers compared the women's responses to similarly aged childhood cancer survivors who did not receive chest radiation, and siblings with no history of childhood cancer.

Among women 25 to 39 who had received chest radiation for childhood cancer:

• Most (47.3%) never had a mammogram.
• 63.5% had not received a screening mammogram within the past two years, despite guidelines that recommend annual exams.
• Less than a fourth (23.3%) had a screening or diagnostic mammogram in the previous year.
• They were three times more likely to have had a mammogram if their doctor recommended one.
  

Among women 40 to 50 who had received chest radiation for childhood cancer:

• They were more likely to have had mammograms than those aged 25 to 39.
• About two-thirds (76.5%) had a screening mammogram in the past two years (compared with 70% for women who did not receive chest radiation during childhood and 67% for siblings without history of childhood cancer).
• Slightly more than half (52%) had regular breast cancer screenings. (This finding was not significantly higher than those who never had chest radiation.)

Overall findings:

• Older women were more likely to undergo breast cancer screening in the past two years or to have received regular screening.
• The chances a woman would report having a mammogram jumped nearly twofold for every five-year increase in age.

"Findings from this study should provide the foundation for targeted interventions involving both clinicians and cancer survivors," the authors conclude.

An accompanying editorial written by doctors in the United Kingdom emphasizes the need for well-designed programs to provide ongoing education for women and their doctors about the risks of breast cancer after childhood chest radiotherapy.

Aliki J. Taylor, MD, PhD, MPH, of the University of Birmingham in Enlgand, and Roger E. Taylor, MD, MA, of Swansea University in Wales also encourage future studies to determine if exposure to radiation during mammography increases the cancer risk for these women, and to explore breast MRI as a possible alternative. They also suggest investigating whether more women in this high-risk group would undergo breast cancer screening if it were provided at no cost.

source: webmd.com

FDA: Peanut Processor Found Salmonella, Shipped Anyway

The government Tuesday accused the peanut butter manufacturer tied to a nationwide salmonella outbreak of shipping products in 2007 and 2008 after internal tests found bacterial contamination, violating food safety regulations.

Peanut butter and peanut paste manufactured by the Peanut Corp. of America (PCA) has been tied to the salmonella outbreak that has sickened 501 people in 43 states and is believed to have contributed to eight deaths.

The Food and Drug Administration said that its inspection of the PCA plant in Blakely, Ga., found records of 12 instances in which plant officials identified salmonella in ingredients or finished products. The products should not have been shipped, the FDA says. PCA took no steps to address cleaning after finding the salmonella, says Michael Rogers, director of the FDA's division of field investigations.

In some instances, the company had the product tested again by a different laboratory and got a clean test result, FDA officials said in a telephone conference with reporters.

It's quite possible that a retest would miss the salmonella, says Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety. The product should have been destroyed after the first positive test result, he says.

This outbreak is hitting children especially hard, says Robert Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control. Half of those stricken are younger than 16, and 21% are under 5, Tauxe says. While PCA's peanut butter was sold in bulk to institutions, its peanut paste has been used as an ingredient in snack foods.

The FDA says it has not found the exact outbreak strain in the plant, but it has been found in tubs of peanut butter made at the plant, considered the sole source of the contamination.

"It's incredibly negligent," says William Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner. Hubbard questions why the FDA didn't act sooner, given the sanitation violations found by state inspectors.

Previous inspection reports by the Georgia Department of Agriculture found deficiencies in how well the plant was cleaned.

In a statement issued Tuesday, PCA said it "has cooperated fully with FDA from day one during the course of this investigation. We have shared with them every record that they have asked for that is in our possession, and we will continue to do so."

Shipping products known to be contaminated is "a violation of the law," says the FDA's Stephen Sundlof. "Whether or not there was any criminal activity involved is a different issue."

source: usatoday.com

Gov. Richardson Porposes Health Care Package

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson proposed his 2009 health care legislation package Monday morning.

Nearly a quarter of New Mexicans are without health insurance including 18 percent of children, but the governor is proposing 10 bills that will help ensure more people across the state.

“I don't have any so any kind of state help would be nice,” said Troy Scoughton of South Las Cruces.

He is hoping for benefits soon.

“Me and my wife are having a baby, so we've got Medicaid, but it's real limited. If she needed dental care we really couldn't get any,” he said.

One bill proposed states that insurance companies would cover everyone regardless of preexicting conditions or sex.

"It's something that need to be thought about in our area. There is the low income residents and poverty near the border,” said Rachel Martinez of North Las Cruces.

“I think insurance has become such a business rather than actuall care,” said Emily Poppenberg of Central Las Cruces.

Not everyone agrees the governor's idea is the right way to go.

