Monday, January 19, 2009

News Clipping Archives

 

Maryland / Regional

Jaguar mauls zoo worker  (Frederick News Post)

Health officials finalizing inauguration prep (Baltimore Examiner)

Tests Show No Contamination After Md. Water Main Break (Washington Post)

National / International

He Died Suddenly, but He's Still Helping Others Live Better (Washington Post)

Early detection is key to treating cervical cancer (Baltimore Sun)

HEALTH CARE REPORT: SCHIP vote set this week in Senate (Washington Times)

More companies join recall of peanut butter snack foods (Baltimore Sun)

Testing when eyes become vulnerable to cataracts (Washington Post)

Low-Cost Strategies to Maintain Health in Hard Times (Washington Post)

Opinion

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Jaguar mauls zoo worker

 

Frederick News-Post

Monday, January 19, 2009

 

THURMONT " A female zookeeper was in critical condition at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma unit after she was attacked by a jaguar Sunday morning at the Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo. 'She was inside the jaguar enclosure and hadn't secured the area where she was working,' said Harold Domer, executive director of Frederick County Animal Control. The woman suffered several bite wounds, he said, and her condition was critical Sunday evening.

 

Two jaguars were in the enclosure at the time, and both since have been quarantined, according to a statement from the zoo.

 

The woman, whose name was not released by the zoo, was performing maintenance in an area that would normally be secured, when a 300-pound male jaguar entered the area and attacked her just before 11 a.m. The Catoctin Zoo said in a statement that staff members responded to her call for help and were able to move both animals to another part of the enclosure, secure the site and perform first aid.

 

Jason Schultz, assistant chief of the Thurmont Ambulance Company, responded and treated the woman at the scene. He would not comment on her injuries. She was then flown by helicopter to Shock Trauma. 'The jaguar went through whatever normally secures one area from the other, and the jaguar entered the area where she was,' Domer said. Both jaguars are current on their rabies shots through September of this year, Domer said. An Animal Control officer was called to the scene shortly after 11 a.m. because of the bite wounds, he said.

 

The zoo has not had many incidents but has always been cooperative, he said. Domer plans to meet with the zoo's executive director, Richard Hahn, on Monday.

 

A jaguar killed an employee of the Denver Zoo in early 2007 when the young woman left the door to the jaguar enclosure open. The animal was subsequently shot and killed.

 

Marc Bekoff, a retired University of Colorado professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and the author of 'The Emotional Lives of Animals,' said zoo employees never should leave an enclosure housing a predatory animal unsecured. 'She's lucky she's alive,' he said of the Catoctin Zoo employee. 'In times like these, you hate to blame somebody, but not securing an area is not a good thing to do. You're keeping these wide-ranging carnivores in prisons. You never know what's going on in the heads of these animals. 'Such accidents tend to happen on weekends and holidays when zoos have less staff, he said. He has worked in wolf sanctuaries, and said work inside an animal's enclosure is always done in teams of two to prevent potential mishaps. Large carnivorous animals require a lot of care and maintenance when kept in captivity, he said.

 

The Catoctin Zoo has 450 animals on 35 acres.

 

Copyright 2009 Frederick News-Post.

 

Health officials finalizing inauguration prep

 

By Sara Michael

Baltimore Examiner

Sunday, January 19, 2009

 

As Inauguration Day nears, Baltimore-area hospitals are finalizing plans and testing systems to ensure they can handle a possible influx of patients.

 

"The hospitals have really kicked in with encouraging staff to develop primary and backup commuting plans to get staff there," said Fran Phillips, deputy secretary for public health services at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

 

    Did you know?

 

    A fleet of law enforcement personnel, including about 600 officials from 17 agencies in Maryland, is preparing for an epic security operation Tuesday's Inauguration Day in Washington D.C., but Baltimore-area police departments said they won't be short-staffed in their own public safety efforts.

 

    The state is contributing special operations units from Baltimore, Howard and Anne Arundel police departments, among others, that will assist with crowd control and public safety on the National Mall, authorities said.

 

    Baltimore County police are sending 55 officers trained in crowd control, and Howard police will lend 40 officers to assist Park Police, but those officers haven't been given specific assignments yet, said Howard County police spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn.

