►February 13, 2004 - Excessive heat kills lab animals - Thirteen monkeys and dozens of hamsters died over the weekend at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton after they were housed in 100-degree heat for several hours due to a heater malfunction. -  Helena Independent Record

►February 13, 2004 - Antioxidants Cut Asthma Risk in Children - Reduction most dramatic among those exposed to secondhand smoke - HealthDayNews

►February 14, 2004 - NIH launches new medical database - UPI via http://interestalert.com

►February 13, 2004 - Genes Influence Memory In Families With Alzheimer's Disease - American Academy of Neurology via www.sciencedaily.com

►February 12, 2004 - 'Peptide' may help predict early heart disease - A protein produced by overstressed heart muscle appears to be a strong indicator of heart disease, offering doctors a quick and cheap test for diagnosing patients in the ER and a potential new way to spot heart trouble well before symptoms appear. - AP via CNN

►February 11, 2004 - Drug to stop HIV spread to babies may harm moms - The treatment used in poor countries to prevent the spread of HIV from mothers to their babies may have a serious drawback: It can make the women resistant to the AIDS drugs they may need later on, disturbing new research shows. - AP via CNN

►February 12, 2004 - Talking to bacteria - Researchers teach cells a new language. - journal article (Nature)

►February 10, 2004 - Indonesia Importing Bird Flu Vaccine From China, Despite Concerns About Its Quality - AP via www.intelihealth.com

►February 15, 2004 - Cloning cures are a long way off, scientists say - Scientists say crusading advocates and passionate patients are desperate for something that they cannot provide: therapeutic cloning. - New York Times Service via The Miami Herald

►February 15, 2004 - Despite Advance in Cloning, Scientists Are Tempering Hope With Reality (requires registration or subscription) - The New York Times

►February 14, 2004 - Flu jabs scandal puts old at risk - icBirmingham.co.uk - "Half a million elderly people in the Midlands are at risk of catching killer flu because of a vaccination flop...The prediction comes after it was revealed that less than HALF the primary care trusts in the region had hit Government targets for offering the life-saving jabs."

Comment:  Is the government ignorant of the fact that this year's flu vaccine probably doesn't work, or do they just don't care?

►February 15, 2004 - Prescription drugs will work only if you take them - The Seattle Times

►February 15, 2004 - Expert says ticks causing Lyme's Disease epidemic - The Town Talk

►February 15, 2004 - Concern as bird flu makes the jump to other species - Taipei Times

►February 14, 2004 - China's bird flu claim suspect - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

►February 14, 2004 - Surveillance and containment would be effective intervention against deliberate smallpox attack - Emory University Health Sciences Center via www.eurekalert.org

►February 15, 2004 - Putting your body to the test - From the moment a child is born there are tests and check-ups which can be done to monitor and maximise well-being. That doesn't always mean you need to see a doctor: some tests can be carried out at your local pharmacy. - Sunday Star Times via www.stuff.co.nz

►February 15, 2004 - Journey of discovery - When she asked experts to crystal ball-gaze about the future of our biggest killers, Donna Chisholm found it's a case of the more we know, the more we need to find out. - Sunday Star Times via www.stuff.co.nz - "The story of health research in the past 20 years has been peppered with words such as 'breakthrough' and 'cure'...In the story of the forecast for health research in the next 20 years, the excitement is somewhat muted...Replace breakthrough with a glacial shuffle, cure with complexity...Forget magic bullet - in many cases, we're still trying to figure out how to fire the gun."

Comment:  But question what is known and/or beneficial about vaccines, and you are labeled by many as a fanatic.  

►February 14, 2004 - How well do scientists communicate with the public about vaccine safety? - Vaccine expert to address measles vaccine/autism controversy - Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia via www.eurekalert.org - "WHO: Paul A. Offit, M.D., director of the Vaccine Education Center and chief of Infectious Diseases at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is an internationally prominent expert on immunology and vaccine safety."

Comment: Paul Offit is paid by the vaccine manufacturers to "explain" to doctors about the safety of vaccines.

►February 14, 2004 - Vaccine risk acceptance depends on what you do and don't know - Georgia Institute of Technology Research News via www.eurekalert.org - "Beyond describing the factors that affect individual choices regarding vaccine risk acceptance, Bostrom also will discuss the sometimes-controversial public decision-making process on vaccination policy...'Controversy isn't always a bad thing,' she explains. 'Conflicts of interest can be real, and both scientific and policy processes should be scrutinized. Science, and in particular the science that has enabled vaccine development, has given us much longer, healthier lives. But engineering our immune systems is no mean task, and thinking broadly about that bigger picture is important.'

►February 14, 2004 - Bird flu eradication 'may take years' - AFP via The Australian

►February 14, 2004 - Thailand's PM confident bird flu is beaten - www.abc.net.au

►February 10, 2004 - Anthrax Spores Can Germinate, Grow and Reproduce in Soil - University of Michigan Health System via Newswise

►February 14, 2004 - US agriculture leaders hit out Asian countries banning American poultry imports - Channel News Asia

►February 14, 2004 - Smallpox vaccine tested in Missoula - The Missoulian

►February 13, 2004 - Why parents should immunize their babies against the hepatitis B virus - letter - Houston Chronicle - "Second, even children from uninfected parents are at risk of becoming infected...In fact, most children who become infected with hepatitis B are born to mothers who are not infected with hepatitis B...Approximately one-third of hepatitis B infections among children and adolescents occur among those with no known risk of infection, and many carriers of the virus show no apparent symptoms...There simply is no way to know which children eventually will be exposed to hepatitis B. That's why medical experts recommend that all children be vaccinated to protect against developing a hepatitis B infection and its consequences...If a parent thinks about what a baby has to gain and what he or she may lose, there's really no argument."

