Blocking the Transmission of Violence
Alex Kotlowit
(The New York Times Sunday Magazine, May 4, 2008)
"The stubborn core of violence in American cities is troubling and perplexing. Even as homicide rates have declined across the country -- in some places, like New York, by a remarkable amount -- gunplay continues to plague economically struggling minority communities. For 25 years, murder has been the leading cause of death among African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has analyzed data up to 2005. And the past few years have seen an uptick in homicides in many cities. Since 2004, for instance, they are up 19 percent in Philadelphia and Milwaukee, 29 percent in Houston and 54 percent in Oakland. Just two weekends ago in Chicago, with the first warm weather, 36 people were shot, 7 of them fatally…Many killings are attributed to gang conflicts and are confined to particular neighborhoods. In Chicago, where on average five people were shot each day last year, 83 percent of the assaults were concentrated in half the police districts. So for people living outside those neighborhoods, the frequent outbursts of unrestrained anger have been easy to ignore. But each shooting, each murder, leaves a devastating legacy, and a growing school of thought suggests that there’s little we can do about the entrenched urban poverty if the relentless pattern of street violence isn’t somehow broken…CeaseFire’s founder, Gary Slutkin…says that violence directly mimics infections like tuberculosis and AIDS, and so, he suggests, the treatment ought to mimic the regimen applied to these diseases: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source…Slutkin wants to shift how we think about violence from a moral issue (good and bad people) to a public health one (healthful and unhealthful behavior)."
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(BBC News Online, May 6, 2008)
"Long-term use of ibuprofen may reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, a large US study reports. Data from almost 250,000 veterans showed those who used the painkiller for more than five years were more than 40% less likely to develop Alzheimer's. The study in Neurology reported that some other similar painkillers may also have a protective effect. Dementia experts said the results were interesting but warned against people taking ibuprofen to reduce their risk. It is not the first time an association between non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, and Alzheimer's disease has been reported but results have been conflicting."
Jane Gross
(The New York Times, May 5, 2008)
"Grounded in research at the Dartmouth Medical School, slow medicine encourages physicians to put on the brakes when considering care that may have high risks and limited rewards for the elderly, and it educates patients and families how to push back against emergency room trips and hospitalizations designed for those with treatable illnesses, not the inevitable erosion of advanced age. Slow medicine, which shares with hospice care the goal of comfort rather than cure, is increasingly available in nursing homes, but for those living at home or in assisted living, a medical scare usually prompts a call to 911, with little opportunity to choose otherwise."
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Katie Hafner
(The New York Times, May 3, 2008)
"Mr. Bunnell is among tens of millions of baby boomers who are encountering the signs, by turns amusing and disconcerting, that accompany the decline of the brain’s acuity…At the same time, boomers are seizing on a mounting body of evidence that suggests that brains contain more plasticity than previously thought, and many people are taking matters into their own hands, doing brain fitness exercises with the same intensity with which they attack a treadmill. Decaying brains, or the fear thereof, have inspired a mini-industry of brain health products -- not just supplements like coenzyme Q10, ginseng and bacopa, but computer-based fitter-brain products as well."
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(Reuters, May 7, 2008)
"Women who stop smoking can enjoy major health benefits within five years, but it can take decades to correct respiratory damage and lower their risk of lung cancer, researchers reported yesterday. Those who kicked the habit had a 13 percent reduction in the risk of death from all causes, including heart and vascular problems, within the first five years. After 20 years the risk of death from any cause was the same for those who quit as it was for those who had never smoked, the study found. The report also found that women who start smoking later in life have a lower risk of many lung and heart diseases, which the researchers said was troubling given recent studies that show youngsters are taking up cigarettes at early ages."
(The Boston Globe, May 6, 2008)
"Restaurant smoking bans may be as powerful as peers or parents in the battle to keep teenagers from becoming smokers, a new study suggests. Teenagers who lived in towns that adopted early bans on smoking in restaurants were 40 percent less likely to become smokers than their counterparts in towns with weaker restaurant smoking laws, Boston researchers report. The study did not address how smoking bans discourage teenage smoking. But Dr. Michael Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health said the findings bear out his hypothesis that if teens see fewer people smoking and conclude that smoking isn't socially acceptable, then they may be less likely to pick up the habit."
