Health & WellnessS


Sherlock

US: Mysterious substance sickens Newarkers

Kasi Addison
The Star Ledger
Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:06 UTC


Newark girl
©Amanda Brown/The Star-Ledger
A young girl awaits treatment as hazardous material teams test 521 S. 17th St. in Newark for toxins.

At least 38 people were hospitalized Tuesday after suffering an allergic reaction to an unknown substance in a Newark apartment building infested with bedbugs, fleas and mice.

No one yet knows what caused residents of 521 S. 17th St. to break out with skin rashes, swollen eyes and sore throats, but officials believe it is somehow related to the infestation or the effort to exterminate the pests. City officials could not immediately say when the building had been last exterminated.
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Network

Flashback HealthMap - Automated tracking of world-wide infectious disease reports

Heather Havenstein
Computerworld
Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:35 UTC
The tool is especially vital to developing countries or other areas of the world that might not have traditional disease surveillance mechanisms in place, Brownstein said. "There was no real source that brought all information about outbreaks together," he said. "This is a way to bring all this information together in a very organized and synthesized way while filtering a lot of noise that might otherwise exist on the Web."

Image
©Unknown
Health officials worldwide are now using a system called HealthMap to mine the Web for early information about disease outbreaks.
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People

The Power of Synergy: Individual Personal Ties Strengthen Teams' Overall Creativity


Blackwell Publishing
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:48 UTC
With more employees working in teams, it is critical to find ways to enable teams to be more creative in their work. A new article in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal explores how imagination, insight, and creative ideas develop, evolve, and spread from one team member to another, ultimately increasing the team's ability to think creatively about a range of problems.

The article highlights the fact that although creative ideas occur in the minds of individuals, and can arise in part from having personal ties to diverse others, ways of thinking about and approaching problems also can be jointly developed by the team. In essence, there is a team mindset that is greater than the sum of individual team members. When this synergistic process occurs, teams have the capacity to achieve high levels of creativity.
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People

Most Americans Want Health Care Reform

Steven Reinberg
The Washington Post
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:49 UTC
The vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the U.S. health care system, and 82 percent think it needs to be overhauled, a new survey found.

"There is a broad view by the public that our health care system needs a full overhaul, either to be totally rebuilt or reformed," said Cathy Schoen, senior vice president for research and evaluation at The Commonwealth Fund, which commissioned the survey.

The survey, titledPublic Views on U.S. Health Care System Organization: A Call for New Directions, questioned 1,004 adults on their views of the U.S. health care system.
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Heart - Black

Flashback Clinics Use Tissue From Babies Killed in Abortions for Cosmetic Injections

Steven Ertelt
Lifenews
Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:03 UTC
Women from around the world are traveling to clinics in various locations that are now offering face lifts and cosmetic surgery using tissue from babies who have been killed by abortions.
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Bulb

A new light on the brains of people with borderline personality disorder


Baylor College of Medicine
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:33 UTC
In a game of give and get, the brains of people with borderline personality disorder often don't get it.

In fact, an interactive economic game played between two people in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) devices revealed a brain malfunction associated with the disorder, a serious but common mental illness that affects a person's perceptions of the world and other people, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears in the current issue of the journal Science.

"This may be the first time a physical signature for a personality disorder has been identified," said Dr. P. Read Montague, professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the BCM Brown Foundation Human Neuroimaging Laboratory.
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Life Preserver

Researchers study diet and autism


psychorg.com
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:37 UTC
Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have embarked on one of the first double-blind, clinical studies to determine whether gluten and dairy products play a role in autistic behavior as parents have anecdotally claimed.
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Cow

Monsanto Wants Out of Dairy Hormone Business

Dan Shapley
The Daily Green
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:55 UTC
Will rBST Survive Without a Corporate Backer with a Reputation for Bullying?

Farm cows
©Martin Poole / Istock

Agrochemical giant Monsanto has spent the past year going state to state, trying to convince agricultural departments to ban "hormone-free" labels on milk.
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Cow

Your Milk on Drugs -- The Dangers of rBGH in Dairy Products


Institute for Responsible Technology
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:48 UTC
Although banned in most other industrialized nations due to the health risks to humans and harm to the animals, Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST) is still injected into dairy cows in the US to increase milk-production.

So why was rBGH approved for use in the US? The approval of rBGH in our country is a story of fired whistleblowers, manipulated research, and a corporate takeover of the US Food and Drug Administration. US dairies responding to the health concerns of consumers by not injecting their herds, now battle with Monsanto for their right to label their milk as rBGH-free. For those familiar with the history of this controversial drug, and Monsanto, this is no surprise. Monsanto's controversial past is plagued with toxic disasters, lawsuits and cover-ups.
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Health

Mystery Disease Kills Dozens in Venezuela

Simon Rometo
The New York Times
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:38 UTC
A mystery disease has killed dozens of Warao Indians in recent months in a remote area of northeastern Venezuela, according to indigenous leaders and researchers from the University of California at Berkeley, who informed health officials here of the outbreak on Wednesday.

At least 38 people have died, including 16 since the start of June, said Charles Briggs, an anthropologist at Berkeley, and Dr. Clara Mantini-Briggs, a medical researcher there. They are a husband-and-wife team known for their research on a cholera outbreak that killed 500 people in Venezuela in the early 1990s.
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