►February 29, 2004 - AIDS Tots Used As 'Guinea Pigs' - New York Post Online - "The state Health Department has launched a probe into potentially dangerous drug research conducted on HIV-infected infants and children at a Manhattan foster-care agency, The Post has learned...Some 50 foster kids were used as "guinea pigs" in 13 experiments with high doses of AIDS medications at Manhattan's Incarnation Children's Center, sources said...Most of the ICC experiments were funded by federal grants and in some cases, pharmaceutical companies."

Comment:  This is just one of many examples pointing to the fact that we should not blindly give power over our health to the government or the pharmaceutical companies.  Clearly, we cannot simply assume they have our best interests at heart.

►February 28, 2004 - Farm's reticence shocks officials - No Notification Despite Mass Fowl Deaths - The Japan Times - "Health and animal experts expressed shock at the news Friday that a chicken farm in Tanba, Kyoto Prefecture, did not notify officials that thousands of its birds had died despite mounting bird flu fears...The incident highlights the difficulties involved in trying to contain an infectious disease when announcing that a farm is affected is virtually certain to cripple its business."

►February 28, 2004 - Health experts say more needs to be done to protect women against diseases - AP via The CharlestonGazette

►February 28, 2004 - Women more at risk from infections - UPI via http://interestalert.com

►February 28, 2004 - Students to undergo tests after boy pokes with lancet - AP via The Buffalo News

►February 28, 2004 - TB checks for school's pupils after health alert - The Scotsman

►February 28, 2004 - Weighing in when junior tips the scales - Children today are not just getting fatter, they're getting fatter faster than previous generations. As Alanna Mitchell reports, there are ways a parent can deal successfully with this troubling trend - The Globe And Mail

►February 29, 2004 - Scandal of the Anthrax Babies - Five soldiers lose their babies.  They all had the anthrax jab. - The Sunday Mirror, UK - "Among the general population, around one in 20 babies are still-born."

Comment:  Can that statistic be right?

►February 28, 2004 - Confidence in MMR vaccine grows after research row - www.independent.co.uk

►February 28, 2004 - Wakefield investigations on MMR children "were not approved" by ethics committee - www.briandeer.com

►February 28, 2004 - Japanese officials confirm country's third outbreak of avian flu - Canadian Press via www.canada.com

►February 28, 2004 - Editor in the eye of a storm - journal article (BMJ) - "Instead of Andrew Wakefield himself in the media firing line, it is the Lancet that has found itself under scrutiny. Perhaps it was in a bid to forestall this that the Lancet went public over the whole affair last week in advance of the Sunday Times story, thus angering Brian Deer. ^"

►February 29, 2004 - Flu Vaccinations (requires registration or subscription) - letter - The New York Times - "I was upset to learn that such a low percentage of health care workers are immunized...It baffles me that health care officials would make such a big deal about the public's taking part in immunization when the people hired to help the public get healthy and stay healthy aren't even participating."

Comment:  This college student is right to be baffled. 

►February 29, 2004 - The Mercury Threat: Too Dangerous to Wait (requires registration or subscription) - letter - The New York Times - "Mercury's harm to fetal and child development is well documented."

Comment:  Indeed.

►February 29, 2004 - Bird flu crisis 'will cost Asia $855m'  - AP, AFP via The Straits Times

►February 29, 2004 - Autism proves no barrier for these bright young sparks - The Straits Times

►February 29, 2004 - Facts on breast milk and breast-feeding - The Jakarta Post - "Breast milk is not only the best food for baby but should be the only food in the first six months of its life...'Breast-feeding can go on for two years or as long as both parties still want to do it,' said pediatrician Utami Roesli from the Indonesian Lactation Center...Research also shows that illnesses like infections of the respiratory and digestive systems, meningitis and allergies are much higher with formula milk consumption...Breast milk consumption can also prevent coronary artery disease and ischaemic heart disease at a young age."

Comment:  For some references concerning breastfeeding and infectious disease, click here.