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Lutfi Sheriff Mohammed and Edmund Sanders
(Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2008)
"Thousands of angry Somalis rioted yesterday over rising food prices and the collapse of the nation's currency, culminating in clashes with government troops and armed shopkeepers that killed at least five protesters, witnesses and officials said. Shops and markets throughout Mogadishu quickly shut their doors as protesters, including many women and children, stoned storefronts and chanted slogans accusing traders of cheating them…[R]ecently, the Horn of Africa nation's food industry, which previously thrived because of private traders, has been grappling with soaring inflation, spurred by an explosion of counterfeit currency over the last year and the global spike in food prices."
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Hundreds Turn Out for Second Day of Food Protests in Somalia
(Associated Press, May 6, 2008)
(Associated Press, May 6, 2008)
"Thailand is dropping plans to create a Southeast Asian rice cartel that would have fixed the price of the skyrocketing commodity over food security concerns, the country's foreign minister said Tuesday. The proposal to create an OPEC-like cartel was first floated last week by Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to give rice producers greater control over rice prices, which have tripled since December. But the idea was heavily criticized by senators in the Philippines, a major importer, as well as some Thai rice exporters."
Carly Weeks
(The Globe and Mail, Toronto, May 5, 2008)
"The recent discovery that some organic pear juice on store shelves in Canada contained arsenic is a telling sign of how the industry has changed in recent years in response to explosive consumer demand for organic food…Global supply chains and reliance on industrial factories were once unthinkable for an industry that began as an environmentally conscious alternative to the traditional food market. But what was once a grassroots initiative dominated by small producers and customers concerned over factory farms and the use of pesticides has evolved into a global food system that includes retail giants and major corporations."
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Richard Davies
(Mail & Guardian Online, South Africa, May 5, 2008)
"The government is looking at giving food vouchers or cash to poor households to help them cope with spiralling food prices…Last month, the Cabinet mandated an inter-ministerial committee to develop a strategy to tackle food security. Millions of poor South Africans have been hard hit by the rapidly escalating prices of basic foodstuffs such as bread, milk and maize."
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Spencer S. Hsu and Mary Beth Sheridan
(The Washington Post, May 6, 2008)
"Hospitals in seven major U.S. cities would be overwhelmed if any of the cities were struck by a terrorist attack on the scale of the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, and shortages of emergency room capacity and intensive care beds will grow worse if Bush administration Medicaid changes are implemented, House Democrats charged yesterday. In a survey by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, more than half of 34 hospitals in five U.S. cities deemed at greatest risk of attack and two cities that will host this summer's national political conventions said they had no emergency room treatment space available to accept severely injured patients."
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Nicholas Bakalar
(The New York Times, May 6, 2008)
"It is often said that emergency rooms are crowded because of the disproportionate number of uninsured people using them. But data based on telephone surveys and in-person interviews, published on April 14 in The Annals of Emergency Medicine, tell a different story. The number of uninsured people nationwide rose to 15.7 percent in 2004 from 15.4 percent in 1995. Yet in that period, the proportion of uninsured people using emergency rooms declined. The 26 percent increase in the number of visits in the period was largely caused by an increase in the number of people with private doctors who sought emergency room care. The authors suggest several reasons, among them an aging population, a growing number of time-sensitive medical treatments that can be performed only in an E.R., complications from medical and surgical treatments and the difficulty of obtaining a timely appointment with a private physician."
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(Globe and Mail, Toronto, May 6, 2008)
"Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won't get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die. Now, an influential group of U.S. physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn't be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia. The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services."
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(Reuters, May 6, 2008)
"A new study provides some of the best evidence to date that breast-feeding can make children smarter, an international team of researchers said yesterday. Children whose mothers breast-fed them longer and did not mix in baby formula scored higher on intelligence tests, researchers in Canada and Belarus reported. About half the 14,000 babies were randomly assigned to a group in which prolonged and exclusive breast-feeding by the mother was encouraged at Belarusian hospitals and clinics. The mothers of the other babies received no special encouragement."