“That doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. Insurace companies have to be able to make money to provide insurance for those who can use it,” said Luke Wyatt of Alamogordo.

The package also includes a same-sex provision in which insurance companies would have to cover same-sex couples if they lived together for at least a year.

“If they can ask for insurance and they can't turn you down, then why not get it individually,” Poppenberg said.

“I don't like that arrangement for marriage and living together. I have a little more respect for marriage than that,” Wyatt said.

The Legislature is working to get everyone insured, but they know the money is tight.

“Now since I don't have insurance I have to pay out of pocket and it's really expensive,” said Scoughton.

Another bill prosed includes electronic medical records. The governor would like more use of the electronic records to cut down on errors and save money.

Copyright 2009 by KFOXTV.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Organ Donation Ads on Craigslist?

People on Waiting Lists for a New Kidney Are Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands

People can get cars, boats, jobs, pets and even dates on Craigslist. So why not a kidney?

More and more patients across the U.S., many facing a life-or-death wait for a suitable organ, are turning to Internet sights like Craigslist to find a kidney donor. (ABC News Photo Illustration)

More and more patients across the U.S., many facing a life-or-death wait for a suitable organ, are turning to Internet sites like Craigslist to find a kidney donor.

And some are finding them. Their ingenuity has saved lives, and cut waiting times by years -- possibly a decade or more for some.

It's not hard to see why some families are willing to take this route. Last year, 4,505 people died on traditional lists waiting for a kidney, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

But some families who talked to ABC News say once they find a kidney outside of the traditional organ-donor waiting list system, they have faced hospitals that are suspicious or unprepared to deal with the legal and ethical questions of harvesting an organ from a living person located through personal ads.

Only 10 percent of transplant centers will consider doing a kidney transplant from an altruistic live donor who is not related or known by the patient.

And only 20-30 percent of transplant centers are willing to perform a so-called "kidney swap" between two families at the hospital who can't find a blood-type match for their loved ones among their own family, but are well-matched across families.

These barriers would not deter Brian Golbad, a 25-year-old from Los Angeles, from his New Year's resolution to find his dad a kidney. It was a promise that would lead him to search for a donor on the Internet.

Remove Second Breast to Prevent Cancer?

By Miranda Hitti
Study Probes First Breast Cancer and Decision to Get Preventive Mastectomy in Second Breast

When a woman has a mastectomy to remove breast cancer in one breast, what should she do about the other breast?

Her first breast cancer may hold some clues, according to a new study, published in the advance online edition of Cancer.

"Not every woman who has breast cancer will get another breast cancer in the opposite breast," researcher Kelly Hunt, MD, tells WebMD.

"We tried to distill down some of those factors with our study and figure out which ones may be the most important ones," says Hunt, a professor of surgical oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

But the findings don't amount to a checklist for getting a preventive mastectomy; breast cancer experts say that's still a personal decision that each patient must weigh with her doctors.
Mastectomy Study

Hunt's study included 542 women who had a mastectomy at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to remove a cancerous breast, and also chose to get a precautionary mastectomy in the unaffected breast, a procedure called contralateral prophylactic mastectomy.

Immediately after the contralateral prophylactic mastectomy, tests showed that the vast majority of women -- about 95% -- had no cancer in that breast, and only 1.5% had an invasive tumor in that breast.

Because women typically get preventive mastectomies to curb their future risk, Hunt's team also followed another 1,574 women who had mastectomy to remove a cancerous breast but chose not to have a preventive mastectomy in their second breast. Over the next four years or so (50 months), only 2.4% of the women developed breast cancer in their remaining breast. It's not clear how many of those cancers were invasive tumors.

Key Factors

Hunt and colleagues found three factors that were more common among women with cancer in the breast that they had removed as a precaution. Those factors are:

• Having more than one tumor in the breast that was first diagnosed.
• Having invasive lobular cancer in the breast that was first diagnosed.
• Being at high risk for breast cancer, according to the Gail model.

Hunt points out that invasive lobular breast cancer isn't common; it accounts for about 5% of all breast cancers. And she notes that the Gail model was designed to gauge future breast cancer risk for women who haven't been diagnosed with breast cancer; it wasn't intended for use for breast cancer patients.

Hunt says the Gail model may be a "useful tool" for women with breast cancer, but it will take more studies to confirm that. "We're hoping to develop a risk calculator that we can put online that would be useful to clinicians and patients," Hunt says.

"We're learning more and more that all breast cancers are not the same and they really shouldn't all be treated the same," she says. "We have general guidelines that really help to make sure women get the appropriate treatment, but each individual patient has unique factors and features ... that are important to consider."

Breast Cancer Experts Weigh In

Julie Gralow, MD, director of medical oncology at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and an associate professor of oncology at the University of Washington, tells WebMD that the risk factors noted in Hunt's study "make sense," but the study "doesn't convince me that we should be recommending" preventive mastectomy based on those factors.

