FDA Approves Another Flu Vaccine
November 30, 2009
CNN
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday it has approved a new vaccine to prevent seasonal influenza.
Agriflu, made by Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, is not intended to protect against the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu.
The vaccine was approved using an accelerated approval process, the FDA said. Novartis demonstrated that the vaccine induces levels of antibodies in the blood that are effective in preventing seasonal influenza, but it still needs to conduct further studies.
Agriflu, for ages 18 and older, is administered as a single injection in the upper arm and is available in single-dose, prefilled syringes, according to the FDA.
Novartis produces another licensed vaccine for seasonal influenza, Fluvirin, approved for ages 4 and older.
Although no vaccine is 100 percent effective in preventing disease, vaccination is the key to flu prevention, according to the FDA.
Novartis spokesman Eric Althoff said Agriflu is made in Siena, Italy, with eggs, and it has been available in Europe under the brand name Aggripal. This approval, he said, will add to future seasonal vaccine supplies.
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Cost of Treating Diabetes to Triple by 2034
November 30, 2009
Reuters
By Juile Steenhuysen
By 2034, nearly twice as many Americans will have diabetes and spending on the disease will triple, further straining the U.S. health system and testing the viability of Medicare and other government health insurance programs, U.S. researchers said on Friday.
“We forecast that in the next 25 years, the population size of people with diabetes — both diagnosed and undiagnosed — will rise from approximately 24 million people to 44 million people by the year 2034,” said Dr. Elbert Huang of the University of Chicago, whose study appears in the journal Diabetes Care.
“We anticipate that the cost of taking care of those people — and these are direct medical costs — will triple over the same period of time, going from $113 billion today to $336 billion (per year),” Huang said in a telephone interview.
Huang said the burden of treating so many people with diabetes will strain the viability of Medicare, the U.S. health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.
Huang projects that the number of people covered by Medicare will rise from 8.2 million to 14.6 million, and annual Medicare spending on diabetes will jump from $45 billion to $171 billion.
In the United States, about 11 percent of adults have diabetes. Most have type 2 diabetes, the kind closely linked to obesity.
The rising diabetes burden could further complicate efforts to rein in U.S. healthcare spending in the coming decades.
Congress is grappling with legislation to extend health coverage to millions of uninsured people, control healthcare spending and bar insurance industry practices such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions.
‘MAJOR PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEM’
“Diabetes is a major public health problem right now, but it’s important for the country and for policymakers to have an idea of what will happen in the next couple of decades,” Huang said.
“We already have a financial crisis at hand in healthcare and we need to plan for how we can deal with those costs in the future,” Huang said.
For the study, the researchers built a forecasting model of diabetes population costs that tracks how many people will develop diabetes over the next decades and how much it will cost. The model accounts for the size of different generations that will be entering the diabetes population.
“That is important to account for because we know that age itself is a major predictor of diabetes, and we know that the baby boomer generation is entering an age where there’s a high risk of developing diabetes,” he said.
It also assumes that no progress is made in terms of rates of obesity, diabetes prevention and diabetes care. If obesity levels rise, Huang said, the model may actually underestimate the problem.
He said the study emphasizes the importance of public health efforts already under way to try to reverse the number of people who have diabetes.
“We know from a recent trial — the Diabetes Prevention Program — we know we can prevent diabetes through diet and exercise,” Huang said.
In that 10-year study, overweight people with elevated blood sugar levels who lost a modest amount of weight lowered their risk of developing diabetes by at least a third.
People over age 60 got even more dramatic results, cutting their risk of diabetes during the study period by about half.
“I do feel preventing diabetes is the first step,” Huang said.
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Top UK Hospitals with the Worst Death Rates
November 30, 2009
Telegraph
By Laura Donnelly,Patrick Sawer and Alastair Jamieson
Bolton, Greater Manchester and Basildon NHS trusts have elite “foundation status”. However, The Sunday Telegraph has learned that statistics to be published this week will show a higher percentage of patients died while in their care in 2008-09 than in any other trusts in the country.
With the average mortality rate set at a score of 100, Basildon scored 131, Royal Bolton 122 and Tameside Hospital, in Greater Manchester, 119.
The disclosures have cast further doubt on Labour’s flagship foundation hospitals’ policy, which has been under attack since appalling standards of care at Mid Staffordshire Hospital were exposed in March.
