Germany Bans Children From Getting Cosmetic Surgery

[Guest guest]

Lots of news . . . please read through to the end! . ---------------------------------------------------Hadcorp News: April 26, 2008

Germany Bans Children From Getting Cosmetic Surgery

eMaxHealth.com

Hickory, NC , USA

Cosmetic surgery has been banned for children and adolescents in Germany . The ban on cosmetic surgery was announced on Wednesday that will stop the tens of thousands of German youth going under the knife in the name of beauty.

“Wishing for a breast job after finishing high school is no longer the exception,” wrote the bill’s 30 parliamentary co-sponsors.

Children as young as 10 have become caught up in the cosmetic surgery craze. The Federation of Pediatricians are also very concerned about the number of young children who are having body piercings and permanent tattoos. Some of the members of NDR are also calling for a ban of those procedures.

The German Society for Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery is understandably upset by the ban. They say that the numbers have been exaggerated and have “nothing to do with reality.” They also contend that often the operations are medically necessary.

“If you (lawmakers) knew how thankful 14 to 16 year-old patients are after these procedures, that would put your worries in context,” Joachim Graf von Finkenstein, head of DCAEPC, said.

Plastic surgery for the very young who have not finished growing seems to be a little drastic. Boob jobs can wait until a child is an adult and can be sure that they honestly wish to deal with all the risks that are involved.

STEM CELL RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY

Rearming America :The military's plan to regrow body parts

By Saletan

Posted Friday, April 18, 2008, at 12:40 PM ET The regeneration of lost body parts has just moved from science fiction to U.S. military policy.

Yesterday the Department of Defense announced the creation of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, which will go by the happy acronym AFIRM. According to DOD's news service, AFIRM will "harness stem cell research and technology … to reconstruct new skin, muscles and tendons, and even ears, noses and fingers." The government is budgeting $250 million in public and private money for the project's first five years. NIH and three universities will be on the team.

The people who brought you the Internet are about to bring you replacement fingers.

If you've been following Human Nature for the past three years, you know that tissue regeneration is well underway. The military has been working on regrowing lost body parts using extracellular matrices. Scientists in labs have grown blood vessels, livers, bladders, breast implants, and meat. This year they announced the production of beating, disembodied rat hearts. At yesterday's press conference, Army Surgeon General Schoomaker explained that our bodies systematically generate liver cells and bone marrow and that this ability can be redirected through "the right kind of stimulation."

Now that the regeneration fantasy is becoming real, it's worth pausing to notice how we're absorbing it culturally. This is extremely freaky stuff. Just a few days ago, my wife and I were explaining to our 5-year-old daughter that she needs to take good care of her adult teeth because they're the last real teeth she'll ever have.

That's just not true anymore. It's not true of her fingers and toes, either. And why stop there? Schoomaker points out that salamanders can regenerate whole limbs. He asks: "Why can't a mammal do the same thing?"

When technology transforms humanity in such a fundamental way, it's best to start with a context that feels normal. Today, that context is what every American politician now calls "our brave men and women in uniform." The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan , waged in large part through improvised explosive devices, have produced nearly 1,000 U.S. military amputees. Many other service members have lost eyesight or suffered burns or spinal-cord damage. We all want to help these young people recover. We've seen inspiring stories of doctors outfitting them with prosthetic limbs. If only we could make them truly whole again. And now we can.

At the press conference, Schoomaker displayed pictures of a wounded Marine whose disfigured features could be restored only through tissue regrowth. He vowed to "redefine the Army and military medicine." The Defense Department's assistant secretary for health declared a goal of "getting these people up to where they are functioning and reintegrated, employed, [and] able to help their families and be fully participating members of society."

It's a familiar and worthy goal. And it has to be, because in the larger context of human history, its job is to ease us across the mind-blowing threshold of human regeneration. If my daughter loses a tooth, she may be able to grow it back. If my son loses a finger, the work pioneered by AFIRM early in his life may be able to help him.

Warfare will never be the same again, either. American military medicine is already saving the lives of soldiers who would have died in previous conflicts. Yesterday's death is today's wound. Now we're raising the ante: Today's permanent wound will be tomorrow's bad memory. Blow off our fingers, and we'll grow them back.

Further down the road, other possibilities will emerge. If we can restore a soldier's original muscle strength, we can probably add to it. The military is already encouraging soldiers to get LASIK, which improves some people's eyesight beyond 20/20. It's hard to believe we won't continue to improve that surgery and systematize it across the armed forces. Most of us civilians will face these revolutions when we're ready. By then, like AFIRM, they'll already be here.

