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Evidence Of Harm Has Been Linked To Various Vaccines Challenging Prevailing Public Recommendations
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic set out to determine whether the flu vaccine
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Australian Medical Association To Work With Government On Nurse Legislation
The Australian Medical Association will work with the Federal Government to ensure patients benefit from the introduction of new prescribing rights for nurse practitioners and midwives.
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L.A. Times, NYT Opinion Pieces Discuss International Women's Health Issues
The Los Angeles Times and the New York Times recently published opinion pieces examining issues related to international women"s health. Summaries appear below.~ Michelle Goldberg, Los Angeles Times: The solution to addressing issues of over-population and under-population in various parts of the world is "giving women more control over their fertility and their lives," Goldberg, author of "The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World," writes in a Times opinion piece. Goldberg says that both problems are "symptoms of countries" failures to meet women"s needs." Citing United Nations data, Goldberg writes that the world"s population is growing at an "unsustainable" rate of 78 million people annually, and it will probably continue to increase by 70 million or 75 million annually through 2020. Almost all of that growth will occur in developing countries, she says. "The ethical and effective way to counter rapid population growth is to bolster women"s rights and improve their access to family planning," as well as access to education, Goldberg writes, adding that "study after study has found that girls who go to school marry later and have fewer, healthier children." Meanwhile, some developed countries -- including Japan, Russia, Italy and Spain -- are seeing a decline in birth rates, a fact that some social conservatives are using "to argue for restrictions on women"s rights." According to Goldberg, "Fertility is reaching dangerously low levels in countries where social attitudes and institutions haven"t caught up with women"s desire to combine work and family. When faced with men who are unwilling to share domestic burdens, inflexible workplaces and day-care shortages, many women respond by having fewer children." However, "when societies make it possible for women to combine having children with pursuing their other ambitions, fertility rates are fine," Goldberg says. She adds, "Give women freedom and support, and they will find reproductive equilibrium, so that when societies do shrink or grow, they do so in a manageable way" (Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 5/17).~ Nicholas Kristof, New York Times: About 500,000 women "die annually from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth without attracting much interest because the victims are typically among the most voiceless people in the world: impoverished, rural, uneducated and female," Kristof writes in a Times opinion piece. He adds, "It"s no mystery how to save the lives of pregnant women; what"s lacking is the will and res." Kristof writes that Sierra Leone, which has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, "is now making progress with the help of the United Nations Population Fund." Former President George W. Bush cut off U.S. funding for UNFPA, but President Obama has restored the funding. Kristof adds that a bill (H.R. 1410) that would "establish American leadership in this area ... has attracted pathetically little attention." He continues that if the lives of women in West Africa "were a priority, there would be many simple ways to keep them alive," such as providing them with bed nets to help protect against malaria or iron tablets to fight anemia at a cost of "just a few dollars" (Kristof, New York Times, 5/17).
Sexual Health

Research Into Genetic Neurological Disorders Will Benefit From New Mouse Model

Neurosensory diseases are difficult to model in mice because their symptoms are complex and diverse. The genetic causes identified are often lethal when transferred to a mouse. The lack of animal models slows progress in understanding and treating the diseases. By strategically altering a protein-making molecule, a mouse was made to help understand nervous system diseases that impair feeling and cause paralysis of the arms and legs in humans. Scientists have created a mouse to help understand human neuronal diseases that impair a patient"s ability to feel and to move their arms and legs. By strategically altering a protein-making molecule, a mouse was made with symptoms similar to the nervous system diseases, Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) and hereditary motor neuropathy (HMN). In CMT and HMN, neurons that signal and maintain muscle cells become defective, which causes weakening and loss of muscle that is significant enough in some cases to lead to death. The symptoms become progressively worse over time and no effective treatments or cures exist for these diseases. Researchers came together from the University College London (UCL), the Medical Research Centre (MRC) Harwell, the University of Oxford, and the University of London in England, Vrije University in The Netherlands and Jackson Laboratories in the US to make a genetic change in mice that has been associated with CMT and HMN diseases in people. Neurosensory diseases are difficult to model in mice because they involve symptoms that are complex and diverse. These diseases are passed from parents to their children but the genetic causes identified are often lethal when transferred to a mouse. The lack of animal models slows progress in understanding and treating the diseases. The researchers made a mutation in a protein, which is part of the protein building machinery, called glycyl-tRNA synthetase (GARS). As described in their study in Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM), dmm.biologists.org> mice with mutations in the GARS gene have some of the same symptoms as CMT and HMN patients. Their hope is that this mouse can be used to study what causes these diseases and how it might effectively be treated. Mice with defects in some of this protein have problem with grip strength and motor skills while symptoms are more pronounced in animals that carry the mutation in all of their protein copies. This report is the first documentation of successful breeding of animals with this mutation, giving researchers access to new materials to understand how this gene influences human neuronal diseases. When the researchers made the same mutation in two different breeds of mice it caused two distinguishable sets of symptoms, demonstrating that the genetic background influences the effects of the GARS gene mutation. This variability in the mouse disease symptoms is also seen in humans, and may help shed light on how CMT and HMN differently affect individual patients" symptoms. The report titled "An ENU-induced mutation in mouse glycyl tRNA synthetase (Gars) causes peripheral sensory and motor phenotypes creating a model of Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 2D peripheral neuropathy" was written by Francesca Achilli, Virginie Bros Facer, Hazel Williams, Gareth Banks, Mona AlQatari, Ruth Chia, Michael Groves, Sebastian Brandner, Martin Koltzenburg, Linda Greensmith, and Elizabeth M.C. Fisher at the University College London (UCL), Valter Tucci, Rachel Kendall and Patrick Nolan at the Medical Research Centre (MRC) Harwell, Carole Nickols and Joanne Martin at Queen Mary University of London, Kevin Seburn and Robert Burgess at Jackson Laboratories, Muhammed Cader and Kevin Talbot at the University of Oxford, and Jan van Minnen at Vrije University. The study is published in the June/July issue of the new research journal, Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM),Issue 7/8 July/August published by The Company of Biologists, a non-profit based in Cambridge, UK. Kristy Kain The Company of Biologists


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