Last night patients’ groups demanded that ministers carry out a “total overhaul” of the system, which they said was “failing” patients. Investigations by this paper have found:
- Eight foundation hospitals are failing so badly that they have breached the terms of their licence to operate and are being placed under close supervision by the NHS watchdog, Monitor.
- The leading children’s hospital Alder Hey has been issued with a “warning notice” for breaching basic infection standards and putting vulnerable young patients at risk of killer infections – just two weeks after the trust declared itself “the best in the country”.
- Three ambulance services have also been issued with the same notices after failing to properly decontaminate equipment, or provide clean services for the most high-risk patients.
- Bosses of foundation trusts with high death rates have awarded themselves bumper pay rises. Chief executives at the eight foundation trusts with the highest death rates in 2007-08 had average salary rises of 15 per cent when their institutions took on the coveted status.
Last week Basildon was condemned by inspectors who found “blood-spattered” walls and filthy conditions.
The hospital has the worst patient death rate in the country, according to the health care information analysts Dr Foster.
Hospitals were also rated for overall patient care. Again, Basildon came off worst; followed by Scarborough and North East Yorkshire and Lewisham Hospital trust, in South London, respectively.
Katherine Murphy, from the Patients Association, said the foundation hospital system had reached crisis point. “Foundation hospitals claim to be in a premier league, but yet more evidence is coming out that many of them are failing their patients,’’ she said.
There are also question marks over the way ratings given to hospitals rely on their own assessment of their performance. At Basildon Hospital, managers gave themselves 13 out of a 14 possible marks for safety and cleanliness. The ratings were published just weeks before the damning inspection report was drawn up.
At Alder Hey, hospital managers awarded themselves the maximum score for cleanliness. When its self-assessments were added up, it was awarded an overall rating of “excellent” for its services.
On October 15, the hospital sent out a press release, titled “best in class, best in country”, describing how it had achieved the most successful result of any children’s hospital.
Twelve days later, when inspectors from regulators the Care Quality Commission (CQC) arrived unannounced, they found filthy conditions, with brown running water, mouldy bathrooms and soiled furniture and commodes. Toys were stored on top of equipment to clean bedpans.
The inspectors also found that trays used to carry sterile equipment were dirty. Domestic staff said the parts of the wards they could not reach were cleaned just once a year, by outside contractors. The hospital was told it was failing to protect patients from infections, and ordered to make urgent changes. Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary said: “We have to move away from the flawed system of self-assessment to one where inspectors really understand what is going on in our hospitals.
”We need more spot inspections which focus on the results of treatment, the experiences of patients and their feedback.”
Dr Steve Ryan, medical director at Alder Hey, said the trust apologised for the failings found by CQC during its inspection, but insisted that the faults found on the wards visited last month were not typical of the hospital. Ambulance services in the North East, East of England, and East Midlands have all been issued with warnings by the CQC about their basic hygiene.
The regulator for foundation trusts, Monitor, is scrutinising eight trusts which are failing to meet basic standards.
The Sunday Telegraph’s campaign, Heal our Hospitals, has received 1,200 signatures backing its calls for an independent inquiry into the way hospitals are regulated and run.
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Limitations on Swine Flu Shot for Elderly
November 30, 2009
ReviewJournal.com
By Paul Harasim
George Anter knows he has a lot to be thankful for during the holidays.
The heart he received during a transplant procedure 12 years ago, for which he gives thanks every day, continues to do its job.
He has won bouts with prostate and skin cancer, and his non-Hodgkins lymphoma remains under control with chemotherapy.
His four children and four grandchildren are thriving in their careers and in school.
And in December, Anter and his wife, Madeline, will celebrate their 53rd wedding anniversary.
But as grateful as he is, the 74-year-old Anter admits one thing will be bugging him during the holidays.
“The truth is,” the retired paper sales executive said last week, “when I think about not being able to get a swine flu shot, I get real pissed off.”
Two months after H1N1 flu vaccine was first distributed to public health districts around the country, people 65 and older with serious medical conditions still can’t get vaccinated.
Anter’s doctors at Stanford University Hospital, where he received his transplant, tell him he has a compromised immune system and “the H1N1 flu could do me in.”