"Nobody would recommend a prophylactic mastectomy in a group that over the next four years only had a 2.4% chance of getting it on the other side," says Gralow, referring to the comparison group in Hunt's study.

Women who have had breast cancer are at "high risk" for another breast cancer, "but 'high' is a relative term," notes Victor Vogel, MD, the American Cancer Society's national vice president for research.

"Whether the Gail model is the appropriate way to estimate that risk is highly debatable," Vogel says. "What you'd want is a study in which patients with a first breast cancer had a Gail model score, and then in five years, you look to see whether the Gail model accurately predicted the number of second breast cancers. And I am not aware that any such study has ever been done."

Gralow and Vogel also point out that when breast cancer is diagnosed, many doctors now perform MRI scans of both breasts. Those scans help show the extent of breast cancer in the affected breast and check the other breast for cancer.

Hunt's study started before that practice became common, so not all of the patients got MRI scans before opting for preventive mastectomy. Genetic testing also wasn't a routine procedure for the patients in Hunt's study, and isn't recommended for most breast cancer patients.
No Rush to Decide

Hunt, Gralow, and Vogel encourage women to take their time in deciding whether or not to get a contralateral prophylactic mastectomy and to focus on treating the breast cancer that they already know they have.

"A lot of women will come to my office and immediately say, 'Why don't you just take both breasts off?' and I try to explain to them that depending on their risk, not everyone needs that dramatic measure," Hunt says. "I always try to get patients to give much more time and consideration to it."

"There shouldn't be this sense that we have to do this [preventive mastectomy] right now," Vogel says. "This is not urgent, it's not life-threatening immediately ... it can be done after the primary therapy, when you get a little emotional distance from it and you can make these decisions with a calm heart."

Gralow notes that preventive mastectomy hasn't been shown to improve breast cancer survival, though it does cut the odds of getting breast cancer again. That's because if a recurrence happens, chances are it would be found and treated.

No Rush to Decide continued...

Still, "it's perfectly understandable that maybe women wouldn't want to go through that a second time," Gralow says. "For some women, even a couple percent chance of getting another breast cancer is enough to say, 'I just don't want to deal with it.'"

Gralow says she would support a woman who made that choice, as long as the patient understood the risks and benefits. Her advice: "If you're not sure, you shouldn't do it, because it's permanent."

source: webmd.com

WHO Says No Evidence Of China Bird Flu Epidemic

BEIJING (AFP) — The World Health Organisation said Tuesday there was no evidence of a bird flu epidemic in China after a fifth person died of the disease this month, but urged caution in the Lunar New Year holiday.

An 18-year-old man succumbed to the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus Monday, bringing to five the number of fatalities from the disease so far this year in China, compared to just three in the whole of 2008.

The number of cases has sparked fears of an epidemic, particularly during this week's Lunar New Year, as hundreds of millions of families across China reunite around huge feasts that include poultry.

Peter Cordingley, WHO spokesman for the Western Pacific Region, said there was no need for undue alarm.

"What we are seeing is so far within our expectations and broadly matches previous years," he told AFP. "There is no evidence of an epidemic.

"Also, the China cases are geographically scattered and sporadic, with no sign of any connection between them."

Cordingley urged caution during the biggest holiday of the year in China, saying the mass movement of people and poultry brought a heightened risk of humans mingling with chickens.

"(This) is not a situation we are comfortable with, and the increase in consumption of chicken meat presents dangers of people unknowingly handling infected meat," he said.

"Members of the public should take every precaution when preparing chicken meat for the table."

China is considered one of the nations most at risk of bird flu epidemics because it has the world's biggest poultry population and many chickens in rural areas are kept close to humans.

The H5N1 virus typically spreads from birds to humans via direct contact, but experts fear that it could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, with the potential to kill millions in a pandemic.

Cold weather also encourages the spread of the virus and large swathes of China have been hit by sub-zero temperatures in recent days. All three of last year's deaths occurred in the first two months of the year.

The first fatality in 2009 occurred on January 5 when a 19-year-old woman died in Beijing.

Then a 27-year-old woman died away in the eastern province of Shandong, and a 16-year-old boy died last week in the central province of Hunan, although he had initially fallen ill in neighbouring Guizhou.

A 31-year-old woman succumbed to the disease Friday in northwest China's Xinjiang region.

Some of the victims had come into contact with dead or sick poultry before falling ill, according to previous health ministry statements.

Cordingley said this indicated there was a problem with animal surveillance in China.

At least two other people in China have fallen ill to avian influenza this month, including a two-year-old girl in the northern province of Shanxi who is now out of danger, the official Xinhua news agency reported last week.