Comment:  There is really no argument if you ignore the adverse reactions to hepatitis B vaccine, that is.  If you don't ignore them, however, giving ALL babies a potentially harmful vaccine, when hardly ANY babies get hepatitis B, is a highly questionable policy.  (By the way, 1/3 of a small number is an even smaller number still.) For more on the problem with estimates of hepatitis B incidence and universal infant hepatitis B vaccination policy go to Scandals: For No Good Reason: The Utterly Misguided Universal Infant Hepatitis B Vaccination Policy and Scandals: The CDC and “The New Math”, where 1 + 1  does not equal 2.

►February 13, 2004 - Bird flu strain in Pennsylvania said no threat to humans - Reuters via Forbes

►February 13, 2004 - Genetic AIDS immunity traced to smallpox, not plague - www.gay.com

►February 13, 2004 - NIH may grant firm exclusive rights on West Nile vaccine - Capital News Service via www.sunherald.com

►February 13, 2004 - New Flu Vaccine Provides Insight into Immunity Development, Says Stanford Researcher - Stanford University Medical Center via Business Wire

Comment:  Wouldn't it be better to understand immunity prior to using vaccines, rather than use them under the assumption that they both work and are safe?

►February 14, 2004 - Heartbreaker, painmaker - The Guardian via Hindustan Times - "While physical stress (such as eating fatty foods) may be an obvious cause for making heart disease one of the biggest global killers, cardiologists, psychologists and other scientists around the world have been gradually gathering evidence that emotional stress from heartbreak is sometimes also a factor in exacerbating heart disease and other illnesses. Sometimes, this can even lead to death."

►February 13, 2004 - Bird flu viruses have geographic features - Xinhuanet via China View

►February 13, 2004 - Bird flu victim's father sues Thai government - Financial Times - "The angry father of a six-year-old Thai boy who died of bird flu has filed a legal complaint against the Thai government, accusing it of covering up the lethal disease, with fatal consequences for his son...Chamnan Bounmanut, whose son Captan was the first of five Thais to die from the H5N1 bird flu virus, says the boy would be alive today if the government had issued public warnings that bird flu was sweeping through Thai poultry and could infect people."

►February 13, 2004 - Avian Flu Found Beyond Delaware (requires registration) - Reuters via The Los Angeles Times - "A strain of bird flu that is devastating to commercial chicken flocks but not harmful to humans has spread into Pennsylvania and more cases may be found in Delaware, agriculture officials in both states said Thursday."

►February 13, 2004 - MMR vaccine and autism - No link - Major Study - Medical News Today - "Lead author Frank DeStefano of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said: 'Children with autism received their first MMR vaccine at similar ages as children without autism, so this study supports the weight of the evidence from previous studies that didn't find an association between the MMR vaccine and autism.'"

Comment:  I don't know that anyone is suggesting that it is because the MMR is occurring at a particular age that it may be causing autism.  And given the varying lengths of time it takes to recognize and/or diagnose autism, the arbitrary cut-off times only serve to obscure, rather than shed light on, the question.  The relevant comparisons are children who have not had the MMR vaccine and those who have had no vaccine, ever.  This study says nothing about whether or not MMR causes autism in some susceptible children.  (If, after comparing the vaccinated to the never vaccinated it becomes apparent that the MMR vaccine, with or without other vaccines, causes autism, it might then be interesting to see if there are ages that are more susceptible than others.  But to assume a known cut-off point and age at diagnosis, without having determined what, if any, such factors are meaningful, is a good example of poor research design.  Besides, the average age at which a diagnosis is made and the MMR is given says nothing about the actual ages these things occur.)

►February 14, 2004 - Increase in autism is due to changes in diagnosis, study claims - journal article (BMJ)

►February 13, 2004 - Destiny: Is it in the Genes? Battle of the Sexes - Ivanhoe - "When they started to look at women, UCLA psychologist Shelley Taylor, Ph.D., and colleagues found a difference they didn't expect. 'Humans, but especially females, cope with stress in large part by caring for their offspring, getting them out of harm's way, ensuring that nothing bad happens to them and by affiliating with a social group,' Taylor tells Ivanhoe.
She calls this 'tend and befriend' and says it may be one reason why women live longer. 'When people give or get social support in response to stress, it down regulates stress hormones. What that means is that there's lesser wear and tear on the body.'"

►Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee - FDA/CBER - meeting alert - February 18 - 19, 2004

►Alternative therapies for autism - WebMD

►What Medications are Available (for autism) - NIMH

►February 11, 2004 - NAA's Response to the Wall Street Journal Editorials - www.nationalautismassociation.org

►Autism A.L.A.R.M. - CDC, AAP et al via www.medicalhomeinfo.org - "Autism is prevalent...1 out of 6 children are diagnosed with a developmental disorder and/or behavioral problem...1 in 166 children are diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder"

Comment:  Note that it is the CDC and AAP that are saying this. 

►January 29, 2004 - Coolidge v. Riegle - court of appeals decision re: autistic child who acted aggressively against his teacher

►February 12, 2004 - Central Florida medical examiner barred from doing autopsies - AP via www.theledger.com - "Gore was investigated for his testimony that contributed to the conviction of Alan Yurko, of Orlando, who was sentenced to life in prison for shaking his 10-week-old son to death...The commission determined Gore committed eight errors in the autopsy of Alan Ream-Yurko, who died Nov. 24, 1997. Yurko said the baby stopped breathing and took him to the hospital where he died. The father was arrested days later...Yurko is seeking a new trial, saying that Gore botched the child's autopsy. He suggests his son died after an adverse reaction to a vaccination." (click here for complaint filed by Francine Yurko on behalf of her husband Alan Yurko)