`A Cook County jury on Tuesday awarded an Illinois-record $5 million judgment in a medical malpractice suit to an Arizona couple for the loss of the woman’s vagina, according to a release from the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
The suit alleged that on May 5, 2000, Dr. Taek Kim unnecessarily placed a synthetic suburethral sling during a hysterectomy and repair of a cystocele on the plaintiff. Eventually, the sling eroded into the plaintiff’s vagina, resulting in chronic infection, pain and discharge, according to the release from the law firm of Taxman & Hurst. The scar tissue and foreshortening led to the eventual loss of the woman’s vagina, the suit claimed.’
`Scientists hoping to stop the inexorable march of the cane toad are working on a gene that would ensure all the pest’s offspring are male – wiping out future egg-laying mothers.
The University of Queensland’s Peter Koopman has been developing a “daughterless gene” that would limit the toad’s population by eradicating females, which are able to lay tens of thousands of eggs at time.
“I am hoping to engineer a strain of toads where the male offspring stay male and the female offspring become male,” Professor Koopman said at yesterday’s national cane toad conference in Brisbane. ‘
`We may not be entirely human, gene experts said on Thursday after studying the DNA of hundreds of different kinds of bacteria in the human gut.
Bacteria are so important to key functions such as digestion and the immune system that we may be truly symbiotic organisms — relying on one another for life itself, the scientists write in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. [..]
“We are somehow like an amalgam, a mix of bacteria and human cells. There are some estimates that say 90 percent of the cells on our body are actually bacteria,” Steven Gill, a molecular biologist formerly at TIGR and now at the State University of New York in Buffalo, said in a telephone interview.’
`While most Canadians are aware that medicinal marijuana is legal in Canada, many may not know that there is a product available that also offers cannabis health benefits for your pets.
Med-Marijuana’s newest product, Medi-Paws, is being used by Canadian pet owners for a host of animal issues such as cardiac health, arthritis, liver and kidney functions.’
`Researchers here have learned how a derivative of vitamin E causes the death of cancer cells. The researchers then used that knowledge to make the agent an even more potent cancer killer.
The compound, called vitamin E succinate, or alpha tocopheryl succinate, is taken by some people as a nutritional supplement, mainly for its antioxidant properties. In addition, it has a weak ability to kill cancer cells, and it has been tested as a cancer chemopreventive agent.
The substance kills cancer cells by causing them to undergo a natural process known as programmed cell death, or apoptosis. Until now, no one knew how the agent caused this to happen.
These findings answer that question and also indicate that the molecule’s antitumor activity is separate from its antioxidant effect.’
`Scientists have reached a landmark point in one of the world’s most important scientific projects by sequencing the last chromosome in the Human Genome, the so-called “book of life.”
Chromosome 1 contains nearly twice as many genes as the average chromosome and makes up eight percent of the human genetic code.
It is packed with 3,141 genes and linked to 350 illnesses including cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
“This achievement effectively closes the book on an important volume of the
Human Genome Project,” said Dr Simon Gregory who headed the sequencing project at the Sanger Institute in England.
The project was started in 1990 to identify the genes and DNA sequences that provide a blueprint for human beings.’
`A Philadelphia man is recovering from an alleged attack at the hands of his wife. The assault on his private parts has become public knowledge. In an exclusive interview with Action News after his release from Einstein, the 52-year-old victim spoke of his terrifying ordeal allegedly at the hands of his wife who thought he was cheating on her.
The 52-year-old Tioga-Nicetown man, who we are identifying only by his first name of Howard, arrived home late Wednesday, hours after his wife allegedly tore off part of his genitalia with her bare hands. Surgeons at Einstein successfully managed to repair the damage.’
`Everyone who has even thought about exercising has heard the warnings about lactic acid. It builds up in your muscles. It is what makes your muscles burn. Its buildup is what makes your muscles tire and give out.
Coaches and personal trainers tell athletes and exercisers that they have to learn to work out at just below their “lactic threshold,” that point of diminishing returns when lactic acid starts to accumulate. Some athletes even have blood tests to find their personal lactic thresholds.