 

    Those teams don't include patrol officers; therefore, routine law enforcement efforts around Maryland won't be affected, according to county police departments.

 

Hospitals have been checking schedules and adding staff to handle any injured or ill sent to Baltimore from Washington, D.C.

 

Officials have estimated that of the more than 1 million expected to attend President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration Tuesday, about 10,000 will visit satellite clinics near the National Mall. About 300 will be transported to area hospitals.

 

At the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, officials have been reminding staff to allow extra time to get to work and anticipate traffic or public transportation delays, said spokeswoman Ellen Beth Levitt.

 

"There's a lot of planning going on right now," she said.

 

The Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems, which coordinates emergency services, is sending three ambulance strike teams down for the inauguration, which includes 18 ambulances, said spokesman Jim Brown.

 

State emergency officials will be coordinating with hospitals and other emergency responders, he said.

 

During the past couple weeks, the state health department has been hosting regular conference calls with hospitals and health departments to coordinate plans for the inauguration.

 

The state health department also has added investigators to respond to any unusual reports of an outbreak, Phillips said.

 

"We are at a high level of readiness," she said, "and we continue to review all our operations to make certain we are overcommunicating rather than leaving any gaps."

 

smichael@baltimoreexaminer.com

 

Copyright 2009 Baltimore Examiner.

 

Tests Show No Contamination After Md. Water Main Break

 

By Matt Zapotosky, Nelson Hernandez, and Christy Goodman

Washington Post

Monday, January 19, 2009

 

The first round of tests on water in the area of Saturday's massive water main break in Temple Hills have come back negative for any contamination, a spokesman for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission said today.

 

That means the boil water order issued Saturday night is on schedule to expire Tuesday night, provided the next round of tests also come back negative, said spokesman Mike McGill.

 

Perhaps at 11 p.m. Tuesday, people at Gaylord National Resort can toast with a glass of tap water -- the first one they will have been allowed to drink in three days.

 

The note that hotel management slid under doors during the night surprised guests of the glitzy Gaylord resort who had poured in from across the country for the inauguration.

 

"Dear Guests," it said. "We are writing to inform you of a local water emergency . . . "

 

Orders followed: Don't drink the tap water. Be aware that authorities have "advised against bathing and showering if anyone in your party has open wounds, cuts, or a depressed immune system."

 

Work crews with the WSSC restored water service yesterday to most of the 90,000 homes and businesses in Prince George's County affected by Saturday's break of a 42-inch water main in Temple Hills, but many people were advised to boil their water through tomorrow night as engineers test the water for safety. A WSSC spokesman said the main has been repaired but, as a precaution, will not be brought back into service until it is filled with water and the safety tests are finished.

 

The water advisory could complicate inaugural party plans in Prince George's, where scores of charter buses were arriving yesterday. At National Harbor, the massive development where the Gaylord is located, restaurants were boiling their water, and at one, Potbelly Sandwich Works, there were no soda-fountain drinks. Smaller private parties reported that although their food would be catered, they were stocking up on hand sanitizer and bottled water.

 

The balls at Gaylord National Resort should be largely unaffected by the boil order because, like most high-end hotels, it has an in-house filtration system for water used in food preparation, ice machines and dishwashers, said Amie Gorrell, a spokeswoman. The purpose of the system is usually to make the water taste better, but in this case, it allows the hotel to continue operations as normal, she said.

 

"This really only impacts the guests who may be staying in our hotel rooms," Gorrell said. "It's a bummer that this had happened, but I'm confident that with everything we have in place, it should be a negligible impact."

 

Guests at the Gaylord hotel said they received voice mails and two notes slipped under their doors.

 

"We have bottled water in our rooms, so I wasn't very concerned about it. It didn't alarm me that much," said Katie Schneider of Evanston, Ill., who is here for the NCAA convention.

 

"It looked fine. I was drinking water from the tap before they sent the advisory," said Dee Morris of Alexandria, who said she was staying there to escape the inauguration traffic as well as to attend tonight's Black Tie & Boots Inaugural Ball, a Texas-style hootenanny with at least 11,000 guests.