He takes at least nine prescription medications daily to stay alive.
“But when I try to get a shot, I’m told I’m too old ” he said as he sat in the study of his Peccole Ranch home.
“I feel that they see me and other older people as garbage and are just waiting for the trucks to come pick us up,” Anter said.
“I served my country. I enlisted during the Korean War. You don’t treat people this way just because they’re older.”
The priority groups for the vaccine, which public health officials say is still in short supply, remain pregnant women; people who live with or care for children younger than 6 months; health care and emergency first responders; persons between 6 months and 24 years of age; and adults up to 64 with chronic health conditions.
The evidence has shown that, as a group, seniors need the vaccine less than younger age groups, according to Dr. Anthony Fiore with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And when there is a vaccine shortage, he said, you must prioritize.
Public health authorities admit they have been inundated with calls from the elderly who want to know when they can receive vaccinations.
Many seniors have called the Review-Journal to complain. Some refrain from giving their names because they fear their complaints could cause their Social Security benefits to be cut off.
No one knows when the system will change.
“We are working collaboratively with the Nevada State Health Division and other local health authorities in the state to determine if the state is in the position to expand vaccine availability,” Stephanie Bethel, a health district spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
Mary Ann Sokol, a 79-year-old cancer and heart attack survivor profiled by the Review-Journal in August after the priority groups were announced, said last week she and her husband no longer go out to dinner for fear her compromised immune system won’t be able to fight off the H1N1 virus.
“I have to admit I’m sometimes really scared,” she said. “When I feel that way, I always wear a mask when I go out.”
When public health officials realized last August that the vaccine would be in short supply this fall, they studied the 44,000 cases of the virus that had been reported to the CDC since the outbreak began in April.
Seniors were affected the least, Fiore said. It appeared that older people have a pre-existing immunity to the H1N1 virus.
CDC researchers suggested that the immunity older adults appear to enjoy was built up either because they were infected with or vaccinated against an older seasonal flu strain that closely resembled H1N1.
Americans up to 24 years of age are about 20 times more likely to contract the virus than people older than 65.
People ranging in age from 25 to 49 are five times more likely to be hit by the virus than seniors.
And men and women in the 50 to 64 age bracket have a three times greater chance of catching the virus than those older than 65.
Anter is familiar with the statistics. But he says many seniors have underlying medical conditions that render their immune systems defenseless.
“You’ve got to make exceptions for people with very serious health conditions,” he said.
Exceptions aren’t favored by public health officials, however, including those with the health district who have repeatedly said that this would slow down the process of trying to contain the outbreak.
And private physicians who have enrolled in the H1N1 vaccine provider program aren’t supposed to bypass public health regulations. They sign documents saying they will abide by the program’s designated priorities if given vaccine to distribute.
The health district had stockpiled thousands of doses of vaccine while claiming there wasn’t enough vaccine to vaccinate those between the ages of 25 and 64 with chronic health conditions.
Then, earlier this month, state health officials forced the health district to start vaccinating that group.
The district still has nearly 50,000 doses of vaccine on hand, as of Wednesday.
“Why not give it to those who need it?” Anter said. “They’ve given clinic after clinic to those they said were in priority groups, and they still have it left over.”
Martha Framsted, a state health division spokeswoman, has said public health officials are continually reviewing the situation to see when vaccinations can be made available to more Nevadans.
“We want to give it to everybody,” she said.
But Anter doesn’t see any sense of urgency.
“When you get as old as I am, they see you as a big zero,” he said. “They don’t really care if we die.”
Click here for the full report.
China Concerned H1N1 Might Combine with H5N1 Bird Flu
November 30, 2009
Reuters
By Stefanie McIntyre
China must be alert to any mutation or changes in the behavior of the H1N1 swine flu virus because the far deadlier H5N1 bird flu virus is endemic in the country, a leading Chinese disease expert said.
Zhong Nanshan, director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases in China’s southern Guangdong province, said the presence of both viruses in China meant they could mix and become a monstrous hybrid — a bug packed with strong killing power that can transmit efficiently among people.
“China, as you know, is different from other countries. Inside China, H5N1 has been existing for some time, so if there is really a reassortment between H1N1 and H5N1, it will be a disaster,” Zhong said in an interview with Reuters Television.
