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Video:Penicillin Soon to be Obsolete

Penicillin Soon to be Obsolete

New research suggests penicillin is becoming obsolete, and antibiotic resistance could lead to a "major health crisis" unless governments act to promote research into new drugs.

Antibiotics such as penicillin have been key to the decline of infectious diseases over the last 60 years, but bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to existing drugs.

That means many antibiotics are no longer effective at combating common diseases, and a lack of research into new drugs means there is a dire shortage of alternatives, according to the report by London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Elias Mossialos, professor of health policy at LSE, led the research and has called for governments to do more to tackle the problem.

He told CNN that penicillin is becoming obsolete in some developing countries, as well as in France, Spain and Romania, because of over-prescription by doctors and pharmacists. He said the emergence of "superbugs" such as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is causing the growing problem of hospital-acquired infections.

"Antibiotic resistance is a much more important situation than swine flu and it will only get worse," he said.

He said doctors are commonly misdiagnosing viral infections as bacterial infections, and then prescribing antibiotics to treat them, while in some countries pharmacists are selling antibiotics without a doctor's prescription. Excessive use of antibiotics encourages the emergence of resistant bacteria.

Dr Kathleen Holloway of the World Health Organization (WHO) told CNN that antibiotic resistance is a global problem, with diseases including childhood pneumonia, dysentery and tuberculosis (TB) no longer responding to first-line antibiotics in some parts of the world.

"We've got to a situation where there are no more drugs for certain conditions. There are some people with extreme drug-resistant TB and there are no drugs to treat them," Holloway said.

"Research and development of new antibiotics isn't keeping up with development of resistance. If we don't do something about it we'll end up with a situation where all the old drugs have resistance and we don't have any new ones."

Mossialos said the lack of development of new antibiotics is largely because antibiotics don't earn pharmaceutical companies as much as other products.

That's partly because health policy tries to restrain the use of antibiotics, to avoid building up resistance, and partly because patients only need to use antibiotics for a short duration, typically 10 to 14 days, whereas patients take drugs for chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease for the rest of their lives.

Mossialos told CNN that governments need to introduce incentives to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop new antibiotics.

His recommendations include governments developing an international fund that would invest in the early stages of antibiotic R&D, and guarantee sizeable orders for new antibiotics.

Holloway agrees governments should help stimulate the development of new antibiotics and also stresses that more investment is needed to promote more prudent use of existing drugs.

"In many countries it's not necessarily doctors who are prescribing, it's nurses, paramedical staff and unqualified staff," she said. "Governments need to invest more in providing continuing medical education and supervision for prescribers.

"If we run out of antibiotics it's not just poor people with infections who will suffer, it's rich people who won't be able to have anti-cancer therapies or routine operations that rely on antibiotics."

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Video:Gas Mask Bra Wins Award

Gas Mask Bra Wins Award


The designer of a bra that turns into two gas masks was among the winners of the 2009 Ig Nobel prizes.

The aim of the awards is to honour achievements that "first make people laugh and then make them think".

Dr Elena Bodnar won the public health prize for the bra that, in an emergency, can be converted into two gas masks.

She demonstrated her invention and gave one to each of the Nobel laureates as a gift, reports the BBC.

The only British winners were Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson who found that cows with names produce more milk.

Dr Douglas, from the agriculture, food and rural development department of Newcastle University, said she was "thrilled" to have been selected and was a "big fan of the Ig Nobel awards".

She dedicated the award to Purslane, Wendy and Tina - "the nicest cows I have ever known".

The peace prize went to a Swiss research team who determined whether it is better to be hit over the head with a full or empty bottle of beer.

The prize for economics went to the executives of four Icelandic banks.

And the governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank received the prize for mathematics for printing bank notes with such a wide range of denominations.

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Video:Study: Teens Who Own Their Cars Have More Crashes

Study: Teens Who Own Their Cars Have More Crashes

CHICAGO — Parents beware: Giving in to teens' demands for their own cars can have dangerous consequences, new research suggests.

Teenagers with their own cars or free use of one are much more likely to get in crashes than those who share a car. And crashes are much less common among teens whose parents set clear driving safety rules.

The findings are in two studies by researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and funded by State Farm Insurance Co. They were released Friday and are in the October issue of Pediatrics.

The researchers say the findings can help parents keep their kids from becoming a grim statistic: Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens, killing more than 5,000 each year.

Getting a driver's license and car are often viewed as rite of passage for U.S. teens, and many parents underestimate the risks.

