Got a question about the new Medicare bill on its way to President Bush for his signature? I'll be moderating a live online chat Tuesday at noon with a representative from AARP of Washington.
You can post a question now. Then on Tuesday at noon Pacific time, click here to join our chat.
Cold weather brings an end to mosquitoes and the threat of West Nile virus. Last spring, I predicted to my colleagues in the newsroom that our state, Washington, would have its first human case in 2003. I was wrong.
Washington, Oregon and Maine now are the only states without a human case of the virus acquired within state lines, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Take a look at the CDC's West Nile map.
Idaho reported one case this year, a man who had been working with infected baby alligators imported from Florida.
The non-profit group Results for America has a web-based tool that allows
consumers to calculate their potential savings from buying prescription drugs from Canada, where government controls keep prices down. Try the Drug Savings Calculator.
Consumers anywhere in the United States who used the cancer drug Taxol or its generic equivalent, paclitaxel, from Jan. 1, 1999, through Feb. 28, 2003, may be eligible to receive a portion of a $12.5 million settlement from the drug maker.
Taxol's manufacturer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, overcharged consumers for the drug, Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire said in a statement. Only a fraction of those eligible have filed claims to get their money.
The deadline for filing claims is Jan. 31, 2004. Submit claims by contacting the Taxol settlement administrator at 1-800-659-7609 or visit the Taxol web site.
Food-borne illness from fresh produce is on the rise, according to a story by Marian Burros in Sunday’s New York Times. One reason: Our taste for year-round fruits and vegetables means more imports from countries with lower food-safety standards.
My state is home to probably the top food-borne illness law firm in the nation. And the web site of Seattle-based Marler Clark is a cornucopia of information on E. coli, salmonella, hepatitis and other food-borne illnesses.
In Spokane, three restaurants are celebrating the Great American Smokeout today with a free slice of pizza or a free cold turkey sandwich for smokers who trade in a pack of cigarettes. It's the 27th year of the national event that encourages tobacco users to set a date to quit.
For serious quitters, there's help at Washington state's Tobacco Quit Line web site. Or call 1-877-270-STOP.
A month after receiving five vaccinations, 22-year-old Army reservist Rachel Lacy died of a lupus-like illness. The Pentagon said yesterday that the vaccines may have contributed to her death, according to a story in today’s New York Times.
Lacy had received shots to protect her from smallpox, anthrax, hepatitis B, typhoid, measles, mumps and rubella, the newspaper reported.
The U.S. hospital bill for premature births is $13.6 billion, the March of Dimes said today.
For every person who visits the March of Dimes web site during November, CIGNA, a national sponsor of the organization’s Prematurity Campaign, will donate $1.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a chewable, spearmint-flavored birth control pill. Bristol Myers Squibb Company makes the product. Drinking a full glass of water after chewing the pill is important to make sure all the medication gets to the stomach, rather than remaining in the mouth, the FDA says. Read more.
While some birth defects are declining because of better nutrition and prenatal care, a few are on the rise. I’ve been researching one of those defects: gastroschisis. It’s a rare condition in which the abdomen never closes around the intestines of the developing fetus. Babies with the defect are born with part of their bowels outside their bodies.
The good news is that ultrasound detection and improvements in treatment mean most of these babies survive and live normal lives. The bad news is researchers think the rate, once one in 5,000 births, is increasing, especially among teenage mothers. Aspirin use in early pregnancy is thought to be a risk factor.
Here's a link to my story in Sunday's Spokesman-Review.
High school cigarette smokers are a minority among their peers, and their ranks are shrinking. Smoking prevalence among high school students declined from 28 percent in the year 2000 to 22.9 percent in 2002, the American Legacy Foundation announced today. Click here for more on the 2002 National Youth Tobacco Survey.
"Where are all the lung cancer races and ribbons? And why does the nation’s research investment in lung cancer lag behind other cancers?"
--Andrew Holtz, journalist, writing in the Nov. 10 issue of Oncology Times
Holtz’ article examines the stigma of lung cancer and how it affects research funding. He found, for example, that the National Cancer Institute spends almost nine times as much per death from breast cancer as it does per lung cancer death. Another problem for lung cancer research: Survivor advocates are in short supply because the disease is so deadly.
When a person receives a frightening diagnosis it can be informative and comforting to hear the experiences of other patients. Here’s a British web site devoted to collecting personal experiences of illness from ordinary people.
Using Real Player, you can see and hear people talking about their experiences with hypertension, prostate cancer, breast cancer (including a male patient), colorectal cancer, testicular cancer, cervical cancer, epilepsy and congenital heart disease.
I found out about this site from Informed Health Online’s "Web Site of the Week."
Dr. Stephen Luber, a pediatrician with Spokane's Rockwood Clinic, will answer questions online about colds, flu and other children's illnesses on Thursday, Nov. 13, at noon. I'll be the moderator.
Luber is a graduate of the University of California School of Medicine at San Francisco, and also has a master's in business administration from Harvard School of Business. He is interested in allergy and asthma, attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities. Click here to post a question now. On Thursday, click here to join the chat. Or read the transcript later.
"Dr. (Larry) Kessler said the patients were largely unaware that they were essentially subjects in a large, uncontrolled experiment. He called the off-label use of TMR 'doing an experiment without informed consent.'"
--From Gina Kolata’s New York Times story today on transmyocardial revascularization, a laser treatment for chest pain. She reports on a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that found that about three-quarters of patients who get TMR don’t meet the criteria for which it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Eat hearty, but keep moving is the message of a new study of almost 9,800 Americans. During 17 years of follow-up, 1,531 participants in the study died of heart disease. After adjusting for body mass index (a measure of weight in relation to height) and physical activity, caloric intake was unrelated to heart disease.
People who exercised more and ate more were both leaner and had less than half the deaths from heart disease than did those who exercised less, ate less and were overweight.
The study, by Dr. Jing Fang and her colleagues from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y., appears in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Those who eat less won't necessarily be thinner, Fang said, and eating more does not have to translate into obesity.
Read the abstract. Or read a press release about the study.
