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Health

WTC studies find no big jump in cancer, deaths (AP)

September 2, 2011 – 9:04 am

NEW YORK – Two major medical studies have failed to find significant increases in deaths or cancer among people exposed to dust from the World Trade Center. In one, researchers who studied cancer rates among nearly 9,000 firefighters who spent time at ground zero found four more cases of the disease than might normally be expected in a group of American men of the same age and ethnicity, an increase independent experts said was small enough to be caused by chance alone. Fire Department doctors also compared exposed firefighters to a group of 926 colleagues who were never at the trade center, and had no contact with the dust. There, they found that cancer rates were about 19 percent higher for in the exposed group, but, again, experts uninvolved in the study said the difference was not statistically significant. Advocates for the firefighters said the trend was still worrisome, however, and doctors said they could not rule out the possibility that more cancer cases will develop among the firefighters as time goes on. In the other study, researchers with New York City's health department who studied death rates among 42,000 people potentially exposed to trade center dust found no evidence of a spike in fatalities. In fact, they found that the 790 deaths among people in the study group was about 43 percent lower than the mortality rate for New Yorkers in general. They were also less likely to have suffered fatal respiratory ailments. Those findings, however, was also written off by scientists as too premature to mean much. Because the attacks happened in a business district and presumably involved people who were fit enough to be reporting to work, the study group was probably healthier than the general public to begin with, said New York City's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley. "I wouldn't interpret it as that the World Trade Center has somehow helped people live longer," he said. Also, the types of toxins released in the trade center disaster usually take decades to result in deaths, not the few years covered in the study, he and other experts said. Donald Berry, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, said the two studies "provide no evidence that living or working in the former shadow of the World Trade Center increases one's risk of anything." "Occupational hazards are real," he said. "An extreme example is the plight of asbestos workers. But occupational risks accrue over years of exposure. With the exception of a nuclear explosion or meltdown, it's difficult for any single event to cause an increase in cancer or in mortality." Both studies were being published Friday in The Lancet, a British medical journal. Also set for publication in The Lancet on Friday is a study of nearly 27,500 people enrolled in a World Trade Center health monitoring program that found that nearly 28 percent had asthma, 42 percent had sinus problems and 39 percent had acid reflux disease, a condition related to heartburn. The study also found large numbers of rescue and recovery workers suffering from depression or panic disorders. Those findings echo the results of several other studies. Dr. David Prezant, the fire department's chief medical officer, said he believed the firefighters study indicated "a moderately strong correlation" between World Trade Center dust and cancer. He said he did not agree with other experts who said the study failed certain key tests of statistical significance. The inquiry found that 242 of the nearly 9,000 firefighters exposed to the attacks had developed cancer within the study period, compared to the 238 that researchers would have expected in the general public. Researchers found less lung cancer than expected — only 9 cases instead of the 21 they expected to see. That's reassuring because people are concerned about inhaled dust particles. All 9 of the cases involved smokers. Conversely, they found 12 cases of thyroid cancer in the study group, compared to the 6 they might have expected based on rates in the general public. Dr. James M. Melius, director of the New York State Laborers' Health Fund and one of the leading advocates for ground zero workers suffering health problems, said that even though the cancer research on firefighters was inconclusive, it showed enough possibility of a risk that U.S. officials should consider adding cancers to a list of conditions covered by a multi-billion dollar health aid bill passed by Congress last year. Doing so would qualify exposed people for sizeable compensation payments. "Are we going to wait until we have definitive evidence, which could be 20 or 30 years? Are we going to say, decades from now, `Yeah, you did get cancer because of the World Trade Center, and we should have helped you out back then?'" he said. "It's limited information. It isn't a perfect study ... It still provides compelling evidence that we should be providing at least health care for these people." Experts said both the mortality study and the cancer study are limited, in part because of the difficulty of finding a proper comparison group. Drawing conclusions can also be difficult because researchers don't know the full medical history of the subjects. Dr. Michael Thun, vice president emeritus of epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society, said it isn't surprising that the study would fail to detect any major trends so soon after attacks. Typically, the types of cell mutations caused by toxic and carcinogenic exposures take decades to develop into a diagnosable cancer, he said. Outside of cancers in children, he said, "You can't really go from the earliest stage to lethal in just a few years." But it is possible that a cancer that already existed might have been accelerated by something in the dust, and on that point, "the results are neither conclusively negative, or conclusively positive," Thun said. He called the Fire Department research "a solid first study on the issue," but said it will likely be another decade before scientists can really see whether people exposed to trade center toxins have an increased risk of getting cancer. Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook

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Technology

AT&T gearing up for rare antitrust fight with DOJ (AP)

September 1, 2011 – 4:20 pm

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department's rejection of AT&T's proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies' resolve in forming the nation's largest wireless carrier. A courtroom battle is likely and could wring out information that the companies would prefer to keep private. Still, AT&T Inc. has a big incentive to fight: If the deal is called off, the company has to pay a $3 billion breakup fee and surrender some of its unused spectrum for wireless communications. AT&T is promising to fight the Justice Department's decision. The department filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the $39 billion deal, saying it would reduce competition and lead to price increases for customers. If AT&T follows through on that, it could produce the biggest antitrust showdown since business software maker Oracle Corp. squared off with the federal government seven years ago. That dispute, triggered by the government's decision to block Oracle's proposed purchase of rival PeopleSoft Inc., exposed several well-kept corporate secrets and required Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to testify before a packed courtroom. In the end, Oracle pulled off something few companies have done in the past 30 years: It persuaded a federal judge that the Justice Department didn't have grounds to block its PeopleSoft deal. Oracle closed its $11.1 billion takeover four months after getting the favorable court ruling. Usually, not even the most powerful companies bother to fight government regulators in an antitrust dispute. Google Inc., for example, backed off in 2008 when the Justice Department threatened to sue to block a proposed Internet search partnership with Yahoo Inc. Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, pulled out of a deal to buy Intuit Corp. in 1995 after the Justice Department objected. The Justice Department filed 138 antitrust cases in federal courts from 1999 to 2008 and lost just four of them, according to the latest breakdown from the agency. One reason that the Justice Department has such a good track record is because it rarely challenges a deal unless it's very confident it can win, said Joseph Bauer, a University of Notre Dame law professor and antitrust expert. Knowing AT&T would probably go to court, the Justice Department may have wanted to signal that it intends to get tougher on corporate marriages between rivals in markets with few other competitors. A union between AT&T and T-Mobile USA would leave Verizon and Sprint as the only other major cellphone carriers in the U.S. T-Mobile, a subsidiary of German telecom company Deutsche Telekom AG, is currently the No. 4 wireless carrier, while AT&T is second. Combined, AT&T would be the largest. In a sign of its confidence, the Justice Department decided to strike down the deal even though it could have taken about three more months to study the pros and cons. The timing stunned AT&T, which said it didn't get any advance warning. "It was an aggressive and impressive move by the DOJ to take the battle right at AT&T," said Daniel Wall, a San Francisco attorney who represented Oracle in its 2004 fight to win the right to buy PeopleSoft. "It sent a statement that the DOJ intends to fight this one all the way to the finish line." Wall said AT&T may have a tougher time proving its case than Oracle did against the Justice Department. In the PeopleSoft deal, Wall said, antitrust enforcers seemed to be manipulating the definition of the business software market. "This time, it looks to me that they have a pretty solid market definition," Wall said. "They don't appear to be playing games." University of Iowa law professor Herbert Hovenkamp said the Justice Department is being guided by a set of new guidelines, issued late last year, which make it clearer when mergers should be challenged on antitrust grounds. "I don't think they are overreaching here," Hovenkamp said. "If there is a broader message here, it's that the government intends to enforce these new guidelines." Besides being forced to divulge potentially damaging information, AT&T will face other risks if it doesn't settle with the Justice Department. Going to trial will take months, or even years, leaving the company in a legal limbo that could depress its stock price and cause customers and key employees to defect. There's another risk to going to trial: as they try to prove their case, antitrust lawyers sometimes obtain confidential e-mails that contain embarrassing snippets and present other evidence that can make companies look bad. Those are some of the reasons why AT&T mayl try to reach some kind of settlement with the government. If AT&T persists, antitrust experts said that it's better off going up against the Justice Department than the Federal Trade Commission, which also handles antitrust reviews. That's mainly because lawsuits with the Justice Department are contested in federal courts. By contrast, the threshold for the FTC to block deals is generally lower, and the ensuing legal skirmishes occur in administrative law proceedings that drag on longer. "The merging parties usually have a better shot when they are going up against the DOJ than the FTC," said D. Daniel Sokol, a University of Florida professor specializing in antitrust law. Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter , become a fan on Facebook

