Bryceland

Coagulent

2006-11-19T06:59:00.000-08:00

BALTIMORE (AP) — A blood-coagulating drug designed to treat rare forms of hemophilia is being used on critically wounded U.S. troops in Iraq despite evidence it can cause clots that lead to strokes, heart attacks and death in other patients, The (Baltimore) Sun reported for Sunday's editions.
Recombinant Activated Factor VII, which is made by Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, is approved in the United States for treating forms of hemophilia that affect fewer than 3,000 Americans. It costs $6,000 a dose.
The Food and Drug Administration said in a warning last December that giving Factor VII to patients who don't have the blood disorder could cause strokes and heart attacks. Its researchers published a study in January blaming 43 deaths on clots that developed after injections of Factor VII.
However, the Army medical command considers it a medical breakthrough that gives front-line physicians a way to control deadly bleeding. Physicians in Iraq have injected it into more than 1,000 patients, reported The Sun, which makes its first Sunday edition available Saturday afternoon.
"When it works, it's amazing," said Col. John B. Holcomb, an Army trauma surgeon and commander of the Army's Institute of Surgical Research. "It's one of the most useful new tools we have."
Critics strongly disagree.
"It's a completely irresponsible and inappropriate use of a very, very dangerous drug," said Dr. Jawed Fareed, director of the hemostasis and thrombosis research program at Loyola University in Chicago and a specialist in blood-clotting and blood-thinning medications.
Military doctors said patients requiring transfusions of 10 or more units of blood have a 25 percent to 50 percent chance of dying from their injuries, and there is enough evidence of the drug's effectiveness to continue promoting its use.
"I've seen it with my own eyes," said Air Force Lt. Col. Jeffrey Bailey, a trauma surgeon deployed this summer as senior physician at the American military hospital in Balad, Iraq. "Patients who are hemorrhaging to death, they get the drug and it stops. Factor VII saves their lives."
However, doctors at military hospitals in Germany and the United States have reported unusual and sometimes fatal blood clots in soldiers evacuated from Iraq, including unexplained strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms, or blood clots in the lungs. And some have begun to suspect Factor VII, The Sun reported.
Contacted Saturday by The Associated Press, an Army spokeswoman, Mary Ann Hodges, declined to comment immediately on the report because she had not seen it.
Doctors say determining the precise cause of blood clots is rarely possible, making it difficult to establish definitively whether Factor VII is responsible for complications. And military doctors caution against drawing any conclusions from individual cases.
Officials at Novo Nordisk said complications don't mean the drug is too dangerous to use.
"It's really not a question of an absolute safety level, but rather a ratio of benefit to risk that has to be established," said Dr. Michael Shalmi, vice president of biopharmaceuticals for Novo Nordisk.
"We're making decisions, in the middle of a war, with the best information we have available to us," said Holcomb at the Army's Institute of Surgical Research.

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fraud at the EPA

2006-10-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

Kate RaifordPublished: Tuesday October 10, 2006
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Increasing fraud and other misconduct at Environmental Protection Agency water quality analysis labs has put all of us at risk for contaminants and disease outbreaks, RAW STORY has learned. However, since the scope and risk cannot be measured, EPA is downplaying the findings.
A Sept. 21 report issued by the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) found hundreds of weaknesses—missing data, no log books, falsified measurements—not noted by EPA. The office had found many of the same problems in 1999, and they were identified again by EPA in 2002. EPA did nothing, the report said.
Drinking water and wastewater fraud investigations comprise more than half of all OIG investigations.
“Fraud in even just one lab can have a significant impact on several thousands, millions of people,” said a spokesman for the EPA OIG. “We think this is an area vulnerable and susceptible to fraud.”
In a response to the report, EPA said in a statement that “[g]iven that the report includes recommendations that would require significant investments on the part of EPA and states, it is also critical to demonstrate more specific evidence of the problem.”
Speaking to RAW STORY, an analytical chemist and former lab inspector described some of the types of fraud and questionable lab practices he’s observed.
For example, states routinely send out test samples that must be analyzed by all labs. The test samples are all the same, and labs will call each other to check answers. “What then followed were phone calls between the labs trying to find out what the results were that other people had gotten, like high school kids with a take home test,” the chemist said in an e-mail.
“Now this alone isn’t out-and-out fraud, because the labs still presumably analyze the samples,” he wrote, “but if someone is expecting the answer to be seven, they’re going to keep testing the sample trying to get seven to turn in for certification, even if seven isn’t really the right answer.”
Two other types of fraud are called “time travel” and “mountain ranging,” and both involve manipulating equipment to make it look like the experimental protocol was followed or the correct result was produced. EPA OIG found evidence of both, according to its report, along with “suspicious condition[s] or practice[s],” such as altered signatures on reports, no maintenance records on instruments, and numerous quality control failures.
The scope of the problem is hard to measure. Lab inspectors in some regions do not look for fraud. EPA OIG has not done national or statewide checks on lab misconduct to measure the extent of fraud or the likelihood of danger to people, the report said.
In Arizona, where state inspectors use a more advanced analysis than EPA requires, inspectors have found more cases of fraud than any other state. About one in seven labs there had fraudulent or severely inappropriate lab procedures.
One consequence of fraud might be outbreaks of waterborne diseases. No cases have been tied to fraud, but this is because outbreaks are never traced all the way back to lab procedures and notes, the report said. However, his is the reason given by EPA in the report for its reluctance to follow all of OIG’s 10-point recommendation plan—that because fraud has never been tied to any cases of disease, it doesn’t justify all the protective measures.
EPA Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water declined to comment and cited the report for its statement. “[W]e are concerned that the report does not adequately distinguish between possibilities and likelihoods and, in not doing so, may present an unnecessarily alarming picture to the American public,” Benjamin H. Grumbles said in the report. He is the assistant administrator to the Office of Water.
So how prevalent is fraud? The lab inspector RAW STORY spoke with said fraud is seldom looked for because it is perceived as rare.
“Of course that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy—if you don’t look, you never find,” he said. “I think some of the sense of frustration that comes out in the [O]IG report regarding EPA’s relative inaction compared to what the [O]IG recommends has basis here. It’s a cultural mindset that makes it not a priority.”
“The fact that it may also be expensive and difficult to root out doesn’t encourage EPA management to follow up on it either, given the many issues EPA has to address, why take on a hard problem that’s costly to address and whose scope, as the [O]IG noted, isn’t fully known.”
But fraud is preventable and detectable. A good lab inspector will interview lab employees while they are working, look at data, inspect instruments and observe how the lab is operating, said Wisconsin State Certification Officer and audit chemist Alfredo Sotomayor. He served on the EPA OIG’s expert panel to review the drinking water analysis process.
Sotomayor added that inappropriate lab procedures are often the product of rushed work, pressure to cut costs, lack of oversight and inefficiently trained employees, saying, “The amount of money for analysis is decreasing. [There’s an] increasing pressure to cut costs.”
EPA has until Dec. 21 to respond to the report with a plan of action.

Doctors

2006-10-10T05:50:00.000-07:00

Four top doctors arrested over illegal human experimentation
By Ran Reznik, Haaretz Correspondent
Four senior doctors at Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot and Hartzfeld Geriatric Hospital in Gedera suspected of illegally experimenting on humans were arrested Monday.The national fraud squad has opened an investigation into the affair. The four are suspected of abuse, aggravated assault, causing death through negligence, fraud, forgery, breach of statutory duty, and disruption of legal proceedings.The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court on Monday extended by three days the remands of Kaplan-Hartzfeld deputy director Dr. Shmuel Levi and Dr. Nadia Kagensky. The third suspect, Dr. Alona Smirnov, was released to house arrest for five days, and the fourth suspect was released following an investigation.

Police searched the houses of all four suspects and confiscated incriminating documents.Many of the details of the affair were revealed in a series of Haaretz articles on the subject, as well as Channel 2 TV's investigative documentary series "Fact."In May 2005, the State Comptroller's Office slammed the hospitals over the illegal experimentation in a report. According to a report issued by the investigations department of the Health Ministry and exposed by Haaretz, the hospitals in Gedera and Rehovot conducted illegal and unethical testing on thousands of elderly patients for years. During one of the incidents described, twelve patients died either during the experiments or shortly after they took place, but these incidents were not reported to the Health Ministry or investigated, as is required by law. The Health Ministry's director general filed a complaint with police following an internal inquiry into the affair and the fraud squad confiscated from the hospitals many documents pertaining to the experimentation. The ministry's investigation revealed that some of the patients were included in the experiments without providing their consent, while some of them suffered from severe mental damage, which prevented them from being legally capable of providing consent. According to the report, some of the tests did not even yield any medically or scientifically beneficial results. Furthermore, some of the experiments were conducted despite top doctors' warnings that they were illegal or unethical. The report voices harsh criticism of the Helsinki committee at the hospitals, responsible for approving the experiments and failing to protect the public's best interests. The ministry's report further condemns the hospital's management for failing to address the complaints and information handed to it over the past few years, describing the flawed medical procedures. According to the report, some doctors received promotions, both in their professional and academic careers, on the basis of the illegal tests. In some cases, the tests were used as the basis for research studies published in local and international medical journals. At least four doctors at the hospitals were named as experts in Geriatrics based on the illegal tests they allegedly conducted along with their colleagues.

obesity

2006-09-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

By ROHAN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer 11 minutes ago
SYDNEY, Australia - An obesity pandemic threatens to overwhelm health systems around the globe with illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, experts at an international conference warned Sunday.

"This insidious, creeping pandemic of obesity is now engulfing the entire world," Paul Zimmet, chairman of the meeting of more than 2,500 experts and health officials, said in a speech opening the weeklong International Congress on Obesity. "It's as big a threat as global warming and bird flu."
The
World Health Organization' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> World Health Organization says more than 1 billion adults are overweight and 300 million of them are obese, putting them at much higher risk of diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, stroke and some forms of cancer.
Zimmet, a diabetes expert at Australia's Monash University, said there are now more overweight people in the world than the undernourished, who number about 600 million.
People in wealthy countries lead in overeating and not doing enough physical activity, but those in the poorer nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America are quickly learning bad habits, experts said.
Thailand's Public Health Ministry, for instance, announced Sunday that nearly one in three Thais over age 35 is at risk of obesity-related diseases.
"We are not dealing with a scientific or medical problem. We're dealing with an enormous economic problem that, it is already accepted, is going to overwhelm every medical system in the world," said Dr. Philip James, the British chairman of the International Obesity Task Force.
The task force is a section of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, a professional organization of scientists and health workers in some 50 countries that deal with the issue.
James said the cost of treating obesity-related health problems was immeasurable on a global scale, but the group estimated it at billions of dollars a year in countries such as Australia, Britain and the United States.
Among the most worrying problems are skyrocketing rates of obesity among children, which make them much more prone to chronic diseases as they grow older and could shave years off their lives, experts said.
The children in this generation may be the first in history to die before their parents because of health problems related to weight, Kate Steinbeck, an expert in children's health at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, said in a statement.
Experts at the conference said governments should impose bans on junk food advertising aimed directly at children, although they acknowledged such restrictions were unlikely to come about soon because the food industry would lobby hard against them.
"There is going to be a political bun fight over this for some time, but of course we shouldn't advertise junk food to children that makes them fat," said Dr. Boyd Swinburn, a member of the International Obesity Task Force.
Dr. Claude Bouchard, president of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, an umbrella group for medical organizations dealing with weight-related and children's health issues, said the group supported advertising bans as official policy.
But the policy position is unlikely to have any immediate effect on influencing governments to introduce such bans, said Bouchard, head of the Pennington Research Center at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge.