“This is something we need to monitor, the change, the mutation of the virus. This is why reporting of the death rate must be really transparent.”
The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that H5N1 had erupted in poultry in Egypt, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, posing once again a threat to humans.
“First, it places those in direct contact with birds — usually rural folk and farm workers — at risk of catching the often-fatal disease. Second, the virus could undergo a process of “reassortment” with another influenza virus and produce a completely new strain,” it said.
“The most obvious risk is of H5N1 combining with the pandemic … (H1N1) virus, producing a flu virus that is as deadly as the former and as contagious as the latter.”
Zhong told the Chinese media last week that China may have had more H1N1 flu deaths than it has reported, with some local governments possibly concealing suspect cases.
The doctor is known for his candor and work in fighting Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003, when nationwide panic and international alarm erupted after it emerged that officials hid or underplayed the spreading epidemic.
Cover-ups by local governments in 2003 during the SARS epidemic led to the sackings of several officials. More than 300 people died in that outbreak.
China, the world’s most populous country, has reported around 70,000 cases of H1N1 and 53 death from the virus.
While some regions simply lack the technology to test for H1N1, other areas have been treating deaths as cases of ordinary pneumonia without a question, Zhong said.
“Some local healthcare authorities are reluctant, unwilling to test patients with severe pneumonia because there’s some latent rule which says the more H1N1 deaths, the less effective the control and prevention work in your area,” Zhong said.
Zhong said China’s health minister Chen Zhu rang him up last week and agreed with his views. A notice then appeared on the ministry’s website threatening severe punishment for officials caught concealing deaths from H1N1 swine flu.
WHO reported more than 526,060 laboratory confirmed cases of H1N1 worldwide on November 15, with at least 6,770 deaths. However, it has stressed for months now that the figures were only the tip of the iceberg.
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A Cup of Brazilian Mint Tea Relieves Pain as Well as Aspirin
November 30, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
Researchers from Newcastle University have scientifically proven that Hyptis crenata, also known as Brazilian mint, is a powerful pain reliever that works just as well as Indometacin, a synthetic drug similar to aspirin. A traditional remedy for treating the flu, stomach problems, high fevers, and headaches, Brazilian mint was found to be extremely powerful and safe.
The team, led by Graciela Rocha, set out to perform the study using the traditional preparation of the herb. Surveys were conducted in Brazil to figure out exactly how this was done and how much should be consumed in order to achieve beneficial results. The preparation the team ended up using consisted of the herb’s dried leaves being steeped in boiling water for 30 minutes. Once cool, the tea was consumed in the same way as any other brewed tea would be. The results indicated efficacy in a wide range of ailments.
Graciela emphasized the fact that more than 50,000 plants worldwide are used for some type of medicinal purpose and that researchers should focus on identifying these types of plants and testing their efficacy. Since more than half of all prescription drugs are derived from plant compounds, it is a worthy effort to study plant medicines in their natural, safe forms.
Findings were put forward at the 2nd International Symposium on Medicinal and Nutraceutical Plants in New Delhi, India and are set to be published in the society’s journal Acta Horticulturae. Clinical trials are the next step for the group who hopes to discover not only the various effective dose levels for various pains and illnesses but also the specific characteristics of the herb that make it so advantageous.
Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Living in South America, I find myself surrounded by abundant natural medicine. I can’t walk fifty feet out my front door without discovering medicinal plants.
South America is an undiscovered medicine chest that continues to remain largely ignored by western nations. Ecuador, for example, offers seemingly countless medicinal plants that have yet to be properly studied and understood. Brazil, meanwhile, is a huge, incredibly biodiverse nation with a rich collection of undiscovered medicinal plants that very quite literally save the western world from chronic disease.
In Ecuador, I recently took a weekend trip and harvested fresh Sangre de Drago from the trees found in the local rainforests. We also harvested tres filos herb from the local hillsides, and we even found some amazing guayusa herb leaves that we harvested to make some invigorating tea. In these three herbs alone, thousands of medicinal compounds exist. Most are entirely unknown by western science, but they were well understood in function by the South American Indians who inhabited regions throughout South American which now include Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and several others.