More than 7,000 people nationwide were killed in crashes involving teen drivers in 2007, government data show. More than 3,000 of these deaths were teen drivers, and more than 250,000 teen drivers were injured.

"With teen drivers, you have to recognize that it's a public health issue," said Dr. Jeffrey Weiss, a Phoenix pediatrician who co-wrote an American Academy of Pediatrics report on teen drivers.

The 2006 report encourages parents to highlight the seriousness of driving privileges by requiring teens to sign driving contracts promising to abide by safety rules.

The new research shows that kind of hands-on approach pays off.

"Families need to know that driving is different" from other steps toward independence,said Dr. Flaura Koplin Winston, the study's lead author. "Just at the time their teen is pulling away, they need to get back involved to spare them heartache."

The research is based on a nationally representative survey of more than 5,500 teens in grades nine through 11. Students at 68 high schools answered questionnaires in 2006.

More than 2,000 students who reported driving on their own were the focus of one study; 70 percent said they had their own cars or were the main drivers of cars they used.

Winston said it's alarming that so many kids have their own cars or feel that they have free use of one. She said that freedom can lead to "a sense of entitlement about driving" that may make them less cautious.

Among these "main" drivers, 25 percent had been involved in crashes, versus just 10 percent of teens who shared driving access. Winston said the lower crash rate doesn't reflect less driving time, but is likely due to having to ask for the car keys, which helps parents monitor their kids' driving.

Compared with teens whose parents were uninvolved, kids who said their parents set clear rules and monitored their whereabouts without being overly controlling had half as many crashes and much better driving habits.

These teens were 71 percent less likely to drive while drunk and 30 percent less likely to use a cell phone while driving than kids with uninvolved parents.

Dr. Niranjan Karnik, a University of Chicago specialist in adolescent mental health, said the research underscores the importance of appropriate parenting and widely enacted graduated licensing laws for teens.

Debby Hendricks of Hatfield, Pa. made her daughters wait until age 17 to get their licenses, and gave them lots of driving practice beforehand.

The girls, aged 17 and 19, also share a family car, and can't "just grab the keys and leave" without saying where they're going and with whom, Hendricks said.

So far so good — neither girl has been in an accident, although the younger one, Leslie, has only had her license for a few months.

Leslie considers herself a safe driver, but adds, "I probably do underestimate the risks."

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WAIT WAIT.

GOOD PARENTING = HIGH RISK OF RESPONSIBLE KIDS?

/SHOCKED

 

Video:Woman Implanted With Other Couple's Embyro

Woman Implanted With Other Couple's Embyro

TOLEDO, Ohio (Sept. 26) - A woman who had the wrong embryo implanted by a fertility clinic has given birth to a boy, her family said Friday.

Sean and Carolyn Savage released a statement Friday night saying a "healthy baby boy," whom they plan to give up to his biological parents, was delivered Thursday at St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo. No information about the baby or the circumstances surrounding the delivery was immediately released.

The Savages, of Sylvania, outside Toledo, had said earlier this week the baby was to be born in the next two weeks via cesarean section.

In the statement, the Savages offered congratulations to the baby's biological parents, Paul and Shannon Morell, of suburban Detroit.

"At this time, we would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations to the Morell family on the birth of their son," the Savages' statement said. "We wish Paul, Shannon, their twin girls and their new baby boy the best, as they move forward with their lives together."

The Savages asked for privacy in the days ahead, saying "Our family is going through a very difficult time."

The Morell family didn't immediately respond Friday to an e-mail seeking comment.

The Savages extended thanks to people around the world for their support and prayers. They thanked medical professionals for their care and treatment throughout the pregnancy and delivery.

The Savages say a fertility clinic outside Ohio transferred the wrong frozen embryo in February. Ten days later, they got a call from a doctor at the clinic saying she was pregnant with someone else's child.

The Savages said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday they never considered terminating the pregnancy or trying to fight for custody.

They have hired attorneys who say they are working to make sure the fertility clinic accepts responsibility.

The Morells, who live in Troy, Mich., found out about the fertility clinic mistake a day after the Savages.

The two couples knew nothing about each other. Shannon Morell feared that the pregnant woman would choose abortion, ending their chance to give their 2-year-old twin girls a sibling.

A few days passed before they learned that the Savages were not only willing to continue with the pregnancy but also to hand over the baby without hesitation.

"This was someone else's child," 40-year-old Carolyn Savage told the AP on Wednesday. "We didn't know who it was. We didn't know if they didn't have children or if this was their last chance for a child."

