Lisa Mascaro | Washington | May 25

LAT - In a momentary flash of bipartisanship, the Senate approved legislation that would allow Americans speedier access to generic drugs as well as breakthrough treatments for life-threatening diseases as part of a Food and Drug Administration revamping that now heads to the House.

But the comity didn't last, and the FDA accord was quickly followed by another round of partisan fighting over President Obama's push to keep student loan interest rates low. On party-line votes, senators blocked Democratic and Republican efforts to prevent interest rates from rising this summer.

Stephanie Nebehay | Geneva | May 24

Reuters - The last three countries where polio is still paralyzing children -- Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria -- said on Thursday that they have enlisted Muslim women and religious leaders to allay fears of vaccination and wipe out the disease.

Polio cases are at an all-time low worldwide, following its eradication in India last year, raising hopes but also fears about a threat of resurgence especially in sub-Saharan Africa unless remaining reservoirs of polio virus are stamped out.

That's the pretty interesting, if simplistic, question posed by The Atlantic:

Not everyone is thrilled by the prospect of radical life extension. As funding for anti-aging research has exploded, bioethicists have expressed alarm, reasoning that extreme longevity could have disastrous social effects. Some argue that longer life spans will mean stiffer competition for resources, or a wider gap between rich and poor. Others insist that the aging process is important because it gives death a kind of time release effect, which eases us into accepting it. These concerns are well founded. Life spans of several hundred years are bound to be socially disruptive in one way or another; if we're headed in that direction, it's best to start teasing out the difficulties now.

May 19

Alzforum - In a slow-mo game of mental Whack-a-Mole, two paralyzed people, using only their thoughts and an implanted brain sensor, manipulated a robotic arm to grasp foam balls. The achievement, reported in the May 17 Nature, is the first instance of a human brain-computer interface controlling such complex, three-dimensional motion.

In a more practical test, one woman was able to grab a thermos of coffee with the robotic arm and bring it to her lips for a drink. While many challenges remain to bring this technology to people who need it, the time will be measured in “years, not decades,” suggested study authors Leigh Hochberg and John Donoghue of Brown University and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

The work is part of the ongoing BrainGate pilot trial by researchers at the Rhode Island institutions
and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

James Gallagher | May 16

BBC - Thousands of heart attacks and strokes could be prevented if the cholesterol-lowering drugs, statins, were more widely prescribed, research suggests.

The study of 175,000 patients, in the Lancet, said even very low-risk patients benefited from the medication.

The Oxford researchers says the NHS should consider giving statins to healthy people. The NHS drugs watchdog, NICE, is reviewing the evidence.

TheDaily Beast | May 7

The nation’s most powerful anti-obesity groups are teaming up for a new HBO documentary—but it pushes the same tired advice. Gary Taubes on the research they're ignoring.

Kate Zernike | Trenton, NJ | May 10

NYT - In a swipe at President Obama’s signature health care legislation, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey vetoed on Thursday an online marketplace that the Legislature created to help residents and small businesses buy health insurance.

The Affordable Care Act, the federal law passed in 2010, requires most Americans to have health insurance and mandates states to have health care benefits exchanges to help them buy it. With the Supreme Court debating whether the health care law is constitutional, Mr. Christie said in his veto message that the exchange, approved in March, was “premature” and could impose “unnecessary obligations upon the state’s citizens.”

“Indeed, the very constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is cloaked in uncertainty, as both the individual mandate to procure health insurance as well as the jurisdictional mandate to establish an exchange may not survive scrutiny by the Supreme Court,” he wrote.

Marcela Valente | Buenos Aires | May 10

IPS - Under a new law that recognises a broad range of rights for transvestites, transsexuals and transgender persons in Argentina, they will have the right to modify their legal documents to match their gender identity.

Activists say the law, which was passed by the Senate late Wednesday, breaks new ground in the world because it allows transgender people to change their legal identity without first having to undergo sex change surgery or hormone therapy.

But if they do decide to undergo physical changes, the new legislation guarantees them access to surgery or hormone treatment in both the public and private health care systems.

Sarah Kliff | Boston, MA | April 30

WaPo - In 2006, under Gov. Mitt Romney, Massachusetts became the first state to extend insurance coverage to all its residents. Now it’s looking to slow the growth of its health-care costs in equally groundbreaking ways.

In the next few months, Massachusetts is expected to take up legislation that would overhaul how doctors, hospitals and other providers are paid. The forthcoming payment-reform bill is expected to include many incentives for hospitals to accept “global payments,” or a flat fee for all the care delivered for a specific person or group of people.

