Alaska Best in Disciplining Docs, Mississippi Worst: Report
Alaska topped the 50 United States in how effectively its medical board disciplined doctors from 2004 to 2006, while Mississippi was at the bottom of the rankings, a consumer advocacy group reported Wednesday.
Public Citizen said its list was based on state-by-state data released by the Federation of State Medical Boards. The group said it calculated the rate of serious disciplinary actions per 1,000 doctors in each state.
Nationwide, there were a total of 2,916 serious disciplinary actions taken by state medical boards in 2006, down 10.4 percent from 2005, the group said in a prepared statement. Such actions included license revocations, surrenders, suspensions and orders of probation.
Individual boards were likely to be more effective if they were adequately funded and staffed, if they were proactive and didn't just respond to complaints, if they were independent from other parts of state government, and if the state had "a reasonable legal framework" in place for disciplining doctors, Public Citizen said.
After Alaska, rounding out the top five states were: Kentucky, Wyoming, Ohio and Oklahoma. Ranking just ahead of Missouri in the bottom five states were: South Carolina, Minnesota, South Dakota and Nevada.
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Teen Smokers Prefer Marketed Brands: Survey
Almost four out of five American youths who smoke cigarettes prefer heavily marketed brands, the American Legacy Foundation said in a report released Wednesday.
A survey of more than 3,500 U.S. teens found that 78 percent of them usually smoked one of the three brands: 50 percent preferred Marlboro, 14 percent Newport, and 14 percent Camel, the foundation said in a prepared statement.
Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they usually smoked cigarettes labeled as "light," "ultra-light", or "mild." The proportion increased as youth grew older, with 18 percent of 13- to 15-year-olds saying they preferred light brands, compared with 32 percent of smokers aged 16 to 18.
Nearly 37 percent of American youth surveyed said they smoked menthol cigarettes, and about 11 percent said they had tried brands flavored with candy and other non-menthol tastes, the foundation said.
"Every day 4,000 American youth try their first cigarette, and this survey show us that the tobacco industry's effective marketing drives their decisions to smoke specific cigarettes," said the statement from the foundation, which was created as a result of the 1998 settlement between U.S. tobacco firms and the attorneys general of 46 states.
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Drug-Resistant TB Poses Rising Threat: WHO
In the wake of a transatlantic health scare involving an American bridegroom with an extremely drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, the World Health Organization says similar infections could become the norm unless the world community does more to stop the spread of the disease, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The case of Andrew Speaker isn't an isolated one, since the extremely resistant form of TB has been recorded in 37 countries. About 5 percent of the world's almost 9 million new cases of TB are resistant to standard drugs, a WHO official told the newspaper. Moreover, about 30,000 of these cases are considered extremely drug-resistant to first-line and second-line TB medications, the Times said.
Regions of greatest concern include Africa, where immune-compromised people with AIDS often develop TB. Other areas include China, Eastern Europe and India, the newspaper said.
On Tuesday, the WHO called on world nations to provide $1 billion over each of the next two years to fight the disease. The United Nations agency said its plan to help countries better diagnose, treat and prevent TB could save 134,000 lives over the next two years and 1.2 million people by 2015, the Times said.
While most cases of standard TB are easily cured, the cure rate falls to 67 percent for drug-resistant cases and to less than 30 percent for those considered extremely resistant, the newspaper said.
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Atlanta Man's Third TB Test Negative
Andrew Speaker's third-consecutive sputum smear test for tuberculosis has come back negative, confirming results from his previous tests, officials at National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, Colo., said Tuesday.
A person who tests positive is considered infectious, while three consecutive negative sputum smears may be considered non-infectious in most settings. Despite Speaker's third negative test, hospital officials said they haven't determined when the 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer will be allowed to leave his isolation room for exercise and fresh air.
In related news, two U.S. congressional committees heard testimony Wednesday into the health and national security implications of Speaker's wedding-honeymoon travel on international airline flights. Speaker, whose testimony was beamed from the Denver hospital where he remains in government-ordered isolation, repeated his contention that he was told he was not contagious and that he was "not a threat to anyone," the Associated Press reported.
Separately, U.S. border officials testified before a different congressional panel that a lone customs officer unraveled efforts to stop Speaker from re-entering the country, the wire service said.
Even while defending past practices, border officials have changed internal rules to require a supervisor's approval before overriding the kind of warning issued to prevent Speaker from re-entering the United States, the AP reported.
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Groups Seek Ban on Household Detergent Chemicals
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should ban the use of chemicals commonly used in household detergents, because the compounds have been linked to gender changes in fish, environmental groups say.
The Sierra Club and five other groups have petitioned the EPA to ban nonylphenol and nonylphenol ethoxylates. Some 400 million pounds of the chemicals are produced annually in the United States, much of which ends up in rivers and other waterways, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.
The chemicals mimic the female hormone estrogen, and exposed laboratory fish, including rainbow trout, have wound up becoming part male and part female, the newspaper said.
The effects on people aren't known, the groups' petition says in calling for more research, notably on workers at dry cleaners and laundries.
A group representing companies that produce or use the chemicals says the compounds have been used for more than 50 years and "are among the most extensively studied compounds in commerce today."
Though use of the chemicals currently is unrestricted in the United States, some companies, including Procter & Gamble and Unilever, have stopped using them, the Times said.
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Chinese Soldier Dies of Bird Flu
A 19-year-old Chinese soldier is the nation's 16th reported human fatality from the virulent strain of bird flu that has global health officials concerned about a future human pandemic, the Associated Press reported.
World Health Organization officials said the soldier died Sunday from the H5N1 strain of avian flu after being hospitalized in mid-May with a fever and cough. He had been stationed in the southern province of Fujian.
The Chinese Health Ministry provided no additional details of the case, including how the virus may have been contracted and if other soldiers might be at risk, the wire service said.
While 25 cases of human H5N1 infection have been reported in China, there have been no reported outbreaks among poultry, sparking concerns of a weak surveillance system in China, the AP said.
Poultry-to-human and human-to-human cases are still considered rare, although experts worry that the virus will mutate into a form that's more easily passed between people.
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