 

"These things happen," she said. "We have let our infrastructure sort of go to hell."

 

Officials blamed freezing weather and aging pipes for the break, which snarled traffic and slowed emergency crews. The 42-inch pipe, built in 1965, is not considered old, but it rests in acidic soil that has weakened other pipes in the area, said Mike McGill, a WSSC spokesman.

 

The boil-water advisory affects most of southwestern Prince George's, including Fort Washington, National Harbor and parts of Temple Hills, Rosecroft and Oxon Hill.

 

Water that would be consumed in any fashion, including water used for washing dishes, brushing teeth or making ice, should be boiled for at least one minute, McGill said. Residents who want to see whether they live within the boil-water zone should check the WSSC's Web site, http://www.wsscwater.com, McGill said.

 

Copyright 2009 Washington Post.

 

He Died Suddenly, but He's Still Helping Others Live Better

 

By Libby Garvey

Washington Post

Monday, January 19, 2009; HE06

 

The call came at 3 a.m. last Jan. 20, shortly after we'd gotten home from the hospital.

 

"Who could that be now?" I asked my grown daughter, Shannon. We looked at the phone and at each other.

 

"I'll answer it," she said. "Yes, I'm his daughter. Thank you."

 

She listened, then looked at me. "Dad was registered as an organ donor. They're calling about tissue donation."

 

"Now?" I asked. "Why on Earth did they call at this hour?"

 

I felt angry, even though I knew neither of us would sleep that night.

 

"The tissue is only good for a few hours," Shannon said. "You don't have to say yes. They're very nice. We can talk about it, but they have to know by 8 this morning."

 

We were both still in shock. My wonderfully fit husband had died less than five hours before of a sudden heart attack at age 56. Organ donation had not come to mind that night, even though Kennan and I had talked about it years earlier when the question first appeared on our Virginia driver's license applications. We'd agreed: We would want our organs to help others if they could. But the question seemed so hypothetical, so . . . distant. Besides, wasn't organ donation an option only in the case of brain-dead people on a ventilator?

 

The donation specialist at the Washington Regional Transplant Community, the federally designated organ procurement organization for the area, confirmed that Kennan could not be an organ donor because he had died at home and had not been on a ventilator.

 

He could, however, be a tissue donor.

 

A year later, I know that 98 percent of donors give tissue rather than organs, and that tissue donation is important. One tissue donor can benefit dozens of people, saving the life of a burn victim with skin grafts, giving the gift of sight to one or two people through cornea transplantation, and helping cancer and trauma patients with bone and tendon grafts.

 

And so, at 3 a.m., we began the painful discussion that more than 2,000 families in the Washington area undertook last year. It went as many such conversations do. We hesitated.

 

Last year, only 635 families said yes after being called, and I understand why. It was hard to let go, to hand over the body of our beloved husband and father as just a useful hunk of tissue. We couldn't yet really believe he was dead. It all seemed so unreal.

 

Shannon looked at me. "Dad wanted to be a donor. You both agreed it was the right thing to do. I'll call them."

 

We had many questions. Kennan's tightknit family included brothers and sisters scattered across several states. We knew they would want to view his body before cremation. Would the body be in any shape to be seen after the donation process? We were assured skin would be taken only from the back of the body, and the team would insert prosthetics where bone was removed and under the eyelids after the eyes were taken out.

 

This was all painful. We tried hard to think of Kennan's body as no longer Kennan and to comprehend that he was dead.

 

We had another concern: Would the prosthetics be a problem for cremation, the method we had always planned? That would be no problem, we were told.

 

Finally, we didn't think family members would be able to get into town for several days, and we did not want to embalm the body. Wouldn't cutting it open hasten decomposition and make a late viewing problematic? The answer to this question was more cautious. We would have to speak to the funeral home about that, the donation specialist said.

 

We told her to go ahead with the tissue donation, hoping that everything would work out. We told each other again this was the right thing to do.

 

But the next morning, the first funeral home we called told us flatly that donation would make a viewing impossible, embalming absolutely necessary and cremation complicated. They were curt and unsympathetic. I felt sick: Had we made a terrible mistake?