PETA Stuff

2006-09-02T21:43:00.000-07:00

St. Louis Post-Dispatch6/21/2003 Animal rights spy infiltrates Missouri labBy Todd C. Frankel Post-DispatchHATTON, Mo. — They never suspected she was a spy. She was just another research associate at theSinclair Research Center animal laboratory in thistiny town outside Columbia, working with the hundredsof dogs, cats, sheep and pigs used in experiments fordifferent companies. She was in her late 20s and certainly friendly, herformer co-workers recalled. She had straight brownhair with red highlights. She often took lunch at herdesk, eating Ramen noodles or salad. She liked to talkabout her two dogs. She once mentioned her father wasa dentist, and she had the good teeth to prove it. But like the tiny video camera she hid on her body,there was more to her than she let on. She was workingundercover for the animal activist group People forthe Ethical Treatment of Animals. Her mission:document any mistreatment of animals. For nine months, her deception — a possible violationof state law — continued. Then one day in February,she abruptly quit her job and disappeared. A month later, her work surfaced as the backbone forPETA's launch of a negative publicity campaign againstSinclair and several of its clients, including petfood giant Iams, St. Louis-based Nestle Purina Petcareand St. Louis biotech firm Isto Technologies. PETA hassplashed allegations on its Web site, called newsconferences and complained to federal regulators toend what it calls a "hidden world of cruelty," whereit claims terrified animals are confined to smallcages for dubious research. But figuring out what to believe is not so simple. Thepast several months has seen the renewal of along-standing battle between two sworn enemies: PETAand companies that use animals for research. As theFoundation for Biomedical Research's Frankie Trull,who has watched the fight for years, said, "With PETA,there is no middle ground." The campaign has made an impact. Sinclair, whichdenies there was systemic animal abuse while admittingthere were problems, has already lost clients. Fortypercent of its staff has been laid off. But GuyBouchard, who owns and runs the center, said what hashurt the most is "the highest level of betrayal" byhis former employee. "No one survives when someone comes into your house todestroy you," Bouchard said. "I've done well all mylife helping people and animals. Now this." Birth of a PETA spy PETA's undercover investigators rarely talk abouttheir exploits. The woman who infiltrated Sinclairagreed to share her experiences but did not discloseher name. Sinclair officials also declined to nameher. Her identity and her role have been independentlyverified by the Post-Dispatch. Her journey into radical activism was gradual, shesaid. It began when she was a teenager growing up nearthe East Coast. She started using only so-calledcruelty free beauty products, those which haven't beentested on animals. In college, she became avegetarian. A few years later, in 2002, she wasworking with primates at an animal sanctuary when shedecided to take a job with PETA. "I'm just a normal person who loves animals who feltthey weren't doing enough," she said during a recentphone interview. She quickly found her niche. She was uncomfortabletaking the normal route of helping with PETA's vocalprotests. She'd been there only two months but wantedto go undercover. Mary Beth Sweetland said she tried to talk her out ofit. Sweetland is PETA's director of research andinvestigations. She is the handler for the group'sundercover agents and knows how tough and lonely theassignments can be. She trains the spies on how to use the recordingequipment, how to conceal it, how to do their job andhopefully not break the law. She teaches them to bepatient and thorough. She asks the more experiencedinvestigators to give advice to the new charges. Shestays in almost daily contact with her team, what shecalls "my little army of the kind." Sweetland declined to give the exact number ofundercover agents employed by PETA. But her departmenthad a nearly $3 million annual budget last year,according to the nonprofit group's filings with theIRS. PETA is best known for its shocking antics andbillboards. Last November, members jumped on stage atthe Victoria's Secret fashion show in New York City toprotest the wearing of fur. The group is currentlygoing after Kentucky Fried Chicken with "KFC Cruelty"billboards in several cities. And PETA attracted lotsof attention — and outrage — with ads based on thepopular "Got Milk?" campaign suggesting, withoutevidence, that former New York Mayor Rudolph Giulianigot prostate cancer by drinking milk. The group, based in Norfolk, Va., thirsts forattention. By that measure, it is a success. It nowhas 750,000 supporters who donated nearly $17 millionto its operations last year. Celebrities have joinedits cause. This is a group with a self-describedradical agenda, summed up by its mission statement:"Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on oruse for entertainment." Despite the attention paid to its inventive marketing,the real change sought by PETA comes from itsundercover work. "We are the heart and soul of thisorganization," Sweetland said. In just the past three years, the missions have led tothe prosecution of two men who were filmed beatinghogs on a hog farm and a federal inquiry intomistreatment of laboratory mice and rats at theUniversity of North Carolina. PETA is achieving broader changes, too. Last year, itconvinced the Safeway supermarket chain to force itsmeat suppliers to adopt more humane treatment ofanimals raised for slaughter. Recently, McDonald'sbowed to PETA pressure and agreed not to buy chickenfrom farmers who "de-beak" birds or keep them in cagessmaller than 72 square inches. Now, they're targeting the use of laboratory animals. Walking in the door Fresh off training, the young spy on PETA's payrollsaid she headed out to meet with a veteran PETAinvestigator in Kansas City. They spent a week holedup in a hotel there, where the veteran sharedpointers. One day they went to the circus and werepredictably upset. "Oh, the things people make animals do," the spyrecalled. "It's horrific." She then drove to Springfield and began job-hunting inearnest. She looked online, in newspapers and in thephone book. No luck. She punched up a governmentposting of registered research facilities, picked aname at random and called the number. It was Sinclair Research Center. They asked her to send her résumé. Everything on itwas true, even her name, she said. Two days later, shewas called for an interview. They liked her but wantedsomeone who had experience with computer spreadsheets.She ran out and bought books on how to use thesoftware. As with all her other expenses, PETA pickedup the tab. She went back two weeks later and showedoff her new skills. Bouchard, who runs the center, was impressed. "It'sthe type of person you look for," he said. She started her new job on May 6, 2002. Sinclair's history Sinclair Research Center is one of 35 animal researchlabs in Missouri, including seven in St. Louis, and 41in Illinois that are certified by the U.S. Departmentof Agriculture. Sinclair is a collection of white metal-framebuildings with green trim on 200 acres surrounded byfarmland in Callaway County. The construction may besimple, but the facility uses state-of-the-art energyrecovery and ventilation systems. Many of the buildings are shaped like double-longtrailers and contain two animal rooms separated by aprocedure area. The animal rooms feature metal cagesstacked two-high with a wide aisle down the middle.One room might be full of black Yucatan pigs for ahuman cardiovascular drug trial. Another might hold adozen tri-colored beagles eating a new pet foodformula. Bouchard's office is at the end of a second-floorhallway inside the center's only two-story building.The sound of barking dogs filters up from an animalroom below. The air is stuffy with the smell ofanimals. "The people we have are all animal lovers," Bouchardsaid during a recent visit. "You don't get intoresearch to get rich. You get into research becauseyou love animals." Bouchard took over the Sinclair operation from theUniversity of Missouri at Columbia in 1994. For almost30 years, the school ran the facility at a differentlocation in Columbia, where it had done groundbreakingwork in the use of animals to track human diseases. Bouchard was the attending veterinarian at Sinclairwhen the school considered closing it. Instead, hetook the center private. The new Sinclair Research Center started out with oneclient. By the time the spy walked in the front door,the center had many. And the transfer of operationsfrom the Columbia site to Callaway County was nearlycomplete. Bouchard, 40, is a big man with a boyish mop of lightbrown hair. He speaks with a thick French accent, alegacy of growing up on a farm in Rougemont, Canada,outside Montreal. His father was a police officer butalso kept livestock. Much of the work fell to his twosons. Before he was 4, Bouchard was helping his olderbrother feed 5,000 turkeys a day. He also had a petpig. Bouchard earned his doctorate of veterinary medicinein Montreal, before coming in 1990 to the Universityof Missouri for graduate studies in animalreproduction. A contract lab Sinclair is a contract animal laboratory. Just asother sectors have increasingly turned to outsourcing,companies that need to conduct animal tests sometimesuse outside labs. A common saying among workers at Sinclair is that "wemay not have the right to test on animals, but we dohave the need." Almost all research being done on breakthrough drugsto treat diseases like cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer'sdisease requires the use of lab animals, said Trull,president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research,an industry group in Washington representing medicalinstitutions and companies that use lab animals. Thefederal government also mandates animal tests for manyproducts that are to be used on humans. More than 1.1 million animals were used in researchnationwide in 2002, according to the USDA. About 60percent were rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters, withthe rest made up of everything from dogs to primatesto pigs. The typical dog, cat or lamb at Sinclair is purchasedfrom a top-grade, regulated breeder, Bouchard said.Most animals spend their entire lives in the lab,going on and off different experiments, year afteryear. In animal research labs, the law of the land is thefederal Animal Welfare Act. It sets up minimumstandards of care and treatment. They includerequiring that dogs have the chance to exercise andthat all animals are given anesthesia orpain-relieving medication to minimize pain anddistress. USDA inspectors make surprise visits to the facilitieseach year. According to the USDA, Sinclair has norecord of wrongdoing. PETA sees its undercover actions as helping thegovernment do its job, Sweetland said. The USDA visitsfor a day, while the animal rights group stays formonths. "The USDA doesn't have the motivation wehave," she said. The tapes During the spy's tenure, there were several ongoingstudies: Iams contracted with Sinclair for tests usingmixed-breed dogs to evaluate the nutrition of dogfood. Nestle Purina Petcare was running cat litterstudies. Pet food studies also were conducted for MenuFoods, a Canadian private label pet food maker with aplant in Kansas. Sheep from Isto Technologies wereinvolved in studies of a new lab technique to growcartilage for humans. The spy shot hours of videotape inside Sinclair. Everynight, she'd go home to the apartment she rented inColumbia, watch the day's video and fill out adetailed report, which was e-mailed back to PETAheadquarters. The videotape — mostly of Iams, Menu Foods and Istostudy-related animals — was whittled down to snippetsof riveting scenes: * A beagle clawing maniacally at the metal bars of itscage; a dog circling wildly in its cage, anothercowering quietly in back; and a meowing cat pacingback and forth inside its cage. PETA claims these aresigns of distressed and bored animals. * A group of at least 10 beagles, slowly awakeningfrom anesthesia, lined up on the floor of an exam roomafter having their bone density measured by an X-raydensitometer. PETA claims such unsterile conditionsare unsafe. Bouchard said that the floor was clean and thatbeagles were placed close together to conserve bodyheat. * A dog, asleep from anesthesia, strapped on its backduring an X-ray. "When the dog is done, make surethey're breathing," an off-camera worker says, movinghis hand over the prone animal's stomach. "When yousee they've stopped breathing, give them (this)," theworker says, pantomiming a slap at the dog. * A pig in distress, convulsing on its side in a cage.A worker tells the spy that the pig almost died,perhaps from the position of a heart catheter, butthey managed to resuscitate the animal. * Employees discussing their work with sheep, sayingthat surgeries were rushed and that there wereproblems with the medical equipment. * Dogs walking gingerly on metal-slotted cage floors,the bars too narrow for their paws. In one scene, abeagle has its leg stuck in the slotted bottom. Thedog is obviously in pain and can't move. Another dogis later shown after being rescued from having its legcaught. As the animal holds its left hind leg off theground because of the pain, the camera zooms in on asevere red and green wound. Bouchard admits there were problems with the cagedesign, which has a slotted floor to collect animalfecal samples. But he said the problems were isolated.And any video of caged animals, no matter theircondition, plays on the emotions of the public, hesaid. "The bottom line is the animals had excellentveterinary care," Bouchard said. Another problem, Bouchard and Iams claim, is that thespy was put in charge of implementing an Iamsenrichment program — which should have providedexactly the type of care PETA criticizes them for notgiving. They allege that the spy stalled efforts toimprove the life of the dogs in order to supplyherself with dramatic video. "She came and all of asudden, we have more (problems) than we have in fiveyears," Bouchard said. The spy denied such accusations. Putting on the pressure The spy left her job on Feb. 19. She'd collectedenough evidence. It was time to go public. On March 25, PETA held a news conference in Dayton,Ohio, home to Iams, where the group introduced its newcampaign. They handed out press packets with stickersreading "Iams kills cats & dogs in 'nutritionalexperiments.'" While the link between Iams studies and dead animalsappears weak — dogs may have died while on the study,but the link between their deaths and the research isnot there — the PETA public relations machine madefull use of it. Iams said it had never before been targeted so heavilyby PETA. And PETA hasn't relented. The dominant imageon its Web site is the message "PETA to 'Pet' FoodIndustry: Lay Off the Animals," which links to morearticles and pictures featuring purportedly mistreatedanimals. There is growing concern within the pet food industrythat this is just the start of a broader campaign,said Iams spokesman Bryan Brown. "The signals are there that what they've done in thefast food industry," Brown said, referring to thechanges at McDonald's, "they're planning for us." The day after the news conference, a team from Iamsvisited Sinclair for a surprise inspection. They foundproblems with the air temperature and ventilation inthe cage rooms, a lack of resting boards for the dogsand inadequate socialization for the animals, Brownsaid. These items posed no serious health risks, Brown said,"but there were some gaps in following the Iamsresearch policy." Iams canceled its contract with Sinclair the next day.PETA's tactics also were successful in getting Iams toconduct inspections at all of the company's contractresearch labs and to adopt tougher lab requirements.Iams said it found no problems at its otherfacilities. Isto Technologies said in a statement that its work atSinclair is completed, but the company "is reviewingthe allegations made and takes this matter seriously."But Purina Petcare spokesman Keith Schopp said thecompany feels unfairly swept up by PETA's allegationsbecause officials have seen no evidence that animalsin its studies were mistreated. PETA research associate Peter Woods said Purina, whichdid not respond to PETA's letter alerting the companyto problems at Sinclair, "should be very concernedabout the people they do business with." "Effective" tactics While PETA's tactics are applauded in some circles,companies and institutions have tried unsuccessfullyfor years to stop these undercover operations, saidTrull with the Foundation for Biomedical Research. Theissue is addressed at professional conferences,warnings and advice are provided, but three monthslater they hear about another spy, she said. Trullblamed researchers for thinking that it just couldn'thappen to them. PETA has intimidated researchers who use lab animals,even driven some from the field, she said. And itappears the animal rights activists are winning thepublic relations battle, too, despite the medicaladvances made possible by animal testing, she said. "You've got to give them credit for being as effectiveas they've been," Trull conceded. One factor in PETA's recent success is the group'sincreasing willingness to set aside its long-term goalof abolishing all animal testing in favor of improvingthe treatment of lab animals in the meantime. "We hate it all," Sweetland said of animal testing,"but we're also very pragmatic." What the future holds PETA recently fired off a 104-page complaint to theUSDA, alleging dozens of instances of failure toprovide adequate care for animals at Sinclair. Theagency is reviewing the claims, a spokesman said. Bouchard said he's considering legal action againstPETA for its use of an undercover investigator. Hepointed to a little-known state law that makes itillegal to access "an animal facility by falsepretense for the purpose of performing acts notauthorized by the facility." This year, some legislators tried to add to the law bymaking it illegal to photograph "any aspect of ananimal facility." That measure, derided by otherlawmakers as the "puppy mill protection act," failed. Bouchard plans to keep operating Sinclair and woo backsome of his lost clients. He has installed bettercages with new flooring for dogs so they won't gettheir feet caught. He's ordered new cat cages,increasing their size to 9 square feet. But Bouchard said the one thing he's lost that can'tbe regained is trust. He is suspicious of everyonenow. He is dreading when the time comes to hire a newemployee, fearful that it will be another undercoverinvestigator. The spy said she is sorry if her former co-workerswere hurt by her actions. But for her, the deceit wasnecessary. "How else is there to know what goes onbehind closed doors?" she asked. Going undercover "isthe only way." Sweetland, who guided the young spy, said PETA willkeep fighting. "They will never succeed in keeping us out of thelabs," Sweetland said. "We will always be doing this."Now, the spy who made it inside Sinclair is back onthe road, traveling somewhere in the South. She'slooking to get behind closed doors once again. She's ready for her next mission.