But that, it turns out, is all wrong. Lactic acid is actually a fuel, not a caustic waste product. Muscles make it deliberately, producing it from glucose, and they burn it to obtain energy. The reason trained athletes can perform so hard and so long is because their intense training causes their muscles to adapt so they more readily and efficiently absorb lactic acid.’
`A woman is pregnant with Britain’s first designer baby selected to prevent an inherited cancer, The Times can reveal.
Her decision to use controversial genetic-screening technology will ensure that she does not pass on to her child the hereditary form of eye cancer from which she suffers.
Although they did not have fertility problems, the woman and her partner created embryos by IVF. This allowed doctors to remove a cell and test it for the cancer gene, so only unaffected embryos were transferred to her womb.’
`Lesbians’ brains react differently to sex hormones than those of heterosexual women, new research indicates.
That’s in line with an earlier study that had indicated gay men’s brain responses were different from straight men — though the difference for men was more pronounced than has now been found in women.’
`If diseases like AIDS and bird flu scare you, wait until you hear what’s next. Doctors are trying to find out what is causing a bizarre and mysterious infection that’s surfaced in South Texas.
Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible.
“These people will have like beads of sweat but it’s black, black and tarry,” said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients.
Patients get lesions that never heal.
“Sometimes little black specks that come out of the lesions and sometimes little fibers,” said Stephanie Bailey, Morgellons patient.
Patients say that’s the worst symptom — strange fibers that pop out of your skin in different colors.’
`Seven RMIT staff working just metres underneath two mobile phone towers in a Melbourne CBD building have been diagnosed with brain tumours.
The cases have forced the university to evacuate the two top floors of the Tivoli building and begin immediate health and safety testing.
The seven business faculty staff work on the top two floors of the Bourke St building and have developed tumours in the past seven years.
Two of the cases are cancerous. The remaining five are benign, or non-cancerous, brain tumours.’
`Nanotechnology companies need to do more to understand potential toxic effects of their products, a senior UK researcher has warned.
Professor Anthony Seaton, of Aberdeen University, said “very little” was still known about the health impacts of particles engineered at small scales.
His concern over nanoparticles covered production and lab workers as well as consumers, he told a conference.’
`A California lawmaker has introduced a bill sparked by Tom Cruise’s revelation he bought a sonogram machine to watch his daughter grow in Katie Holmes’ womb.
Democratic Assemblyman Ted Lieu’s bill would ban selling, leasing or distributing ultrasound machines to anyone other than licensed medical professionals, E! Online reported Wednesday. The state assembly is scheduled to debate the bill in Sacramento Thursday.
“If someone sees Tom Cruise buy one, they think this is the thing to do,” Lieu said. “This is a public safety measure. There’s really no medical reason for an untrained person to use this machine.”‘
`An engineered virus tracks down and infects the most common and deadly form of brain cancer and then kills tumor cells by forcing them to devour themselves, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The modified adenovirus homed in on malignant glioma cells in mice and induced enough self-cannibalization among the cancer cells — a process called autophagy — to reduce tumor size and extend survival, says senior author Seiji Kondo, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at M. D. Anderson.
”This virus uses telomerase, an enzyme found in 80 percent of brain tumors, as a target,” Kondo says. ”Once the virus enters the cell, it needs telomerase to replicate. Normal brain tissue does not have telomerase, so this virus replicates only in cancer cells.”’
`A Mexican man who at 550 kg (1,200 lb) is possibly the heaviest person in the world hopes to travel to Italy for a life-saving operation to shed weight.
Manuel Uribe, bedridden for the past five years, cannot stand on his own and will need a special flight to take him from Monterrey, Mexico to Modena, where a surgical team has offered to perform an intestinal bypass free of charge.
“I can’t walk. I’m can’t leave my bed,” the 40-year-old Uribe, who weighs the same as five baby elephants, said in a recent telephone interview.’
`Scientists have discovered a bacteria-fighting compound 100 times more effective than penicillin – in wallaby milk.