Martin Johnston
(The New Zealand Herald, May 6, 2008)
"Girls may be given free access to the emergency contraceptive pill at their local Auckland pharmacies in a bid to reduce teen pregnancies and abortions. The medicine can already be sold by many pharmacists without a doctor's prescription, including to girls without parental consent."
(The Japan Times, May 5, 2008)
"The number of children aged 14 or younger in Japan was estimated at 17.25 million as of April 1, marking a record low for the 27th straight year, the government said Sunday. Children made up 13.5 percent of the total population, giving Japan the lowest percentage of children among the world's major countries. Their proportion to the total population was down from 13.6 percent last year, registering a drop for the 34th year in a row, the government said in its annual report ahead of Children's Day on Monday. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates that the number of children will drop below 15 million and 12 percent of the total in 2015."
Kounteya Sinha
(The Times of India, May 4, 2008)
"A longer jail sentence along with a higher financial penalty and a 24-hour toll free number to record complaints against doctors conducting sex determination tests are among a slew of measures planned by the health ministry to tackle the hideous practice of female feticide in India."
Kira Cochrane
(The Guardian, London, May 2, 2008)
"While one in 8,200 women in the UK dies in pregnancy or childbirth, in the poorest, most conflict-riven countries, including Niger, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, that figure rises to a stark, inexcusable, one in eight...These deaths are highly preventable. It is not a question of finding a vaccine or a cure, of brilliant scientists labouring over test tubes. In many cases, it's not even a question of governments having to find huge amounts of cash: it is estimated that 80% of maternal deaths could be prevented at little or no cost. It is a matter of advocacy and will."
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(BBC News Online, May 7, 2008)
"Appropriate treatment can all but eradicate the risk that a pregnant woman with HIV will pass the virus to her child, research shows. Data on 5,151 HIV pregnancies in the UK and Ireland between 2000 and 2006 found an infant infection rate of just 1.2% where preventative steps were taken. In the mid-1990s, before effective drug therapy became available, the infant infection rate was over 20%. University College London led the Aids Online study."
(Mail & Guardian Online, South Africa, May 5, 2008)
"The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Monday accused Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang of keeping Aids statistics low after an official report was released by the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA)… Kalyan said the report suggested that 2,2-million more people were becoming sick and dying of Aids than government figures showed."
(The Times of India, May 5, 2008)
"An HIV positive mother cannot be deprived custody of her child, the Delhi High Court has ruled asking in-laws of a widow to hand over the two-year-old son to her. 'There is no law which can deprive a mother of her child because of AIDS,' justice Geeta Mittal said when the counsel appearing for in-laws contended that custody of the child cannot be given to their daughter-in-law as she was an AIDS patient."
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Editorial
(Philadelphia Inquirer, May 6, 2008)
"The cold-blooded killing of Philadelphia Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski is yet another sad reminder of the violence that rages on the streets, thanks to the easy access of guns and a disregard for human life. Sgt. Liczbinski should be celebrating his 40th birthday today with his wife and three children. Instead, his family is preparing for his funeral…Sgt. Liczbinski's death should motivate state lawmakers to stop kowtowing to the gun lobby and pass meaningful gun-control laws, including a ban on assault weapons such as the one used to kill Sgt. Liczbinski."
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 5, 2008)
"Although raw figures show an almost 20 percent jump in violent crime in New Orleans in the first quarter of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007, police say the increase is much smaller when figured on a per capita basis. Figures released on Monday show that all categories of violent crime were up except for simple robbery and murder. Violent crime jumped only 1.08 percent on a per capita basis, however, police said. Police based that per capita figure on an average population of 273,412 in 2007 and an estimated population of 323,302 in 2008 but did not indicate the population source. However, others say the 2008 population figure is lower."
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(Baltimore Sun, May 5, 2008)
"American children take anti-psychotic medicines at about six times the rate of children in the United Kingdom, according to a comparison based on a new British study. Does it mean U.S. kids are being over-treated? Or that British children are being under-treated? Experts say that's almost beside the point, because use is rising on both sides of the Atlantic. And with scant long-term safety data, it's likely the drugs are being over-prescribed for both U.S. and U.K. children, research suggests. Among the most commonly used drugs were those to treat autism and hyperactivity."
