In Zambia, an experiment in the battle with HIV/Aids is producing staggering results. If this were a vaccine trial, the medical world would be hailing it as a miracle. But instead of a wonder drug, the secret weapon is circumcision.
After weeks of waiting, Michael Phiri decided to take matters into his own hands. The 16-year-old from George Compound, a township outside Lusaka, was so anxious to be rid of his foreskin, and so frustrated after being turned away from the circumcision clinic at local hospital for the third time, that he took a bread knife and did the job himself. The resulting bloody mess had one positive outcome; it sent him straight to the top of the queue for surgery, and he got his operation performed, as an emergency, by the urology specialist Kasonde Bowa.
"He had made a good start, with a dorsal cut as far as the rim of the glans, but things had got difficult from there," a smiling Dr Bowa says, with admirable understatement.
Comment: The AIDS pandemic is so devastating in the countries of Africa - where millions of people suffer from malnutrition and a plethora of political, health and social issues - that might not be too difficult to convince the male population to undergo such a painful and
unnecessary procedure. Yet some continue
to rightfully question this dangerous and irreversible experiment:
Tshabalala-Msimang said she was not convinced, noting South Africa's Xhosa ethnic communities suffer high AIDS infection rates even though nearly all Xhosa men are circumcised. However, the infection rate is even higher for Zulus, for whom circumcision is taboo.
The health minister also said male circumcision offers no protection for women, who bear the brunt of the AIDS infections in sub-Saharan Africa.
"I can't say to people they must get circumcised when the process (of research) is ongoing," she said. "I can't go and say things to people which I can't guarantee."
And:
"It is important that, while circumcision interventions are being planned, several points must be considered carefully. If the experiment fails, Africans are likely to feel abused and exploited by scientists who recommended the circumcision policy. In a region highly sensitive to previous colonial exploitation and suspicious of the biological warfare origin of the virus, failure of circumcision is likely to be a big issue. Those recommending it should know how to handle the political implications." - James P.M. Ntozi.
Consider also the fact that in the US,
circumcision does not affect HIV in men and that MRSA deaths, due to circumcision,
exceed AIDS deaths.
For more information, read the Cassiopaea Forum topic,
Bogus Evidence That Male Circumcision Prevents HIV Spread.
A good night's sleep really does a sick body good, new research says.
Stanford University research with fruit flies reveals that the immune system fights invading bacteria the hardest at night and the least during the day. The findings were to be presented Sunday at the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting, in San Francisco.
Despite major progress reducing overall colorectal cancer incidence and death rates in the United States, black men and women are still 45 percent more likely than whites to die of the disease.
That finding was contained in a report released Monday by the American Cancer Society.
The Colorectal Cancer Facts & Figures 2008-2010 report -- the second edition of a report first issued in 2005 found that colorectal cancer incidence and deaths continue to decrease among both blacks and whites, but rates remain higher and declines have been slower among blacks. In fact, the gap between blacks and whites has actually increased over the past few years, the report said.
Hospital-borne infections are a serious risk of a long-term hospital stay, and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), a lung infection that develops in about 15% of all people who are ventilated, is among the most dangerous. With weakened immune systems and a higher resistance to antibiotics, patients who rely on a mechanical ventilator can easily develop serious infections - as 26,000 Americans do every year.
Thanks to a proven new clinical approach developed by Tel Aviv University nurses, though, there is a new tool for stopping the onset of VAP in hospitals.
This new high-tech tool? An ordinary toothbrush.
Three Times a Day Keeps Pneumonia Away
"Pneumonia is a big problem in hospitals everywhere, even in the developed world," says Nurse Ofra Raanan, the chief researcher in the new study and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Department of Nursing. "Patients who are intubated can be contaminated with pneumonia only 2 or 3 days after the tube is put in place. But pneumonia can be effectively prevented if the right measures are taken."
Raanan, who works at the Sheba Academic School of Nursing at The Chaim Sheba Medical Center, collaborated with a team of nurses at major medical centers around Israel. The nurses found that if patients - even unconscious ones - have their teeth brushed three times a day, the onset of pneumonia can be reduced by as much as 50%.
