A tussle that began with a condom and a banana has morphed into all-out war at a New Jersey high school, with some parents trying to end a peer-to-peer sexual-education course taught in about 45 other public schools statewide. Parents opposed to the classes at Clearview Regional High School, in Mullica Hill, say that kids shouldn’t be instructing kids about sex and that the elective course doesn’t go far enough in stressing abstinence. Some have accused the school of being deceptive about what is taught in the New Jersey Teen Prevention Education Program, known as Teen PEP. And they contend that public money has been misspent on the curriculum, developed with help from state health officials and taught since 1994. School district administrators say misinformation has fueled the firestorm, which began last month and is expected to continue at a Feb. 28 school board meeting. They say New Jersey law requires them to teach a comprehensive class that addresses abstinence, safe sex, dating violence, HIV-AIDS, and how alcohol and drugs affect sexual decision-making – a fact confirmed by the state health department. Six students have withdrawn from the coeducational program, in which faculty-supervised juniors and seniors […]
Due to a name mix-up, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) failed to inspect a Chinese plant that made the active ingredient in vials of heparin now linked to four U.S. deaths, the agency said in a Monday press conference. The vials of multi-dose injectable heparin — suspended from the market earlier this month by the manufacturer, Baxter Healthcare Corp. — may have caused severe allergic reactions in American patients, four of which proved fatal. Generally, the FDA inspects all foreign plants that make pharmaceuticals imported into the United States. However, ‘when this site was named in the application [by Baxter], the firm selected and sent to the office of compliance for evaluation was not the correct firm. It was another firm with a similar name. We therefore evaluated the firm, with a similar name. Therefore, this particular firm was not put forward for evaluation,’ said Joseph Famulare, deputy director of FDA’s Office of Compliance. ‘We have discovered that; we are acting on that by doing our immediate inspection,’ Famulare said. ‘Today, this is isolated situation, but the wrong firm was put in to the database. Therefore, this one was not evaluated or scheduled for […]
The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced the recall of 143 million pounds of raw and frozen beef from a troubled Chino meat-packing company, deeming it unfit for human consumption because of lapses in required inspections. Agriculture Department officials called this the largest beef recall in the United States, surpassing the ban in 1999 of 35 million pounds of ready-to-eat meat. The USDA said there was ‘a remote probability of adverse health consequences from the use of the product.’ But officials said it is likely that most of the recalled meat, some of which was distributed through federal programs to schools, has already been consumed. The cattle ‘did not receive complete and proper inspection,’ according to a news release issued by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service in Washington, D.C. Information received by the agency shows that Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. ‘did not consistently contact the FSIS public health veterinarian’ as required when cattle became nonambulatory after being inspected, the release said. Department spokesman Keith Williams noted that today’s beef recall, while the largest in history, was not based on the same levels of concern for public health as in some prior recalls. ‘There […]
ATLANTA — A nationwide study has found that the uninsured and those covered by Medicaid are more likely than those with private insurance to receive a diagnosis of cancer in late stages, often diminishing their chances of survival. The study by researchers with the American Cancer Society also found that blacks had a higher risk of late diagnosis, even after accounting for their disproportionately high rates of being uninsured and underinsured. The study’s authors speculated that the disparity might be caused by a lack of health literacy and an inadequate supply of providers in minority communities. The study is to be published online Monday in The Lancet Oncology. Previous studies have shown a correlation between insurance status and the stage of diagnosis for particular cancers. The new research is the first to examine a dozen major cancer types and to do so nationally with the most current data. It mined the National Cancer Data Base, which began collecting information about insurance in the late 1990s, to analyze 3.7 million patients who received diagnoses from 1998 to 2004. The widest disparities were noted in cancers that could be detected early through standard screening or assessment of symptoms, like […]
Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden isn’t ready to say humans are the cause of climate change. But the president of the National Association of Attorneys General said the Earth is warming, polar ice caps are melting, and public officials like him need to educate themselves about the subject. If the majority of the world’s scientists are right, energy production is the largest source of carbon, the major greenhouse gas that leads to global warming. So Wasden has made energy issues the major initiative for the national group this year, he told the Idaho Environmental Forum Thursday at the Rose Room. He’s bringing the attorneys general to Coeur d’Alene this spring for an energy conference May 6 and 7. Public officials and experts from industry, environmental groups and universities will talk about the alternatives to meet the demand for energy that will grow three times by 2050 worldwide. Conservation and carbon-free energy sources like wind and solar power will become increasingly important to meet energy needs, Wasden said. But even these projects attract opposition from people who don’t want windmills, solar collectors or even clotheslines in their neighborhoods. Nuclear power has even larger issues – and more […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