 

Thankfully, on the advice of a friend, we next called Old Town Funeral Choices in Alexandria. They reassured us that a viewing late in the week would be possible and that cremation would be no problem. We were still nervous, though. Their undertaker told us that without embalming, the body "might not look as we expected" for the viewing. It might even "smell slightly." We worried for days.

 

We need not have. Even my 6-year-old grandson, Jeremiah, for whom Kennan was more father than grandfather, was able to see Kennan's body and say goodbye.

 

And in the days and months since, Kennan's gift has kept on giving, not only to those who have received his tissue but also to us.

 

At first, it helped just to know we'd done what Kennan had wanted, what he would have considered the right thing. It made our decision and coming to terms with his death a little easier.

 

A few weeks later, we received a letter from the regional transplant office, offering sympathy and thanks and letting us know that as many as 60 people would benefit just from Kennan's donation of bone. More might be helped by his tendons and skin. Sight might be restored to two people using his corneas.

 

Kennan's family was here when that letter arrived, and we all cried. It was such a comfort to know that his early death could help so many. When a box arrived with green plastic bracelets for anyone who wanted to show support for organ donation, many family members put them on. And this Thanksgiving, I was touched to see that several nieces and nephews still wear them in memory of their uncle.

 

Next came a packet for my two daughters and me with a note from Maureen Balderston, the transplant office's donor family advocate, and some pamphlets offering advice and support for the first weeks after losing a husband or a father. I read and re-read those little booklets, sometimes just to feel reassured that what I was experiencing was normal even though it was so awful. Others had gone through this and survived.

 

A few weeks later, when it was painfully sinking in how permanent my new condition was, I got a phone call from Maureen. She said she didn't want to disturb me but was calling to see how I was doing and if I had any questions. She wanted me to know that I'd be getting letters and occasional phone calls and information about various support services over the next two years. Unless, of course, I told her I didn't want them.

 

It was so good to hear from someone who was perfectly comfortable talking about grief. Our friends and family have been a source of enormous support and comfort, but the transplant office is a professional resource to which we can turn, free of charge. There are support groups for my daughters and me and for my grandson. There are speakers and quilt projects and one-on-one mentors, should we want them. And, most important to me this first year, there are the regular letters with their comforting pamphlets.

 

Kennan has left many gifts, but leading me to the transplant community was an unexpected one. In the year since he died, I have learned that many people don't realize -- as Shannon and I initially did not -- just how urgently organ and tissue donors are needed. Only 50 percent of eligible donors in the nation designate themselves as such. Even when people do, their next of kin must be closely consulted -- which is why we got that 3 a.m. phone call. If the donor hasn't talked to his or her family about the decision, relatives who are overwhelmed after a sudden death often cannot agree to it.

 

It's understandable. It was hard enough for me to agree even though I knew that Kennan had checked the box to say, "Yes, I want my body to help others when I no longer need it."

 

But the reluctance of the bereaved costs lives. Of the 635 donors last year, the transplant office was able to use donations from only 391, for a variety of reasons. While the waiting list for organs and tissue has tripled in the past 10 years, the number of donors nationally has stayed more or less constant.

 

A year from now, the transplant office will tell us how many people were ultimately helped by Kennan's donation. And that will not even be counting his own family.

 

© 2009 The Washington Post Company.

 

Early detection is key to treating cervical cancer

Expert advice

 

By Holly Selby

Baltimore Sun

Monday, January 19, 2009

 

Each year, about 11,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute. This cancer is relatively slow-growing and may not cause any symptoms, but it can be detected with regular tests called Pap smears. If detected early enough, the cure rate - or five-year-survival rate - is about 80 percent, says Robert E. Bristow, director of the Kelly Gynecologic Oncology Service and the Ovarian Cancer Center of Excellence at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

 

What is cervical cancer?

Cervical cancer is a malignancy in the cervix [lower part] of the uterus that usually starts with precancerous changes or dysplasia that is detectable with a Pap smear [in which cells scraped from the cervix are examined under a microscope]. Cervical cancer is caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), which is usually spread through sexual contact. A recently developed vaccine for young women can protect them against the more common types of HPV that are most often associated with cervical cancer.