MEDICAL DEVICE NEWS

Lawyer sued for not filing medical malpractice papers against urologist

New York Daily News

New York, NY , USA

BY JOHN MARZULLI

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Monday, April 21st 2008, 4:00 AM

A Great Neck lawyer is being sued for failing to file court papers in time to sue a urologist who allegedly botched a penile implant procedure.

The suit, filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, accuses Ira Podlofsky, of the law firm Podlofsky, Hill, Orange & Modzelewski, of missing the deadline to file a medical malpractice action against the doctor.

Podlofsky and his firm "failed to commence a lawsuit and negligently allowed the statute of limitations to expire," according to the complaint filed by Isabella, who is back to being impotent - and powerlessto recover damages from the doctor.

Isabella, a carpenter formerly of Maspeth, Queens, claims he suffered serious injuries in 2004 when the doctor who installed the penile prosthesis failed to remove a foreign device during the surgery.

"It was a bonehead mistake," Isabella's new lawyer Gordon said about the doctor's flub.

The doctor, whose name is not given in the new lawsuit, initially denied anything was wrong and referred Isabella to a psychologist, telling him the problem was all in his mind, Gordon said.

"He's very bitter at the doctor," Gordon said of Isabella.

Finally, surgery to remove the device was performed, and Isabella retained Podlofsky in July 2005, which gave the attorney a six-month window to sue, Gordon contends.

But on March 6, 2007 - with the deadline already past - Podlofsky sent the following letter to Isabella: "After due reflection, we are going to decline to accept your case into our office."

"I don't know how he [Podlofsky] missed this one. It's a slam-dunk case," Gordon said.

Isabella is seeking $10 million in damages from the lawyer for legal malpractice.

Isabella and his wife, Natasha, now live in Michigan with the child they were able to conceive when the implant was working.

Podlofsky declined to comment on the suit, and his attorney could not be reached for comment.

Service to mankind or medicine for profit

By Shan (China Daily)

Updated: 2008-04-23 08:06

Are multinational pharmaceutical companies doing mankind a favor by conducting clinical trials (on humans) or are they using Chinese people as guinea pigs to make more money? The question came to the fore again with a court hearing on a medical dispute in Beijing last week.

Ouyang Lidong, 36, of Hunan province, was admitted to Beijing You'an Hospital in 2006. Doctors diagnosed he had complicated liver problems and only a liver transplant could save his life. Since a donor liver was not immediately available, the hospital doctors recommended on Dec 5, 2006, that he be put on extracorporeal liver assist device (ELAD), or an artificial liver. Developed and manufactured by Vital Therapies Inc., California, the ELAD is designed to help liver failure patients survive till a donor liver is available or another mode of treatment is found, says the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website. The device, however, has not been approved for use in the US.

Ouyang was part of a free trial program, and his wife He Binying accepted the offer in a desperate bid to save his life. But he soon developed complications, including rising blood sugar levels, breathing problems and hemoptysis (coughing up of blood from the respiratory tract that indicates a severe infection of the bronchi or lungs), which proved fatal.

But before that - in fact, as soon as he developed the new complications - his wife requested the doctors to put him off the ELAD. Her requests went unheeded till Dec 7. And by the time the therapy was stopped, Ouyang's condition had deteriorated. He was transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) later, and died on Dec 27, 2006.

A few days after his death, He Binying filed a lawsuit against the hospital, alleging that its doctors' negligence had caused the death of her husband. "Before we signed the paper giving consent for the use of the ELAD, the hospital authorities had promised to stop the therapy as soon as any adverse effect or discomfort was detected. They had insisted it was very safe, too," she says.

"They made the wrong recommendation for the ELAD trial, which is more suitable for acute liver failure, whereas my husband had been suffering from hepatitis B for 12 years." Worse, they broke their promise and continued the trial despite his worsening condition, she says.

The hospital lawyer, on the other hand, argued in court last week that the couple had signed the consent form before the trial, and knew full well the efficacy of and potential risks associated with the ELAD. "That should be enough to exempt the hospital from any legal liability," he said.

Also, Ouyang's condition was serious, and the doctors had diagnosed that he had been suffering from the life-threatening hepatocirrhosis, and the only known cure was a liver transplant. "It was natural for the hospital to have recommended the therapy to prolong his life so he could get a donor liver," the lawyer said.

A Beijing Youth Daily report on June 19, 2007, quoted hospital Vice-President Duan Zhongping, who also heads the institution's Artificial Liver Treatment & Training Center, as having said that before putting Ouyang on the ELAD, the doctors had tried it on 28 other patients and none had died.

