Traffic injuries are the leading cause of death in people ages 10 to 24 around the world — a huge, overlooked and largely preventable public health problem, the World Health Organization said yesterday. In a new report, the organization promoted a long list of suggestions to developing countries, where most of the deaths and disabling injuries occur. The improvements include safer roads and vehicles, better urban planning, helmet laws, prosecution of speeders and drunken drivers, better education of the driving and walking public, and simple interventions such as putting reflective tape on backpacks. ‘It is a big public health issue for kids, and we can do something about it,’ said Etienne Krug, a physician who heads WHO’s department for injury and violence prevention. As does most of the public health world, WHO eschews the term ‘traffic accidents.’ In a statement accompanying the report, the organization’s new director-general, Margaret Chan, said that ‘road traffic crashes are not ‘accidents.’ We need to challenge the notion that they are unavoidable.’ About 30 percent of all traffic deaths worldwide — roughly 400,000 each year — are of people younger than 25. Although teenage and young-adult drivers are at greatest risk, […]
Eating less salt reduces the chances of suffering a heart attack or stroke, the first long-term study of salt’s impact on health confirms today. The findings, from a 15-year study, offer the clearest evidence yet that cutting salt consumption saves lives by reducing the risks of cardiovascular disease. People who ate less salty food were found to have a 25 per cent lower risk of cardiac arrest or stroke, and a 20 per cent lower risk of premature death. The results, published in the British Medical Journal, underline the need for population-wide salt reductions in the diet, the scientists conclude. Despite campaigns to reduce salt intake, such as that run by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), actual evidence of any benefit has been limited. This has enabled the salt industry to contest vigorously the value of such campaigns. Both sides accept that cutting salt consumption reduces blood pressure, although not very dramatically. This ought to translate over the longer term into reductions in strokes and heart attacks, but no studies have been able to show this convincingly until now. The new findings are the result of work by a US team led by Nancy Cook, of […]
A compound found naturally in blood could form the basis for an entirely new class of Aids drugs, according to scientists. The chemical prevents the HIV virus from entering human immune cells and it is effective even against strains of the virus that are resistant to other drugs. ‘You want a lot of drug classes, because multi-drug resistant viruses are starting to show up more and more,’ said Frank Kirchhoff at the University of Ulm in Germany, one of the authors of the study. Article continues The newly identified compound prevents the virus from attaching a molecular anchor to the cell it is invading. No existing drugs affect this stage of infection, so the team hopes the compound could be modified to form a new class of similar drugs. With nearly 40 million people living with HIV worldwide and 3m deaths last year, new approaches are urgently needed. The team discovered the compound – called Virus-Inhibitory Peptide or VIRIP – by screening hundreds of proteins from human blood. ‘A number of studies have suggested that some compounds in the human blood are able to inhibit HIV-1 and control it,’ said Prof Kirchhoff. One way was by adding […]
WASHINGTON — That abortion is bad for fetuses is a statement of the obvious. That it is bad for women, too, is a contested premise that nonetheless got five votes at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. It was a development that stunned abortion rights advocates and that represents a major departure from how the court has framed the abortion issue for the past 34 years. The question on the day after the justices voted 5 to 4 to uphold the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act is where the court goes from here. Regulating abortion for the sake of a woman’s health has been part of the court’s consideration since Roe v. Wade in 1973; Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote for the court then that ‘the state does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman.’ Reflecting the court’s view that illegal abortions were a serious public health problem, the opinion gave examples of permissible regulations, like requiring doctors to be properly licensed. After fetal viability, the court said in Roe v. Wade, abortion can be banned except when ending a pregnancy is necessary for the sake of a woman’s […]
PROVIDENCE — Gov. Donald L. Carcieri today announced that Rhode Island has sufficient wind capacity to meet his goal of deriving 15 percent of the state’s electricity from wind-power, and announced plans for a stakeholder group to determine where such facilities could be located. ‘To emphasize this goal, I am also announcing that this project will be known as ‘Energy Independence 1′,’ he said. ‘This new brand indicates that this is only the beginning of our efforts to reduce electricity prices and to wean our state off foreign energy.’ Carcieri earlier had commissioned a wind-power siting study, the results of which he cited in today’s announcement. ‘In January 2006, I created the [R.I] Office of Energy Resources and tasked it with finding a way to generate 15 percent of Rhode Island’s electricity from wind power,’ the governor recalled. ‘My goal was simple: I wanted to encourage Rhode Island’s energy independence through the use of a renewable source. ‘This study … makes clear for the first time that Rhode Island enjoys enough wind to achieve five times that amount of electricity generation.’ The Ocean State has nearly 100 square miles in which wind power is feasible, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
