Free Republic

A mysterious illness at a Del Rio detention center that has killed two inmates and hospitalized two others within the past month has baffled health authorities, who have asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for help. All four men — three of them foreign nationals from Honduras and Mexico held on immigration charges, the fourth a Val Verde county prisoner who was one of the dead — were described as in their 20s and 30s, and apparently healthy when they arrived at the Val Verde Correctional Facility and County Jail. The privately operated 850-bed medium-security facility is under...

Abstract For 10 years the World Health Organisation has had a single answer to the deadly threat of tuberculosis (TB)—provide treatment to smear positive patients and watch them take it. In contrast with confident statements about how global TB would be brought under control when directly observed therapy, short course (DOTS) was introduced, TB continues to rise worldwide. The introduction of selected multiple drug resistant TB treatment programmes, "DOTS-Plus", although important, also focuses on therapy for active TB. HIV endemic countries in particular have experienced tremendous increases in TB despite having DOTS programmes. A critical review of recent epidemiological data...

States with the greatest number of guns in the home also have the highest rates of homicide, a new study finds. The study, in the February issue of Social Science and Medicine, looked at gun ownership in all 50 states and then compared the results with the number of people killed over a three-year period. The research, the authors said, “suggests that household firearms are a direct and an indirect source of firearms used to kill Americans both in their homes and on the streets.” The researchers, led by Matthew Miller of the Harvard School of Public Health, drew on...

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, by Steven Johnson (Riverhead Books, 320 pp., $26.95) However terrifying modern epidemics may appear, we have one source of comfort unavailable to our forefathers: that the scientific authorities will soon discover the cause of the malady. As many have remarked, the ability to name an enemy reduces the fear that he—or it—inspires. That is why the atmosphere that Kafka created is so disturbing: we can never identify the source of the menace. New epidemic diseases, even if they kill fewer people...

ASSOCIATED PRESS GARDEN CITY, N.Y. -- A multiyear study of elevated breast cancer rates in several Long Island communities found no environmental factors contributing to the spike, the state Health Department announced Friday. "The results of the investigation found nothing unusual," the agency said in a statement released in Albany. "We hope that our findings will ease concern among residents in Suffolk County about breast cancer and the local environment," said Health Commissioner Antonia C. Novello. "This investigation represented the largest and most thorough examination of environmental risk factors that may be related to cancer in a particular geographic area."...

Deer and elk that are infected with mad cow-like disease, known as chronic wasting disease (CWD), carry infectious agents called prions in their leg muscles, indicating that those handling and eating infected deer meat may contract the same disease, University of Kentucky researchers reported on Jan. 26 in the journal Science. This newfound evidence is shocking because the public has been informed that the infectious prion protein for CWD was only present in parts of the nervous system such as brains and backbones. It was thought in the past that only nervous tissues from infected deer were susceptible to spreading...

A cholera epidemic is spreading rapidly across West Africa, killing nearly 500 people and infecting thousands of others, United Nations officials warn. The head of the UN humanitarian co-ordination office in the region said the outbreak needed a rapid response. "It's not business as usual. We have a crisis that needs immediate attention," said Herve Ludovic de Lys. With heavy rains across the region, cholera is likely to spread to Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad, the UN warns. Guinea-Bissau is the worst hit country, with 9,047 infections and 172 deaths reported between June and August by the health authorities. The country...

Disease hunters in action, just outside Washington, DC, at the U.S. Defense Department's Global Emerging Infections System, known as GEIS. They are working to track, prevent and cure infectious diseases. In one laboratory doctors are working with Sand Flies, which carry Leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that usually infects the skin, but can also infect internal organs. Scientists also are working with mosquitoes that carry malaria. Chemists are working on new treatments and vaccines for a number of communicable diseases. Captain Joseph Malone Captain Joseph Malone is the director of GEIS. "We play a supportive role in both outbreaks within the...

Whooping Cough Outbreak Communities throughout the U.S. are experiencing whooping cough (pertussis) outbreaks - the worst in 40 years. If the school nurse or the health department informs you that there is a pertussis outbreak in your school or community, you may need to call your pediatrician. The school or health department will tell you if your child was directly exposed and requires antibiotics. Health departments across the country are acting quickly to prevent the spread of pertussis, so your cooperation in contacting your pediatrician is crucial. Please follow the instruction of the health department. The care of children in...

A cargo ship remains under quarantine about 10 miles off the Galveston shore after a crew member died Aug. 31 from an as-yet unidentified illness authorities said could be Lassa Fever or malaria. The ship, which had returned from a voyage to West Africa, was headed to Pasadena but voluntarily anchored offshore Sunday, Galveston County Health District spokesman Kurt Koopmann said. The county, along with the federal Centers for Disease Control and the Texas Department of Health Services, is investigating the unidentified man's death. The Galveston County Medical Examiner's Office will conduct an autopsy today, and samples will be sent...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - A New Jersey man who recently returned from a trip to Liberia has died of an illness that had not been detected in the United States since 1989 but is common in West Africa, state health officials said Thursday. The man died of Lassa fever, a virus spread through rat droppings or urine that can be passed to other people through bodily fluids but not through causal contact, officials said. The 38-year-old man from the Trenton area was not identified by authorities. It is unlikely that other passengers on the man's flight back from Africa or...

A Hong Kong researcher says a wild animal considered a dining delicacy is the carrier of a virus that causes SARS. The finding fits earlier speculation that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome originated in wild animals. Hong Kong University revealed Friday that the civet cat, a wild animal indigenous to southern China, is the likely source of the virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Dr. K.Y. Yuen said researchers at the Shenzhen Center of Disease Control found four strains of the virus in a large percentage of civet cats. "From a special type of civet cat, we are able...

[Please note, this is the complete December 26, 2001 article which is posted at UCLA, and they have cross-referenced it with many links to related discoveries in the news; for information and discussion purposes only.] [The article runs long, yet the collection includes many details not generally known by the public.] There was no commotion, no outcry. Except for the blond woman in the black dress sitting by herself in a back pew, no one knew that anything unusual had happened. Johanna C. Huden, a 31-year-old editorial assistant at The New York Post, had first noticed the strange blister on...

<p>There is a new front in the war against AIDS. When first discovered 20 years ago, the disease was taking a devastating toll among white gay men. Now it is the leading cause of death among African-Americans, ages 25 to 44. This story is the second in a series that describes the impact of AIDS in St. Louis.</p>