By Ishani Ganguli

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pilar Albarado spent five months after September 11, 2001, cleaning pulverized building material from apartment buildings and offices near the site of the World Trade Center. A chronic cough came two years later, and she is also battling asthma, memory loss and acid reflux.

Only now, almost six years after the attacks, is the extent of the medical toll on firefighters, police and others who worked on the cleanup coming to light, along with questions about how much the government knew of the danger.

Albarado, 44, cannot work because of her medical problems. Her acid reflux is so bad she cannot eat most foods.

She is being treated at the recently opened World Trade Center health clinic at Bellevue Hospital, but she said the medicines they give her do little to help.

“Our problems will be with us for life,” she said during a protest outside congressional offices in June. “I will never be the same.”

SICKENING DUST

Democrats in Congress say Albarado is one of thousands of people endangered when the Bush Administration knowingly played down the risks posed by the dust, which contained asbestos, lead and other contaminants.

Inhalation of dust-laden air has been implicated in at least two deaths — from lung inflammation and scarring — and connected to the respiratory illnesses and even cancers of thousands working and living within miles of Ground Zero, according to medical studies.

Mount Sinai Medical Center researchers found 69 percent of the nearly 10,000 first responders they examined had new or worsened lung problems after September 11, while doctors at New York University School of Medicine documented these problems in lower Manhattan residents.

More at Reuters

I’m posting this because I live the flip flop hell. I ran around in flip flops and bare feet for years, managing an aquatic facility, teaching swimming lessons and training lifeguards. Then when I moved to Florida, it was year round flip flops. The only time I put real shoes on was when I had to. Now, I am paying the price. Heel pain. Not fun. My flip flop days are pretty much over. Now I wear them only when I’m going to the pool or to run short errands. Wish I knew then what I know now…….. Oh….one other thing on footwear. If you do water aerobics often, get a good pair of water shoes. Although it’s low impact, there is an impact.

Take good care of your feet girls……so you can keep wearing those 5″ heels when the situation warrants!

Once upon a time, flip-flops were cheap, rubber thongs that you wore to wash your car or schlep to the beach.

Nowadays, they-re a summertime craze. No longer just dull drugstore specials, the sandals with the V’shaped straps turn up everywhere in eye-popping shades, from hot pink to lime green. They come adorned with spangles, flowers, and college logos. One company even created flip-flops with a built-in bottle opener.

Fun and fashionable, flip-flops have their place in your shoe closet, experts say. But they-re not meant to be worn with abandon — or else you may be courting foot pain.

Flip-Flops: Good and Bad
Jackie Hartnett, a young Northern California woman, owns five pairs, including some with a Hawaiian motif and a black pair with polka dots. Come rain or shine, she wears flip-flops. “They-re really comfortable. I don-t like shoes because they-re so confining,” she says. Her boyfriend accidentally steps on her toes, but to Hartnett, that’s a small price to pay for the breezy feel of flip-flops.

“Flip-flops and sandals during the summer are very common and very popular,” says John G. Anderson, MD, a Michigan orthopaedic surgeon and American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society spokesman.

What’s their best purpose? “Flip-flops give you some basic protection to the bottom of your foot to walk around poolside or on a surface that may be warm during the summer,” says Jim Christina, DPM, director of scientific affairs for the American Podiatric Medical Association.

They can also help prevent you from catching athlete’s foot or plantar warts in public showers, according to foot specialists.

In contrast, it’s a bad idea to play sports or hike trails in flip-flops, foot pain experts tell WebMD. Here’s a quick primer on flip-flop safety.

More at WebMD

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer

Bradford Plumer, a reporter and researcher at The New Republic, is interested in studies showing that scientists think lead abatement in the 1980s might have been a major driver in the great crime decline of the 1990s. “On this theory,” writes Plumer on his personal blog, “children who are exposed to lead paint or gasoline fumes are more likely to become violent teenagers. Rick Nevin, an economist, argues that the reduction in lead pollution in the 1970s and 1980s can account for most of the decline in New York City’s crime rate over the past decade.”