Tags business, federal, florida, german, government, oracle, people, san, Technology, university, usa, yahoo | Comment (0)
Health

Need a C-section? Protection from blood clot urged (AP)

August 30, 2011 – 12:37 pm

WASHINGTON – New advice for pregnant women: If you're getting a C-section, special inflating boots strapped on your legs may lower the risk of a blood clot. Hospitals already use these compression devices for other major operations, such as hip replacements, and a growing number have begun offering them for at least some of their cesarean deliveries, too. Now guidelines for the nation's obstetricians say it's time to make the step routine for most C-sections, which account for nearly a third of U.S. births. The new recommendations promise to raise awareness of what is a silent threat not just for pregnant women but for thousands of other people, too: Blood clots in veins that can masquerade as simple leg pain. Called a DVT, for deep vein thrombosis, this kind of clot usually starts in the leg or groin. But it can kill if it moves up to the lungs, where it's called a pulmonary embolism. These clots make headlines every few years when seemingly healthy people collapse after long airplane flights or similar prolonged inactivity. Certain surgeries also can trigger a DVT. Earlier this year, tennis star Serena Williams was treated for clots in her lungs discovered after foot surgery and cross-country travel. Obesity, some types of injuries, even some birth control pills can increase the risk, too. A woman's risk of a DVT jumps during pregnancy and the six weeks afterward. That's partly because of slower blood flow from the weight gain, and because mom is less active in the last trimester and during those first few weeks of recovery from childbirth. It's also because pregnancy temporarily changes blood to make it clot more easily. "This is a consequence of nature's protecting women against the bleeding challenges of childbirth," explains Dr. Andra James of Duke University, who co-authored the new guidelines from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Add a C-section and, like any major surgery, it further increases that risk. As many as two of every 1,000 pregnant women will experience a DVT, James says. Fortunately, pregnancy-related deaths are very rare in this country, but when they happen, those clots are one of the leading reasons. Yet too few people even know the warning signs, she says: Pain or swelling in one leg, especially the calf or thigh. Redness or warmth in one spot on the leg. If the clot has reached the lung, shortness of breath or chest pain. The new guidelines urge obstetricians to closely monitor their patients for DVTs — and to check if they have additional factors that would put them at extra risk. Women who've had a DVT earlier in life, or whose close relatives had one — or who have certain inherited clotting disorders — may need anti-clotting medicines throughout the pregnancy, say the recommendations, published in the September issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology. Then there are those compression devices, which slip over each leg and regularly inflate and deflate, sort of like a massage, to help blood flow more briskly. The obstetricians' group acknowledges that there haven't been large studies with C-sections to prove how much difference the gadgets could make. But it decided to recommend them anyway because in other types of surgery, the devices can cut the clot risk by two-thirds, James says. The guidelines recommend strapping them on before the C-section begins, unless there's no time before an emergency operation or the woman is taking anti-clotting medication. Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York began using the devices for C-sections a few years ago, and deputy chief medical officer Dr. Erin DuPree says they add $14 to the cost of care. Women typically remove and replace them as they ease out of bed throughout the first day after surgery, and no longer need them by the second day, she says. "It's an easy thing to do that really does not cause harm and could potentially help," she says. James stresses that leg compression shouldn't lull a woman into thinking she can rest in bed rather than push herself to walk — and a new mom should remain alert to symptoms when she goes home because half of pregnancy-related DVTs occur in those weeks after childbirth. ___ EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press. ___ Online: DVT info: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/dvt/index.html Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook

Tags country, facebook, journal, lungs, medical-center, obstetrics, online, people, recommendations, risk, serena-williams, university, woman | Comment (0)
Technology

Chinese general's spy talk leaked onto YouTube (AP)

August 29, 2011 – 7:13 pm

BEIJING – Footage of a Chinese general discussing sensitive spying cases has been leaked onto video sharing site YouTube, in what appears to be an embarrassing failure of secrecy for the usually tightlipped military. It wasn't clear when or where Maj. Gen. Jin Yinan made the comments and China's Defense Ministry did not immediately respond Monday to faxed questions about the video. Calls to the National Defense University where Jin is a lecturer rang unanswered. While some of the cases had been announced before, few details had been released, while others involving the military had been entirely secret. Among those Jin discussed was that of former Ambassador to South Korea Li Bin, who was sentenced to seven years for corruption. Jin said Li had actually been discovered passing secrets to South Korea that compromised China's position in North Korean nuclear disarmament talks, but the allegations were too embarrassing to make public and graft charges were brought instead. "In all the world, what nation's ambassador serves as another country's spy?" Jin said. Similar treatment was handed out to the former head of China's nuclear power program, Kang Rixin, who was sentenced to life in prison last November on charges of corruption. Jin said Kang had in fact peddled secrets about China's civilian nuclear program to a foreign nation that he did not identify, but that was considered too sensitive to bring up in court. Kang, a member of the ruling Communist Party's powerful Central Committee as well as its disciplinary arm, was one of the highest-ranking officials ever to be involved in spying, Jin said. His arrest dealt a major shock to the party leadership, Jin said. "The party center was extremely nervous. They ordered top-to-bottom inspections and spared no individual," he said. Jin also talked about Tong Daning, an official from China's social security fund, who was executed in 2006 after being convicted on charges of spying for rival Taiwan. Jin said Tong had passed information to the island's leaders about China's currency regime, allowing them to avoid massive losses due to exchange rate changes. Among the cases involving military personnel, Jin said that of Col. Xu Junping, who defected to the United States in 2000, did not involve the loss of any technical secrets. Instead, Xu relayed to the Americans his knowledge of the military leaderships' personalities, attitudes and habits gleaned from many years accompanying the top brass on trips abroad, Jin said. The video was also posted on Chinese websites, and while it was removed from most locations, screen shots, audio files and transcripts of Jin's comments could still be found on sites such as Sina Weibo's popular microblogging service. Jin's presentation, complete with explanatory slides, was typical of how such cases are discussed at private sessions as a warning to Communist Party cadres not to be lured into espionage or corruption. The leaked video appeared to have been from an official recording rather than filmed by a member of the audience. Authorities heavily police the Chinese Internet but can only remove objectionable content after it is posted and have no control over what appears elsewhere. While Chinese are enthusiastic users of social media, YouTube and Facebook are blocked inside China and their Chinese equivalents are required to inspect all content and remove politically sensitive material before being ordered to do so. Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter , become a fan on Facebook

Tags among-the-cases, china, chinese, communist-party, country, facebook, military, national, north, south-korea, united-states, university, video, world, yahoo | Comment (0)
Health

Back-to-school can mean vaccines for tweens, teens (AP)

