Forums: Deadly Outbreak

Inspired by Albany Fire Chief Marc McGinn's passion and four years of research, City Council members voted unanimously Monday night to require a somewhat uncommon type of smoke alarm in many homes and businesses in the city from this point forward. In doing so, Albany became the first city in California, officials said, to take a public stand on the importance of photoelectric-only alarms, which use a light source to detect the presence of smoke, in saving lives. Ionization alarms, which use a different trigger, are much more common. Albany joins the state of Vermont in requiring photoelectric alarms. Vermont...

LONDON – Here's a new warning from health experts: Sitting is deadly. Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for prolonged periods — even if you also exercise regularly — could be bad for your health. And it doesn't matter where the sitting takes place — at the office, at school, in the car or before a computer or TV — just the overall number of hours it occurs. Research is preliminary, but several studies suggest people who spend most of their days sitting are more likely to be fat, have a heart attack or even die. In an editorial published...

MADISON — The specter of a drug-resistant form of the deadly H5N1 avian influenza is a nightmare to keep public health officials awake at night. Now, however, a study published this week (Dec. 21) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests that a new compound, one on the threshold of final testing in humans, may be more potent and safer for treating "bird flu" than the antiviral drug best known by the trade name Tamiflu. Known as T-705, the compound even works several days after infection, according to Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist and...

LONDON - Swine flu is far less dangerous than originally feared, British officials said Thursday — about 100 times less lethal than the 1918 Spanish flu. To determine how deadly the virus is, the British health department tracked all reported swine flu patients hospitalized between July and November. In a paper published online in the British journal, BMJ, experts estimated that out of every 100,000 infected people in Britain, about 26 died.

The World Health Organization, the UN agency (ir-) responsible for declaring a Phase 6 “PANDEMIC” global alert over what it calls H1N1 Influenza A or Swine Flu, whose chief Dr Margaret Chan has repeatedly warned that while Swine Flu to date had been rather mild, that the emergency declaration was necessary because it “could mutate” aggressively into a deadly pandemic killing millions, now admits well into the flu season in the Northern Hemisphere that H1N1 has apparently not mutated. Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organization, at a meeting with health officials in her native Hong Kong has...

This was announced by the Obama administration last evening. President Barack Obama on Friday slapped punitive tariffs on all car and light truck tires entering the United States from China in a decision that could anger the strategically important Asian powerhouse but placate union supporters important to his health care push at home. Obama had until Sept. 17 -- next week -- to accept, reject or modify a U.S. International Trade Commission ruling that a rising tide of Chinese tires into the U.S. hurts American producers. A powerful union, United Steelworkers, blames the increase for the loss of thousands of...

ORLANDO, Fla. – There's more troubling news about hormone therapy for menopause symptoms: Lung cancer seems more likely to prove fatal in women who are taking estrogen-progestin pills, a study suggests. Hormone users who developed lung cancer were 60 percent more likely to die from the disease as women who weren't taking hormones, according to results reported Saturday. The new findings mean that smokers should stop taking hormones, and those who have not yet started hormones should give it careful thought, said Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. He led the analysis and presented results at...

Experimental vaccine used in Ebola exposure case BERLIN – It was a nightmare scenario: A scientist accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used to inject the deadly Ebola virus into lab mice. Within hours, members of a tightly bound, yet far-flung community of virologists, biologists and others were tensely gathered in a trans-Atlantic telephone conference trying to map out a way to save her life.