Plumer feels there’s a problem, however:

“The Bush administration loves lead. Loves it. They want it everywhere. Okay, that’s only a slight exaggeration: Back in 2002, the White House tried to stack an advisory committee on lead regulations with industry types. Last December, the administration announced that it would consider doing away with the standards that cut lead from gasoline, at the behest of battery makers and lead smelters. And its EPA has weakened a rule on removing lead paint from older residences.”

Data May Undermine Giuliani’s Claims

Rudy Giuliani never misses an opportunity to remind people about his track record in fighting crime as mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001.

“I began with the city that was the crime capital of America,” Giuliani, now a candidate for president, recently told Fox’s Chris Wallace. “When I left, it was the safest large city in America. I reduced homicides by 67 percent. I reduced overall crime by 57 percent.”

Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani’s tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the “New York miracle” was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning.

The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children’s exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives.

What makes Nevin’s work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries.

“It is stunning how strong the association is,” Nevin said in an interview. “Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead.”

Through much of the 20th century, lead in U.S. paint and gasoline fumes poisoned toddlers as they put contaminated hands in their mouths. The consequences on crime, Nevin found, occurred when poisoning victims became adolescents. Nevin does not say that lead is the only factor behind crime, but he says it is the biggest factor.

Giuliani’s presidential campaign declined to address Nevin’s contention that the mayor merely was at the right place at the right time. But William Bratton, who served as Giuliani’s police commissioner and who initiated many of the policing techniques credited with reducing the crime rate, dismissed Nevin’s theory as absurd. Bratton and Giuliani instituted harsh measures against quality-of-life offenses, based on the “broken windows” theory of addressing minor offenses to head off more serious crimes.

read more at The Washington Post

By CHRISTIE ASCHWANDEN
The New York Times
h/t to Virginia

The young woman in the American Cancer Society advertisement holds up a photograph of a smiling blonde. “My sister accidentally killed herself. She died of skin cancer,” reads the headline.

The public service announcement, financed by the sunscreen maker Neutrogena, is running in 15 women’s magazines this summer. It warns readers that “left unchecked, skin cancer can be fatal,” and urges them to “use sunscreen, cover up and watch for skin changes.”

The woman in the picture is a model, not a skin cancer victim. And the advertisement’s implicit message - that those who die of skin cancer have themselves to blame - has provoked a sharp response from some public-health doctors, who say the evidence simply does not support it.

As the advertisement says, skin cancer is the most common form of cancer. But most skin cancer is not life-threatening: it represents less than 2 percent of all cancer deaths, an estimated 10,850 people this year. Almost all of those deaths are from melanoma, which makes up only 6 percent of all skin-cancer cases.

And the link between melanoma and sun exposure is not straightforward. Dr. Marianne Berwick, an epidemiologist at the University of New Mexico who studies skin cancer, led a study published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2005 finding that people who had a lot of sun exposure up to the time they got a diagnosis of melanoma actually had better survival rates than those who had little sun exposure. The researchers are conducting a large’scale follow-up aimed at clarifying the relationship between sun exposure and melanoma.

Until that is made clear, many doctors say, it is premature to suggest that people are endangering their lives by failing to use sunscreen.

“It’s just not that simple,” said Dr. Barry Kramer, associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health.

“We do have some pretty good evidence that sunscreen will reduce your risk of the less lethal forms of skin cancer,” Dr. Kramer added. “There’s very little evidence that sunscreens protect you against melanoma, yet you often hear that as the dominant message.”

Dr. J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, acknowledges that the advertisement is aggressive. “We have taken some license in taking that message and using it the way we-ve used it,” he said, “because that’s the way to get the message to our target audience.”

Dr. Lichtenfeld said the advertisements were aimed at women ages 20 to 48 because sun exposure in childhood and young adulthood can influence skin cancer risk later in life, and it is mothers who largely control children’s time in the sun.

He added that the advertisement’s creators settled on the approach with the help of focus groups, who told them, “To get the message through to me, you have to shock me and get my attention.”

“Our focus groups showed us that these young women as a group were oblivious to the risk and felt that skin cancer isn-t a serious problem,” Dr. Lichtenfeld said, adding, “The issue isn-t A-How can you tell whether it was caused by sun exposure?- The issue is to try and prevent that sun exposure earlier in life so we reduce the risk for people later in life.”