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Video:Alcohol May Protect Brain During An Accident

Alcohol May Protect Brain During An Accident

Alcohol, a drug that is a major cause of accidents, may actually protect the brain from a life-threatening injury when an accident does occur, according to a study published this week in Archives of Surgery.

In the study of 38,000 patients with moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries who were admitted to U.S. hospitals between 2000 and 2005, 38 percent had alcohol in their blood. Such patients had a lower risk of dying of their injuries than those who hadn't been drinking.

"This study really brings up more questions than it answers," says coauthor Ali Salim, M.D., the program director of the General Surgery Residency Educational Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles. "It's a bad thing to say alcohol is good, especially since it's responsible for so many of these injuries. But our study suggests there may be some survival advantage for people with elevated [blood alcohol] levels."

Each year, about 2 million people in the U.S. experience traumatic brain injuries, and 56,000 die and 80,000 are permanently impaired as a result. Alcohol plays a role in 40 percent of car fatal crashes, and half of the patients hospitalized for trauma are intoxicated at the time of injury.

The study may help experts develop therapies for traumatic brain injuries, but it has important limitations as well, Salim says.

Patients in the study who had been drinking were younger, had less severe injuries, and spent less time on a ventilator or in an intensive care unit than other patients. (Alcohol, however, still seemed to protect the brain after taking these factors into account.) Overall, 9.7 percent of people who hadn't been drinking died after a brain injury, compared with 7.7 percent of those with alcohol in their blood.

It's not clear why alcohol might be helpful, although it could dampen the impact of catecholamines, hormones like adrenaline and dopamine that are released by the body after a traumatic injury, according to Salim. "We think [the blood alcohol] may attenuate that response," he says.

Alcohol may also help lower the body's core temperature, says David Hovda, Ph.D., a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the director of UCLA's Brain Injury Research Center. Lower body temperatures are known to slow cell death and swelling caused by severe brain injuries.

But alcohol's beneficial effect may be severely limited, says Hovda, who was not involved with the study. He notes that the results of animal studies have been mixed. Some animal research suggests that low levels of alcohol protect the brain, but the effect is lost at higher levels; others have found that alcohol lowers survival.

In the new study, researchers did not look at the amount of alcohol in the patients' blood, but they did find that alcohol was associated with a greater risk of complications, even as it seemed to lower mortality rates.

It's not clear if alcohol could be helpful if given after an accident. "Giving patients [alcohol] after a traumatic brain injury is much different than having it on board during the traumatic brain injury," Hovda says. The protective effect may only work when the injury occurs or may work later. "One would have to know the therapeutic time window and the dose."

Using alcohol as a therapy is unlikely, but understanding how it protects some people could help scientists develop new treatments for traumatic brain injuries, Salim says.

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Video:Pandas Failed to Evolve, Let Them Die Out

Pandas Failed to Evolve, Let Them Die Out

A leading conservationist has called on wildlife groups to leave giant pandas alone and let them die out "with a degree of dignity".

BBC wildlife presenter Chris Packham says it's the pandas own fault that they have not adapted to the modern environment and they are only surviving because of human intervention, the Daily Mail reports.

"Here is a species that, of its own accord, has gone down an evolutionary cul-de-sac," Packham said.

"It's not a strong species.

"I reckon we should pull the plug ... let them go, with a degree of dignity."

He said the pandas' "cute" looks and demeanor has caused valuable funding to be diverted from helping animals that have a chance of surviving without human assistance in the future.

His comments were criticized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which uses a picture of a giant panda as its logo.

WWF conservation science adviser Dr Mark Wright said the comments were "daft" because pandas have adapted to the environment.

"It's like saying the blue whale is in an evolutional cul-de-sac because it lives in the ocean," Dr Wright said.

"Pandas face extinction because of poaching and humans moving into their habitat. If left alone, then they function perfectly well."

According to the WWF, there is believed to be more than 1600 giant pandas in the wild.

The organization said the panda population currently lives in about 20 small regions in China.

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Video:Tooth Implant Helps Blind Woman See

Tooth Implant Helps Blind Woman See

A 60-YEAR-OLD US grandmother, blind for nearly a decade, has recovered her sight after surgeons implanted a tooth in her eye as a base to hold a tiny plastic lens, her doctors said today.