medical stuff

2006-08-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

By Randy DotingaHealthDay Reporter 39 minutes ago
THURSDAY, Aug. 24 (HealthDay News) -- New research in mice points to a possible treatment for
Alzheimer's disease" name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Alzheimer's disease, one that repairs brain cells so they can rid themselves of the amyloid beta proteins that are suspected of contributing to the disease.
By tinkering with an enzyme in the brains of mice afflicted with the rough equivalent of Alzheimer's in humans, scientists were able to improve the rodents' memories.
There's no way to know if the approach will work in humans, but researchers are hopeful. In essence, "we were able to restart -- or make more efficient -- the garbage disposal function of the cell," said study co-investigator Dr. Michael Shelanski, director of the Alzheimer's Research Center at Columbia University.
Despite intensive research, Alzheimer's disease remains very difficult to treat and affects about 4.5 million Americans, a number that is expected to soar in the coming decades as the population ages. Some drugs are available, but their effectiveness is limited, Shelanski said.
According to Shelanski, the new research expands on previous findings that suggested a shortage of an enzyme in the brain may be connected to Alzheimer's. The enzyme, known as Uch-L1, appears to be crucial to a cell's ability to get rid of malformed proteins and maintain memory.
"It has been widely assumed in Alzheimer's disease that a lot of the problem comes from the fact that proteins within the cell do not fold correctly, and therefore don't function correctly," Shelanski said. "The cells' garbage disposal tries to get rid of them."
Researchers engineered mice to suffer from a kind of rodent Alzheimer's disease. Then they boosted the level of the enzyme in the mice to see what would happen.
The treated mice were able to remember to avoid parts of a cage floor where they had earlier been exposed to a mild stimulus. The other mice forgot the places to avoid, the study found.
The study findings appear Thursday on the Web site of the journal Cell.
"We were able to greatly improve function in mice that had (the equivalent of) Alzheimer's disease for as long as a year," Shelanski said. That could reflect changes that would happen in a human who had Alzheimer's for many years, he added.
Will it work in humans? No one knows. One downside is that the treatment must be injected, not taken as a pill by mouth. And it might not be safe in people.
"This is hope, not proof, that even people with established Alzheimer's disease might be able to get some recovery from a therapy that works along these lines," Shelanski said.
Another Alzheimer's specialist called the study "interesting, exciting, and important."
The research points to "a previously understudied area of investigation that may be useful for developing drugs for Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Sam Gandy, director of the Farber Institute for Neurosciences at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
He added that the new research relies upon the most commonly accepted theory about what causes Alzheimer's, although it still remains to be proven.
Unfortunately, he said, it will take years to develop a drug for people.

Animal stuff

2006-08-23T08:20:00.000-07:00

By Jeanna BrynerSpecial to LiveScienceposted: 23 August 200612:05 am ET

Whether it's a blowout argument or a dinner-table disagreement, a spat with your lover can be trying. Humans have of course devised ways of making up, including tight hugs and the customary apology flowers.
Killer whales have their own tricks for mending relations, a new study finds. Rather than a bouquet, however, they might opt for an intimate swim.
Studies have shown that chimpanzees kiss and hug after a dispute, and other primates such as bonobos resort to sexual activity to resolve conflicts. Until now, reconciliatory behavior had not been shown in any marine mammal.
For the past five years, Michael Noonan, a psychologist and specialist in animal behavior at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, has been studying the captive killer whales at the theme park Marineland of Canada in Niagara Falls, Ontario. To learn more about orca social behavior, Noonan videotaped a group of captive killer whales for a total of 2,800 hours.
"Nearly all social animals occasionally squabble," Noonan said.
He noted 21 disagreements, many of which involved complicated interactions between several whales. Most notably, the video revealed eight unambiguous quarrels between one pair—a mother and a father. The disputes entailed aggressive chasing, Noonan said.
Orcas, the largest members of the dolphin family, can reach swimming speeds at sea of 30 miles per hour (50 kilometers per hour) for short stints.
After the mother chased the father for several minutes, each zipped away to separate aquatic quarters to cool off for about 10 minutes. Then, the mates smoothed over their clash with side-by-side swimming, called echelon swimming [image].
"In eight out of eight instances, the animals engaged in a pro-social, affiliative behavior shortly after the period of tension," Noonan told LiveScience. "The pro-social behavior was echelon swimming."
Animal behavior scientists have known that orcas take part in echelon swimming as a form of routine social bonding. "That these two [killer whales] did it so consistently after periods of tension is the new discovery," Noonan said.
The research was presented at the Animal Behavior Society conference earlier this month in Salt Lake City.
"It shows yet another way in which cetaceans have converged with primates, Noonan said. Other similarities: large brains, long lives and social complexity.
But Noonan is still trying to elucidate some secrets held by these black-and-white mammals. For instance, what triggered the domestic squabbles? "We are working on that," he said.

more stuff

2006-08-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

By Jonathan Rowe Mon Aug 21, 4:00 AM ET
POINT REYES STATION, CALIF. - It is an old saying in the advertising trade that you sell the problem, not the solution. That helps explain why the media today are awash with images of disease. Erectile dysfunction, depression, stress, attention deficit disorder, on and on – you can't escape them and the sense of looming peril that they conjure up.
Politicians sell terror and fear; pharmaceutical companies sell disease. Every state and stage of existence has become a pathology in need of pharmaceutical "intervention," and life itself is a petri dish of biochemical deficiency and need. Shyness is now "social anxiety disorder." A twitchy tendency has become "restless leg syndrome." Three decades ago the head of Merck dreamed aloud of the day when the definition of disease would be so broad that his company could "sell to everyone," like chewing gum.
That day is rapidly approaching, if it's not already here. "We're increasingly turning normal people into patients," said Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz of the Dartmouth Medical School. "The ordinary experiences of life become a diagnosis, which makes healthy people feel like they're sick."
In one sense, the ads have been successful. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that every dollar drug companies spend on ads brings more than four dollars in additional sales. But for most others, the result has been soaring medical insurance costs, toxic side effects, and new tensions between doctors and patients, who increasingly badger doctors for the drugs they've seen on TV.
One study found that 30 percent of Americans have made these demands. A Minnesota doctor complained recently that patients now push him for sleep medications "when maybe they just need to go to bed on a more regular basis."
But perhaps the worst part is that prescription drug ads have immersed us all in a pervasive drug culture that seems to have no boundaries. We are being reduced to helpless "consumers" who have no capacity to deal with challenges other than by taking a pill. Last month Tim Pawlenty, the Republican governor of Minnesota, called for a moratorium on prescription drug ads. It's about time.
For most of the past half century, there were tight restrictions on the general advertising of prescription drugs. These require doctors' guidance for a reason; so why should Madison Avenue get involved? But under heavy pressure from the drug and advertising industries, the government backed down in the late 1990s, and that started the tsunami.
Spending on drug ads for the general public more than tripled between 1996 and 2001. It is now some $4 billion a year, which is more than twice what McDonald's spends on ads. In 1994, the typical American had seven prescriptions a year, which is no small number. By 2004, that was up to 12 a year. Homebuilders are touting medicine cabinets that are "triple-wide."
The industry says this is all about "educating" the consumer. But an ad executive was more candid when he said – boasted, really – that the goal is to "drive patients to their doctors." Reuters Business Insight, a publication for investors, explained that the future of the industry depends on its ability to "create new disease markets." "The coming years," it said, "will bear greater witness to the corporate-sponsored creation of disease."
The Kaiser study found that drug ads increase sales for entire categories of drugs, not just the one in question. The ads really are selling the disease more than a cure.
Advertising is just one way the industry has sought to accomplish this goal. It also funds patient advocacy groups such as Children With Attention Deficit Disorder (CHADD), and doctors who push for expanded definitions of disease, among a host of other things. (When the definition of ADD expanded in the 1980s, the number of kids tagged with this problem increased by 50 percent.)
But advertising is the most pervasive and aggressive way of selling sickness. It also is the hardest to justify. Medicine is supposed to be about science, not huckstering; about healing people, not persuading more of them that they are sick. There are far better ways to inform the public about health issues than to spend billions of dollars a year pushing pills.
This is why more than 200 medical school professors recently called for an end to prescription drug ads, and why close to 40 health and seniors groups have joined them. Even the American Medical Association, many members of which have close ties to the pharmaceutical industry, has urged restrictions. Washington should listen to these doctors. As Governor Pawlenty put it, we need to put "the decisionmaking back where it should be – on an informed basis between the patient and the doctor."
•Jonathan Rowe is issues director at Commercial Alert and a fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute. He is a former Monitor staff writer

more stuff

2006-08-17T07:31:00.000-07:00

(Reuters) - As many as one in 300
Most have gone unnoticed by the top researchers, because they are well, do not need treatment and do not want attention, said Dr. Bruce Walker of Harvard Medical School.
But Walker and colleagues want to study these so-called "elite" patients in the hope that their cases can help in the search for a vaccine or treatments.
"What in the heck is going on in people that successfully control this virus?" Walker asked a news conference held at the 16th International Conference on AIDS.
"If we can figure out how people are doing that, we can try to replicate it."
So far Walker and colleagues have not been able to find out why certain people can live for 15 years and longer with the virus and never get ill. The AIDS virus usually kills patients within two years if they are not treated.
Some even appear to have weak immune responses, he noted. "Is it just that these people got infected with a wimpy virus? The answer to that is no," Walker said.
"Some of the people know who infected them," he added, and in those cases, the person who infected the "elite" patients always went on to become ill.
A few years into the AIDS epidemic, researchers identified people who were called "long-term non-progressors." These were patients infected with HIV who did not become ill.
Many have become ill as the years have gone by, and required treatment.
Walker said a few of the long-term non-progressors were now classified as "elite" patients. But the difference is that the "elite" status is clearly defined by how much virus they have circulating in their blood.
Loreen Willenberg, of Diamond Springs, California, is a newly designated "elite." Now 52 and healthy, she said she became infected in 1992.
BAD DREAM
"I dreamed that I was HIV positive," Willenberg told the news conference.
"I was really going through a very bad flu." She sought testing, and after getting an inconclusive result was later declared HIV positive.
HIV patients are not immediately put onto drugs that can keep them healthy, but wait until the virus reaches a certain level in the blood or until the virus kills a certain number of immune system cells called CD4 T-cells.
Willenberg, a landscape designer, never got to that point.
"I am in perfect health. I think I have had maybe only one cold in the past 14 years," she said.
Walker has tracked down 200 elite patients and has now joined up with other prominent AIDS researchers to find at least 1,000 "elites" in North America and as many as possible globally.
Based on research done so far, Walker estimates there are 2,000 of them in the United States.
His team wants to take blood and DNA samples to see what might be different about them. Confidentiality is promised.
The recently published map of the human genome will make this possible.
They will compare key genetic sequences of the "elite" patients to genetic readouts from healthy people and from other HIV patients. Maybe a few genetic variations can explain what is happening, Walker hopes.