Vital Therapies Inc. announced on Jan 4, 2007, that it had received positive response for its clinical trials on the first 45 patients at Beijing You'an and 302 Military hospitals. "Our center has treated a large number of patients with other mechanical and bio-artificial liver therapies, and although the data for ELAD are preliminary, none has looked more promising than ELAD to impact a patient's long-term survival from a single treatment," Duan said in the announcement.

Ouyang's case does not seem to have changed the course of ELAD treatment, for the center has said it would continue with the trials till 90 consenting patients undergo the therapy. The center insists, too, that no significant harmful effects have been attributed to the ELAD, and has not posted any details of Ouyang's case. "The ELAD trials in our hospital have been approved and commissioned by China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), which is authorized to approve and oversee clinical trials in the country," Duan said. But according to the paper, SFDA's Medical Device Department official Hu Xueyan denied that Duan had said so

Other experts too do not agree with Duan. "It's unethical to conduct clinical trials in China without the SFDA's approval," says Qiu Zongren of Asian Ethics Committee, which helps oversee such schemes. "Trial patients should be well informed of potential hazards and effects of the tests."

"Some foreign pharmaceutical companies and domestic medical institutions just take advantage of regulatory loopholes to conduct clinical trials for their products on innocent Chinese patients because the cost involved (in China) is very low," said SFDA Deputy Director Zhang Jingli said at a workshop organized by the administration in Beijing early this month. To plug such loopholes, he said the agency will issue a sound set of laws and regulations on medical device management.

Duan has a supporter in breast cancer specialist Jiang Zefei, of Beijing-based Military 307 Hospital, though. Jiang says global drug trials have given Chinese patients a new hope, especially because many of them are poor. It is not rare for poor patients to forego treatment because of the high costs involved and the "not-so-perfect" public healthcare system in China.

"Since 1997, hundreds of my critically ill patients have participated in trials for different drugs to combat breast cancer," Jiang says. "Nearly all of them, I should say, have benefited from the trials." Given the strict regulations on clinical trials, sudden field inspections by the drug watchdog and the self-discipline practiced by the hospital, there has been no medical dispute over any of "my department's trials", he says.

"Medical ethics is the top concern in a drug trial Most of the therapies would fail for terminal cancer patients. But clinical trials of the latest potential remedies, provided free, might be effective for them. At least, they can save the patients and their families from the heavy economic burden even if they don't prove efficacious," he says.

An increasing number of foreign drug and medical device companies have begun outsourcing their research and development (R & D) work in China, and clinical trials are on top of their tasks. China attracts them with its sound infrastructure, low research cost and the huge number of patients suffering from chronic and infectious diseases. Experts say the cost of drug trials in China can be as little as one-tenth of that in the US or Europe.

In the US, drug companies have a hard time trying to enroll enough people for clinical trials. But the situation is quite different in China, which has 130 million hepatitis B patients and carriers alone - a number larger than the combined populations of Britain and France. And many of such patients are poor farmers or workers.

"The US has no such pool," says Terry E. Winters, British biochemist and chairman of the Vital Therapies Inc. Besides, foreign companies' drugs and medical devices have to be tested locally in China before they can enter the country's huge market, "That boosts trial outsourcing too," he said.

Big drug companies doubled their investment in R & D to $2.2 billion in China and India, and most of the additional amount came to China. Drug companies' business is booming, and with it have increased medical disputes, including those over clinical trials. Some of these cases, like Ouyang's, end up in court, and verdicts in such cases are slow to come by, given the series of complicated medical verifications and appraisals.

Clinical trials for more than 800 new medications, including drugs and medical devices, are conducted in the country every year, according to official figures, and most of them are conducted by foreign pharmaceutical companies.

Clinical trials can indeed be a problem - not only of medical ethics, but also of proper healthcare, poverty and helpless patients' desperation. And only foolproof government regulation and socially conscious drug companies can make them beneficial to human beings.

MORE MEDICAL DEVICE NEWS

SEC says Tampa firm lied about medical device

Shareholder Class Action Filed Against Candela Corporation by the Law Firm of Schiffrin Barroway Topaz & Kessler, LLP

MERCURY

Dental Fillings: Old School vs. New School

PR-USA.net

Varna, Bulgaria

More dentists are moving away from silver fillings because of health and aesthetic concerns, finds a recent Wealthy Dentist survey. A number no longer offer amalgam, preferring composite restorations instead.