►February 29, 2004 - Project fuses environment and real estate design - The Jakarta Post

►February 29, 2004 - Thailand reports one more suspected human bird flu infection - Xinhuanet via China View

►February 29, 2004 - Farm shipped 15,000 live chickens despite seeing mass deaths - Japan Today

►February 29, 2004 - Japan confirms fresh bird flu outbreak - Xinhuanet via China View

►February 28, 2004 - Tests point to avian flu in 28,000 chicken deaths - The Asahi Shimbun

►February 26, 2004 - Superbug Deaths Climb in Britain - AP via Yahoo! - "Although new antibiotics are constantly being developed, some experts fear it is only a matter of time until virtually every drug is useless."

►February 26, 2004 - New Norovirus Behind Stomach Bug Outbreak - HealthDay via Yahoo!

►February 26, 2004 - CDC Says U.S. Asthma Rates Rose in 2002 - AP via Yahoo!

►February 26, 2004 - States Take on Fighting Childhood Obesity - AP via Yahoo!

►February 28, 2004 - Adenoidectomy does not reduce recurrent otitis in young children - journal article (BMJ)

►February 28, 2004 - Adenoidectomy versus chemoprophylaxis and placebo for recurrent acute otitis media in children aged under 2 years: randomised controlled trial - journal article (BMJ)

►February 28, 2004 - Does animal research benefit humans? - journal article (BMJ)

►February 28, 2004 - Pressure mounts for inquiry into MMR furore - journal article (BMJ)

►February 26, 2004 - Disease experts: Study may bring sickle cell breakthrough - AP via USA Today

►February 27, 2004 - Diet of TV junk-food ads tied to obesity in children - The Globe and Mail

►March 1, 2004 - Meningococcal septicaemia: do not be reassured by normal investigations - journal article (Emergency Medicine Journal)

►February 28, 2004 - "Drink plenty of fluids": a systematic review of evidence for this recommendation in acute respiratory infections - journal article (BMJ) - "Doctors often recommend drinking extra fluids to patients with respiratory infections. Theoretical benefits for this advice are replacing insensible fluid losses from fever and respiratory tract evaporation, correcting dehydration from reduced intake, and reducing the viscosity of mucus.^{1 2} To many this advice is self evident and justified on the basis that even if the benefit is uncertain, or at best small, at least it is harmless.^..However, there are theoretical reasons for increased fluid intake to cause harm."

►February 26, 2004 - Pediatric Endocrinology: A Practical Clinical Guide - journal article (New England Journal of Medicine)

►March 2004 - Enlarged adrenal glands as a prenatal marker of congenital adrenal hyperplasia: a report of two cases - journal article (Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology)

►February 28, 2004 - Editorial: Management of anorexia nervosa revisited - Early intervention can help - but some cases still need tertiary inpatient care - journal article (BMJ)

►March 2004 - Seasonal variation in flares of inflammatory bowel disease - journal article (Gastroenterology)

►March 2004 - Persistent and Selective Deficiency of CD4+ T Cell Immunity to Cytomegalovirus in Immunocompetent Young Children - journal article (Journal of Immunology) 

►January 19, 2004 - Methylmercury Toxicology Probed - Seafood contaminant moves through the body, often posturing as benign molecule - Chemical and Engineering News via National Institute of Environmental Health Science

►February 20, 2004 - Scotland: Alarming Rise in Mumps Among Teenagers in Glasgow - International Society for Infectious Diseases via ProMED Mail

►February 23, 2004 - Mumps Outbreak Not Related to Decline in MMMR Uptake - International Society for Infectious Diseases via ProMED Mail - "In fact this outbreak and similar ones like it elsewhere in the UK are not a result of recent falls in MMR uptake -- they are affecting the wrong age group for that -- but are as a result of previous vaccination policy."

