HEALTH TOOL BOX

Pollution in China

2009-08-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

Lead scares highlight China's environmental dilemma

by Dan Martin Dan Martin – Wed Aug 26, 12:03 am ET

BEIJING (AFP) – A pair of lead poisoning scandals affecting at least 2,000 children in China are just the latest in a seemingly endless string of pollution scares exposing the dark side of the nation's economic boom.

China's growth rates have long been envied around the globe, but its three-decade industrial expansion also has turned it into one of the world's most toxic countries.

Countless cities are smothered in smog while hundreds of millions of citizens lack access to unpolluted drinking water.

Acid rain affects huge swathes of the country and there are regular revelations of public health scares due to factories spewing cancer-causing toxins and other pollutants into the air, water and the food chain.

Despite a growing environmental consciousness here, such scares remain rife due to lax enforcement and an overriding focus on industrial growth, activists said.

"The main issue is that local law enforcement remains very weak. They have limited resources to monitor industries, so (polluting) companies can just get away without punishment," said Ma Tianjie, a campaigner with Greenpeace China.

In the recent cases, at least 2,150 children living near two smelting plants in Hunan and Shaanxi provinces are suffering from suspected lead poisoning, according to official figures. The plants have been closed.

While such cases have grabbed headlines, the true extent of such scandals remains unknown due to a culture of suppressing potentially embarrassing information about pollution, Greenpeace's Ma said.

"It's highly possible there are many similar cases out there that just have not been revealed," he said.

Campaigners note hopeful signs, including a six-year-old regulation requiring environmental impact assessments and public participation before new industrial projects are approved.

Beginning last year, China also started requiring local governments to regularly disclose key environmental information to the public.

"That is good news. Affected people have the right to know what it going on," said Ma Jun, who runs the independent Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing.

But he acknowledged that fulfilling that right would entail a sea change in how China's secretive Communist Party-dominated governance system actually operates.

For example, a 2007 World Bank report said 750,000 Chinese die prematurely each year due to air and water pollution -- a figure edited out of final versions of the report, reportedly after China warned it could cause social unrest.

Meanwhile, environmental campaigners face continued harassment and even arrest.

In one high-profile case, prominent activist Wu Lihong, who fought for years against industrial pollution of a major lake in eastern China, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2007 on fraud charges widely seen as fabricated.

Just two years earlier, Wu had been hailed as an "environmental warrior" by the nation's legislature.

"Put in a historical perspective, China has come a long way in five years' time on environmental transparency, but it remains quite basic," said Ma Jun.

And reports still regularly emerge about projects hustled through by local governments eager for an economic spark -- whatever the environmental costs.

"Central government priorities may have shifted, but getting vested interests at the local level to go along is not an easy task," Ma Jun said.

In a symbol of the power of such vested interests, China in 2007 postponed plans to factor environmental damage into gross domestic product performance -- the so-called "Green GDP" push -- due to resistance in the provinces, state media said at the time.

Senator Kennedy's battle with cancer

2009-08-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

Kennedy's cancer puts focus on quality of life

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione, Ap Medical Writer – Wed Aug 26, 3:16 pm ET

He lived 15 months with an incurable brain tumor, a little longer than usual for a patient in his late 70s. Perhaps equally important is that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy lived those months well — able to work almost to the end, to sail the choppy New England waters he adored, to help elect a president he supported, and even to give him a dog.

Time is important to any cancer patient. Quality of life, not just how much life they can squeeze out, is increasingly the focus for people with a terminal illness, cancer specialists say. It also is one of the chief goals of treatments for brain tumors, since these therapies typically do not buy much time.

"The advances that we've made in prolonging survival aren't as big as we've liked them to be, but people have stayed at a good quality of life right up to the end," said Dr. Matthew Ewend, neurosurgery chief at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Even after treatments can no longer control tumor growth for patients, "we can usually keep their quality of life pretty good with medicines for brain swelling, and then the end is usually pretty graceful," Ewend said.

There is much to be admired in how Kennedy spent his final months, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

"This is a man who had a serious and fatal illness and he knew that. Despite his illness, he carried on as best he could," Lichtenfeld said.

He noted that celebrities "are public representatives of millions of people who deal with these issues on a daily basis." When one gets recommended treatments and is able to live life to its fullest, it gives hope to other patients, Lichtenfeld said.

Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant glioma, a cancerous brain tumor, after suffering a seizure at his home in May 2008. He had surgery two weeks later, followed by chemotherapy with the drug Temodar during and after radiation, his family has said.

Cancer specialists say he also likely received Avastin, a newer drug aimed at depriving the tumor of its blood supply. Avastin recently won federal approval for treating brain tumors that recur after standard treatment. It is made by Genentech, which recently was acquired by Swiss-based Roche.

Kennedy's doctors have declined to comment on specifics and did not respond to interview requests Wednesday.

Median survival for the type of tumor Kennedy is believed to have had is 12 to 15 months, but the range is wide, said Dr. Mark Gilbert, a brain tumor expert at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Gilbert is leading an international study of 1,200 patients testing intensive Temodar therapy to see if that can improve survival. Results are expected next year. Temodar is made by Schering-Plough Corp.

"Treatments are keeping the cancer under control for a longer time," Gilbert said. Without the tumor continuing to grow, patients "maintain their function and with that, their quality of life," he said.

Even though survival time remains grim, it has improved, said Dr. Steve Brem, neurosurgery chief at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla.

"Only a few years ago, it used to be about nine months," Brem said. Gliomas are so invasive — spreading tentacles into the brain in a way that all cannot be removed with surgery — that they usually cannot be cured, he explained.