Researchers found the highly-potent compound, tagged AGG01, was active against a wide variety of fungi and bacteria including antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
Research team leader Dr Ben Cocks said the discovery could have a profound impact on both human and animal health.
“This compound has the potential to be commercially synthesised and may prove vital in the war against increasingly resistant human and animal diseases,” Dr Cocks said.’
`A woman from the Country Club Park area contracted a case of bubonic plague, the first human case in Los Angeles County since 1984, county health officials said Tuesday.
The woman, who has not been identified, came down with symptoms last week and remains hospitalized.
Health officials said they believe the woman was exposed to fleas in the area around her house, although an investigation is continuing.
Public health workers set out traps Tuesday to catch squirrels and other wild animals in the area near her home. County Public Health Laboratory workers will test blood from those animals to determine if there has been any exposure to the plague bacteria.’
`A chemical used to make food wrapping and line tin cans could be the cause of surging prostate cancer rates in men, says a study.
Bisphenol A is widely used in the food industry to make polycarbonate drinks bottles and the resins used to line tin cans, even though it is known to leach into food and has long been suspected of disrupting human sex hormones.
The new research suggests the small but constant level of bisphenol A entering people’s diet has a particular impact on pregnant women, disastrously altering the development of unborn baby sons.
The chemical causes microscopic changes in the developing prostate gland but these are not apparent at birth. Instead, they show up years later when they lead to a range of prostate diseases, such as enlargement and cancer. The changes can also cause malformation of the urethra, the channel for urine.’
`A 12-year-old girl is believed to have become the first UK patient to have her heart transplant reversed.
Doctors at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital acted when Hannah Clark’s body rejected her donor heart – 10 years after her original transplant.
The donor heart was disconnected, and Hannah’s own heart – which was never removed – was able to cope on its own.’
`Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital, USA, are using the Free-Electron Laser at specific wavelengths (selective photothermolysis) to heat up fat, which is then excreted by the body – without harming the skin. They say this technique could be used for treating cellulite, acne and heart disease.
Researchers used pig fat and two-inch-thick skin samples.
Prof. Rox Anderson, Mass. General Hospital, said “The root cause of acne is a lipid-rich gland, the sebaceous gland, which sits a few millimetres below the surface of the skin. We want to be able to selectively target the sebaceous gland and this research shows that, if we can build lasers at this region of the spectrum, we may be able to do that…. We can envision a fat-seeking laser, and we’re heading down that path now “‘
`A 38-year-old Lincoln man showed up at BryanLGH Medical Center West on Monday, claiming he had been assaulted last week, police said Tuesday.
The man told hospital staff he was in the area of 28th and P streets Thursday when someone punched him in the head from behind and kicked him when he fell.
He said he temporarily lost consciousness and came to, only to find his pants down to his ankles.
An X-ray at the hospital Monday revealed a 20-ounce soft drink bottle lodged in the man’s lower intestine. He was to have it removed Tuesday.’
It’s at the bottom of the page.
`The grimly named “isolator” was supposed to be temporary.
Everyone expected that the baby boy named David Vetter would develop a functioning immune system once he received a bone marrow transplant from his sister. Then he could leave the plastic walls that protected him from germs and live happily ever after, forever able to touch those he loved.
It was not to be. As a fascinating and heartbreaking new television documentary reveals, overly optimistic doctors and modern medical technology would fail the “boy in the bubble.” Doomed by a deadly combination of hope and hubris, he wouldn’t make it to his teen years.’
`The paper is all about visualizing the arrangement of organs during coitus. People have tried to figure out how the pieces all fit together internally using cadavers and their imagination, by using a speculum and poking around with their fingers, and by clever tools, like hollow glass tubes shaped like a penis. This paper tries something different: the investigators had people have sex in an MRI tube, and snapped a few pictures while they were at it. [..]
