Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- Flu pandemic ‘could hit 20% of world’s population’
- Guidant Admits Defibrillator Problem
- ORNL Nanoscience Center Creates Custom-Tailored Medical Compounds
- Metabolism may play role in heart problems, study finds.
- Viagra for Sex Offenders; Paris Hilton’s Ad; Coast Guard Duty;…

Flu pandemic ‘could hit 20% of world’s population’
Guardian Unlimited - May 25, 2005
A report in scientific journal Nature gives a fearful assessment of the huge impact a pandemic could have on the world, with an estimate that more than seven million people could die in the first few months. A pandemic would change the world “overnight” and could be worse than previous outbreaks because of the greater interlinked nature of modern life, experts told Nature. Fears of a pandemic have increased because of the outbreak of the current H5N1 bird flu strain in south-east Asia, which has caused 51 confirmed human deaths. At present, there is no evidence that the H5N1 strain can be transmitted from one person to another, but it may only be a matter of time before the virus mutates into a form that can easily pass between people. If that were to happen it would spread rapidly around the world with devastating consequences… An optimistic estimate suggests that the next influenza pandemic could cause 20% of the world’s population to fall ill and within a few months, almost 30 million people would need to be hospitalised, a quarter of whom would die. Four Dutch experts, led by Dr Albert Osterhaus from the Erasmus medical centre in Rotterdam, said in Nature that there was an urgent need for the creation of a global task force to control a future pandemic. They said the task force should consist of leading specialists in the fields of human and animal medicine, virology, epidemiology, pathology, ecology and agriculture. It should also include experts in translating science into policy. Management teams should be available to target specific flu outbreaks occurring anywhere in the world. “Given the large geographical area in which the H5N1 virus has become endemic, and the greater potential for rapid virus spread, an efficient, effective, outbreak management team strategy, with centralised guidance, is urgently needed,” they said. Early detection and rapid response to bird flu at a global level would greatly reduce the cost of dealing with a full-blown outbreak, they said.

Guidant Admits Defibrillator Problem
Forbes - May 25, 2005
As reports of individual problems came in, Guidant also filed them with the agency. FDA regulations for devices are different from those for drugs, with a more modern set of rules, largely owing to the fact that the device regulations were crafted in the 1970s. They take into account, for example, the incremental nature of technical progress when it comes to devices. As a result, device manufacturers are permitted to make small improvements to their products and their manufacturing processes without coming back to the FDA every time. This allows the modern electronics and engineering in these medical products to evolve, creating incrementally better products. Bringing small change before the FDA for review would slow down innovation by making it time-consuming and expensive. But that does not resolve the question of whether Guidant, or the FDA, should have informed patients and doctors about the flaw it fixed… It is a fair question when doctors and patients should be warned about a problem with a new device, especially when subsequent models have been revised to fix a known flaw. Should rare shortcomings be made more routinely known? The medical industry and the FDA seem to be heading in that direction in our present environment, where they are assailed almost daily for not making problems more transparent. That should make those disclaimers on our medicine bottles even longer. More transparency may also add to the volatility of medical device stocks, because small and predictable error rates would still make headlines. Whether the public finds the ensuing warnings of very remote risk soothing or superfluous is another question.

ORNL Nanoscience Center Creates Custom-Tailored Medical Compounds
AZoNano.com - May 25, 2005
Simpson is a CNMS Theme Leader, and a joint ORNL-University of Tennessee scientist. Matteo’s device uses ORNL developed technology to manipulate ions in a stream of solution. Potential commercial applications can be found in industry, medicine, and even bio-threat detection. His ideas to enhance the chemistry of drug development offer many advantages over commercially available technology. While current methods can rapidly explore thousands of variants of a compound to achieve a certain solution, their parallel high-volume nature is not information driven. A closed-loop, information driven system offers a serial or sequential discovery method and promises a more “intelligent” drug-making process, Matteo said… His ideas to enhance the chemistry of drug development offer many advantages over commercially available technology. While current methods can rapidly explore thousands of variants of a compound to achieve a certain solution, their parallel high-volume nature is not information driven. A closed-loop, information driven system offers a serial or sequential discovery method and promises a more “intelligent” drug-making process, Matteo said. “Combinatorial or parallel processing chemistry can do a process thousands of times to get the right answer, but its like casting a large net to capture a small solution,” Matteo said. “If you’ve pointed the device in the wrong direction, you’ll need to cast again. “With a serial approach, if you can learn something every step of the way, you can very efficiently find a solution.

Metabolism may play role in heart problems, study finds.
Free with registration - St. Louis Post-Dispatch - AccessMyLibrary.com - May 25, 2005
LOUIS _ Faulty metabolism can damage your heart, according to a new study from scientists at Washington University. People blame their metabolism for weight gain and other problems, but this new study indicates that bad metabolism could cause blockages in blood vessels, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes. The finding appears Thursday in the journal Nature. Several years ago, Dr. Clay Semenkovich, a Washington University physician, cell biologist and physiologist, and his colleagues thought they had discovered a sure-fire cure for heart disease when they created mice that were able to eat a high-fat diet without gaining weight and were as physically fit as mice that ate low-fat chow.

Viagra for Sex Offenders; Paris Hilton’s Ad; Coast Guard Duty;…
CNN International - May 25, 2005
COOPER: That’s pretty incredible. Had you done that before? VIDANA: Not before my injury, no. COOPER: And, what do you want to do now? I understand you want to be an occupational therapist. That’s what I received my degree in before I went to Iraq, essentially. COOPER: Does this — I mean, what you have gone through, does it help in any way with what you want to do? VIDANA: Oh, absolutely. It’s given me a lot more insight, I think, the way my injury presented is the way a person with a stroke would have presented… Is there a legitimate reason in your opinion someone who is a sex offender should be getting a sexual enhancement drug from the government? On the face of it, it doesn’t make sense. FRED BERLIN, JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Well, whether the government pays for it or not is not so much my issue. But I think people really need to fully understand what we’re talking about here from the medical perspective. Viagra enhances the ability of a man to perform genitally. It does nothing to increase his motivation to engage in sexual activity of either a legal or an illegal nature. I don’t know of a single incidence of a documented sex offense having occurred in association with Viagra.