stuff

2006-08-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

Cures and controversy
Animal experiments advance medicine, but secrecy, violations keep some activists skeptical
Photos by David M. Barreda © News Onyx, a Boston terrier, is given oxygen before having a large tumor removed in April at the Colorado State University Animal Cancer Center. Owners often volunteer their cancer-stricken pets for experimental treatments at the center, which has treated pets from all around the world.
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By Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News August 12, 2006
Most of the research monkeys that attracted protests, petitions and candlelight vigils to the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center have been moved out of state, but animal research continues at a steady clip in Colorado, information obtained by the Rocky Mountain News shows.
Nearly 600,000 animals have been bred or used for research at the state's three major institutions - CU's Health Sciences Center, CU and Colorado State University - during the past three years, according to data provided by the universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The overwhelming majority of those are mice and rats. But the numbers also include other creatures, from dogs and cats to frogs, fish, pigs and bats.
Together, the schools estimate research involving animals brought $237 million in grant money to the state last year from organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute.
That troubles animal rights activists such as Rita Anderson, who's made freeing CU's bonnet macaque monkeys a kind of personal mission - some would say obsession - over the past few years.
But researchers and university administrators say the work is vital to advancing science and has made Colorado home to major medical breakthroughs that otherwise would not have been possible.
"It's unimaginable to me to think about the state of health care in the world if animals had not been sacrificed," said John Sladek, vice chancellor for research at the University of Colorado at Denver and the CU Health Sciences Center.
At Colorado State University's Animal Cancer Center, veterinary oncologist Dr. Stephen Withrow's research on dogs resulted in a new way to focus radiation on bone cancer. The treatment - first conducted on pets whose owners volunteer them for it - has saved limbs of humans who have the disease.
At CU's Boulder campus, professor Tom Johnson is locating a gene that makes mice more susceptible to severe alcoholism. Because the mouse's genetic makeup is similar to that of humans, the findings could help alcoholics - even those with a long history of relapsing - stop drinking for good.
There would be "absolutely no way" to do the research on humans, Johnson said. It involves injecting alcohol into a mouse's bloodstream to raise the blood alcohol content to sometimes fatal levels.
"Overall, it's a trade-off," Johnson added. "For every mouse we sacrifice we hope there's going to be a resulting improvement in human health."
Monkeys spark controversy
Colorado's research institutions have been doing animal research for decades, largely without controversy.
Yet many university officials remain skittish about discussing the work, pointing to incidents on other campuses where animal-rights activists destroyed labs, causing millions of dollars in damage and setting back research by years.
CSU's Animal Cancer Center - where owners volunteer their pets for research - was the only institution to allow the Rocky Mountain News to see and photograph animals. The other campuses would not reveal the location of their labs or let nonemployees enter them.
That secrecy is part of what bothers Anderson, a Boulder grandmother and animal-rights activist who has been a thorn in the side of CU's Health Sciences Center for years.
Anderson started her fight to stop research on CU's colony of bonnet macaque monkeys more than two years ago, after working on other animal-rights projects in the Boulder area.
She said she was first troubled by the research of psychiatry professor Mark Laudenslager, which she describes as a study of whether maternal separation causes young monkeys to abuse alcohol - a project she calls "pointless and absurd."
"We're not saving lives here," Anderson said. "It should be an embarrassment to CU."
Since then she has launched a campaign titled "Free the CU 34" (at the time, there were 34 monkeys; the number grew to 48), held candlelight vigils on campus, collected thousands of signatures on a petition and spoken at CU Board of Regents meetings, sometimes wearing a monkey mask and accompanied by supporters, including one in a monkey suit.
CU officials maintain the research is worthwhile.
Laudenslager has identified a gene that may make some young monkeys prefer alcohol more than others, Sladek said. With adolescent alcohol abuse such a problem today, the findings could be significant.
"Some of us can say no to the next drink. Some of us cannot," Sladek added. "It's a serious problem."
Last fall CU began talking with researchers at Wake Forest University in North Carolina about moving the monkeys there. Laudenslager would continue his studies, working with colleagues at Wake Forest.
In mid-June, 37 of the monkeys were moved. CU officials are looking for a sanctuary in which to place the remaining 11 monkeys, CU spokeswoman Sarah Ellis said.
The decision was made because Wake Forest has much larger and better facilities in which to study the monkeys, including outdoor areas, Sladek said. Wake Forest also has an alcohol research center.
Sladek denied the transfer had anything to do with pressure from Anderson and her supporters.
"If that was the motivation, (Laudenslager) would have done this a long time ago," Sladek added.
Anderson isn't so sure.
She believes CU is simply trying to get out from under her spotlight, and she says she won't stop until the project is terminated.
Last spring Anderson traveled to North Carolina to protest the use of monkeys there. She urged the CU Board of Regents to look into violations at Wake Forest's primate research facilities, such as some monkeys that did not have perches in their cages and outdated drugs found in some labs.
And she has continued pushing for CU to send all the monkeys to a sanctuary - and to pay for the animals' care once there.
"I just want the public to start paying some attention," Anderson added.
Committees provide oversight
Officials at both CU campuses and CSU insist there is plenty of oversight to ensure animals are being used only when no other option exists, that they are treated well and feel little or no pain.
Each campus doing animal research must have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, or IACUC, which reviews each proposal. A campus veterinarian makes unannounced stops in research labs, as do U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors.
Protocols are reviewed to ensure animals feel the least amount of pain possible - if any - and if there are problems or concerns, a study can be terminated at any point, said Peter Hellyer, professor of anesthesiology at CSU's Veterinary School and a member of CSU's IACUC.
"You don't cut a toenail here almost without some morphine," added Withrow, the veterinary oncologist at CSU. "We really do care about animals. We're a vet school, for God's sake."
USDA inspection reports for CSU did find some incidents of noncompliance. In 2005, for example, an inspector reported that sheep housed in a remote location had no shade to protect them from direct sunlight. A 2001 report showed CSU's older mascot, "Cam the Ram," had overgrown front hooves and had not received veterinary care.
Both issues were corrected by the next inspection, reports show.
At the Health Sciences Center, a 2003 inspection found temperatures in the facility where monkeys were housed reached 96 to 100 degrees - more than 10 degrees higher than allowed. It also found "numerous enclosures are deteriorating," pulley systems designed to open doors not functioning and exposed electrical components and conduits.
In April 2005, an inspector noted rodent droppings and cockroaches were found in the room where items used by the monkeys were stored. A month later, the problem had been resolved, reports show.
The monkeys have since been moved to a newer facility, university officials said. The most recent inspection, in February, found no cases of noncompliance.
USDA reports from CU-Boulder between 2003 and 2005 also found no violations.
Albert Petkus, director of animal resources at CU-Boulder, said each lab hires trained animal caretakers, and it's in their best interest to treat the animals well.
He also said the public should be aware of the benefits animal research has not just on science, but on educating students as well.
At CU, undergraduate physiology students study the heart by opening the chests of anesthetized rats and putting the rat on a ventilator to watch how its cardiac system works. The lab is one of the department's most popular, Petkus said.
"You could read about it in a book, watch a film or on a computer, but there's still nothing like seeing live tissue and working on it," he added. "It's a really, really valuable experience."
The facts about animal research in the U.S.
• Can anyone conduct animal research?
No. Federal law requires all institutions that conduct animal research to have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, or IACUC. The committee - made up of faculty, the campus veterinarian and at least one member of the public - evaluates each proposal to determine if the use of animals is necessary and if the researcher has an adequate plan for reducing and/or managing any pain that may be inflicted on the animals. The proposal then goes through a similar review by the group issuing the grant, such as the National Institutes of Health.
• Where do researchers get their animals?
Most animals are purchased from licensed dealers, which must be approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Others - dogs at CSU's Animal Cancer Center, for example - are pets whose owners have volunteered them for clinical trials. Other research is conducted on animals living in the wild, such as prairie dogs or deer, while some researchers breed their own animals.
• Where do the animals live?
Assuming the animals are kept on campus (vs. a study of animals in their natural habitat), they are usually kept in cages. Mice, for instance, are generally kept in shoebox-sized, polycarbonate plastic boxes with steel wire on top. Because they are social animals, the monkeys at CU's Health Science Center were kept in larger cages, usually with other monkeys.
• Who takes care of them?
Each university has a campus veterinarian who oversees the care of animals and treats any medical problems that arise. The university, academic departments or individual researchers also employ caretakers who are responsible for cleaning cages and feeding and monitoring the animals.
• What kind of oversight is there?
The IACUC is expected to inspect the facilities where animals are kept every six months and ensure the researcher is following the approved protocol. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also has inspectors who visit campuses. The veterinarian at CU-Boulder said a USDA inspector checks on its animals once or twice a year. The campuses also must file annual reports with the USDA listing the number of animals being used for research, though that list does not include mice and rats.
• How does Colorado compare with other states in number of animals used? It's hard to tell. No entity collects data on the number of animals used nationwide, so there's no accurate way to compare one state with another.Source: Csu, Cu-Boulder, Cu Health Science Center, U.S. Department Of Agriculture
Research in Colorado schools
• CSU: Dr. Stephen Withrow and researchers at the Animal Cancer Center, operating on dogs, found a way to target radiation to cancer of the bone. The procedure has saved some humans with bone cancer from having limbs amputated. The center also keeps a tissue bank of various types of naturally occurring tumors removed from animals. The tissues may be used in various studies to identify drugs that will attack cancerous cells.
• CU: Professor Tom Johnson uses colonies of worms to study aging. One of his projects looks at how stress affects lifespan. He also studies alcohol abuse in mice. Professor Leslie Leinwand's lab is studying how a python's heart enlarges rapidly as it digests food. If researchers can understand how the python's heart works, they may be able to apply the knowledge to human conditions, such as high blood pressure.
• CU HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER: Mark Laudenslager's study on monkeys explores how poor maternal care affects the tendency to abuse alcohol. It focuses on young monkeys that have a particular gene identified by Laudenslager. The gene makes monkeys more susceptible to alcohol abuse. In the School of Dentistry, researchers use zebrafish to study how the jaw is formed. The findings could help prevent humans from being born with cleft palates.Source: Cu, Csu, Health Sciences Center.
burnetts@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5343

stuff

2006-08-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

BOSTON (Reuters) - After 11 years of abuse, Susan Walsh knew her husband was a problem. He had threatened her, beat her and killed some of their turkeys and sheep, leaving the corpses out for her to find.
But the last straw came in 2001, when he killed her dog while she was out of town visiting family.
"He had run over my border collie, who was fairly old at that point," Walsh recalled in a phone interview. "She was blind and deaf and she never saw him coming. He just ran her over in the driveway."
Abusive spouses often use threats to pets to keep their victims from leaving, according to domestic abuse experts. To make it easier for those people to leave their abusers, domestic violence support groups and animal welfare advocates are lobbying for laws that protect pets from domestic abuse.
Maine, Vermont and New York were the first states to enact laws allowing judges to include pets in protection orders, which require abusers to stay away from their victims. The New Jersey and Illinois legislatures are considering similar measures.
"The desire to protect a pet is often a deterrent for women or victims leaving a situation like this, because they're afraid if they do, their pets will be harmed," said Sherry Lane of Caring Unlimited, a shelter in Sanford, Maine.
Despite the torment she experienced, Walsh and their two children stayed with her husband out of fear that if they left, he'd kill the rest of the animals on their 32-acre farm in Ellsworth, Maine, 250 miles northeast of Boston.
"He would use the animals and threats to them as a tool to try and control me -- 'If you try to leave, I can do this. I can do worse,"' Walsh said.
Amy, a domestic violence victim from Windsor County, Vermont, said having a pet on a protection order gets the police's attention.
After years of abuse, Amy's husband disappeared with her dog, and filed for divorce while in hiding, leaving her wondering what would befall her pet if she contested terms.
He wanted "to control me and for me to acquiesce, to say, 'Whatever you want, just give me back my dog,"' said Amy, who asked that her last name be withheld.
Two months after her husband disappeared, she learned the dog was being kept alone at an empty apartment a few miles away, fed by a local woman. She approached local police to get the dog back, but said her concerns were ignored.
"I felt that they were laughing at me, that it was, 'Come on, let's talk about what's important,"' Amy said.
She said she believes her experience would have been different if the new Vermont law was on the books then.
"If you call the police and say, 'I have an order of protection for my pet,' they are going to take it seriously because there is a reason. And without that, there's nothing," Amy said. "Is it going to protect you from a fist? No. But it's going to give you an edge."
While many women's shelters do not accept pets, programs like Pets and Women to Safety at the Animal Welfare Society of West Kennebunk, Maine, fill that void.
Steve Jacobsen, that shelter's executive director, said Caring Unlimited approached his group eight years ago, looking for a place to bring victims' pets.
His shelter now takes in 12 to 24 pets a year. Local volunteers care for them in their own homes. It's one of about 160 U.S. animal shelters that board pets of domestic violence victims, according to the Humane Society.
Domestic violence affects roughly 700,000 Americans each year, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