In an effort to spread awareness about sun safety, the cancer society has joined with Neutrogena, a division of Johnson & Johnson whose sunscreens carry the society’s logo.

As part of the agreement, Neutrogena is paying for the public’service campaign, though its name is not mentioned in the advertisement.

Iris Grossman, director of communications for Johnson & Johnson, said the partnership benefited both parties. “We have the common goal of raising awareness of the importance of sun protection,” she said.

But this financial relationship raises red flags for some experts. “When people see an American Cancer Society public service announcement,” said Dr. Lisa Schwartz, co-director of the Outcomes Group at the Veterans Affairs hospital in White River Junction, Vt., “they expect it to reflect the best evidence. We don-t want people who have a financial interest to be telling you the benefit of doing something.” Dr. Lichtenfeld replied that Neutrogena did not influence the cancer society’s message on skin cancer.

The subject “has been important to our organization for some time,” he said, adding that the announcements “don-t promote something with a Neutrogena message on it - it’s our message.”

Howard L. Kaufman, co-director of the Melanoma Center at Columbia University and author of “The Melanoma Book” (Gotham, 2005), estimates that only 20 percent of melanomas are related to sun exposure, but says, “It’s the one risk factor that we can control.” While he calls the advertisements “a little bit alarmist” he says they are meant to raise awareness and they achieve that goal.

But Dr. Kramer, of the National Institutes of Health, disputes the advertisement’s assertion that skin cancer is “almost always curable if you catch it early.”

“There’s no high-quality evidence,” he said, “that shows that skin cancer screening prevents deaths.”

While the notion that detecting and treating early’stage cancers can prevent deaths might seem logical, the idea represents a gross oversimplification of how cancer works, Dr. Kramer said.

The Oversight Committee holds a hearing, “The Surgeon General’s Vital Mission: Challenges for the Future.” The hearing focuses on the importance of the Surgeon General’s Office, the need to preserve the Surgeon General’s independence, and recent limitations on the Surgeon General’s ability to carry out its public health education mission. Richard Carmona, who resigned as Surgeon General in 2006, testifies about what he viewed as political and partisan pressure.

Now we hear why Richard Carmona resigned.

The Oversight Committee holds a hearing, “The Surgeon General’s Vital Mission: Challenges for the Future.” The hearing focuses on the importance of the Surgeon General’s Office, the need to preserve the Surgeon General’s independence, and recent limitations on the Surgeon General’s ability to carry out its public health education mission. C. Everett Koop, a Surgeon General under President Reagan who is credited for fighting for AIDS awareness against heavy opposition, gives opening testimony on the need for independence in the office.

By KEVIN FREKING
Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO! NEWS

WASHINGTON - The nation’s 45 million smokers will probably help pay for the spending increase that Democrats want for children’s health insurance, say analysts familiar with deliberations on Capitol Hill.

Democratic lawmakers will push for $50 billion in new funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program over the next five years. To pay for that increase, they must find new sources of revenue or cut existing programs.

Powerful trade groups representing doctors, hospitals and insurers have united around the idea of taxing tobacco. Democratic leaders have not said to what extent they will agree.

Still, the question now is not whether the tobacco tax will go up - but how much it will go up, said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an advocacy group that promotes universal health insurance.

“I’ve every reason to believe an increase in the tobacco tax will be part of the way expanded health insurance for children is paid for,” Pollack said.

Pollack said his assessment was based on “frequent and relatively recent conversations” with the committees that have jurisdiction over SCHIP. Democrats from the House and the Senate are expected to unveil their respective SCHIP proposals soon.

The federal tax on tobacco stands at 39 cents per pack, and it generated about $7.2 billion in 2005. The money goes into the general fund of the U.S. Treasury.

States also tax cigarettes. The rates range from $2.58 cents a pack in New Jersey to 7 cents a pack in South Carolina.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

By Maggie Fox
Reuters Health and Science Editor

The U.S. tuberculosis patient who set off international alarms after fleeing across borders does not have the most dangerous form of TB but instead a strain that is easier to treat, his doctors said on Tuesday.

