NewsTrust - Infectious Diseases - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

Canada kept detection of salmon virus secret

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Craig Welch - Nov. 30 (News Report) - A decade before this fall's salmon-virus scare, a Canadian government researcher said she found a similar virus in more than 100 wild fish from Alaska to Vancouver Island. But Canadian officials never told the public or scientists in the United States about those tests.

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Social Media Join Toolkit for Hunters of Disease

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Bronwyn Garrity - Jun. 14 (News) - Social media — Facebook, Google, Twitter, location-based services like Foursquare and more — are changing the way epidemiologists discover and track the spread of disease.

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Circumcision Ban to Appear on San Francisco Ballot

Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Staff writers - May. 18 (News) - An initiative that would ban the circumcision of males younger than 18 in San Francisco has received enough signatures to appear on the ballot. The practice would become a misdemeanor.

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Past medical testing on humans revealed

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Mike Stobbe - Feb. 27 (Special Report) - Shocking as it may seem, U.S. government doctors once thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.

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Scientific review reaches no conclusion on source of anthrax

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

CNN - By Carol Cratty - Feb. 16 (News Report) - Using the available scientific evidence, "it is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion" about the source of the anthrax used in the 2001 anthrax letter attacks which killed five people, according to a report issued Tuesday by the National Academy of Sciences.

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Leprosy, Plague and Other Visitors to New York

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By By Anemona Hartocollis - Feb. 11 (News) - If an illness has cropped up elsewhere, it will probably find its way to New York City through its visitors.

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Flu breakthrough promises a vaccine to kill all strains

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Alok Jha - Feb. 07 (News) - Scientists at Oxford University have successfully tested a universal flu vaccine that could work against all known strains of the illness, taking a significant step in the fight against a disease that affects billions of people each year.

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Circumcision helps stop cancer-causing virus, study finds

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Reuters - Jan. 07 (News) - Researchers have documented yet another health benefit for circumcision, which can protect men against the AIDS virus, saying it can protect their wives and girlfriends from a virus that causes cervical cancer.

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Looking for a Superbug Killer

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Andrew Pollack - Nov. 06 (News Report) - Worried about an impending public health crisis, government officials are considering offering financial incentives to the pharmaceutical industry... to spur the development of vitally needed antibiotics... a considerable number of pharmaceutical giants have abandoned this field in search of more lucrative medicines. The number of new antibiotics in development is “distressingly low,”

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Amazon Indians hit by deadly epidemic

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Ian James - Oct. 31 (News) - Malaria-like illness kills dozens, many of them children, in three villages. Venezuelan health workers say an epidemic that may be malaria has killed dozens of people.

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Haiti confirms cholera outbreak

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:40:03 -0700

Reuters - By BBC Staff - Oct. 22 (News Report) - Hundreds of people received treatment in the car park of a hospital in Saint-Marc Haiti's president and medical officials have confirmed that an outbreak of cholera has killed scores of people north of the capital Port-au-Prince. The victims suffered

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Honeybee Killer Found by Army and Entomologists

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Kirk Johnson - Oct. 06 (News Report) - Since 2006, 20-40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States have suffered “colony collapse.” Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough ... it may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own.

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Doctors reconsider old antibiotics despite hazards

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Andrew Zajac - Jul. 18 (News Report) - More than half a century ago, when antibiotics were transforming modern medicine, a now almost forgotten drug was hailed as something close to the miracle of miracles. Doctors rushed to prescribe it for an array of medical problems — that is, until they discovered that the drug, chloramphenicol, sometimes had lethal side effects. Yet today, improbable as it may seem, an effort is underway to revive the use of chloramphenicol and other antibiotics that had largely been banished because of their potential danger.