animal info

2006-07-29T06:45:00.000-07:00

By DAVE MONTGOMERY
STAR-TELEGRAM WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON — After being forced out of Congress by Republican-led redistricting, former West Texas Rep. Charles Stenholm embarked on a thriving career as an agricultural lobbyist.
Now he faces what some would say is a daunting, if not impossible, task: putting a positive face on a small but much-maligned industry that slaughters American horses for overseas consumption.
Stenholm, a conservative Democrat who earned bipartisan respect in Congress for his expertise on agricultural issues, is the most visible lobbyist for three foreign-owned horse-slaughter plants fighting legislation that would force them out of existence.
The legislation, which appears to be headed to a vote on the House floor by early September, has stirred an impassioned summertime debate over one of America’s beloved four-legged icons.
The processing plants, in Fort Worth, Kaufman and DeKalb, Ill., killed more than 90,000 horses last year, with much of the meat going to parts of Europe and Japan, where horse meat is a delicacy.
More than 200 of the 435 House members are co-sponsoring the bill, backed by a coalition of animal-rights activists, celebrities, horse groups and rescue shelters. Texas oilman Boone Pickens has also embraced the measure, calling the slaughterhouses “a dirty little secret.”
But those on the other side of the issue are also pressing a highly organized counteroffensive and believe that Stenholm’s involvement is making a difference in what some originally thought would be a slam-dunk for the bill.
Both sides claim hundreds of supporters, with veterinarians and prominent horse groups arrayed on both sides of the debate.
Stenholm, who was the ranking Democrat on the Agriculture Committee before he left the House last year, was clearly in friendly territory Thursday when he appeared before the committee along with other opponents of the measure, including ranchers and veterinarians.
“Welcome back,” said the chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., as Stenholm took his place at the witness table.
Afterward, the committee voted 37-3 to send the measure to the floor with an unfavorable recommendation after adding “poison pill” amendments that may guarantee its defeat. One of the amendments would exempt the three plants from what Goodlatte called a “draconian” measure.
The action clearly complicated the parliamentary course for the bill, sponsored by Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y. The Energy and Commerce Committee has cleared an unamended version of the bill for floor action, and House leaders will decide in September how to resolve the differences.
The bill’s opponents hope to soften the emotionalism surrounding the debate and convince lawmakers that the legislation will destroy a 100-year-old industry that now offers what the industry says is a humane and well-regulated way to deal with unwanted horses.
Elimination of the slaughterhouses, they say, will lead to a surplus of 100,000 to 200,000 horses that will be subject to abuse and neglect. Stenholm also argued that horse owners have a “constitutionally protected right” to dispose of their horses.
Dick Koehler, vice president of the Dutch-owned Beltex processing plant in Fort Worth, said industry representatives recruited Stenholm because of his extensive background in agriculture after 26 years in Congress.
“Mr. Stenholm is an icon,” Koehler said. “I expect to win.”
Stenholm, who was a leader of the “Blue Dog” faction of conservative Democrats, was defeated for re-election in 2004 after his West Texas district was redrawn in redistricting engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land.
After the election, speculation surfaced that Stenholm might be in line to become President Bush’s agriculture secretary. But he disavowed any interest in returning to politics and joined the Washington law firm Olsson, Frank and Weeda as a senior policy adviser.
Stenholm acknowledges that his current task is “a tremendous challenge” but says he hopes that he his and allies can defeat the legislation by persuading lawmakers to retain processing houses as a part of the horse industry.
But his adversaries say Stenholm has a tough public-relations job trying to sell an industry that many Americans find appalling.
“It’s tough to defend horse slaughter,” said Nancy Perry, vice president of government affairs for the Humane Society of the United States. “So I’m a little sympathetic that they have a very tough argument to make.”

health

2006-07-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent Thu Jul 27, 2:34 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who ate a low-fat vegan diet, cutting out all meat and dairy, lowered their blood sugar more and lost more weight than people on a standard American Diabetes Association diet, researchers said on Thursday.
They lowered their cholesterol more and ended up with better kidney function, according to the report published in Diabetes Care, a journal published by the American Diabetes Association.
Participants said the vegan diet was easier to follow than most because they did not measure portions or count calories. Three of the vegan dieters dropped out of the study, compared to eight on the standard diet.
"I hope this study will rekindle interest in using diet changes first, rather than prescription drugs," Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine, which helped conduct the study, told a news conference.
An estimated 18 million Americans have type-2 diabetes, which results from a combination of genetics and poor eating and exercise habits. They run a high risk of heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, blindness and limb loss.
Barnard's team and colleagues at George Washington University, the University of Toronto and the University of North Carolina tested 99 people with type-2 diabetes, assigning them randomly to either a low-fat, low-sugar vegan diet or the standard American Diabetes Association diet.
After 22 weeks on the diet, 43 percent of those on the vegan diet and 26 percent of those on the standard diet were either able to stop taking some of their drugs such as insulin or glucose-control medications, or lowered the doses.
The vegan dieters lost 14 pounds (6.5 kg) on average while the diabetes association dieters lost 6.8 pounds (3.1 kg).
An important level of glucose control called a1c fell by 1.23 points in the vegan group and by 0.38 in the group on the standard diet.
DROPPING DRUGS
A1c gives a measure of how well-controlled blood sugar has been over the preceding three months.
In the dieters who did not change whatever cholesterol drugs they were on during the study, LDL or "bad" cholesterol fell by 21 percent in the vegan group and 10 percent in the standard diet group.
The vegan diet removed all animal products, including meat, fish and dairy. It was also low in added fat and in sugar.
The American Diabetes Association diet is more tailored, taking into account the patient's weight and cholesterol. Most patients on this diet cut calories significantly, and were told to eat sugary and starchy foods in moderation.
All 99 participants met weekly with advisers, who advised them on recipes, gave them tips for sticking to their respective diets, and offered encouragement.
"We have got a combination here that works successfully," said Dr. David Jenkins of the University of Toronto, who worked on the study. "The message that we so often get with diet is that it is no good because nobody follows it for very long."
Dr. Joshua Cohen, George Washington University associate professor of medicine, said everyone diagnosed with diabetes is told to start eating more carefully.
"That may be among the hardest things that any of us can do," Cohen told the news conference.
The vegan diet "is at least as good, if not better than traditional approaches," Cohen said.
Vance Warren, a 36-year-old retired police officer living in Washington, said he lowered his a1c from 10.4, considered uncontrolled diabetes, to 5.1, considered a healthy level, over 18 months. "My life is much better being 74 pounds (34 kg) lighter," Warren told the news conference.

science

2006-06-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Gritty rats and mice living in sewers and farms seem to have healthier immune systems than their squeaky clean cousins that frolic in cushy antiseptic labs, two studies indicate. The lesson for humans: Clean living may make us sick.
The studies give more weight to a 17-year-old theory that the sanitized Western world may be partly to blame for soaring rates of human allergy and asthma cases and some autoimmune diseases, such as Type I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. The theory, called the hygiene hypothesis, figures that people's immune systems aren't being challenged by disease and dirt early in life, so the body's natural defenses overreact to small irritants such as pollen.
The new studies, one of which was published Friday in the peer reviewed Scandinavian Journal of Immunology, found significant differences in the immune systems between euthanized wild and lab rodents.
When the immune cells in the wild rats are stimulated by researchers, "they just don't do anything they sit there; if you give them same stimulus to the lab rats, they go crazy," said study co-author Dr. William Parker, a Duke University professor of experimental surgery. He compared lab rodents to more than 50 wild rats and mice captured and killed in cities and farms.
Also, the wild mice and rats had as much as four times higher levels of immunoglobulins, yet weren't sick, showing an immune system tuned to fight crucial germs, but not minor irritants, Parker said. He said what happened in the lab rats is what likely occurs in humans: their immune systems have got it so cushy they overreact to smallest of problems.
"Your immune system is like the person who lives in the perfect house and has all the food they want, you're going to start worrying about the little things like someone stepping on your flowers," Parker said.
Challenged immune systems - such as kids who grow up with two or more pets - don't tend to develop as many allergies, said Dr. Stanley Goldstein, director of Allergy & Asthma Care of Long Island.
Parker said his study has drawbacks because he can't be sure that the age of the wild and lab rodents are equivalent, although he estimates the ages based on weight. He also could not control what happened in the past to the wild rats to see if they had unusual diseases before being captured and killed.
It would have been more useful had Parker studied extremely young wild rodents because, according to the hygiene hypothesis, that's when the protection from dirty living starts, said Dr. Stuart Levy, director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University.
Human epidemiological studies have long given credence to the hygiene theory, showing that allergy and asthma rates were higher in the cleaner industrialized areas than in places such as Africa. Parker's studies, looking at animal differences, may eventually help scientists find when, where and how environmental exposure help protect against future allergies and immune disorders, said Goldstein, and Dr. Jeffrey Platt of the Mayo Clinic in Minn., both of whom were not part of Parker's studies.
Parker said he hopes to build a 50-foot artificial sewer for his next step, so that he could introduce the clean lab rats to an artificial dirty environment and see how and when the immunity was activated.
That may be the biggest thing to come out of the wild and lab rodent studies, Platt said: "Then all of a sudden it becomes possible to expose people to the few things (that exercise the immune system) and gives them the benefit of the dirty environment without having to expose them to the dirt."