Sharron "Kay" Thornton, from the southern US state of Mississippi, lost her sight in 2000 when she came down with a case of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare disease that scarred her cornea, according to the University of Miami's Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

For patients whose bodies reject a transplanted or artificial cornea, this procedure "implants the patient's tooth in the eye to anchor a prosthetic lens and restore vision", said Thornton's surgeon Victor Perez.

In the procedure - which was pioneered in Italy but was a first in the US - the medical team extracted Ms Thornton's canine or "eyetooth" and surrounding bone, shaved and sculpted it, and drilled a hole into it to insert an optical cylinder lens.

The tooth and the lens are implanted under the patient's skin in the cheek or shoulder for two months so they can bond, then they are carefully implanted in the center of the eye after a series of procedures to prepare the socket.

"A hole is made in the mucosa for the prosthetic lens, which protrudes slightly from the eye and enables light to re-enter the eye allowing the patient to see once again," the Eye Institute said.

Following a series of operations, medical personnel removed the bandages from Ms Thornton's eyes two weeks ago.

She was able to recognize objects and faces a few hours later, and 15 days later she was able to read newspapers, the Eye Institute said.

"I'm looking forward to seeing my seven youngest grandchildren for the first time," said Ms Thornton.

"We take sight for granted, not realizing that it can be lost at any moment," the grateful patient said. "This truly is a miracle."

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Video:Study: Women Can't Keep Secrets

Study: Women Can't Keep Secrets

The average woman cannot keep a secret for longer than 47 hours, according to a new study.

Researchers found women will typically spill the beans to at least one other person in 47 hours and 15 minutes, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Depending on who the gossip is about, their boyfriend, husband, best friend or mother are the most likely to be the first person they tell.

The study of 3,000 women, aged between 18 and 65, also found that four out of ten admitted they were unable to keep a secret - no matter how personal or confidential.

It also found that alcohol usually gives us a helping hand to blurt out secrets with more than half admitting a glass or two of wine could prompt them to dish the dirt.

Michael Cox, UK Director of Wines of Chile, which commissioned the research to mark Chile's National Day, said: "It's official - women can't keep secrets.

"We were really keen to find out with this survey how many secrets people are told. What we didn't bank on was how quickly these are passed on by those we confide in.

"No matter how precious the piece of information, it's often out in the public domain within 48 hours. That means every single Brit who has confided in a friend should be worried because they don't know where their secret is heading."

Intimate issues, the true cost of purchases and affairs emerged top of the secret-keeping list, with girls most likely to share a secret chatting face-to-face, on the phone or via a text message.

Fortunately for some though, more than a quarter said they forgot what they were told the following day.

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Video:Green Sex Toy Could 'Help Save Planet'

Green Sex Toy Could 'Help Save Planet'

Environmentally conscious women are getting a buzz out of a new hand-cranked vibrator that makers say could help save the planet.

The eco-sex toy - dubbed the Earth Angel - uses a small wind-up handle to power up rechargeable batteries inside the casing.

It had originally been planned as a sex aid for the Third World where batteries and electricity supplies are unreliable.

But Irish manufacturers Camden Enterprises have been swamped with interest from Green followers after displaying the vibrator at an electronics fair in Linz, Austria, this week.

"We wanted to produce an environmentally friendly sex toy that appealed to all consumers regardless of gender, age or ethnicity.

"It has been in its development stage for the past two years and we are excited that our vision has become reality," said a spokesman.

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Video:Men With Long Ring Fingers Drive Faster

Men With Long Ring Fingers Drive Faster

Men with long ring fingers are more likely to drive too fast, overtake dangerously and park illegally, according to new research.

The study suggests bad driving may be programmed from birth because finger length is directly associated with exposure to the hormone testosterone in the womb.

Numerous studies have shown that a long wedding ring finger compared to the index finger in men can have a powerful effect on health and behavior.

Scientists believe exposure to greater levels of testosterone in the womb affects the way the brain works later in life.

But it also seems to activate growth of the wedding ring finger by stimulating testosterone receptors in bone.

In the latest study, researchers at the University of Mainz, in Germany, recruited 77 male drivers at an average age of 38.

Each volunteer had their left hand scanned to measure the difference in length between the ring and index fingers. They then provided details of all driving offenses within the previous five years.

Just over a third of the drivers reported having penalty points on their licenses, ranging from one to 20, for offenses ranging from speeding to drink driving.

The results, published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, showed men with longer ring fingers were more likely to have offended.

In a report on their findings the researchers said: "A longer ring finger than index finger was related to more traffic violations. Hormone exposure in the womb might increase traffic violations in later life."

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