Deborah L. Shelton and Bonnie Miller Rubin
(Chicago Tribune, May 5, 2008)
"Adolescents who were adopted as infants are significantly more likely to have a psychiatric disorder as those who were not adopted, a study released Monday has found. While emphasizing that most of the adoptees in the study were psychologically healthy and faring well, the researchers said that as a group they faced a greater risk for two psychiatric conditions: attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder…The researchers had thought that adoptees born overseas would be at higher risk of psychiatric disorders than those who were born and placed in the U.S., but they found the reverse was true."
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(The Globe and Mail, Toronto, May 5, 2008)
"British Columbia has become the latest province to offer schoolgirls a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease that causes most cervical cancers. The voluntary immunizations for the human papilloma virus will be available to girls in Grade 6 and Grade 9, with their parents' consent, the province announced Monday. HPV is the second most common type of cancer for women between the ages of 20 and 40."
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Monifa Thomas
(Chicago-Sun Times, May 5, 2008)
"Though there's now a vaccine against HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cervical cancer, most moms aren't willing to get their daughters vaccinated at the age recommended by federal health authorities. That's according to the first national study of mothers' attitudes toward the human papillomavirus vaccine, or HPV…[The] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that it be given to girls at age 11 or 12, when they receive adolescent booster shots. According to a survey of more than 10,000 mothers, only 49 percent said they would vaccinate a daughter if she were 9 to 12 years old. But moms were more willing to vaccinate a daughter who was 13 to 15 years old (68 percent) or 16 to 18 (86 percent)."
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Colorado: HPV Linked to Cancers in Men
(The Denver Post, May 6, 2008)
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Kounteya Sinha
(The Times of India, May 6, 2008)
"British scientists may have an answer to why, despite best efforts, you are constantly putting on weight, especially around the waist…A new large scale British study has identified genetic variations, occurring commonly among Indian Asians, that make them heavier and more prone to diabetes."
Alfred Lubrano
(Philadelphia Inquirer, May 6, 2008)
"Some of the fattest people in America are among the poorest. And with food prices rising, the problem is likely to get worse…More poor people may suffer…with the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicting food prices will be up 4.5 percent throughout the year, due to high fuel costs, weather problems, and the growing diversion of corn crops to make ethanol. Globally, prices will rise nearly 50 percent, according to the president's Council of Economic Advisers."
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Subodh Varma
(The Times of India, May 4, 2008)
"Even as the world spins into a global food crisis, a popular theory… is that the Chinese and Indians are responsible. The 'logic': due to zooming incomes, they are eating more, causing worldwide shortages. But is that true? Due to their huge populations, countries like India and China may appear to consume gigantic amounts of food. But the real elephant in the room that nobody is willing to talk about is how much each person gets to eat. And the answer will shock many. Total foodgrain consumption -- wheat, rice, and all coarse grains like rye, barley etc -- by each person in the US is over five times that of an Indian, according to figures released by the US Department of Agriculture for 2007."
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Anil Dawar
(The Guardian, London, May 7, 2008)
"The government today defied the advice of drug experts and upgraded cannabis from class C to class B. The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, announced a new system of escalating penalties for adults caught in possession of small amounts of the drug from early next year. Tougher sanctions will replace the current system of police warnings, and officers will be able to arrest first-time offenders. Smith justified her decision by highlighting the strength of ‘skunk’ strains of herbal cannabis now widely available."
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Jamie Doward and Tom Templeton
(The Observer, London, May 4, 2008)
"They are not hard to find. Every few days brings a fresh tale of feral youths meting out random acts of violence with unfathomable intensity. Apart from the shocking brutality, the speed with which a seemingly trivial argument or confrontation can assume murderous proportions, the stories have a common theme: the perpetrators of the violence, often in their very young teens, were high on 'skunk' at the time…Suddenly, skunk -- a high-strength herbal strain of cannabis -- is showing the darker side of a drug that was once considered to be relatively benign. Concerns about its links with mental illness and its ability to act as a 'gateway drug', leading users into addiction, have prompted a sea change in popular opinion about cannabis."