August 24, 2011 – 9:37 pm

WASHINGTON – Backpack. Notebooks. Whooping cough shot? If you haven't worried about back-to-school shots since your tween or teen was entering kindergarten, better put vaccines on the to-do list. Older kids need a few new immunizations starting at age 11, including a shot to guard against the worrisome resurgence of whooping cough. And for the first time this year, 16-year-olds are supposed to get a booster shot, too, for a scary type of meningitis. Many slip through the cracks. One reason: Schools don't require adolescents to comply with a list of national vaccine recommendations like they do kindergarteners. Another reason: "Kids this age go to the doctor much less," says Dr. Melinda Wharton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who had to scramble to get her own daughter that meningitis shot before she headed to college. "This whole back-to-school push is a good time for parents to think about their kids in terms of what vaccines are recommended." But when it comes to whooping cough, a growing number of states are requiring updated shots as students enter middle school and beyond. A new California law requires a staggering 3 million students to show proof they're protected as they head back to class. "It is that kind of effort that's going to help us stem the outbreaks," says Dr. Mark Sawyer of the University of California, San Diego. Aside from an annual flu vaccine, here are federal recommendations for preteens and teens: _A Tdap shot between ages 11 and 12. It protects against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis or whooping cough — and the latter is key as the cough that's so strong it can break a rib is on the rise. Young children get vaccinated before kindergarten but that protection wears off, and pertussis outbreaks in middle or high school no longer are rare. While older kids usually recover, whooping cough can cause weeks of misery — and worse, they can easily spread the bacterial infection to not-yet-vaccinated infants, who can die. Last year was especially bad for whooping cough, with more than 21,000 U.S. cases and at least 26 deaths. California was hard hit with more than 9,200 cases — the most since 1947 — and 10 babies died. The new California law aims to ensure everyone entering seventh through 12th grade got a booster at some point. Before the law, about half those students were estimated to be unprotected, says Dr. John Talarico of the California Department of Public Health. With vaccine vans parked at schools and special Tdap lines at some county health departments, an immunization program for the poor and underinsured has been distributing three to seven times more shots than usual in recent months, he says. _A first dose of what's called meningococcal conjugate vaccine between ages 11 and 12, with a booster dose at 16. This fast-moving bacteria can cause meningitis or a bloodstream infection. It's fortunately rare, causing fewer than 2,000 cases a year. But it can be so aggressive that someone can feel fine one day and be dead the next — and its main targets are adolescents and college freshmen. Why? That's not clear, but about 10 percent of the population carries the germ harmlessly in their noses and throats. Carriers tend to spread it by coughing, kissing and sharing drinking glasses, especially in crowded conditions like dormitories. Infection initially mimics a stomach bug, with fever and vomiting. Up to 15 percent of patients die. One in five survivors suffers permanent disabilities including brain damage, deafness or amputated limbs. CDC's statistics show that 54 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds had gotten vaccinated by 2009. But the booster dose is new advice — scientists only recently learned that that first dose wears off after five years. So if your child didn't get vaccinated until, say, 13 and now is 18 and heading for college, Wharton says don't forget the booster. _Finally for girls ages 11 to 12, there's the HPV vaccine for strains of human papillomavirus that can cause cervical cancer. The idea is to start the three doses needed early enough to be fully vaccinated well before the girl becomes sexually active. But in 2009, only 27 percent of girls ages 13 to 17 had gotten all three doses. "We were very disappointed in those numbers," Wharton says. A vaccine version is sold for boys to prevent HPV-caused genital warts, although CDC hasn't yet recommended its routine use. Wharton's final advice: Adolescence is a good time to catch up on any shots that were recommended after your child started kindergarten and thus missed, like the second dose of chickenpox vaccine that became routine for the 5-year-old set just a few years ago. ___ EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press. ___ Online: List of state vaccination requirements: http://www.immunize.org/laws Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter , become a fan on Facebook

Tags booster, california, child, disease-control, girl, Health, melinda-wharton, prevention, sawyer, university, yahoo | Comment (0)

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