Animal rights

2006-06-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 03 June 2006
The ban on using chimpanzees and other great apes in scientific experiments should be relaxed in a global health emergency, the head of the Medical Research Council (MRC) has said.
Colin Blakemore, an outspoken advocate of animal experiments, said that the existing ban on great apes makes no moral sense because it degrades the clear boundary between humans and animals.
Professor Blakemore, a distinguished brain scientist at Oxford University, said that he is opposed in principle to the ban on experiments with great apes, although he sees no immediate need to lift it. "I'm not entirely comfortable with the decision absolutely to ban the use of great apes," Dr Blakemore said at the launch of an MRC pamphlet explaining the benefits of primate research yesterday.
"I can see no current necessity for the use of great apes, and I'm pleased that they're not being used and that every effort is being made to reduce the use of other primates. But I worry about the principle of where the moral boundaries lie. There is only one very secure definition that can be made, and that is between our species and others," Professor Blakemore said.
Great apes - but not monkeys - were banned from medical research in Britain in 1998, although medical experiments on chimps have continued at research facilities in the United States, Japan and the Netherlands.
Professor Blakemore said that under certain circumstances, such as the emergence of a lethal pandemic virus that only affected the great apes, including man, then experiments on chimps, orang-utans and even gorillas may become necessary.
But the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), which is launching its own report into experiments on primates, said that Professor Blakemore's stance is backward-looking. "The Government was absolutely right in 1998 to recognise that no great ape should ever be subjected to confinement in a laboratory and experimentation: nothing will change that," said Alistair Currie, BUAV's campaigns director.
"What makes it wrong to experiment on people is what makes it wrong to experiment on apes - they have needs too, much like ours, and suffer too, much like us, to ever be used as tools," he added.
Decades of research on Aids vaccines have used chimps and other primates, yet these experiments have not produced an effective form of vaccination for Aids, Mr Currie argued.
"If some hypothetical virus threatened half the population, half the population would almost certainly be dead before chimp research produced the answer. The MRC, of all people, should be investing in research that works, not trying to turn back the clock."
The BUAV is calling for a ban on all primate research, arguing that there is no biological rationale for morally discriminating between humans and all other primates. The organisation said that the pain and distress caused to monkeys outweighs any benefits that may come out of such research - a view dismissed by the medical establishment.
Professor Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, which co-published the pamphlet, Primates in Medical Research, with the MRC, said that primates are rarely and only reluctantly used in medical research. Of the 2.7 million animals used in medical research each year in Britain, just 0.1 per cent are primates, mostly marmosets and macaques, and the vast majority are rats and mice.
Professor Tipu Aziz, a consultant neurosurgeon at Oxford University, said that the limited number of experiments on primates have nevertheless been critical for medicine. "I have been using primates for the last 16 years because of my long interest in Parkinson's disease," Professor Aziz said. "These are patients that cannot move, trapped inside a trembling body."
He said primates had proved crucial in the development of treatments for Parkinson's and that they may even one day provide the key to the repair of the human brain. "I use primates, I have always used primates and have no qualms about it," Professor Aziz added.
Professor Roger Lemon, director of the UCL Institute of Neurology in London, said that primate research has produced critical breakthroughs for the benefit of patients with devastating illnesses. "I do not think there is any difficulty in experimenting where non-human primates are needed and will continue to be needed to study models of debilitating diseases ... Primate models are only used when animals such as rats and mice cannot be used," he said.
A divisive issue
For: Colin Blakemore, chief executive, Medical Research Council
"Research on monkeys is, quite rightly, a particularly sensitive issue. That is why the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, the two biggest funders of medical research in this country, have published an open account of how and why monkeys are used in some of their research. They are used only when no other species and no alternative approach can provide the answers to questions about such conditions as Alzheimer's, stroke, Parkinson's, spinal injury, hormone disorders, and vaccines for HIV. Research on great apes is banned in the UK and campaigners are calling for this ban to be extended to monkeys. But there had been no research on great apes for many years. In the case of monkeys, the loss to medical progress would be enormous."
Against: Dr Gill Langley, scientific consultant to the BUAV
"Primates have been subjected to research for decades, but today science itself demonstrates why this simply can't continue. Any suggestion that great apes could be used again in this country flies in the face of compelling evidence of their mental and emotional capacities, behavioural needs and ability to suffer. Primates suffer from confinement, isolation and experimentation beyond anything previously realised. The stress they experience damages the very systems scientists hope to study. The US Food and Drug Administration now acknowledges that of all the drugs which pass tests on animals, including primates, 92 per cent will never reach the market, mainly because of safety or efficacy problems. This is an appalling indictment of 21st-century science."
The ban on using chimpanzees and other great apes in scientific experiments should be relaxed in a global health emergency, the head of the Medical Research Council (MRC) has said.
Colin Blakemore, an outspoken advocate of animal experiments, said that the existing ban on great apes makes no moral sense because it degrades the clear boundary between humans and animals.
Professor Blakemore, a distinguished brain scientist at Oxford University, said that he is opposed in principle to the ban on experiments with great apes, although he sees no immediate need to lift it. "I'm not entirely comfortable with the decision absolutely to ban the use of great apes," Dr Blakemore said at the launch of an MRC pamphlet explaining the benefits of primate research yesterday.
"I can see no current necessity for the use of great apes, and I'm pleased that they're not being used and that every effort is being made to reduce the use of other primates. But I worry about the principle of where the moral boundaries lie. There is only one very secure definition that can be made, and that is between our species and others," Professor Blakemore said.
Great apes - but not monkeys - were banned from medical research in Britain in 1998, although medical experiments on chimps have continued at research facilities in the United States, Japan and the Netherlands.
Professor Blakemore said that under certain circumstances, such as the emergence of a lethal pandemic virus that only affected the great apes, including man, then experiments on chimps, orang-utans and even gorillas may become necessary.
But the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), which is launching its own report into experiments on primates, said that Professor Blakemore's stance is backward-looking. "The Government was absolutely right in 1998 to recognise that no great ape should ever be subjected to confinement in a laboratory and experimentation: nothing will change that," said Alistair Currie, BUAV's campaigns director.
"What makes it wrong to experiment on people is what makes it wrong to experiment on apes - they have needs too, much like ours, and suffer too, much like us, to ever be used as tools," he added.
Decades of research on Aids vaccines have used chimps and other primates, yet these experiments have not produced an effective form of vaccination for Aids, Mr Currie argued.
"If some hypothetical virus threatened half the population, half the population would almost certainly be dead before chimp research produced the answer. The MRC, of all people, should be investing in research that works, not trying to turn back the clock."
The BUAV is calling for a ban on all primate research, arguing that there is no biological rationale for morally discriminating between humans and all other primates. The organisation said that the pain and distress caused to monkeys outweighs any benefits that may come out of such research - a view dismissed by the medical establishment.
Professor Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, which co-published the pamphlet, Primates in Medical Research, with the MRC, said that primates are rarely and only reluctantly used in medical research. Of the 2.7 million animals used in medical research each year in Britain, just 0.1 per cent are primates, mostly marmosets and macaques, and the vast majority are rats and mice.
Professor Tipu Aziz, a consultant neurosurgeon at Oxford University, said that the limited number of experiments on primates have nevertheless been critical for medicine. "I have been using primates for the last 16 years because of my long interest in Parkinson's disease," Professor Aziz said. "These are patients that cannot move, trapped inside a trembling body."
He said primates had proved crucial in the development of treatments for Parkinson's and that they may even one day provide the key to the repair of the human brain. "I use primates, I have always used primates and have no qualms about it," Professor Aziz added.
Professor Roger Lemon, director of the UCL Institute of Neurology in London, said that primate research has produced critical breakthroughs for the benefit of patients with devastating illnesses. "I do not think there is any difficulty in experimenting where non-human primates are needed and will continue to be needed to study models of debilitating diseases ... Primate models are only used when animals such as rats and mice cannot be used," he said.
A divisive issue
For: Colin Blakemore, chief executive, Medical Research Council
"Research on monkeys is, quite rightly, a particularly sensitive issue. That is why the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, the two biggest funders of medical research in this country, have published an open account of how and why monkeys are used in some of their research. They are used only when no other species and no alternative approach can provide the answers to questions about such conditions as Alzheimer's, stroke, Parkinson's, spinal injury, hormone disorders, and vaccines for HIV. Research on great apes is banned in the UK and campaigners are calling for this ban to be extended to monkeys. But there had been no research on great apes for many years. In the case of monkeys, the loss to medical progress would be enormous."
Against: Dr Gill Langley, scientific consultant to the BUAV
"Primates have been subjected to research for decades, but today science itself demonstrates why this simply can't continue. Any suggestion that great apes could be used again in this country flies in the face of compelling evidence of their mental and emotional capacities, behavioural needs and ability to suffer. Primates suffer from confinement, isolation and experimentation beyond anything previously realised. The stress they experience damages the very systems scientists hope to study. The US Food and Drug Administration now acknowledges that of all the drugs which pass tests on animals, including primates, 92 per cent will never reach the market, mainly because of safety or efficacy problems. This is an appalling indictment of 21st-century science."

Why the dog?

2006-06-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

TAVARES, Fla. - A couple tried to hire a hit man to kill their three grandchildren and daughter-in-law to stop them from testifying against their son in his rape trial, authorities said.
The couple, ages 60 and 59, were charged with four counts each of criminal conspiracy to commit murder. They were being held without bond.
Police said they initially offered $100 to an undercover sheriff's deputy to kill their son's wife, their 10-year-old granddaughter, two step-grandchildren, ages 14 and 16, and the family dog. More money was promised after the killings, said Lake County sheriff's Sgt. Christie Mysinger

Why would the guy want his dog killed?

going the way of tabacco

2006-05-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO - McDonald's Corp. CEO Jim Skinner told shareholders Thursday not to believe the recent surge of "fiction" maligning fast food and pledged that the company will be more aggressive and creative in setting the record straight.
Skinner's comments at the fast-food chain's annual meeting were the strongest evidence yet of its initiative to counter negative publicity from a new children's book and soon-to-be-released movie, both associated with the 2001 book "Fast Food Nation."
"These days, big equals bad," he said at the meeting at McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill. "And fiction somehow has become more compelling than fact. You have every reason to be proud of your company, our values and our social responsibility record."
Skinner said McDonald's is a leader in food safety and quality, toy safety, employment opportunity, training and development, charitable giving, animal welfare and the environment.
"Fictitious information irresponsibly published and reported in the media has people questioning the quality and safety of fast food in general," he said. "But at McDonald's, we work closely with our suppliers to develop and implement the highest standards, and have for over 50 years."
Concerns about the nutritional content of fast food have risen in recent years along with obesity rates among both children and adults. McDonald's has responded to complaints by consumer advocates to make its food healthier by offering more salads and fruit items and other menu options.
But that pressure has stepped up in 2006 with the publication of "Chew On This," co-written by "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser, and publicity about the upcoming film version of "Fast Food Nation." The book adds to criticism of the fast-food industry for its perceived role in increased obesity and views McDonald's and the industry harshly on the issues of food safety and employment security, among others.
The company said last month it would "ramp up" promotion of its healthier menu choices in response to the new book, taking a more active tack than it did following the 2004 documentary, "Super Size Me," which skewered the fast food business.
"We are committed to taking action that will most impact consumer perception and trust. And we will be more aggressive and creative in setting the record straight," said Skinner, who then showed a company podcast touting it as a leader in food quality safety.
A farmworker and a human rights activist assailed the company at the meeting for running a public relations campaign instead of addressing what they called a human rights crisis in the tomato fields of Florida.
"The workers who pick the tomatoes that go on McDonald's sandwiches and salads work under conditions that can only be described as sweatshops — poverty wages, no overtime pay, no right to organize and no benefits," said Lucas Benitez, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in southwest Florida.
Skinner responded that McDonald's has worked closely with its suppliers to maintain the highest standards for its workers and will continue to do so.
Shareholders voted in favor of a resolution urging the McDonald's board of directors to seek shareholder approval of any severance agreements with senior executives that would reward them with sums triple or more the combined size of their base pay plus bonus — payments widely known as "golden parachutes." Chairman Andrew McKenna said the board would consider the recommendation.
The shareholders rejected a resolution asking McDonald's to identify and label all genetically engineered ingredients in its products.
McDonald's shares rose 31 cents to close at $33.26 on the
New York Stock Exchange' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> New York Stock Exchange. They are down 1.4 percent in 2006.

Medical stuff

2006-05-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A new study suggests that people preparing for surgery ask their doctor: "Have you played your video games today?"
Surgeons who warmed up by playing video games like "Super Monkey Ball" for 20 minutes immediately prior to performing surgical drills were faster and made fewer errors than those who did not, said Dr. James "Butch" Rosser, lead investigator on the study slated for release on Wednesday.
The research involved 303 surgeons participating in a medical training course that included video games and was focussed on laparoscopic surgical procedures -- which use a tiny video camera and long, slender instruments inserted through small incisions. The study was conducted by Beth
Israel' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Israel Medical Centre in New York City in conjunction with the National Institute on Media and the Family.
Doctors were measured on their performance of the "cobra rope" drill, a standard laparoscopic training exercise used to teach how to sew up an internal wound.
Researchers found that surgeons who played video games immediately before the drill completed it an average of 11 seconds faster than those who did not. Any errors committed during the training lengthened the time it took to complete the task -- indicating that faster finishers made fewer mistakes.
The results supported findings from a small study conducted by Rosser in 2003, which showed that doctors who grew up playing video games tended to be more efficient and less error-prone in laparoscopic training drills. That earlier study suggested that playing video games sharpened eye-hand coordination, reaction time and visual skills.
Laparoscopic surgical procedures can be used on organs such as the gall bladder, uterus or the colon.
Rosser, director of the Advanced Medical Technology Institute at Beth Israel, compares performing laparoscopic surgery to "trying to tie your shoe laces with three-foot-long chopsticks while watching on a TV screen."
The 51-year-old surgeon, who said he has been playing video games since the now-primitive looking "Pong" tennis game was the rage in the 1970s, developed the Top Gun Laparoscopic Surgery Skill and Suturing Programme used in the study.
Rosser said he has collected data on 5,000 doctors who have used the training programme since its 1991 debut.
His ultimate goal is to clamp down on medical errors that are estimated to contribute to 100,000 deaths each year in the United States by giving surgeons training tools akin to flight simulators used by pilots.
"We can't practice on patients," he said.

Saved here for work

Not what you know but who you know?