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(Associated Press, May 7, 2008)
"People who sleep fewer than six hours a night -- or more than nine -- are more likely to be obese, according to a new government study that is one of the largest to show a link between irregular sleep and big bellies. The study also linked light sleepers to higher smoking rates, less physical activity and more alcohol use. The research adds weight to a stream of studies that have found obesity and other health problems in those who don't get proper shuteye, said Dr. Ron Kramer, a Colorado physician and a spokesman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine."
(The New York Times, May 6, 2008)
"A formerly controversial high-fat diet has proved highly effective in reducing seizures in children whose epilepsy does not respond to medication, British researchers are reporting. As the first randomized trial of the diet, the new study lends legitimacy to a treatment that has been used since the 1920s but has until recently been dismissed by many doctors as a marginal alternative therapy."
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(Associated Press, May 5, 2008)
"Insulin pumps are used by tens of thousands of teenagers worldwide with Type 1 diabetes, but they can be risky and have been linked to injuries and even deaths, a review by federal regulators finds. Parents should be vigilant in watching their children's use of the pumps, researchers from the Food and Drug Administration wrote. They didn't advise against using the devices. But they called for more study to address safety concerns in teens and even younger children who use the popular pumps. The federal review of use by young people over a decade found 13 deaths and more than 1,500 injuries connected with the pumps. At times, the devices malfunctioned, but other times, teens were careless or took risks, the study authors wrote."
Rob Stein
(The Washington Post, May 4, 2008)
"Rocco Turso was injecting himself with insulin three times a day, swallowing pills twice daily and restricting his diet. But his diabetes was still out of control, blurring his vision, making his feet numb and sapping his energy. So he decided to try an experimental operation. Within days, his blood sugar was normal and he was off all his medications. While many surgeons share Rangraj's enthusiasm, and some diabetes experts agree that the operation and similar ones may lead to fundamental new insights into the disease, other experts remain cautious. Much more research is needed, they say, to validate the effectiveness of the procedures. They worry that the operations will start to proliferate before their long-term safety and effectiveness have been proven, as often occurs with novel surgeries."
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(Associated Press, May 6, 2008)
"More than 200 million children worldwide under age 5 do not get basic health care, leading to nearly 10 million deaths annually from treatable ailments like diarrhea and pneumonia, a U.S.-based charity said Wednesday. Nearly all of the deaths occur in the developing world, with poor children facing twice the risk of dying compared to richer children, according to Save the Children's global report."
(The New York Times, May 6, 2008)
"Defying popular wisdom about wealthy countries and coronary disease, a new study has found that about 80 percent of the world’s deaths from high blood pressure occur in poor and middle-income countries. The study, published last week in The Lancet, found that strokes and heart attacks caused by high blood pressure were responsible for nearly eight million premature deaths worldwide."
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(China Daily, May 5, 2008)
"The number of Chinese children infected with hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) continues to rise, with reported cases exceeding 8,531 on Monday. All were aged below six, with the majority being under two. Altogether 25 children have died of the disease. Tests have confirmed 24 of the deaths were triggered by the virus known as enterovirus 71 or EV71."
(The Independent, London, May 5, 2008)
"Doctors specialising in cosmetic treatments are warning of a growing problem of 'cowboy clinics' using lasers without proper training or controls and endangering patients. The British Association of Cosmetic Doctors (BACD) is demanding tighter regulation of the beauty industry to protect the public. But the Department of Health has ignored the warnings and announced plans to deregulate the use of lasers in cosmetic treatment."
(The New York Times, May 7, 2008)
"The head of a Congressional subcommittee looking into complaints of inadequate medical care in immigration detention announced on Tuesday that she had introduced legislation to set mandatory standards for care and to require that all deaths be reported to the Justice Department and Congress…The need for the bill, she said, was underscored by an article in The New York Times on Monday about the 2007 death of Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea. His name was one of 66 on a government list of detention deaths obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act."
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