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Disease and intelligence: Intelligence tested

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jul. 08 (Research) - HUMAN intelligence is higher, on average, in some places than in others. And researchers at the University of New Mexico have come up with an explanation, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Comparing the average IQ in a particular country with its disease burden (based on the reduction in life expectancy caused by 28 infectious diseases) reveals a striking correlation. At the bottom of the IQ list is Equatorial Guinea, followed by St Lucia, with Cameroon, Mozambique and Gabon tied for third last. These countries also have among the highest burdens of infectious diseases. At the opposite end of the scale, Singapore, South Korea, China and Japan show the highest intelligence scores and relatively low levels of disease. America, Britain and a number of European countries also place in the top left-hand corner of the chart. For more on this, see article.

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Gates rethinks the fight against polio

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:18:04 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Robert A. Guth - Apr. 23 (News Report) - Is humanity better served by waging wars on individual diseases, like polio? Or is it better to pursue a broader set of health goals simultaneously—improving hygiene, expanding immunizations, providing clean drinking water—that don't eliminate any one disease, but might improve the overall health of people in developing countries?

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Eradicating Guinea worm disease

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Mar. 30 (Special Report) - A global campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease is tantalizingly close to success. The parasitic infection, caused by a worm that can grow three feet long before it emerges from a patient’s body, now affects just a few thousand people per year. Almost all of the remaining cases are in Southern Sudan. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who has helped lead the campaign, went there in February. The World’s David Baron was there too.

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Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline in deal to supply low-cost vaccines

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Mark King - Mar. 25 (News Report) - Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline will supply hundreds of millions of doses of their pneumonia vaccines to the world's poorest countries at heavily discounted prices under a novel agreement, reports the New York Times.

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Scientist at Work: Dr. Thomas R. Frieden: At C.D.C., Obama’s Appointee Wields a Big Broom

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Gardiner Harris - Mar. 16 (Special Report) - The former New York City health commissioner has rapidly reversed many of the Bush administration’s policies at one of the world’s top health agencies.

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Pressure Rises to Stop Antibiotics in Agriculture

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Margie Mason, Martha Mendoza - Dec. 28 (Special Report) - The mystery started the day farmer Russ Kremer got between a jealous boar and a sow in heat. The boar gored Kremer in the knee with a razor-sharp tusk. The burly pig farmer shrugged it off, figuring: "You pour the blood out of your boot and go on."

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Global jump in swine flu deaths

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Oct. 31 (News Report) - The number of swine flu deaths reported worldwide has jumped by more than 700 in a week, latest World Health Organization figures reveal.

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L.A. County free H1N1 vaccine clinics overwhelmed

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Molly Hennessy-Fiske - Oct. 28 (News Report) - Los Angeles County's free H1N1 flu clinics opened last week amid public health officials' promises to aggressively vaccinate people at highest risk, especially the uninsured. Instead, overwhelmed clinic staff began vaccinating many people who were not supposed to be first in line for protection, officials said Tuesday.

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Anxious Crowds Meet Ad Hoc Swine Flu Police

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jennifer Steinhauer - Oct. 28 (News Report) - The top public health official in Los Angeles County stood at a swine flu vaccination site in Compton, Calif., on Tuesday and gently told elderly residents that they really ought to go home.

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Obama Declares Swine Flu a National Emergency

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By JACKIE CALMES, DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. - Oct. 25 (News Report) - President Obama’s declaration allows hospitals and local governments to speedily set up alternate sites and procedures if needed to handle any surge of patients.

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Flu Story: A Pregnant Woman’s Ordeal

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. - Oct. 20 (News Report) - Pregnant women are particularly susceptible because they are in the younger age group most likely to catch this new virus, while those over 50 who have had more flus rarely catch it. Moreover, pregnancy suppresses the immune system to protect the fetus, and the growing baby makes it harder for a mother to clear her lungs.

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Does the Flu Vaccine Matter?

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Shannon Brownlee, Jeanne Lenzer - Oct. 15 (Special Report) - "What if flu vaccines do not protect people from dying—particularly the elderly, who account for 90 percent of deaths from seasonal flu? And what if the expensive antiviral drugs that the government has stockpiled over the past few years also have little, if any, power to reduce the number of people who die or are hospitalized?"

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