Five For One

A five-in-one vaccine that could reduce the number of jabs children receive is both safe and effective, federal health advisers said Thursday.

The endorsement makes it more likely the Food and Drug Administration will approve the Sanofi Pasteur vaccine, called Pentacel. The FDA is not required the follow the advice of its outside advisers but usually does.

The vaccine is meant to prevent diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio and bacterial infection caused by Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib. Hib disease can cause meningitis, pneumonia and arthritis.

Great idea, but what is the size of the needle?

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Why Reinvent the Wheel?

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 — A broad coalition of business and consumer groups, doctors, hospitals and drug companies laid out a major proposal on Thursday to provide health coverage to more than half of the nation’s 47 million uninsured by expanding federal benefit programs and offering new tax credits to individuals and families.

“This is a proposal not for mandates but for incentives,” said Dr. Reed V. Tuckson, senior vice president of UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest insurers. “It’s a careful balance of public and private solutions.”

I've been wondering why they haven't done something like this for years. It's a lot easier to build on what works than to start with nothing, especially when the government is concerned.

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And the Envelope Please...

The development of sanitation has been the greatest medical advance in the last 166 years, according to a vote of more than 11,000 people worldwide.

Sanitation received 15.8% of the votes, beating other advances including the discovery of antibiotics and the development of vaccines.

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Your Brain In Neutral

Daydreaming seems to be the default setting of the human mind and certain brain regions are devoted to it, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.

When people are given a specific task to do, they focus on that task but then other brain regions get busy during down time, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"There is this network of regions that always seems to be active when you don't give people something to do," psychologist Malia Mason of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital said in a telephone interview.

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Ancient Surgeon

The archaeologists have discovered that the rest mummified of a doctor that create lived more ago than 4,000 years and that were along with buried the surgical tools of the metal. The mummy was discovered in Saqqara, 12 miles of the south of Cairo, whereas the archaeologists cleaned a next site, the agency of the news official of the Middle East of Egypt quoted Zahi Hawass, head of the supreme advice of antiques, like saying.

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Will California Lead the Nation?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking on just about every major interest group in California in his audacious effort to bring universal health care to the nation's biggest state: unions, small business, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, conservatives.

Whether the former Hollywood action hero can prevail and get it passed _ or get it passed in still-recognizable form _ is far from clear.

"I think it's very difficult in its present form," said Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist. "He's got universal Republican opposition to it and the stakeholders are all going to get hit with a tax _ doctors, hospitals and employers _ so they're clearly going to be opposed to that."

The Republican governor unveiled a $12 billion-a-year plan on Monday to extend health care coverage to most of California's 6.5 million uninsured and make it the second state, behind Massachusetts, to require everyone to carry insurance. Coverage for the poorest of the poor would be free; for many others, it would be heavily subsidized.

I'm having trouble getting past the 2% tax on doctors. We already take care of the uninsured, often with no compensation, and now we have to endure a special tax on top of it? Somehow, this really is way beyond unfair and into ridiculous...

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Artificial Skin 2.0

A patient's skin cells, genetically modified and grown in a test tube, could provide the next generation of artificial skin. As a first step in creating such replacement skin, scientists in Cincinnati have engineered bacteria-resistant skin cells in the lab and are now testing them in animals. Ultimately, they hope to produce a type of artificial skin that can sweat, tan, and fight off infection.

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No Fingerprints?

Imagine touching glass and not leaving a mark — virtually no trace of the complex lines and ridges that make up each individual fingerprint. Most of us take these identifying traits for granted. After all, everyone has fingerprints, right?

Wrong.

Learn something new every day...

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Medical Image of the Week

You're looking at an image of an aortocaval fistula. Thankfully, this doesn't happen too often! The aortic aneurysm measured 8.3 cm in the maximal dimension, and was infrarenal.
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Learning Obstetrics From a Robot

Kyunghee University Medical Center in Seoul is the first institution in South Korea to use Noelle, a life-size robot, and her "newborn" to give obstetric students experience.

"With this simulator training tool, we can conduct not only normal deliveries, but also complicated deliveries such as breech births, Caesarean deliveries," Professor Jung Eui told Reuters Television. "Students can practice in a very realistic situation with this mannequin."

Students regularly crowd around Noelle as she gives "birth." They take turns at monitoring her vital signs and at pulling the "baby" out of her body.

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Cancel That Subscription!

Magazine headlines entice teenage girls with promises: "Get the body you want" and "Hit your dream weight now!" But a new study suggests reading articles about diet and weight loss could have unhealthy consequences later.

Teenage girls who frequently read magazine articles about dieting were more likely five years later to practice extreme weight-loss measures such as vomiting than girls who never read such articles, the University of Minnesota study found.

It didn't seem to matter whether the girls were overweight when they started reading about weight loss, nor whether they considered their weight important. After taking those factors into account, researchers still found reading articles about dieting predicted later unhealthy weight loss behavior.

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Laptop EKG

All the same, there ain't much wrong with this HATO NB electrocardiogram doohicky that MSI slapped onto its latest laptop. The included electrodes can be hooked up to your aesthetically pleasing lady friend, allowing the laptop to record her vitals or even allowing a doctor to remotely examine the patient. You can also print out information the gadget gathers, or place the data on an SD card for doctor perusal.

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Electronic Exercise

Children who play video games requiring them to jump, dance and move around burn more calories than those slouched on the couch with a controller in hand, according to a new study by the Mayo Clinic.

So, why not make more video games that require kids to be active, asks the study published in the current issue of the medical journal Pediatrics?

"The point is that children - very focused on screen games - can be made healthier if activity is a required part of the game," said Lorraine Lanningham-Foster, obesity researcher and study leader.

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Doctors Use YouTube

From BBC News:

A GPs' surgery in mid Wales has launched a series of health education films on YouTube, better known as a website featuring home videos.

Advice about flu vaccination and cervical screening are two of the topics covered by Builth and Llanwrtyd Medical Practice in Powys.

Doctors said they wanted to help educate their 7,700 patients and a wider global audience.

Now if the patients would just watch a YouTube Video rather than appearing in the ED at 2 AM, maybe we'd really have something here!

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