They said Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old lawyer, has multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, known as MDR TB — and not a form of the disease known as extensively drug-resistant, or XDR.

“It allows us to change the way we treat him. We have put surgery on hold for the time being,” Dr. Charles Daley of National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver said at a news conference. “We can use drugs not originally available.”

Nonetheless, Daley said Speaker has a serious condition and it is important to track down anyone he may have infected.

“It is fatal,” he said. “MDR TB is very difficult to treat. The cure rate is nowhere near what we would expect with just standard TB therapy.”

Dr. Mitchell Cohen of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is not clear why one CDC test indicated Speaker had XDR TB.

read more at REUTERS

from United Press International

CHICAGO, (UPI) — A new study shows seniors who have trouble identifying scents are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than people who knew soap smell from cinnamon.

They also were at higher risk of mild cognitive impairment, a condition that often strikes before Alzheimer’s, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday.

Researchers followed 589 Chicago-area people who were an average age of 80 and began the study with no cognitive impairments.

The odors volunteers were asked to identify were banana, onion, soap, cinnamon, lemon, black pepper, smoke, paint thinner, pineapple, gasoline, rose and chocolate.

Test subjects who got four out of 12 wrong were 50 percent more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those who got only one wrong.

Although there is no way to prevent Alzheimer’s, there are several drugs in development that might be able to slow the progression of the disease if it is detected early enough, which is one reason why scientists are looking into ways to test who is at risk for the illness.

The Rush University Medical Center study is published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

from United Press International

SANTA ANA, Calif.(UPI) — A California jury awarded $11.7 million to a man who sustained brain damage from a stroke after an infection was left untreated.

The Orange County Superior Court jury awarded the money Friday to Joey Crumes, 45, who suffered a stroke after the physicians failed to treat an infection in 2004.

The Los Angeles Times said Crumes presented at the Mission Hospital emergency room in Mission Viejo with an acute headache. He informed the treating physicians that the year before he had an operation for cancer in the right sinus area.

He was sent home with some pain medication and a warning to seek further treatment if his condition did not improve. Five days later, the man fell into a coma and it was discovered an infection had reached his brain.

The resulting massive stroke left him paralyzed on the left side, which forced his confinement to a wheelchair and landed him in the hospital for 11 months.

The lawsuit was filed against Mission Hospital radiologist Charles Aucreman and emergency room physician Dr. Andrew Lawson.

By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer
from Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON - For the first time, manufacturers of vitamins, herbal pills and other dietary supplements will have to test all of their products’ ingredients. The Food and Drug Administration said Friday it is phasing in a new rule that is designed to address concerns that existing regulations allowed supplements onto the market that were contaminated or didn’t contain ingredients claimed on the label.

Last year, the agency found that some supplements contained undeclared active ingredients used in prescription drugs for erectile dysfunction. In the past, regulators found supplements that didn’t contain the levels of Vitamin C or Vitamin A that were claimed.

If, upon inspection, the FDA finds that supplements do not contain the ingredients they claim, the agency would consider the products adulterated or misbranded. In minor cases, the agency could ask the manufacturer to remove an ingredient or revise its label. In more serious cases, it could seize the product, file a lawsuit or even seek criminal charges.

Dietary supplements - pills, liquids or other products - are a $22 billion industry.

Most companies already test their raw ingredients, said Steve Mister, president and CEO for the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade association representing about 65 manufacturers.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

By Stephanie Nebehay
from YAHOO! NEWS

GENEVA (Reuters) - A new, untreatable form of tuberculosis is striking up to 30,000 people a year, the World Health Organization said on Friday, and warned it could spark an “apocalyptic scenario” if unchecked.

The United Nations agency appealed for $2.15 billion to combat drug-resistant TB under a program which it said could save up to 134,000 lives over two years.

Extensively drug resistant TB (XDR-TB), a form virtually immune to antibiotics, has been reported in 37 countries in all regions since emerging in 2006, according to the WHO.

“There is somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000, we roughly estimate, cases of extensive drug resistant TB each year,” Paul Nunn, coordinator of WHO’s Stop TB Department, told a briefing.