A new study from the psychology department at Tufts University shows that when dieters eliminate carbohydrates from their meals, they performed more poorly on memory-based tasks than when they reduce calories, but maintain carbohydrates. When carbohydrates were reintroduced, cognition skills returned to normal.
"This study demonstrates that the food you eat can have an immediate impact on cognitive behavior," explains Holly A. Taylor, professor of psychology at Tufts and corresponding author of the study. "The popular low-carb, no-carb diets have the strongest potential for negative impact on thinking and cognition."
Taylor collaborated with Professor Robin Kanarek, former undergraduate Kara Watts and research associate Kristen D'Anci.
While the brain uses glucose as its primary fuel, it has no way of storing it. Rather, the body breaks down carbohydrates into glucose, which is carried to the brain through the blood stream and used immediately by nerve cells for energy. Reduced carbohydrate intake should thus reduce the brain's source of energy. Therefore, researchers hypothesized that diets low in carbohydrates would affect cognitive skills.
Fads have been a staple of American pop culture for decades, from spandex in the 1980s to skinny jeans today. But while going from fad to flop may seem like the result of fickle consumers, a new study suggests that this is exactly what should be expected for a highly efficient, rationally evolved animal.
The new research, led by cognitive scientist Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, shows why direct exposure to repeated ads initially increases a consumer's preference for promoted products, and why the most effective advertisements are the ones consumers don't even realize they have seen.
It has long been known that repeated visual exposure to an object can affect an observer's preference for it, initially rapidly increasing preference, and then eventually lowering preference again. This can give way to short-lived fads. But while this may seem illogical, Changizi argues that it makes perfect cognitive sense.
"A rational animal ought to prefer something in proportion to the probable payoff of acting to obtain it," said Changizi, assistant professor of cognitive science at Rensselaer and lead author of the study, which appears in the online version of the journal Perception. "The frequency at which one is visually exposed to an object can provide evidence about this expected payoff, and our brains have evolved mechanisms that exploit this information, rationally modulating our preferences."
Mould toxins in buildings damaged by moisture are considerably more prevalent than was previously thought, according to new international research. Erica Bloom from the Division of Medical Microbiology at Lund University in Sweden has contributed to research in this field by analyzing dust and materials samples from buildings damaged by mould. Virtually all of the samples contained toxins from mould.
A 12-year-old schoolgirl has been left paralysed from the waist down by a mystery illness that came on 30 minutes after she was given the new anticervical cancer jab.
Washington - For years, the federal government has recommended that pregnant women and young children limit their consumption of fish to avoid exposure to potentially harmful amounts of mercury.
Now, two top consumer protection agencies are at odds on whether that advice should be reconsidered to encourage all people to eat more fish, in order to promote healthy hearts.
The Food and Drug Administration has been circulating a draft report within the government that argues the health benefits of eating fish outweigh the potential ill effects of mercury. But the Environmental Protection Agency has fired off a memo to the White House calling the 270-page FDA study "scientifically flawed and inadequate" and an "oversimplification" lacking analytical rigor.
San Antonio - Taking menopause hormones for five years doubles the risk for breast cancer, according to a new analysis of a big federal study that reveals the most dramatic evidence yet of the dangers of these still-popular pills.
Even women who took estrogen and progestin pills for as little as a couple of years had a greater chance of getting cancer. And when they stopped taking them, their odds quickly improved, returning to a normal risk level roughly two years after quitting.
Collectively, these new findings are likely to end any doubt that the risks outweigh the benefits for most women.
Comment: The AIDS pandemic is so devastating in the countries of Africa - where millions of people suffer from malnutrition and a plethora of political, health and social issues - that might not be too difficult to convince the male population to undergo such a painful and unnecessary procedure. Yet some continue to rightfully question this dangerous and irreversible experiment: And: Consider also the fact that in the US, circumcision does not affect HIV in men and that MRSA deaths, due to circumcision, exceed AIDS deaths.
For more information, read the Cassiopaea Forum topic, Bogus Evidence That Male Circumcision Prevents HIV Spread.