Blood Clot in Cheney's Leg Shrinking
Doctors say the blood clot in U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's left leg is gradually shrinking, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.
An ultrasound of the vice president's clot was done at his doctor's office Tuesday morning. Cheney, 66, then returned to the White House to resume his normal schedule, his spokeswoman Megan McGinn told the Associated Press.
"The ultrasound was reassuring and showed that the clot is gradually resolving," McGinn said. "His blood-thinning medication was found to be in the desired range. The vice president's doctors advised him to continue the current course of treatment."
The clot in Cheney's lower left leg was discovered March 5. This type of blood clot -- deep venous thrombosis -- can prove fatal if it breaks away and travels through the bloodstream to the lungs.
Cheney has experienced a number of health problems, including four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, two artery-clearing angioplasties and implantation of a special pacemaker in his chest, the AP reported.
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Bird Flu Pandemic Could Kill Millions: WHO
A billion people could be infected and two million to seven million could die if there's a worldwide bird flu pandemic, says the World Health Organization (WHO).
The estimates were arrived at from models based on previous flu epidemics, Jean-Marc Olive, the WHO's representative for the Philippines, said Tuesday at a forum in Manila organized by the Australian embassy.
Agence France Presse reported that Olive also said even "a modest pandemic lasting over one year might cause losses as high as three percent of Asia's GDP (gross domestic product) and 0.5 percent of the world GDP."
Mass culls of infected poultry flocks may help avert a human pandemic, Olive said. He also recommended that countries improve preventive and surveillance measures, as well as make preparations for an outbreak, such as stockpiling anti-viral drugs, AFP reported.
Since 2003, the H5N1 bird flu virus has killed at least 172 people, mostly in Southeast Asia. Experts fear that the virus could cause a pandemic if it mutates into a form that's easily transmitted between humans.
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High Fat Meals Boost Blood Pressure
A single high fat meal can quickly boost a person's blood pressure, says a Canadian study published this week in the Journal of Nutrition.
University of Calgary researchers found that blood pressure in people who ate high fat meals increased 1.25 to 1.5 times higher than people who ate low fat meals when both groups underwent several standard stress tests, the Toronto Star reported.
"We can measure this response after only one meal, which is remarkable," said study author Tavis Campbell, a health psychology professor. If blood pressure is affected after just one high fat meal, "it's really striking to think about people who do this (two or three times a week)," Campbell said.
The study included 30 healthy volunteers, ages 18 to 25, who had no history of blood pressure or heart problems.
Campbell said this immediate increase in blood pressure after a high fat meal could help explain why this kind of food causes heart disease over time, the Star reported.
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Many Problems With Lethal Injection: Report
There are numerous problems with the use of lethal injection to execute prisoners in the United States, concludes a report published online Monday by the journal PLoS Medicine.
It said the drugs used in lethal injections sometimes fail to work as planned, which leads to slow painful deaths that likely violate constitutional bans on cruel and unusual punishment, the Associated Press reported.
In some cases, inmates have suffocated while they were conscious and unable to move, instead of having their hearts stop beating while they're sedated, said the authors, who reviewed dozens of executions.
The researchers concluded that the typical "one-size-fits-all" doses of anesthetic fail to factor in an inmate's weight and other important factors, the AP reported.
The study authors also noted that no scientific groups have ever validated that lethal injection is a humane form of execution.
In 37 states, lethal injection has been implemented as a less costly and more humane alternative to other methods of execution, such as the gas chamber and electrocution. However, 11 states have stopped using lethal injection after critics charged that it was cruel and ineffective, the AP reported.
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Breastfeeding Won't Reduce Risk of Being Overweight
Breast feeding does not prevent children from becoming overweight as adults, according to a Harvard Medical School study that contradicts information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
The study looked at nearly 14,500 women who were breast-fed as infants and about 21,000 women who were not breast-fed, the Associated Press reported. Women who were breast-fed for at least a week were about as likely to be overweight or obese as women who were bottle-fed. Women who had been breast-fed for more than nine months were about as likely to be overweight or obese as women who'd been breast-fed for less than a week.
While this study included only women, the researchers said they believe the results also apply to men. This is the largest study to date to look at the link between breast feeding and adult weight, the AP reported.
"I'm the first to say breast-feeding is good. But I don't think it's the solution to reducing childhood or adult obesity," said study lead author Karin Michels.
The CDC says breast feeding is one way of reducing excess weight in childhood. Many previous studies have found an association between breast feeding and lower rates of childhood obesity, Larry Grummer-Strawn, chief of the CDC's maternal and child nutrition branch, told the AP.
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Trustees Issue Warning on Medicare's Financial Health
U.S. Medicare faces a financial crisis as the nation's 78 million baby boomers move closer to retirement, the program's trustees warned Monday.
They said that Medicare's hospitalization trust fund would likely be in the red by 2019. The trustees' formal warning this year follows a similar warning last year, which means that the president and Congress are now legally required to work toward a solution that could include spending cuts and tax increases, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"While the (Medicare) warning is new, it simply reflects the same dire fiscal reality we've been reporting for years, and that has been exacerbated by the addition of the new prescription drug benefit," trustee John L. Palmer, an economics professor at Syracuse University, told the Times.
Under a 2003 law passed by the Republican-led Congress, trustees must issue a warning if two consecutive reports project that Medicare will draw 45 percent or more of its financing from the general fund within seven years.
Many Democrats and seniors' advocates say the Medicare warning is little more than a gimmick. Rep. Pete Stark (D-Fremont), chairman of a health subcommittee, described the warning as "an arbitrary threshold designed to scare people."
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