 

What is the incidence of cervical cancer in the United States?

The incidence is about 11,000 cases a year in the United States, with about 3,000 deaths from cervical cancer. Worldwide, cervical cancer is one of the top two causes of death due to cancer among women, second to breast cancer. There are about 500,000 cases diagnosed in the world annually, largely because many women in developing countries don't have access to the necessary medical care and cervical cancer screening practices.

 

How is it diagnosed?

The standard screening test for cervical cancer and pre-cancer is the Pap smear. It is pretty low-tech, as it were. It is a way to look at the changes in the cells of the cervix, and it does have a 20 percent false negative rate - so it is not a perfect test. That is why it is recommended that women get tested every year. It takes a relatively long time for a pre-cancer to become cancer: About 10 to 20 years in most cases. Ideally, the Pap smear would detect an early pre-cancer change of the cervix and it would be successfully treated before it ever had the chance to develop into an actual cervical cancer.

 

Then why not recommend that women get tested every five years?

Because of that 20 percent false negative. You don't want to take the chance of getting a false negative and then waiting five years to discover that. Also, not all cancers take 10 years to develop, and you don't want to take that chance either.

 

What is the treatment?

For cervical cancer, there are two primary options: surgery and radiation. The best candidates for surgical treatment have early-stage disease and are healthy enough to undergo a major surgical operation. For women with very-early-stage lesions, a simple cone biopsy of the cervix (less than complete removal of the cervix) may be adequate therapy. For most other women with early-stage disease, however, the standard surgical treatment is a radical hysterectomy, which includes removal of the uterus and tissues around it and the lymph nodes in the pelvis. In premenopausal women undergoing radical hysterectomy, the ovaries can usually be preserved, so that hormone replacement therapy is not needed.

 

For young women with early-stage cervical cancer who have not completed their childbearing, we also can perform a surgery called a trachelectomy. In this, we remove the cervix and surrounding tissue and lymph nodes and leave the top part of the uterus (as well as the fallopian tubes and ovaries) in place and reattach it to the top of the vagina. For example, if a patient is a 26-year-old with no children, we can preserve the child-bearing capacity of the woman using this approach. (The child would be delivered by Caesarean method.) This is not the standard approach, however, and patients must be carefully selected to ensure successful treatment of the cancer, which is the top priority.

 

If a woman is not a good candidate for surgery, for example because of more-advanced-stage disease, extensive prior surgery, or serious medical conditions that would make surgery unsafe, she can be treated with radiation combined with low doses of chemotherapy. We call this approach chemo-radiation. If the disease is a stage-3 or beyond, if the cancer has spread to the liver or lungs, then these patients would be treated with chemotherapy alone, with the hope that it would shrink or eradicate the tumors.

 

How are these surgeries performed?

Traditionally, a radical hysterectomy is performed by making an incision (usually 10-12 inches) in the abdomen with a scalpel. But, about 10 years ago, a minimally invasive approach was developed called laparoscopic surgery. This consists of making four or five incisions no more than a half-inch in size, and the surgeon operates through these small incisions with long instruments [that are] about 18 inches in length. In the U.S., about 75 percent of radical hysterectomies are performed using the traditional open approach, and about 25 percent are done using minimally invasive approaches (laparoscopy).

 

More recently, computer-assisted laparoscopy (or robotic surgery) was developed. In this case, the advantage is that the surgeon has much more accurate and precise motions with the surgical instruments, making the procedure safer and faster. With conventional laparoscopy, you are working in reverse motions, but with computer-assisted robotic laparoscopy, the robotic instruments allow a much wider range of motions that mimic the hand motions exactly. The surgeon also has the advantage of three-dimensional vision with robotic surgery, which is also a big advantage over the two-dimensional view provided by conventional laparoscopy. We have been performing these robotic-assisted surgeries for the past two years and currently do about 75 percent of all hysterectomies using this technology. This is probably a higher percentage than in most centers across the country.

 

The robotic surgery approach is minimally invasive, speeds recovery and the patient can go back to work in a couple of weeks. I had a patient a few weeks ago who was out of the hospital on the next day and back to work in the next week.