The hope is to take away the financial incentives to provide more care when less might be equally effective.

David Grant | Washington | April 26

CSM - A new version of the Violence Against Women Act, the legislation that Democrats used as a backdrop to accuse Republicans of waging a "war on women," passed the Senate Thursday afternoon 68 to 31.

Fifteen Republicans joined every Democrat in voting for the measure. The passage reauthorizes a wide variety of services for abused women and men for five years.

"This violence must end," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) of Minnesota, one of the bill's main champions, on the Senate floor Thursday. "And so we all know that we can no longer stand and say it is someone else's problem. We can't let our own differences, minor that they may be on various provisions, get in the way."

Apr 22

AFP -
The United States scrambled on Wednesday to contain the fallout from the discovery of mad cow disease in California as the top beef exporter insisted the outbreak posed no threat to consumers.

The US Department of Agriculture on Tuesday reported the country's fourth-ever case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), but stressed the outbreak was contained and no contaminated meat had entered the food chain.

The infected dairy cow from central California, uncovered on Monday, "at no time presented a risk to the food supply or human health," officials insisted

• Two S. Korea retailers suspend US beef sales over mad cow
• Japan Has No Plan to Halt U.S. Beef Imports on Mad-Cow Case ~ the Japanese consumers might have different ideas

Washington | April 24

Huffington Post - In what has been hailed as a "landmark" move, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled Monday that employers which discriminates against an employee or potential employee based on their gender identity is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on sex.

Having earlier filed a complaint on behalf of Mia Macy, a California transgender woman denied a job, the Transgender Law Center issued the following statement, re-printed in The Miami Herald among other publications, on the ruling:

David Edwards | Sacramento, CA | April 24

Raw Story - A California state Senate committee on Monday approved a bill that aims to protect citizens against “reparative” therapies intended to change the sexual orientation of LGBT people.

By a vote of 5-3, the state Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development advanced SB 1172, which would ban children under 18 from receiving so-called “ex-gay” therapies. Therapists would also have to provide adults receiving treatment with consent forms to warn them of potential dangers.

“An individual’s sexual orientation, whether homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual, is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming,” the bill states. “Under no circumstances shall a patient under 18 years of age undergo sexual orientation change efforts, regardless of the willingness of a patient’s parent, guardian, conservator, or other person to authorize such efforts.”

To no one's surprise, health insurance companies will rape us for every last cent:

The agreement required the companies to finance an objective database of doctors’ fees that patients and insurers nationally could rely on. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, then the attorney general, said it would increase reimbursements by as much as 28 percent.

It has not turned out that way. Though the settlement required the companies to underwrite the new database with $95 million, it did not obligate them to use it. So by the time the database was finally up and running last year, the same companies, across the country, were rapidly shifting to another calculation method, based on Medicare rates, that usually reduces reimbursement substantially.

My Newshoggers colleague John Ballard re-upped his link to a thought provoking post, "How Doctors Die" today.

It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone. They’ve talked about this with their families. They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen—that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right).

David Morgan | Washington | April 19

Reuters - As the U.S. Supreme Court ponders the fate of healthcare reform in the current election year, a study released on Thursday shows that one in four working-age Americans went without insurance at some point in 2011, often as a result of unemployment and other job changes.

The study by the Commonwealth Fund polled 2,100 people aged 19 to 64 and found that 26 percent of non-elderly adults went without insurance -- a percentage that researchers said equals about 48 million people when measured against U.S. Census data.

The Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit organization that analyzes healthcare issues, said that seven in 10 of those who lost insurance spent a year or more without coverage, partly because plans sold on the individual market for health insurance were unaffordable.

James Gallagher | April 18

BBC - What we currently call breast cancer should be thought of as 10 completely separate diseases, according to an international study which has been described as a "landmark".

The categories could improve treatment by tailoring drugs for a patient's exact type of breast cancer and help predict survival more accurately.

The study in Nature analysed breast cancers from 2,000 women.

It will take at least three years for the findings to be used in hospitals.

New York Times Motherlode Blog, By Karen Le Billon, April 13

Consider this: Our children are three times more likely to be overweight than French children. In fact, we lead the world in producing overweight children, but the French have one of the lowest rates of overweight children in the developed world.