2006-05-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

By PARAS D. BHAYANI
Crimson Staff Writer
A 26-year-old college dropout who carries President Bush’s breath mints and makes him peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches will follow in his boss’s footsteps this fall when he enrolls at Harvard Business School (HBS). Though it is rare for HBS—or any other professional or graduate school—to admit a student who does not have an undergraduate degree, admissions officers made an exception for Blake Gottesman, who for four years has served as special assistant and personal aide to Bush. Gottesman, a Texas native who attended Claremont-McKenna College in California for one year, has long had ties to the Bush family. He dated the president’s daughter, Jenna Bush, nearly ten years ago when he attended St. Andrew’s Episcopal School of Austin. After completing his freshman year at Claremont in 1999, he left to join the Bush presidential campaign and later served as a junior aide to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. In February 2002, he became the president’s personal assistant.

I don't really have problem with this, in fact I thinnk it shows that sometimes the best carreer move is doing something, rather than sitting in school talking about doing something.

Less is more?

2006-05-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

By Becky Ham
Science

We’ve all seen the popular cartoon of evolution’s march from an ancient sea, beginning with a single floating cell that morphs into increasingly complicated creatures, on the way to the punch line of Weekend Man slumped in his armchair.
It’s just a joke, but the idea that life starts simple and gets more complex over time persists even in scientific circles. Yet one of the biggest events in evolutionary history — the origin of the cells that make up every tissue in our bodies — may be a case of life getting less complicated, according to recent research.
These types of cells are called eukaryotes, and they're found in organisms from fungi to humans. They look like the souped-up versions of simpler cells such as bacteria and their distant cousins called archaea. Many researchers think eukaryotes are the descendants of either bacteria or archaea, or some combination of the two. But genetic and protein evidence do not support this view, researchers report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.
Instead, the data suggest that eukaryote cells with all their bells and whistles are probably as ancient as bacteria and archaea, and may have even appeared first, with bacteria and archaea appearing later as stripped-down versions of eukaryotes, according to David Penny, a molecular biologist at Massey University in New Zealand.
Penny, who worked on the research with Chuck Kurland of Sweden's Lund University and Massey University's L.J. Collins, acknowledged that the results might come as a surprise.
“We do think there is a tendency to look at evolution as progressive,” he said. “We prefer to think of evolution as backwards, sideways, and occasionally forward.”
Failure of fusionThe landscape inside a bacteria cell is pretty sparse, consisting mostly of free-floating genetic material. By contrast, the inside of a eukaryote cell is a bustling metropolis, crowded with a variety of protein factories, control rooms, transportation routes and a central bundle called the nucleus that contains the cell’s genetic information. Eukaryote cells also have a unique set of genes and proteins.
If the first eukaryotes were a fusion of ancient bacteria and archaea, as some scientists suspect, there should be clues in the eukaryote genome and proteome that point back toward these putative ancestors. Penny and colleagues say those clues simply aren’t there. Instead, the say the fusion theory is “surprisingly uninformative” when it comes explaining the special genetic and cellular features of eukaryotes. Most of the proteins that eukaryotes and bacteria share, for instance, are only distantly related and probably came from the common ancestor of both bacteria and eukaryotes.
Some researchers think the fusion of simple bacterial cells may have created the compartments and tiny organlike structures that fill the insides of eukaryote cells. But Penny and colleagues say another phenomenon called “molecular crowding” could also explain the unique architecture of eukaryotes. When cells become crammed with proteins in a concentration so thick “it’s almost like jelly,” Penny says, it becomes hard for the proteins to move and work together. To avoid this problem, “working groups” of proteins sort themselves into separate compartments.
“Because protein diffusion is so restricted under such high concentrations, it is really essential, especially in large cells, to have proteins together that function together,” Penny says.
Fully loaded, or priced to move?If eukaryotes didn’t originate with bacteria and archaea, is it possible that the simple cell organisms are just stripped-down versions of eukaryotes? Although the idea seems contrary to our cherished notion that evolution makes organisms more complex, Penny and colleagues say it’s possible.
Think of it as the new car dilemma: Do you spring for the fully loaded model, complete with sunroof, satellite radio and side airbags? Or do you opt for the basic model, with less features but a lower cost? Bacteria and archaea may be the “priced to move” models of eukaryotes, cells that opted out of the costly cellular gadgetry and large genomes of eukaryotes. Without these expensive extras, early bacteria could have turned their energies toward growing and reproducing faster using fewer resources — making it easier to advance into new ecological niches, Penny and colleagues say.
Bacterial ancestors may have been forced into simpler lives by the appearance of the first cell to feed on other cells, an ancestral predatory eukaryote that Penny and colleagues have dubbed “Fred the Raptor.” Fred’s debut “would have had a major ecological impact on the evolution of gentler descendants of the Common Ancestor,” the Science researchers suggest.
If early bacteria did take the road toward greater simplicity, they would be in good company. Scientists have identified several cases of genome reduction in organisms as diverse as the malaria parasite and bakers’ yeast, Penny says.
The numerous examples “illustrate the Darwinian view of evolution as a reversible process in the sense that ‘eyes can be acquired and eyes can be lost.’ Genome evolution is a two-way street,” Kurland says.

Saw this on Boston legal, guess it is true.

2006-05-19T06:27:00.000-07:00

Department of Neurobiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710, USA. deaner@neuro.duke.edu
Individuals value information that improves decision making. When social interactions complicate the decision process, acquiring information about others should be particularly valuable. In primate societies, kinship, dominance, and reproductive status regulate social interactions and should therefore systematically influence the value of social information, but this has never been demonstrated. Here, we show that monkeys differentially value the opportunity to acquire visual information about particular classes of social images. Male rhesus macaques sacrificed fluid for the opportunity to view female perinea and the faces of high-status monkeys but required fluid overpayment to view the faces of low-status monkeys. Social value was highly consistent across subjects, independent of particular images displayed, and only partially predictive of how long subjects chose to view each image. These data demonstrate that visual orienting decisions reflect the specific social content of visual information and provide the first experimental evidence that monkeys spontaneously discriminate images of others based on social status.

Thought for the day

2006-05-15T12:47:00.000-07:00

“Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all.” –Daniel C. Dennett, Philosopher

Good news if you reading this at work

2006-04-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

April 24, 2006, 8:13AMJudge: Web-Surfing Worker Can't Be Fired
© 2006 The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Saying surfing the web is equivalent to reading a newspaper or talking on the phone, an administrative law judge has suggested that only a reprimand is appropriate as punishment for a city worker accused of failing to heed warnings to stay off the Internet.
Administrative Law Judge John Spooner reached his decision in the case of Toquir Choudhri, a 14-year veteran of the Department of Education who had been accused of ignoring supervisors who told him to stop browsing the Internet at work.

The ruling came after Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired a worker in the city's legislative office in Albany earlier this year after he saw the man playing a game of solitaire on his computer.
In his decision, Spooner wrote: "It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work."
He added: "For this reason, city agencies permit workers to use a telephone for personal calls, so long as this does not interfere with their overall work performance. Many agencies apply the same standard to the use of the Internet for personal purposes."
Spooner dispensed the lightest possible punishment on Choudhri, a reprimand, after a search of Choudhri's computer files revealed he had visited several news and travel sites.
Martin Druyan, Choudhri's lawyer, called the ruling "very reasonable."

What went wrong in the life of Natalee Holloway?

2006-04-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

Now that the Natalee Holloway investigation seems to be going somewhere it might be a good time to talk about the role her parents played in her demise. On the surface Natalee Holloway seemed to have everything. She lived in a nice house, and had a bright fuure. Beth Twitty the victims mother has done everything possible to see that three young men are convicted of the crime, even though now it appears they may be innocent of any wrong doing. Beth Twitty wanted to hide her daughters involvement with drugs, so she seems to have intentionally steered Aruban authorities away from a suspected drug dealer that may in fact be the culprit. Why? Beth Twitty may have spent much of her daughters life steering people away from the truth about her daughter. When Natalee Holloway dissapeared Beth Twitty repeated that her daughter was an honor student, that claim has since been debunked. Almost everything that Beth Twitty has said about her daughter has been an exageration or outright lie. Why?

At first her mom probably did not believe that her daughter(Natalee Holloway) would be involved with drugs and a drug dealer, but at some point she had to figure it out, so why did she keep pretending that her daughter pure as the driven snow. Was it intentional? Natalees absentee father, father, Dave Holloway, probably kept up the charade to sell books and get a certain measure of fame. Plus, he does not seem to bright and had very little contact with his daughter so I doubt he cared or knew what was going on.

The mom is different, she should have known about some of the alcohol usage and at some point started to suspect drug usage. She should have at least wanted the person or persons responsible for her daughters dissapearance to be caught or at the very least wanted to know what happened to her daughter. But in the end she has spent her time trying to covict the wrong people and her main priority has been to keep her daughters reputation, and perhaps her own intact. Also, their seems to be a stubborn refusal to admit that she may have been wrong. Something this important most peple would admit they made a mistake, but Beth Twitty would rather be "right" than ever see this case solved. This may be a level of selfisheness that most of us cannot even comprehend, but seems to be a way of life for the the family of Natalee Holloway. Is the mom in such a state of denial that she really never understood what was going on with her child? Or, did she intentionally try to hide the facts?

Hopefully people will consider these questions when they ask themselves what went wrong in the life of Natalee Holloway.

Maybe this guy misses the point

2006-03-04T07:21:00.000-08:00

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer Fri Mar 3, 8:01 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Spring break approaches and the State Department is telling students to be on their toes.
Vacations can be ruined by drugs, alcohol, disorderly behavior and preventable accidents, the department said Friday in a statement designed to enhance safety and a good vacation.

I thought most people went for the alcohol

"Most will have a safe and enjoyable adventure," the statement said. "But for some the trip will become a nightmare."
Among unforeseen disasters, the bureau of consular affairs advised vacationing students to be wary of underage drinking, drunk driving and disorderly conduct.
"In many countries, conduct that would not result in an arrest in the United States may constitute a violation of local law," the statement said.
Don't think Americans are immune from prosecution, the department says. "The truth is that Americans are expected to obey all of the laws of the countries they visit, and those who break these laws could face severe penalties, including prison sentences."
And that is just the beginning of the things to worry about, as outlined by the State Department.
There is injury or even death from automobile accidents, drownings and falls. Americans have been sexually assaulted or robbed when they found themselves in unfamiliar locations or used bad judgment, the department said.
Beyond that, the warning said, many young people have died after falls from balconies or into open ditches, drowning in oceans or hotel pools.
"It is possible to have a safe and fun trip if risky behavior is avoided and familiarity is attained with the basic laws and customs of the country," the statement concluded on a slightly upbeat note.

The main reason for going to Mexico or the Caribean over spring break is so you can do the things , specificaly drinking and going to clubs that you cannot do in the US. As long as the drinking age is under 21 in the US college students will go south of the border for spring break.

Real news is boring

2006-03-04T06:59:00.000-08:00

From the LA times:

We verge these days on becoming a trivial people.

I think we are already there.

In a talk to a college audience in Oregon this week, former CNN anchor Aaron Brown mused that cable news has proceeded from promise to decadence because "it is only giving consumers what they want." According to the Ashland Mail Tribune's account of his remarks, Brown said that "CNN spent a fortune covering the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. After two weeks, ratings fell to normal levels. The Fox news channel channeled their dollars into a story about American teenager Natalee Holloway disappearing in Aruba. Fox, of course, cleaned up in ratings and revenue."

Cable news gives the people what they want, and they seem to want simple good vs evil stories, all the better if it involves an attractive women. Maybe it is a byproduct of the soundbite culture we live in, or maybe people do not have the patience for complex stories. The end result does seem to be many people who focus on the trivial.