 

Are there other new developments in cervical cancer prevention or treatment?

Yes, I mentioned the combination chemo-radiation treatment and robotic surgery. There also is a relatively new primary prevention method: HPV vaccines, or vaccines for human papillomavirus (as mentioned earlier).

 

The HPV vaccine holds great promise for reducing the rate of cervical cancer and pre-cancer by perhaps 50 percent to 70 percent. The question the medical community now struggles with is: Who gets the vaccine? Currently, it is recommended that girls from the ages of 8 to 14 get the vaccine - before sexual activity. No one is issuing a blanket statement about who should get the vaccine or when: That is something parents would want to talk to their pediatrician and primary-care doctors [about]. Another question is whether or not to vaccinate males.

 

Is cervical cancer treatable?

Absolutely, particularly for early-stage cancer. The cure, or five-year survival rate, is about 80 percent for stage-1 disease. This drops to about 60 percent for stage-2 and 40 percent for patients with stage-3 disease.

 

Holly Selby is a former reporter for The Baltimore Sun.

 

Copyright 2009 Baltimore Sun.

 

HEALTH CARE REPORT: SCHIP vote set this week in Senate

 

By Sean Lengell

Washington Times

Monday, January 19, 2009

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Beginning today, reporter Sean Lengell will provide a weekly look at health and health care issues on Capitol Hill.

 

SCHIP vote set this week in Senate

The Senate is expected to vote this week on legislation to expand a popular health care program for uninsured children, possibly providing Barack Obama with one of the first bill-signing duties of his presidency.

 

The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday approved a $31.5 billion measure to expand the State Children's Heath Insurance Program, or SCHIP, for another 4 1/2 years. The bill could hit the Senate floor and Mr. Obama could sign health care bill this week for a full vote as early as Wednesday, with a final version sent to Mr. Obama's White House desk later this week.

 

The House passed a similar bill last Wednesday, and Mr. Obama has said he will sign the measure. SCHIP funding would expire at the end of March without congressional action.

 

The expansion, which would add about 4 million children to the 7 million already covered in the program, would provide Mr. Obama with a high-profile down payment on his promise of universal health care coverage.

 

The legislation calls for increasing the federal tax on cigarettes by 61 cents to $1 a pack to pay for the program.

 

Failing grades given over tobacco laws

The American Lung Association slapped the federal government and many states with failing grades in a new report that scores the strength of laws to protect people against tobacco-related illnesses.

 

The association's State of Tobacco Control 2008, released last week, gives the federal government straight F's for failing to increase the Food and Drug Administration's authority over tobacco products and funding for programs that help smokers kick the habit, and its cigarette tax policy.

 

The association also gave the federal government a D for signing but not submitting the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control - the world's first public health treaty, which was drafted in 2004 - to the Senate for ratification.

 

Many states fared even worse, with Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia earning straight F's.

 

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia so far have met the association's 2006 smoke-free-air challenge although just two states - Iowa and Nebraska - passed strong anti-smoking laws in 2008.

 

"During these economically challenged times, it simply cannot be ignored that investing in tobacco prevention and cessation programs is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve our nation's health while trimming the bottom line," said Charles D. Connor, president and chief executive of the American Lung Association.

 

The full report can be viewed at www.stateoftobaccocontrol.org.

 

Obama may restore abortion funding

Mr. Obama may overturn a U.S. policy that prohibits funding for groups that perform or promote abortions overseas, possibly as early as his first day in the White House on Tuesday, according to widespread speculation around Washington.

 

The so-called Mexico City policy was established by President Reagan in 1984. President Clinton rescinded the policy soon after taking office in 1993, but President Bush reinstated it in January 2001.

 

Capitol Hill Democrats repeatedly have inserted provisions in spending bills to rescind the policy, but Mr. Bush has used veto threats to strike the language from the final versions of the legislation.

 

Physician shortage on Congress' radar

House and Senate Democrats jointly introduced legislation Thursday to address a growing nationwide shortage of physicians, nurses other health care professionals who work in geriatric medicine.

 

The Retooling the Health Care Workforce for an Aging America Act was introduced in by Senate Special Committee on Aging Chairman Herb Kohl of Wisconsin and Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.