Science porn! Maybe the stuff about 1.5 Tesla magnets and T2 weighted imaging gets in the way of the romance, but it lets us cut straight to the action. Unfortunately, it sounds like action was hard to come by—while the ladies were willing, the guys seemed to have, umm, flopped. The researchers say the experiment was only possible thanks to the availability of a drug called sildenafil (aka Viagra), with one exception.’
`Nearly five years after President Bush announced his restrictive embryonic stem-cell policy, the field is still feeling the fallout. The leader of the stem-cell unit at the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, announced today he will leave the NIH to join the private sector at a biotech company called Invitrogen in Carlsbad, California.
Dr. Mahendra Rao says the president’s executive order that embryonic stem-cell lines created after Aug. 9, 2001 are not eligible for federal funding, is the reason behind his decision to leave the government agency. He spoke to Wired News about young scientists’ hesitation to enter the field, the danger of hyping stem-cell research, and why he’s still excited about the future of stem-cell research in this Q&A with Wired News.’
`Last year, a likable and accomplished scientist named Serguei Popov, who for nearly two decades developed genetically engineered biological weapons for the Soviet Union, crossed the Potomac River to speak at a conference on bioterrorism in Washington, DC. [..]
“When I came to Texas, I decided to forget everything,” Popov told me. “For seven years I did that. Now it’s different. It’s not because I like talking about it. But I see every day in publications that nobody knows what was done in the Soviet Union and how important that work was.”
Yet if Popov’s appearance last year at the Washington conference is any indication, it will be difficult to convince policymakers and scientists of the relevance of the Soviet bioweaponeers’ achievements. It wasn’t only that Popov’s audience in the high-ceilinged chamber of a Senate office building found the Soviets’ ingenious applications of biological science morally repugnant and technically abstruse. Rather, what Popov said lay so far outside current arguments about biodefense that he sounded as if he had come from another planet.’
`Australian scientists have discovered an “anti-freeze gene” that allows Antarctic grass to survive at minus 30 Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), saying it could prevent multi-million-dollar crop losses from frost.
“It’s a gene from the saltgrass that managed to colonise the Antarctic peninsula called Antarctic Hairgrass,” said Professor German Spangenberg from La Trobe University in Victoria state.
“We identified a novel class of a gene protein which binds twice and that prevents ice crystal growth. It has the capacity to survive being frozen rock solid and then thawing. It prevents the damage from ice crystals,” Spangenberg told Reuters.’
`Government officials in Germany have reported what appears to be the first health-related recall of a nanotechnology product, raising a potential public perception problem for the rapidly growing but still poorly understood field of science.
At least 77 people reported severe respiratory problems over a one-week period at the end of March — including six who were hospitalized with pulmonary edema, or fluid in the lungs — after using a “Magic Nano” bathroom cleansing product, according to the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment in Berlin.
Symptoms generally cleared up within 18 hours, though some had persistent breathing problems for days.’
`Pharmaceutical companies are systematically creating diseases in order to sell more of their products, turning healthy people into patients and placing many at risk of harm, a special edition of a leading medical journal claims today.
The practice of “diseasemongering” by the drug industry is promoting non-existent illnesses or exaggerating minor ones for the sake of profits, according to a set of essays published by the open-access journal Public Library of Science Medicine.
The special issue, edited by David Henry, of Newcastle University in Australia, and Ray Moynihan, an Australian journalist, reports that conditions such as female sexual dysfunction, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and “restless legs syndrome” have been promoted by companies hoping to sell more of their drugs.’
`It is surprisingly difficult to get an anosognosiastic patient to recognize their own paralysis. If you ask them to do something with their paralyzed hand, for example, they will say that they can see and feel the action, despite their inactivity. You could ask them to clap and they would hopelessly wave one hand in the air – but say that nothing is wrong with their technique. When pressed about their inactivity they may make up excuses, such as that they are tired, or arthritic. Also, anosognastiac patients seem unaware of other patients’ paralysis as well – as if paralysis was not something that happened to humans.
In the worst cases, one may even forget that certain appendages are their own – most commonly their paralyzed arm. They will vehemently deny that their arm is theirs, even when it is pointed out to them that it is attached to their body.’
