The United States Senate recently rejected two separate proposals that would have allowed the importation of cheaper medication from other countries, apparently in order to preserve a deal between the pharmaceutical industry and the White House.
The proposals were part of a wider effort to reform the U.S. healthcare system, in large part by cutting unnecessary costs.
Drug importation was first proposed by Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota, in an amendment to the healthcare bill. The amendment would have allowed U.S. wholesale and retail drug distributors, including pharmacies, to import products from Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan or New Zealand, where price controls keep drug costs much lower than in the United States. The amendment eventually gained more than 24 sponsors from both major parties.
"This issue isn't rocket science," Dorgan said. "The American people are charged the highest prices in the world. They want Congress to stand up for their interests and do something about it."
Health & Wellness
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Burning Diapers
In an Internet firestorm thousands of upset mothers complain about disposable diapers that create severe rashes and even burns. Two lawsuits are awaiting class action status, and it appears that an attorney's website trying to garner a class action lawsuit may have been hacked. Meanwhile, facebook forums and a Consumer Affairs website are loading up with mothers sharing horror stories of their infant children with those diapers.
The company, usually associated with soaps, accused of selling dangerous disposable diapers defends its position and implies the mothers are basically bonkers. Attempts to mollify complaints usually include a coupon for the same product! But many of the upset mothers assert that all the rashes and burns, many so severe that blisters and bleeding have occurred, disappeared as soon as different brand disposable diapers were used.
© Watershed Media
Strawberries are already near the top of the Environmental Working Group's Dirty Dozen (13 pesticides were detected on a single sample) and recently, a high-level Presidential Cancer Panel recommended reducing chemical exposure by choosing fruits and vegetables grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers (i.e., organic).
Last year the same researchers reported that the juice can increase physical endurance. The study focused on men aged 19 to 38 cycling on exercise bikes. Drinking 500ml of beetroot juice a day for a week enabled them to cycle 16 per cent longer before getting tired out. Now the scientists believe they understand how the beetroot boost works.
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As we all watch the oil continue to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, many of us are also watching the stories of the workers unfold: those who were aboard the Deepwater Horizon, those who are helping in the cleanup, and the thousands of people whose livelihood is being wiped out along with the ecosystem of the gulf.
The story of the workers on the oil rig illustrates the life and times of many workers in the US today. Told to buck up, take responsibility and to be happy for the jobs they have, workers are often lacking basic training and protections from the materials and in many cases, especially for low wage workers, they can be fired at any time. We all keep working, despite the hazards, to feed our families and keep a roof over our heads.
Officially known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy, broken heart syndrome is a rare heart condition with symptoms that can mimic those of a heart attack.
"A lot of people experiencing the death of a loved one have this condition," says Dr. Wittstein. "That's why we nicknamed this broken heart syndrome."
First described in Japanese medical literature in 1990, takotsubo cardiomyopathy takes its name from a vase-shaped pot, used to trap octopus in Japan, "that has a thin neck and balloons out where the body of the octopus gets stuck," explains cardiologist Richard Stein, MD, a professor at the New York University School of Medicine, in New York City.
Seasonal flu vaccinations have been suspended in Australia for all children under the age of five. The suspension comes after 23 children in Western Australia were admitted to hospitals with convulsions after receiving flu injections.
More than 250 children may have had adverse reactions to the vaccine, with symptoms including fever, vomiting and convulsions.
WA Today reports that:
"Another 40 convulsion cases had been detected in the past month in children at other metropolitan hospitals ... Doctors are now working to determine how many of those children received the flu vaccine."Sources:
WA Today April 23, 2010
News.com.au April 27, 2010
The results provide "encouraging initial data" that art therapy can help improve the emotional health of chronically ill children, the authors write in the May issue of the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 7 million American children, or nearly one in 10, have asthma. The breathing disorder is a leading cause of school absences.
© University of Rochester
"This is great news for cancer survivors who deal with persistent and debilitating side effects from their cancer and its treatments long after their primary therapy ends. There are few treatments for the sleep problems and fatigue survivors experience that work for very long, if at all," said Karen Mustian, Ph.D., M.P.H., the study's lead investigator and assistant professor of Radiation Oncology and Community and Preventive Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center's James P. Wilmot Cancer Center. "Yoga is a safe and simple technique that can have multiple benefits for survivors who are looking for solutions."
People being treated for cancer often report sleep problems and fatigue. Yet, they, along with many doctors and nurses, expect the problems to end when surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy is complete. However, studies show that as many as two-thirds of survivors experience them for months after, sometimes years, and they also report sleep aids aren't effective, said Mustian, one of a handful of scientifically trained exercise psychologists and physiologists specializing in cancer in the United States.