 

The bill would expand education and training opportunities in geriatrics and long-term care for licensed health professionals, direct care workers and family caregivers.

 

Nationally, only about 1 percent of all physicians, or 7,000, are certified geriatricians, even as the population of older people is on track to double by 2030.

 

No vote for the measure has been scheduled.

 

Obama gives nod to Corr for HHS

Mr. Obama said he intends to nominate William Corr as deputy secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

 

Mr. Corr is executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a privately funded organization established to focus the nation's attention on reducing tobacco use among both children and adults. He formerly served as HHS chief of staff during the Clinton administration, where he was principal adviser to Secretary Donna E. Shalala.

 

Mr. Corr also worked as chief counsel and policy director for former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, who is Mr. Obama's pick to head HHS.

 

Sean Lengell can be reached at slengell@washingtontimes.com

 

Copyright 2009 Washington Times.

 

More companies join recall of peanut butter snack foods

 

Baltimore Sun

Monday, January 19, 2009

 

WASHINGTON - The company that sells Little Debbie snacks announced a recall yesterday of peanut butter crackers because of a potential link to a deadly salmonella outbreak. The voluntary recall came one day after the government advised consumers to avoid eating cookies, cakes, ice cream and other foods with peanut butter until health officials learn more about the contamination. The announcement by McKee Foods Corp. of Collegedale, Tenn., about two kinds of Little Debbie products was another in a string of voluntary recalls after the most recent guidance by health officials. Also yesterday, the South Bend Chocolate Co. in Indiana said it was recalling various candies containing peanut butter from Peanut Corp. of America.

 

Copyright 2009 Baltimore Sun.

 

Testing when eyes become vulnerable to cataracts

 

Associated Press

By Lauran Neergaard

Washington Post

Monday, January 19, 2009

 

WASHINGTON - Space shuttle science may soon come to an eye doctor near you: Researchers are using a NASA gadget to finally tell if a cataract is brewing before someone's vision clouds over.

 

It's a story of shot-in-the-dark science that paid off with a noninvasive test that tells when eyes are losing the natural compound that keeps cataracts at bay.

 

That brings the potential to fight the world's leading cause of vision loss. Knowing their eyes are vulnerable could spur people to take common-sense steps to reduce that risk, like avoiding cigarette smoke, wearing sunglasses and improving diet.

 

More intriguing, the device allows easier testing of whether certain medications might prevent or slow cataract formation. Studies involving astronauts - whose space flights put them at extra risk - and civilians could begin later this year.

 

Don't call the eye clinic yet: The government has only a few prototypes of the device and no commercial manufacturer lined up. But already, doctors at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University have begun experimental use to see how the exam might fit into the care of a variety of eye patients.

 

"It's like an early alarm system," says Dr. Manuel Datiles III of the National Eye Institute, who led a study of 235 people that found the laser light technique can work.

 

It all started when NASA senior scientist Rafat Ansari developed a low-powered laser light device to help astronauts with experiments growing crystals in space.

 

Ansari, with NASA's John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, knew physics, not medicine. Then his father developed cataracts, where the eye's normally clear lens becomes permanently clouded. Surgery to replace the lens is the only fix.

 

Surprised at the lack of options, Ansari read up on cataracts and learned the lens is largely made up of proteins and water. One type of protein, called alpha-crystallin, is key to keeping it transparent. When other proteins get damaged - by the sun's UV radiation or cigarette smoke or aging - alpha-crystallins literally scoop them up before they can stick together and clog the lens. But we're born with a certain amount of alpha-crystallin. Once the supply's gone, cataracts can form.

 

Whoa, Ansari thought: His space laser measures proteins that make up crystals. Ever notice dust particles floating when you shine a flashlight? His device worked on the same principle. Small particles flow fast and larger ones more slowly, so that light shining on them scatters in different, measurable patterns.

 

Could it spot cataract-related proteins? His next step is not for the queasy. Ansari bought some calf eyes at a slaughterhouse and got his then-teenage daughter, now a doctor, to dissect the lenses in their kitchen. He stuck them in the refrigerator to test after the cold clouded them over. (Ansari hadn't known that biologists do just that step to create a model of human cataracts.)