Maybe rantings in a blog do matter

2006-03-02T22:03:00.000-08:00

By Steven LevingstonWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, March 3, 2006; Page A01
ConAgra Foods Inc. got an early warning from chatter on the Internet that the low-carb craze was fading. The huge food company seized the chance to promote an alternative menu, its Healthy Choice soups, entrees and lunch meats.
"By utilizing online message boards you pick up nuances in the marketplace -- customer statements, thoughts -- that enable us to distinguish whether something is a trend that has long-term impact or a fad that will be short-lived," said Nick Mysore, director for strategy and insights at ConAgra, which also produces Butterball turkeys, Chef Boyardee ravioli, Rosarita refried beans and scores of other products.
ConAgra Foods Inc. got an early warning from chatter on the Internet that the low-carb craze was fading. The huge food company seized the chance to promote an alternative menu, its Healthy Choice soups, entrees and lunch meats.'Who's Blogging?
Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
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For companies like ConAgra, the individual opinions blasted out in cyberspace are becoming an increasingly powerful force. Together, they form the fabric of online word of mouth that can determine the hottest new product, make or break a TV show, or set off a customer revolt. Eager to tap into the buzz, a growing number of companies are turning to sophisticated new technologies that track what's said on Internet social networks, blogs, message boards, product review sites, "listservs" -- wherever people congregate publicly online.
The comments are particularly valuable for measuring customer sentiment because they're gut-level and spontaneous. "Internet word of mouth is extremely important," said Steve Rubel, a marketing expert and senior vice president at Edelman public relations. "You see what the most vocal consumers have to say about you and about your competitors -- and they're saying it without necessarily knowing you're watching them."
Following online conversations is the latest attempt by companies to grapple with the growing clout of their customers. Empowered by the Internet, consumers can broadly express their skepticism of brand icons, demand the lowest prices and mobilize for action. In recent years, many companies have tried to influence consumers by generating their own favorable word of mouth. But measuring sentiment expressed in cyberspace -- whether provoked or not -- has always been difficult. The high-powered new technologies aim to fill in the missing pieces by searching, tabulating and assessing Internet postings.
To capture the chatter, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a giant in the industry, uses software that collects hundreds of thousands of comments a day. The technology can scan for specific companies, products, brands, people -- anything searchable. It can slice data into a range of categories to quantify the number of times a subject was discussed online, the individuals who mentioned it and the communities where it appeared.
The company, formed last week by the merger of BuzzMetrics and Intelliseek, also can assess the tone of opinions by analyzing writing style and even individual words used. For example, if a blogger is discussing a new sport-utility vehicle and says he loves it but isn't pleased with how it handles, the software is clever enough to score the posting as an overall positive with a negative on the handling.
By trawling in cyberspace, ConAgra sensed that consumer interest in portable snack foods is growing as people's schedules get busier, the kind of intelligence that helps guide expensive decisions on research and development of new products. Spurred in part by remarks floating around the Internet, Mysore said, ConAgra is exploring possible new snack foods, which it won't discuss for competitive reasons.
As a food company that uses lots of chicken, ConAgra also scours the chatter online to understand customer perceptions and fears of avian flu and better plan its response should it hit North America.
"What kind of thought processes are consumers going through?" Mysore said. "As an organization, we are able to leverage that information to strategically create marketing programs to address that issue."
Companies that track online word of mouth emphasize that it is only one of many tools they use to assess consumer sentiment. Focus groups, surveys and other offline research complement information gleaned from cyberspace.
"If I were a company, I wouldn't necessarily make any enormous decisions based just on what people are saying on blogs or messages boards, but it certainly can help point you in the right direction," said Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
Hewlett-Packard, the computer and technology company, lately has picked up from cyberspace that customers really hate leaving their computers at shops for repairs; far better, the company learned, is having technicians repair the machines in homes. "What that makes us do is that when we think about investing more in that area, we say, yes, it's positive to do that," said Rickey Ono, business strategy manager for HP. "We drill into the individual comments and it helps to justify our expenditure on in-home repair."
Even NBC's weak Olympics ratings were partly foreshadowed by chatter in the blogosphere. A sweep of postings shows that conversations about the Olympics peaked around the time of the opening ceremonies then fell off precipitously to just above the low hum weeks before the Games began, according to an analysis prepared for The Washington Post by BuzzMetrics. The survey, which measured the quantity -- not the tone of the statements -- also found that bloggers posted their thoughts about the hugely popular Fox TV show "American Idol" with just about as much frequency as they did about the Olympics.
Specific comments online offer a deeper glimpse into why viewers may have stayed away from NBC's coverage. "I hate the Olympics," said one blogger called TinaPoPo. "The Olympics are so boring and they disrupt my regular TV-watching schedule. So I hate them."
Another touched on NBC's competitive troubles. The Olympics faced off not only against ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" but also the latest installments of "American Idol." "Why am I posting about the Olympics anyway?" wrote a blogger called Todd-tastic. "American Idol is on tonight." NBC's ratings were sharply lower than those of the last overseas Olympics.
Even a sports fanatic like Jill Manty, who ran an Olympics blog, had divided loyalties. She told her readers during the first week that she would skip NBC's coverage and instead tune in to "American Idol." Her voice was just one in the nonstop conversation across the Internet, where millions of blogs compete for attention. But in the banter that forms Internet word of mouth, her lone opinion reverberates.
"It surprises me that it is possible to create something that can have that much impact on how people view what's going on in society," Manty said of her blog.

It is nice to know that someone is paying attention to the comments that get posted in blogs

Lose gracefully, please

2006-03-01T14:49:00.000-08:00

FRISCO, Texas (AP) - Mike Modano, maligned for blasting USA Hockey after a disappointing finish at the Turin Games, has at least one supporter in Olympic and Dallas Stars teammate Bill Guerin.
Modano was widely criticized for speaking out after the U.S. lost to Finland and finished 1-4-1 in the Olympics. He said USA Hockey failed to take care of travel and accreditation needs of players' families, suggesting that the administration could use some "new blood."
"He stuck his neck out there and said something uncomfortable for him to say and definitely uncomfortable for people to hear," Guerin said Tuesday. "In the end, Mike spoke the truth. We had to deal with a lot of other issues along with worrying about the game."

Other teams had to deal with the same issues and they still played hockey. It doesn't bother me that the US did poorly in the winter olympics but the excuses afterwards are pathetic.

Stupid or evil

2006-03-01T08:01:00.000-08:00

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Lionel Tate pleaded guilty Wednesday to the armed robbery of a pizza delivery man last spring, which could net him up to 30 years in prison but spare him a possible life sentence for violating probation in the 1999 killing of a young girl.
Tate, once the youngest person in modern U.S. history to receive a life prison sentence, said “Yes, sir” when Broward County Circuit Judge Joel T. Lazarus asked him if he would plead guilty to the robbery. Lazarus scheduled sentencing for April 3, and said Tate could receive between 10 and 30 years in prison.
Tate also admitted that he had violated probation by possessing a gun during the robbery last May, and that he violated laws by doing so. Lazarus said that any sentence he imposes for those violations would run concurrently with the robbery sentence.
The guilty plea is the latest twist in the long-running case of Tate, who was convicted of killing 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick when he was only 12.
Tate, now 19, did not have to be convicted of the robbery for Lazarus to decide he must go to prison, but the guilty plea settles that matter.
Pro-wrestling movesTate came to national attention after Eunick’s murder at his mother’s home. The boy’s lawyers initially claimed that girl, who suffered skull fractures and a lacerate liver, was accidentally killed when Tate imitated pro wrestling moves he’d seen on television.
He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in 2001, but an appeals court in 2004 tossed out the conviction and sentence after ruling that it wasn’t clear Tate understood what was happening to him. He then pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as part of a deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to 10 years’ probation.
Lazarus added five more years to the probation term after Tate was arrested in September 2004 for carrying a knife with a four-inch blade. The judge warned Tate then that he had “zero tolerance” for future violations.

When this guy was 12 years-old I thought he deserved a second chance, but now it seems like maybe a life sentence was the best thing to do with him. Part of the issue with Lionel Tate is that he is borderline retarded but he is clearly a danger to others, makes me wonder what kind of home enviroment he had. Somewhere things got very screwed up with this kid.

Key to happiness

2006-02-28T20:10:00.000-08:00

Robin LloydSpecial to LiveScienceLiveScience.com Tue Feb 28, 11:02 AM ET
"It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don't make it." —Author and researcher Gregg Easterbrook
Psychologists have recently handed the keys to happiness to the public, but many people cling to gloomy ways out of habit, experts say.
Polls show Americans are no happier today than they were 50 years ago despite significant increases in prosperity, decreases in crime, cleaner air, larger living quarters and a better overall quality of life.
So what gives?
Happiness is 50 percent genetic, says University of Minnesota researcher David Lykken. What you do with the other half of the challenge depends largely on determination, psychologists agree. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be."
What works, and what doesn't
Happiness does not come via prescription drugs, although 10 percent of women 18 and older and 4 percent of men take antidepressants, according to the
Department of Health and Human Services' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Department of Health and Human Services. Anti-depressants benefit those with mental illness but are no happiness guarantee, researchers say.
Nor will money or prosperity buy happiness for many of us. Money that lifts people out of poverty increases happiness, but after that, the better paychecks stop paying off sense-of-well-being dividends, research shows.
One route to more happiness is called "flow," an engrossing state that comes during creative or playful activity, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has found. Athletes, musicians, writers, gamers, and religious adherents know the feeling. It comes less from what you're doing than from how you do it.
Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California at Riverside has discovered that the road toward a more satisfying and meaningful life involves a recipe repeated in schools, churches and synagogues. Make lists of things for which you're grateful in your life, practice random acts of kindness, forgive your enemies, notice life's small pleasures, take care of your health, practice positive thinking, and invest time and energy into friendships and family.
The happiest people have strong friendships, says Ed Diener, a psychologist University of Illinois. Interestingly his research finds that most people are slightly to moderately happy, not unhappy.
On your own
Some Americans are reluctant to make these changes and remain unmotivated even though our freedom to pursue happiness is written into the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.
Don't count on the government, for now, Easterbrook says.
Our economy lacks the robustness to sustain policy changes that would bring about more happiness, like reorienting cities to minimize commute times.
The onus is on us.
"There are selfish reasons to behave in altruistic ways," says Gregg Easterbrook, author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" (Random House, 2004).
"Research shows that people who are grateful, optimistic and forgiving have better experiences with their lives, more happiness, fewer strokes, and higher incomes," according to Easterbrook. "If it makes world a better place at same time, this is a real bonus."
Diener has collected specific details on this. People who positively evaluate their well-being on average have stronger immune systems, are better citizens at work, earn more income, have better marriages, are more sociable, and cope better with difficulties.
Unhappy by default
Lethargy holds many people back from doing the things that lead to happiness.
Easterbrook, also a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institute, goes back to Freud, who theorized that unhappiness is a default condition because it takes less effort to be unhappy than to be happy.
"If you are looking for something to complain about, you are absolutely certain to find it," Easterbrook told LiveScience. "It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don't make it. Most people take the path of least resistance. Far too many people today don't make the steps to make their life more fulfilling one."

Poll numbers

2006-02-28T17:21:00.000-08:00

(CBS) The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high. Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement. CBS News senior White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that now it turns out the Coast Guard had concerns about the ports deal, a disclosure that is no doubt troubling to a president who assured Americans there was no security risk from the deal. The troubling results for the Bush administration come amid reminders about the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina and negative assessments of how the government and the president have handled it for six months. In a separate poll, two out of three Americans said they do not think President Bush has responded adequately to the needs of Katrina victims. Only 32 percent approve of the way President Bush is responding to those needs, a drop of 12 points from last September’s poll, taken just two weeks after the storm made landfall.
Mr. Bush's overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job the president is doing. For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall. Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low. By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq. Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve. In a bright spot for the administration, most Americans appeared to have heard enough about Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident. More then three in four said it was understandable that the accident had occurred and two-thirds said the media had spent too much time covering the story. Still, the incident appears to have made the public's already negative view of Cheney a more so. Just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president, down from 23 percent in January. Americans were evenly split on whether or not Cheney's explanation of why there was a delay in reporting the accident was satisfactory.

18 percent for Cheney, that has to be some sort of record.

Have fun and lose, or just lose

2006-02-28T14:55:00.000-08:00

SQUAW VALLEY, Calif. - Daron Rahlves isn't surprised by the comments or behavior of Olympic teammate Bode Miller.
Rahlves said Miller spends much of his time partying and "trying to look for girls."
"For him to go out and party, that's nothing new. He does that all the time," Rahlves told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
"He doesn't just do it at the Olympics, he does it all year."
Rahlves said he wasn't bothered by personal criticism from Miller, who poked fun at his fellow U.S. Ski Team member for taking the Olympics too seriously.
"It's been an awesome two weeks," Miller told The Associated Press last week. "I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level."
"Look at what happened to Rahlves," Miller said. "He was holed up in his RV; he's probably the fittest guy out here, and he made a point of talking about how important the Olympics were to him ... And he's got nothing to show for the whole thing."
The 32-year old Rahlves, of Truckee, Calif., was the favorite in the downhill but finished 10th and also failed to medal in his other two events. Miller didn't medal, either.
"You live the way you want to live your life, and I don't want to go out late and stay out late all night," said Rahlves, who finished third Sunday at the Professional Skiing and Snowboarding World Championships at Squaw Valley USA. "I've got a wife I want to hang out with.
"I have way more than Bode has as far as a life, I think. He just goes around trying to look for girls all the time. That's his biggest thing."
Rahlves said he was disappointed in his showing at the Olympics.
"It's one of those things. I didn't pull it off. But I can walk away saying I gave it my best shot."

Sports should be about having fun and enjoying yourself, at least I think that is the point Miller is trying to make, maybe Rahlves should lighten up.

First post

2006-02-26T14:20:00.000-08:00

First post