The agency said Monday the other patient, a 29-year-old who had contracted the disease in Guizhou, was now in a "stable" condition.

So far, 25 people have died from avian influenza in China since the disease re-emerged in 2003, according to World Health Organisation figures.

Popular or Not? Your Genes May Help Decide

Twins study suggests that sociability, shyness might be hidden in DNA

ONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Tucked away in the twisted strands of DNA that make you human are genes that may determine whether you are sociable or shy.

A new study comparing the two types of twins shows that genetics might affect social behavior, and the scientists who made the discovery say they are closing in on some of those "personality" genes.

"Absolutely, and we're on the case," said James H. Fowler, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and lead author of a report in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We've identified some, and we're waiting for further tests for verification."

"I'd rather not discuss it just yet, but we're working on it very actively," said study co-author Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a professor of sociology and medical sociology at Harvard University.

The new insights won't help turn a wallflower to a social butterfly, Fowler cautioned, in part because "genetic engineering is very difficult," but mostly because social behavior stems from the interplay of genetics and upbringing.

Fowler and Christakis have done several studies on social networking, showing for example that traits such as happiness and obesity can spread through person-to-person contacts.

Their latest study looked at national data on the social networks of 1,100 twins, some identical and others fraternal. They found greater similarity between the social networks of identical twins, who share the exact same genes, than those of fraternal twins, whose genes might vary slightly.

That finding is revolutionary, Fowler said. "There has been a simple model for the metabolic, neural and Internet networks, and the same model is applied to human beings -- that all parts of the network are identical and interchangeable," he noted.

That assumption can no longer be made about human social network interactions, Fowler said: "There are inherent characteristics that govern where we [as individuals] gravitate to in the social network."

The paper describes that new "attract and introduce" model, which allows for these individual differences.

That sort of model will have to replace existing models of social networks, Christakis said.

"A second implication is that the study suggests that if we really want to understand how things diffuse in social networks, we need to take into account people's locations in the social networks, which are due in part to their genes," he said.

One surprising finding is that an individual's genetic makeup can influence the behavior of others, Fowler said: "My genes can influence the probability that two of my friends will become friends of each other."

Science already has one example of the interaction between genes and environment on human behavior, he said. Studies have found that parents who carry one variant of the MAO-A gene are more likely to engage in child abuse, he said, but that likelihood depends on whether the parent was abused as a child.

So while it might not be possible to affect a supposed gene for shyness, knowing that there is such a gene "can help us make sharper predictions about which experiences you have will have the sharpest impact on what social interactions you have."

source: health.usnews.com

Octuplets' Births Surprise California Doctors

(CNN) -- A woman in California delivered what may be the nation's second live-born set of octuplets on Monday morning, surprising doctors who expected seven babies.

The first three to seven days will be critical for the infants, Dr. Mandhir Gupta said.

The six boys and two girls -- ranging in weight from 1 pound 8 ounces to 3 pounds 4 ounces -- were generally doing well in incubators following their Caesarean-section delivery at Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower, California, doctors said.

Three of the babies need breathing assistance, but otherwise the eight don't appear to have serious problems, doctors said at a news conference Monday evening.

"It was a truly amazing delivery," said Dr. Karen Maples, chief of the hospital's obstetrics and gynecology department.

Doctors initially believed the mother -- whom they did not identify -- was pregnant with seven fetuses. The woman was 23 weeks pregnant when she was hospitalized seven weeks ago and ordered to bed rest.

Over a seven-week period, a team of 46 physicians, nurses and other staff prepared for the births. When they started the delivery Monday -- more than nine weeks before the babies would be full term -- they were in for a surprise.

"After we got to Baby G, we were surprised by the discovery of a Baby H," Maples said.

Getting the number correct with ultrasounds before delivery is difficult with so many babies, said Dr. Harold Henry, the hospital's chief of fetal medicine.

"It is quite easy to miss a baby when you're expecting seven," Henry said.

The hospital said the woman didn't want her personal information released to the news media, and it would not answer questions about whether she'd had fertility treatments.

Preliminary research indicates this is the second set of live-born octuplets in the United States, according to the hospital.

Eight babies believed to be the United States' first set of live octuplets were born in Houston, Texas, in 1998. One of the infants died days after birth. The seven other siblings recently celebrated their 10th birthday, the Houston Chronicle reported last month.

The first three to seven days will be critical for the California babies, said Dr. Mandhir Gupta, one of the doctors at the news conference. The infants could be in incubators for six to eight weeks and in the hospital for 10 weeks, Gupta said.

The mother is doing "very well" after the deliveries, which took about five minutes, Gupta said.

"She is very excited that she [has] all these babies and that the babies are looking good so far," Gupta said.