Treatments besides Temodar that might improve the odds are in testing now: several experimental drugs, an experimental vaccine that prods the immune system to fight the cancer, and a radioactive "homing device" that helps a cancer drug reach tumors deep in the brain.

However, much more research is needed to make meaningful gains, said a statement from the International Brain Tumour Alliance, a British-based international support and advocacy group.

Each year 200,000 people worldwide develop a malignant brain tumor "and there has been only a minimal improvement in new therapies in the past 30 years," the statement says.

Cancer research is a cause Kennedy championed long before his illness, the cancer society's chief executive, John Seffrin, said in a statement.

Kennedy helped overhaul the 1971 National Cancer Act, "rein in the tobacco industry" with a bill giving the federal Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products, and backed expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program with an increase in the tobacco tax, the statement said.

For these and other achievements, he was given the Society's Medal of Honor and National Distinguished Advocacy Award.

Obesity connected to decline in brain tissues

2009-08-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

Obese People Have 'Severe Brain Degeneration'

livescience.com – Tue Aug 25, 10:35 am ET

A new study finds obese people have 8 percent less brain tissue than normal-weight individuals. Their brains look 16 years older than the brains of lean individuals, researchers said today.

Those classified as overweight have 4 percent less brain tissue and their brains appear to have aged prematurely by 8 years.

The results, based on brain scans of 94 people in their 70s, represent "severe brain degeneration," said Paul Thompson, senior author of the study and a UCLA professor of neurology.

"That's a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer's and other diseases that attack the brain," said Thompson. "But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer's, if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control."

The findings are detailed in the online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping.

Obesity packs many negative health effects, including increased risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and some cancers. It's also been shown to reduce sexual activity.

More than 300 million worldwide are now classified as obese, according to the World Health Organization. Another billion are overweight. The main cause, experts say: bad diet, including an increased reliance on highly processed foods.

Obese people had lost brain tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes, areas of the brain critical for planning and memory, and in the anterior cingulate gyrus (attention and executive functions), hippocampus (long-term memory) and basal ganglia (movement), the researchers said in a statement today. Overweight people showed brain loss in the basal ganglia, the corona radiata, white matter comprised of axons, and the parietal lobe (sensory lobe).

"The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than the brains of those who were lean, and in overweight people looked 8 years older," Thompson said.

Obesity is measured by body mass index (BMI), defined as the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters. A BMI over 25 is defined as overweight, and a BMI of over 30 as obese.

The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Center for Research Resources, and the American Heart Association.

H1N1 Global Death Toll

2009-08-26T18:37:00.000-07:00

Brazil tops global swine flu toll with 557 deaths: officials

By AFP - Wed Aug 26, 4:21 PM PDT

SAO PAULO (AFP) - Brazil now has 557 swine flu deaths, making it the country with the highest number of fatalities in the world from the disease, according to figures announced by the health ministry Wednesday.

The toll puts it ahead of the latest count from the United States, which as of August 20 had 522 swine flu deaths, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Brazil's health ministry said in a statement the government was freeing up one billion dollars to buy 73 million doses of a new vaccine being developed against swine flu, as well as Tamiflu stocks, hospital equipment and diagnostic gear.

It added that the infection rate appeared to be diminishing in the country, which is about to exit the southern hemisphere winter at the end of this month.

The ministry stressed that, as a ratio of its population of 190 million, Brazil's mortality rate from the virus ranked 7th in the world.

Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Australia and Paraguay all had higher rates on that basis, it said, referring to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

The United States, which has a population of 300 million, came 13th on the list.

The Americas is the worst-hit region in the world in terms of swine flu deaths, accounting for more than 90 percent of the global count given by the World Health Organization.

After Brazil and the United States, Argentina is the country to suffer the most, with at least 439 swine flu deaths.

H1N1 Update

2009-08-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

H1N1 flu spreads to remote corners of the world: WHO

By Reuters - Mon Jul 27, 10:27 AM PDT

GENEVA (Reuters) - There may be no escape from H1N1 pandemic flu, which according to the latest World Health Organization figures has spread to the most remote parts of the planet including popular island getaways.

In a snapshot published on Monday, the WHO said more than 20 countries and overseas territories had had their first lab-confirmed cases of the new virus, widely known as swine flu.

These include holiday destinations such as the Seychelles, Turks and Caicos, St. Kitts and Nevis, Netherlands Antilles, Belize and France's Reunion Island, as well as isolated spots such as Tonga and American Samoa in the Pacific and the Solomon Islands in the Indian Ocean.

H1N1 flu, which is a genetic mix of human, bird and swine viruses, has also found its way to Bhutan in the Himalayas and Andorra, an independent state tucked between Spain and France. Conflict-ridden Afghanistan and Sudan have also had their first confirmed infections in recent days.

The emergence of the never-before-seen virus in Mexico and the United States and its fast international spread caused the WHO to declare in June that a pandemic was under way. The U.N. agency has said it is impossible to stop it from circulating, and is monitoring it closely for signs of mutation or combination with other flu viruses.

While most patients have had mild flu-like symptoms, such as fever and vomiting, pregnant women and people with diabetes and other diseases have been vulnerable to more serious effects. An estimated 816 people have died from infection to date, according to the WHO's latest tally.

The total number of people infected with H1N1 flu is not known, and countries are no longer testing and reporting each individual case of a person falling ill. The WHO has said more emphasis should be placed on preventing infection and treating the most serious cases to avoid unnecessary death.

Drugmakers Roche, Gilead Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline have benefited from a worldwide rush to secure supplies of their antiviral drugs to fight the spreading flu. Vaccine makers including Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis NOVN.VX>, Baxter and Solvay are also working on H1N1 shots that could be given alongside seasonal flu jabs.

(Reporting by Laura MacInnis)