| Allocating HIV Drugs To South African Cities Would Prevent The Greatest Number Of Infections
The most effective way to control the AIDS pandemic in hard-hit South Africa would be to concentrate the allocation of scarce antiretroviral drugs in urban areas. This, however, would not be the most ethical approach, according to an innovative new study from the UCLA AIDS Institute. .
EHM People
A team of Indian surgeons led by Mumbai-based Dr Rakesh Sinha, Dr Neeta Warty and anaesthetist Dr Manju Sinha (Dr Rakesh's wife) had walked their way into the Limca Book of Records in 2003. This was for laparoscopically removing world's heaviest fibroid weighing 3.4 kilograms and measuring 20 x 12 cms (7.8 x 4.7 in) from a 37-year-old woman in December 2000 at Dr Sinha's Bombay Endoscopy Academy and Centre for Minimally Invasive Surgery (BEAMS), a Super Speciality Hospital for Women. Now, after three years, the 49-year-old Dr Sinha was pleasantly surprised to know that the same feat has also notched up a record at the Guinness Book of World Records. His data on this laparoscopic removal of very large fibroids was published in the American Journal of Gynaecological Laparoscopy in November 2003.
Pfizer Celebrex Lawsuits - 1500 and Counting
The first Celebrex trial, originally set for June 6, 2006, has been delayed indefinitely, reportedly to give attorneys more time to gather information. Although no new trial date has been set, legal analysts now predict that Celebrex trials will begin in early 2007. The delay was requested by a federal judge in San Francisco, where Pfizer is facing around 1,500 lawsuits related to its painkillers Celebrex and Bextra, according to Bloomberg News. In light of the studies on Celebrex that have surfaced over the past year, any media update should say 1,500 lawsuits and counting. The lawsuits filed actually list defendants involved in the development, manufacturing and distributing of Celebrex as Pfizer Inc, Pharmacia Corp, Monsanto Co, and GD Searle & Co. On August 30, 2006, Health Day News doused Pfizer's last hope of ever finding a reason to justify the over-prescribing of Celebrex when it reported that the "final word on whether the cox-2 painkiller Celebrex might be used to prevent colon cancer is a definite "no," according to the long-awaited results of two major studies." "Both of the three-year trials found that the drug reduced the occurrence of precancerous polyps called adenomas in people at risk for colon cancer," Health Day wrote, "but it more than doubled patients' risk for heart attack and other serious cardiovascular events." "The message is that celecoxib has no role as a chemotherapeutic agent -- in people with adenomas or in people among the general population," said Dr Bruce Psaty, a professor of medicine, epidemiology and health services at the University of Washington in Seattle, who co-authored an editorial on the two studies, published in the August 31, 2006, New England Journal of Medicine.
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