News
New York Times
“Banning fast food advertisements from children’s television programs would reduce the number of overweight children in the U.S. by 18 percent and decrease the number of overweight teens by 14 percent, economists have estimated in a new study.
“The researchers used several statistical models to link obesity rates to the amount of time spent […]

News
Thanks to National Public Radio, the below report describes precisely how Big Tobacco keeps on smokin’ even though everyone figured they were finished when the famous lawsuit was settled, which passed on money to states to pursue anti-smoking efforts.
Never, ever, never, ever assume that anyone will outfox, outwit, out-market or in any way finish them […]

News
If more patients can be diagnosed sooner when they begin to suffer memory impairment, the better their care and quality of life can be.
This is a relatively simple test compared to the one now in use. In this study, diagnosis was accurate 83% of the time.
Families start worrying, sometimes needlessly, about memory loss. A faster, […]

News
New York Times
“The health insurance industry said Wednesday that it would support a health care overhaul requiring insurers to accept all customers, regardless of illness or disability. But in return, the industry said, Congress should require all Americans to have coverage.
“The proposals, put forward by the insurers’ two main trade associations, have the potential to […]

News
Even though doctors agree that there is a primary care shortage, primary care and specialists alike are going to limit their hours or shut their doors.
We are not going to have much health care to reform if immediate action is not taken to reduce the preventable frustrations doctors have and to work on sustainable solutions […]

News
Wall Street Journal
“Even as employers push a greater share of rising medical costs on to workers, a growing number of companies also are providing services like free check-ups, screening exams and prescription drugs that potentially can save employees hundreds of dollars a year.”
Source:  Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2008

News
New York Times
PARIS — “Physicians at four European universities have completed what they say is the first successful transplant of a human windpipe using a patient’s own stem cells to fashion an organ and prevent its rejection by her immune system, according to an article in the British medical journal The Lancet. One of the […]

News
CNN
“An extensive federal report released Monday concludes that roughly one in four of the 697,000 U.S. veterans of the 1990-91 Gulf War suffer from Gulf War illness. […]

“That illness is a condition now identified as the likely consequence of exposure to toxic chemicals, including pesticides and a drug administered to protect troops against nerve gas.

“The 452-page report states that “scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans.”

“The report, compiled by a panel of scientific experts and veterans serving on the congressionally mandated Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, fails to identify any cure for the malady.

“It also notes that few veterans afflicted with Gulf War illness have recovered over time.

“Today’s report brings to a close one of the darkest chapters in the legacy of the 1991 Gulf War,” said Anthony Hardie, a member of the committee and a member of the advocacy group Veterans of Modern Warfare.

“This is a bittersweet victory, [because] this is what Gulf War veterans have been saying all along,” Hardie said at a news conference in Washington. “Years were squandered by the federal government … trying to disprove that anything could be wrong with Gulf War veterans.”

“The committee’s report, titled “Gulf War Illness and the Health of Gulf War Veterans,” was officially presented Monday to Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peak.”

Source: CNN,  November 17, 2008

Citation Source:  Report: Gulf War Illness and the Health of Gulf War Veterans, November 17, 2008

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News/Commentary
By Cheree Cleghorn, Editor
This story is about more than a state with a relaxed view of who’s old enough to have a few cold ones.
It is a story about culture and how culture affects our health choices. No state even comes close to Wisconsin in its permissiveness about alcohol, likely, says the story, to the […]

News
Sen. Edward Kennedy’s brain tumor is a glioblastoma. This research story shows how scientists “stumbled” across information about how this particular form of brain cancer develops.
This only is the first study but it is significant in that a blood test may be able to reveal the presence of cancer before it can be seen on […]