“Ultimately, to face down this epidemic, we need new tools — we need new drugs, we need new diagnostics,” he added.

The recent case of an American man with XDR-TB who traveled abroad triggered an international health scare, highlighting the potential risks of rapid spread.

XDR-TB cases are particularly difficult to treat, and a patient could infect other people for years, according to Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO’s Stop TB Department.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

By CHRIS KAHN, Associated Press Writer

PHOENIX - The mother of one of two sets of sextuplets born within 10 hours of each other suffered acute heart failure shortly after the delivery but is now stable, doctors said Tuesday.

The heart problems were due to the huge volume of blood that Jenny Masche, 32, was carrying in her body while pregnant, Dr. John Elliott said at a news conference at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center. When the babies were delivered Monday, some of the extra blood was lost and “stretched her heart and blood vessels to a very, very critical level,” Elliott said.

“So for a while she was very sick.”

The babies, three girls and three boys, are in stable condition. Five had been put on ventilators after birth, but now all but one are breathing on their own, doctors said.

Doctors put Masche in the intensive care unit and gave her medication. Elliott said he expects her to be out of the ICU by Wednesday.

The sextuplets were born 10 hours after Brianna Morrison, 24, gave birth in Minnesota to another set. The Masches used artificial insemination, and Morrison used fertility drugs.

The Morrison sextuplets remained critical Tuesday, a normal condition for such small babies.

New father Bryan Masche joined doctors at the Arizona news conference to talk about his wife’s health and to gush over the six tiny additions to his family.

“They’re amazing: 10 fingers, 10 toes,” he said. “They have little fingernails and perfectly shaped little ears.”

The sextuplets were almost 10 weeks premature and weighed between 2 pounds, 1 ounce and 3 pounds.

After getting six kids in one day, Bryan Masche said, he and his wife are happy with the size of their family.

“This is it,” he said. “I don’t want any more kids.”

from YAHOO! NEWS

LOS ANGELES - A meat supplier has greatly expanded a ground beef recall, which now includes about 5.7 million pounds of fresh and frozen meat that may be contaminated with E. coli.

David Goldman, acting administrator of the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, announced on Saturday that the recall would be expanded to include products with sell-by dates from April 6-April 20. The beef, sold in 11 Western states, was distributed by California-based United Food Group LLC.

Goldman said that none of the latest batch of suspect beef is in stores now because the product would be well past its expiration date, but consumers may still have some of the meat at home.

“It is important for consumers to look in their freezers,” Goldman said.

The meat has been blamed for an E. coli outbreak in the Western states that resulted in 14 illnesses, spanning April 25 through May 18. All the patients have recovered.

On Wednesday, United Food Group expanded an initial recall of 75,000 pounds of ground beef, adding another 370,000 pounds based on “unspecified concerns” raised by the California State Department of Health Services. This meat had sell-by dates from April 29-May 6.

The recalled products were shipped to stores in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. They were sold under the brand names Moran’s All Natural, Miller Meat Company, Stater Bros., Trader Joe’s Butcher Shop, Inter-American Products Inc. and Basha’s.

The affected grocery stores included Albertson’s, Basha’s, Grocery Outlet, Fry’s, “R” Ranch Markets, Save-A-Lot, Save-Mart, Scolari’s Wholesale Markets, Smart and Final, Smith’s, Stater Bros. and Superior Warehouse.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

from UPI.COM

ANN ARBOR, Mich., June 8 (UPI) — Just days after a plane crash left a man without donor lungs in Ann Arbor, Mich., he was in stable condition Friday with a new set of lungs.

The 50-year-old man’s first set of donor lungs was lost when the plane carrying them crashed into Lake Michigan Monday, The Detroit Free Press reported.

Dr. Andrew Chang, surgical director at the University of Michigan, said Friday the patient would most likely have died without the transplant.

The recipient had chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. His name is being withheld at the request of his family.

Chang said the man would remain hospitalized until he can breathe on his own.

Dr. Jeffrey Punch, director of the university’s division of transplantation, said during the procedure the surgical team was “perhaps a little more nervous than usual” because they “didn’t want things to fall through a second time.”