►February 28, 2004 - We have become allergic to our western way of life - Complementary healthcare has a vital role to play in the 21st century - comment - The Guardian, UK - "There is accumulating evidence that the rise in allergies could be directly linked to the way in which we live and the environment which we inhabit. Sir Tom Blundell, chairman of the the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, argues that 'given our understanding of the way chemicals interact with the environment, you could say we are running a gigantic experiment with humans and all other living things as the subject'."

Comment:  Although too few properly designed studies have been done to investigate whether or not vaccines can be counted among the environmental insults which might contribute to the rise in allergies, there is some indication that they may.  For more on this, go to Out of Control: "Childhood vaccinations and the risk of asthma"  - a CDC study.

►February 28, 2004 - Fight allergies the natural way, Charles urges NHS - The Guardian, UK - "Prince Charles is urging the NHS to make complementary medicine much more widely and freely available to counteract a big increase in the number of allergy sufferers...In an article in today's Guardian, the prince claims that such an increase in provision need not cost the NHS huge additional expenditure and will help to prevent the spread of allergies, which otherwise may affect half the population within a decade...The prince contributed the piece after reading a Guardian front page story which warned that half the population of Europe would suffer some sort of allergy by 2015."

►February 19, 2004 - Report Urges Higher Ethics in Human Toxicity Studies (requires registration) - Reuters Health via Medscape - "A government-sponsored expert panel recommended Thursday that federal regulators closely scrutinize controversial experiments in which humans are intentionally exposed to toxic chemicals...The panel urged the agency to restrict human toxicity research to studies that are "necessary and scientifically valid" and to only use human volunteers in cases where animal testing is uninformative or unavailable. Human studies should also only be performed when the potential benefits to society outweigh the potential risk to research subjects, the report said."

►December 1, 2001 - Financial Conflict of Interest and Medical Research: Beware the Medical-Industrial Complex - journal article (The Journal of Philosophy, Science and Law)

►February 27, 2004 - Frist to Bring Up Asbestos Bill by April - Reuters via Yahoo! - "Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist said on Friday that "good progress" had been made on a bill to reform the asbestos litigation system, and he planned to bring legislation to the Senate floor by the end of March or the first week of April...Frist has been trying to jump-start stalled legislation to end asbestos lawsuits and replace them with a victims' fund supported by asbestos companies and insurers."

►February 22, 2004 - Research is needed, not propaganda. - letter- journal article (BMJ)

►February 23, 2004 - MMR: Investigating the interests - Dr Andrew Wakefield is not the only person with questions to answer following The Sunday Times' revelations that he failed to disclose a conflict of interest in his February 1998 Lancet paper that launched the MMR-autism scare. - www.spiked-online.com - "Though I have been critical of Dr Wakefield's Lancet paper and of his campaign against MMR, I would rather that it was rejected for its scientific deficiencies rather than through the author being personally discredited. (Long before these revelations, I argued that this paper should not have been published because of its highly speculative and methodologically flawed character.) Yet Dr Wakefield and his supporters have been very quick to allege conflicts of interest (or worse) in response to anybody who criticises their position. Now they seem fated to become victims of the climate of acrimony around MMR that their activities have done much to foster."

►March 14, 2003 - MMR: the truth? - In a three-part series of articles published in the UK Daily Mail this week, Melanie Phillips provides a comprehensive endorsement of the campaign against the MMR vaccine that has been sponsored by the former Royal Free hospital gastroenterologist, Dr Andrew Wakefield. - www.spiked-online.com - "Phillips' encouragement for the increasingly irrational and irresponsible anti-MMR campaign is likely to compound the unwarranted anxieties of parents whose infants are due to be immunised and result in a further decline in vaccine uptake. It will also intensify the distress of parents of autistic children, whose burden is now increased by feelings of guilt for having them immunised."

►March 29, 2003 - MMR: the onslaught continues - journal article (BMJ) - "The controversy surrounding the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine continues to smoulder and every now and then someone stokes the fire. This time it is "top Mail writer" Melanie Phillips in a much hyped series of three articles in the Daily Mail under the banner "MMR: the truth" (11, 12, and 13 March)."