The causes of obesity are complex (lifestyle, physical activity, poverty, food insecurity, genetics and obesogenic chemicals all play a role). But what we eat is undoubtedly a factor. Because of poor eating habits, the current generation of American children will suffer far more health problems — and perhaps have a shorter life expectancy — than their parents. We may be teaching our kids to eat themselves into an early grave.

From the Globe & Mail, by Adriana Barton

Will all of the screens in our lives force everyone into glasses?

For desk jockeys who stare at pixels all day, blurred vision, headaches and burning eyes are an occupational hazard with a name of its own: computer-vision syndrome.

It’s a fancy term for computer-related eye strain. Although the symptoms are temporary, vision problems are a growing complaint among people who are glued to computers, smartphones and tablets, says the Canadian Association of Optometrists.

Solutions at the link

Michelle Castillo | Washington | April 10

CBS - The rate of teenagers becoming mothers is declining rapidly, according to a new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The average teen birth rate decreased 9 percent from 2009 to 2010, reaching an all time low of 34.3 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19.

That's a 44 percent drop from 1991 to 2010. There were less [sic] teenage mothers in 2010 than any year since 1946.

The effect is being seen across most groups. Hispanic teens, who normally have a higher birth rate than the rest of the population, reported less [sic] young birth mothers than ever before in 2010. While there are still 55.7 teen births in the Hispanic community for every 1,000 births, numbers declined 12 percent for Hispanic and American Indian or Alaskan Native teens. Rates dropped 13 percent for Asian and Pacific Islander mothers. Non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black teenage mother saw their rates drop of 9 percent.

Mark Ward | April 10

BBC - Many medical implants are vulnerable to attacks that could threaten their users' lives, according to studies.

Security researchers have developed attacks that locate and compromise implants used to manage conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

One attack caught a radio signal that, if re-broadcast, would have switched off a heart defibrillator.

Chris Hedges: "It is the very sad legacy of the liberal class that it proves in election cycle after election cycle that it espouses moral and political positions it will not pay a price to defend. And since we have no fight in us, since we will not punish politicians like Obama who betray our core beliefs, the corporate juggernaut rolls forward with its inexorable pace to cement into place our global neofeudalism."

You don't get a progressive agenda by voting for whigs.

Is procreation immoral?

The New Yorker, By Elizabeth Kolbert, April 9

In 1832, Charles Knowlton, a doctor in Ashfield, Massachusetts, published a short book with a long title: “Fruits of Philosophy: The Private Companion of Young Married People, by a Physician.” Knowlton, who was thirty-one, was a “freethinker” and, by the standards of the Berkshires, an unusually adventurous soul. While attending the New Hampshire Medical Institute (now Dartmouth Medical School), he was too poor to pay for a dissecting class and so had liberated a corpse from a cemetery. For this, he was convicted of grave robbing and sentenced to sixty days in jail. In 1829, he wrote up his ideas about agnosticism in a tract and had a thousand copies printed at his own expense. Unable to find buyers in western Massachusetts, he took the copies to New York City, where he was arrested for peddling without a license.

In “Fruits of Philosophy,” Knowlton took up the subject of sex, or population growth, which, at the time, amounted to much the same thing. Like Thomas Malthus, whose work he cited, Knowlton was worried about the hazards of fertility. Using nineteenth-century birth rates, he projected that the number of people on the planet would double three times every century. Unlike Malthus, who saw no remedy except plague or abstinence, Knowlton believed that a more agreeable solution was at hand. What he called the “reproductive instinct” need not actually lead to reproduction. All that was required was some ingenuity. “Heaven has not only given us the capacity of greater enjoyment, but the talent of devising means to prevent the evils that are liable to arise therefrom; and it becomes us, ‘with thanksgiving, to make the most of them,’ ” he wrote.

March 31

Al Jazeera - HIV treatment as prevention strategy considered a "game changer" but lack of funding prevents implementation.

When Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, Director of the Louis Pasteur Institute in France and winner of the Nobel Prize in 2008 for her discovery of HIV, first isolated the HIV virus in 1982, she had no idea she had stumbled onto the greatest epidemic of our time.

"Initially, we thought only a small group of people were affected by the disease," Barre-Sinoussi told Al Jazeera. "Very naively, we did not realise the magnitude of the epidemic."

She was right to be wary. Since then, 60 million people have been infected with HIV and over 30 million have died, akin to half the population of the United Kingdom.

But Barre-Sinoussi was not easily disheartened. "I believe in science. If not now, in the long term, we will find other strategies. My dream is to see the end of HIV before I die."