►January 18, 2004 - Nigerian state upholds ban on polio vaccinations - AP via The Times of India - "Officials of a heavily Islamic northern Nigerian state said Saturday they wouldn't lift a ban on polio immunizations, after local tests failed to assuage fundamentalists' fears that the doses contain ingredients to render Muslims infertile."

►January 17, 2004 - Sleepless Nights? Could Be Sinus Trouble - HealthDayNews via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

►January 17, 2004 - The Mad Cows Finally Come Home - Family Farm Defenders via www.infoshop.org

►January 18, 2004 - Children with disability at risk of victimisation - Sunday Herald, UK - "Children who suffer from conditions such as autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) could be wrongly caught up in the criminal justice system as a result of the Scottish Executive’s Anti-social Behaviour Bill...According to the proposed law, anti-social behaviour is anything that is likely to result in the alarm or distress of a third party, but the campaigners warn that certain repetitive or unusual behaviour by children with autism or ADHD could be misinterpreted to mean exactly this."

►January 18, 2004 - Millions in quest for 'miracle cures' - The Japan Times

►January 17, 2004 - 'This could be way worse than SARS' - A deadly avian flu in Vietnam raises fears that it will be transformed into an infectious human killer. - The Globe And Mail - "When a handful of people in Vietnam recently began dying of a flu spread by birds, it set off alarm bells in the offices of infectious-disease specialists around the world...Could this be the start of a global flu pandemic, just like the one that swept the planet after the First World War, killing between 20 million and 40 million people?"

►January 17, 2004 - Meningitis deaths unrelated, officials say - AP via www.thestate.com - "A high school student who died Jan. 9 was thought to have meningitis, but tests came back negative. Officials think the tests may have been affected by antibiotics given before a spinal tap was done."

Comment:  How often do things like this happen?

►January 17, 2004 - Women of World War II knew how to persevere - Contra Costa Times - "Children's health problems were always close to the surface. When our oldest started school in first grade, she brought home measles, whooping cough and mumps. The shortage of doctors was acute, since most had been drafted into the service."

►January 17, 2004 - Vaccine aims at flu, but shots miss target: Albany -- Inoculations give little protection, but worst of season seems to be over - www.timesunion.com

►January 18, 2004 - Autism rise may be a myth (requires subscription) - The Sunday Times, UK - "A leading medical team claims to have solved the mystery of Britain’s fourfold rise in cases of childhood autism — and it has nothing to do with the MMR ..."