Today's Top Stories (all those selected for the Home Page)

December 3, 2003 - Doctoring Orders - www.tompaine.com - "Equally important, this case highlights the bipartisan indifference of a Congress that for decades has refused to hold the military accountable for law-breaking and unethical behavior related to its practice of medicine."

December 5, 2003 - Study Reviews Discussion of Medical Errors at Hospital Conferences - UCSF Today - "Doctors participating in internal medicine hospital conferences designed to review adverse medical events do not often discuss related medical errors, according to a study led by researchers from the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC)."

December 6, 2003 - Speakout: Flu epidemic exposes gaps, weaknesses in Colorado's health-care system for kids - Rocky Mountain News

December 6, 2003 - Flu virus attacks child despite vaccination - Health of twins declined rapidly after weekly - Rocky Mountain News - "On Monday, Dezmond got sick. Diego followed the next day...But the parents weren't worried - both boys had had their flu shots, and a doctor's visit ended with a prescription."

Comment:  Regardless the cause, this is a terrible tragedy.  But did this child die in spite of having been vaccinated or because of it?  While it sometimes is impossible to determine what happened in a particular child's case, only by doing population studies, comparing vaccinated to never vaccinated, can an understanding of the overall effects of vaccination be ascertained.

December 6, 2003 - An about-face on flu shots - Because of shortages, healthy people asked to forgo getting them - Rocky Mountain News

Comment:  Might there also be a connection between this "about-face" and the death of a flu vaccinated child?

December 3, 2003 - TB case at center triggers jitters - Officials try to allay fears of parents after a staff member is hospitalized. - St. Petersburg Times - "Berger explained that TB is harder to catch than mumps and chickenpox. The disease is spread through airborne bacteria. To contract TB, a person needs to be exposed in a confined space for four to six hours a day for three to four weeks, according to Health Department officials...Even then, the disease remains latent for four to six weeks and can be treated before developing into an active case, health officials say."
 

December 2, 2003 - Graedons: Don't become a statistic this flu season - The Herald Sun - "Public-health experts hope that the vaccine will provide some benefit, but it is hard to predict how many people will come down with this bug despite a shot...In an average year, more than 100,000 people are hospitalized and 36,000 or so die from flu and its complications. In a year like this, when flu begins early with a mutated virus, the toll could be higher."

Comment:  Obviously nowhere nearly 36,000 deaths have occurred thus far, and a relatively small number have been reported.  Yet reporting on this year's flu has made it seem as if this year the flu is extraordinarily deadly.  But is that actually the case?

Comment:  Reporting has also made it seem that children are being hit harder than usual.  But is it even true?

December 3, 2003 - Space: A Bad Influence on Microbes? - At least one common disease-causing microbe becomes more virulent in simulated microgravity. Scientists studying this phenomenon hope to gain a better understanding of infectious disease. -  NASA via  www.rednova.com - "Life is a bit different in space, even for microbes. Research shows that the pattern of gene activity in some microbes differs in weightlessness, leading to differences in behavior. These differences could be behind a curious observation: the common food-borne pathogen salmonella becomes more virulent when grown in a form of simulated microgravity."

The Clinical Impact of Adverse Event Reporting - Postmarketing Reporting of Adverse Events - FDA - "Another major concern with any spontaneous reporting system is underreporting of adverse events (16, 30-32). It has been estimated that rarely more than 10% of serious ADRs, and 2-4% of non-serious reactions, are reported to the British spontaneous reporting program (30). A similar estimate is that the FDA receives by direct report less than 1% of suspected serious ADRs(32)."

For other estimates of "passive" under-reporting rates, click here.