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MRSA Superbug has 50% Mortality Rate in Hospital Patients
November 30, 2009
Natural News
By E. Huff
A recent Henry Ford Hospital study revealed that a new strain of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the deadly bacterial “superbug” that becomes resistant to many antibiotics, is five times more deadly than other previously-seen strains. Fifty percent of patients who become infected with the new virulent strain die within 30 days; other MRSA strains kill only about 11 percent.
Called USA600, the new strain possesses uniquely noxious characteristics that researchers are linking to the significantly higher mortality rate. Study findings were presented at the 47th annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in Philadelphia.
Typical MRSA strains are problematic because they are resistant to virtually every available antibiotic drug. Most MRSA infections are allegedly treatable with vancomycin, a powerful intravenous drug, but the new USA600 strain has proven itself to be nearly impervious to the drug.
Deadly MRSA strains typically take hold on a person through skin and blood infections, as well as through surgical wounds. While predominantly contracted in health care facilities like hospitals and clinics, the disease is now starting to make the rounds in otherwise healthy people in the outside world.
Experts are associating the increased resistance of deadly MRSA strains to the over-prescription by doctors of antibiotics for all sorts of conditions that do not need them. According to Joel Fuhman, an M.D. from New Jersey, studies show that 90 percent of antibiotics are prescribed for viral diseases, against which they have no effect.
When antibiotics are prescribed needlessly for conditions like a child’s ear infection, which is viral rather than bacterial, they do more harm than good by killing off the child’s beneficial bacteria. As a result, the child’s immune system is weakened making them more susceptible to developing other illnesses and being prescribed more antibiotics.
Europe’s Centre for Disease Control warns that if excessive antibiotic use is not curbed, antibiotics will become all but useless and modern medical procedures like organ transplants and neonatal care for babies will no longer be possible.
Modern medicine must also reawaken to the incredible power of colloidal silver in stopping harmful bacteria, viruses, and fungal infections. Studies show that there is virtually no bacterial strain resistant to silver’s powerful antibacterial effects. When developed properly for therapeutic use, colloidal silver packs a punch unlike any other antibiotic.
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The Water Doctor, Fred Van Liew
Click the picture or link below to hear Kevin’s interview with Fred Van Liew and click here to purchase Adrenal Exhaustion & Chronic Fatigue: How To Stop The Nightmare!
Fred Van Liew on The Kevin Trudeau Show 11/25/09
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 11-25-09
Today, Kevin gives you the latest headline news you won’t hear in the main stream media!
Big Pharma Scandal
Vaccines Proven Useless
Female Viagra Joke
Plus, the water doctor, Fred Van Liew, gives you the inside details of what is really lurking in your water and what you can do to bring the life back into your water! Click here to purchase his life changing book, Adrenal Exhaustion & Chronic Fatigue: How To Stop The Nightmare!
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Viagra for Women?
November 25, 2009
Breitbart
A drug that failed to fight the blues could be the female answer to the little blue pill Viagra, the lead North American investigator analysing tests of the drug said Tuesday.
Women who took the drug flibanserin when it was being tested as an anti-depressant said it didn’t help them beat the glums, but did give them “an increase in libido that they liked,” John Thorp, one of the investigators analyzing data from three clinical trials of the drug, told AFP.
Lack of desire is the most common sexual problem in women aged 30 to 60, just as erectile dysfunction, for which Viagra is one of a choice of treatments, is the most common sexual disorder among men in the same age bracket, Thorp said.
“Men remain interested but can’t act or perform properly and women lose interest,” said Thorp.
“So where Viagra and other erectile dysfunction medications work in the blood supply, flibanserin works in the brain,” he said.
In the light of the women’s reactions to flibanserin, the German drug company that had first tested the drug as a treatment for depression, Boehringer Ingelheim, several years ago began exploring the possibilities of it being the active ingredient in the female answer to Viagra.
Clinical trials were held in Canada, Europe and the United States to test the drug’s efficacy in raising the level of sexual desire in women.
Nearly 2,000 pre-menopausal women were given flibanserin or a placebo for 24 weeks and asked to report back to researchers or make diary entries on six variables, including the number of satisfactory sexual encounters they had and their level of sexual desire.
The studies found that 100 milligrams a day of flibanserin resulted in “significant improvements” in the two variables.
Flibanserin is currently an investigational drug and is only available to women taking part in clinical trials.
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