 

When he warmed up the lenses and beamed his device, light scattering differed with the lens' changing opacity. It was time to ask eye specialists if the technique might allow usable alpha-crystallin measurement.

 

It took over a decade of laboratory and animal testing, but the result is a machine that does just that - by aiming Ansari's special laser at the lens for five seconds and then calculating light scattering.

 

In last month's Archives of Ophthalmology, National Institutes of Health researchers reports tests of 235 people ages 7 to 86. Alpha-crystallin decreased steadily both as lenses began to fog and as people with seemingly clear lenses got older.

 

"What we are really looking at is the reserve of this alpha-crystallin," Ansari explains. It can "repair any damage if there is a certain concentration. If it depletes below that level then I think the game is over."

 

What next? NASA and NIH researchers separately are planning to study if special formulations of antioxidants - nutrients that fight certain age-related tissue damage - can slow alpha-crystallin loss.

 

Ansari also plans to measure the impact of long-term space travel on astronauts' vision.

 

Already, Datiles has used the test to diagnose cataracts beginning in some patients whose doctors found no other reason for their worsening vision.

 

And at Hopkins, ophthalmologist Dr. Walter Stark is using it to help tell if some patients complaining that their LASIK surgery for nearsightedness is wearing off need more vision-sharpening surgery - or if they're really forming a cataract, which LASIK can't fix. Also, researchers are testing diabetics with a cataract-speeding eye disorder.

 

"This test does correlate significantly with cataract formation," Stark says. "We think it has great potential."

 

EDITOR's NOTE - Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

 

© 2009 The Associated Press.

 

Low-Cost Strategies to Maintain Health in Hard Times

 

Washington Post

Monday, January 19, 2009

 

MONDAY, Jan. 19 (HealthDay News) - Everyone needs to make sacrifices during hard economic times, but you don't have to shortchange your health.

 

Experts with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston say people can live healthy and cut their risk of cancer without breaking the bank by following several free and low-cost strategies.

 

Get moving

. Moderate to intensive aerobic exercise, including brisk walking, are good for the heart and can help cancer survivors reduce the risk of recurrence. "The most consistent evidence we have so far for reducing the risk of several types of cancer is exercise and avoiding becoming obese," D. Jeffrey Meyerhardt, a Dana-Farber gastrointestinal cancer specialist, said in a news release issued by the institute. Activities can include taking the stairs instead of an elevator, using a stationary bicycle or treadmill while watching TV, or playing a team sport.

 

Eat healthy

. Keeping consumption of processed sugars, red meat and calories low, but fruits and vegetables high, helps you maintain a healthy weight and cuts the risk of certain cancers. "Many of the beneficial nutrients in fruits and vegetables are concentrated in the pigment or rich colors, which are often in the skins," said Stacy L. Kennedy, a nutritionist at Dana-Farber. An apple a day is a good start. The uncooked skin contains the cancer-fighting antioxidant quercitin. Pumpkin, sweet potato, squash (butternut and acorn), carrots and other orange fruits and vegetables contain carotenoids, cancer-fighting nutrients shown to lower one's chances of getting of colon, prostate, lung and breast cancer.

 

Quit smoking

. Kicking the habit will save you money later in health-care costs. "Even though there have been many recent advances in lung cancer treatments, the most effective way to eradicate lung cancer is to prevent it from ever happening," said Dr. Bruce Johnson, director of the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology at Dana-Farber, noting that smokers who stay off tobacco for at least 10 to 20 years cut lower their chances of developing lung cancer by 50 percent. Though smoking is the cause of 80 percent of all lung cancers, according to the American Cancer Society, it also increases the risk of oral, throat, pancreatic, uterine, bladder and kidney cancers.

 

Mind your Ps and Qs

. Obviously you save money by cutting out alcohol consumption, but you may also lower the risk of developing some cancers. For example, Dana-Farber researchers found one drink a day for postmenopausal women may raise their risk for breast cancer.

 

More information

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has more about healthy living.

 

SOURCE: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, news release, Jan. 12, 2009

 

© 2009 Scout News LLC. All rights reserved.

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