Dentists have used dental amalgam to make metal fillings for a long time, but the material is more controversial now than ever before. Some worry the silver/mercury alloy may cause health problems, while others think it's still superior to tooth-colored composite fillings.

When dentists were asked about amalgam restorations in a recent Wealthy Dentist survey, 66% said they tell patients that they have other cosmetic dentistry options. Another 22% tell patients about potentially safer options; many of these dentists no longer use any amalgams at all. However, 12% say they prefer placing amalgams.

Dental amalgam is an alloy of mercury, silver, and other metals. The FDA says amalgam is safe, but some disagree. The primary alternative is composite, a tooth-colored resin.

The poll also revealed that most dentists refer to amalgam restorations as "silver fillings." However, there are many different terms in use (not all of which are considered scientifically neutral): mercury fillings, amalgam fillings, silver/mercury fillings, silver amalgam, or mercury amalgam.

Lots of dentists think mercury fillings are perfectly safe. "I have 40 year old silver in my mouth and no concerns whatever," offered an Oregon dentist. "Mercury poison causes mercury poison symptoms. To my knowledge amalgam fillings never have. They try to blame amalgams on every disease under the sun. Why do people without fillings get the same diseases?" asked a Kentucky dentist.

Amalgam is seen as an old-fashioned material by many. "It was an excellent material for 90 years, but more biocompatible materials are now available," declared a Georgia pediatric dentist. "At least a half a dozen countries in Europe have now done away with amalgam. Don't kid yourself; we are just a stone's throw in the US from the same ruling," warned a Colorado dentist.

Some dentists prefer amalgam because of its superior longevity. "They last much longer than composite... It is a travesty to not offer amalgams at all," declared a Canadian dentist.

Dental amalgam is most often used to restore back teeth, where its metal color is less visible. "Next to gold inlays/onlays, amalgam fillings are the longest lasting and sturdiest posterior restorations that exist," said a Virginia dentist.

In addition, amalgam is a lot more affordable than gold (or even composite). "It's a safe, cost-effective restoration," said a New York dentist. "If it's banned, the cost of dentistry would increase and the poor would be the most to suffer."

Since mercury is a known toxin, some recommend caution. "Why should we have raw mercury in our offices?" asked a California dentist. "If there is a spill you need a Haz Mat team to clean it up and a risk to the staff with possible legal consequences." A Connecticut dentist added, "Remember smoking used to be a great thing too!"

A few dentists recommend patients with amalgam fillings get them all replaced, but many feel it's unethical to overstate the danger. "It is malpractice to tell the average patient who has no allergies to the components in amalgam that these restorations are a threat to their health. Patients have a right to a choice, but that choice needs to be based not on the dentists' bias but on facts," said a Pennsylvania dentist.

Mercury's unique properties can cause amalgam fillings to expand, sometimes causing permanent tooth damage. "With time they undoubtedly cause cracks in teeth," said a Tennessee dentist. "They take more tooth structure away than necessary," agreed an Oklahoma dental hygienist.

Lots of dentists no longer place amalgam. "I stopped doing them 24 years ago. I would not place something in a patients mouth that the government does not allow in their sewer systems," said one pediatric dentist.

To the average cosmetic dentist, it's simply a matter of aesthetics. "[Amalgam fillings] are still the best, but ugly..." sighed a Texas prosthodontist.

"Cosmetic dentistry favors more aesthetic composite fillings," said Jim Du Molin, dental management consultant and founder of the dental website The Wealthy Dentist. "However, it's clear that lots of dentists still love amalgam. And though the mercury might be dangerous, composites have not been proven to be perfectly safe either. What's a consumer to do??"

VETERANS NEWS

Lou Gehrig's disease patient takes to D.C.

Veterans are twice as likely to get ALS; Ken wants answers.

Kate Santich | Sentinel Staff Writer

April 19, 2008

While Ken still has a voice -- before he is completely bedridden and fed through a tube -- he wants answers.

The former Army sergeant wants to know why those who've served in the military are twice as likely to get Lou Gehrig's disease as those who haven't served. And he wants to know what the politicians controlling research funds are going to do about it.

"They worry more about giving little blue pills [Viagra] to old men than the 30,000-plus people with this disease," said , 39, of Titusville .

Today, begins a 940-mile journey from Orlando to Washington in his battery-powered wheelchair. Traveling 50 miles and 10 hours a day -- with his wife, Glenda, trailing him in a van -- he plans to collect letters from other patients and carry them to Capitol Hill, raising awareness along the way.

"Somebody has to do it," he said. "Why not me?"

has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease -- a fatal neurological disorder that progressively robs its victims of the ability to walk, speak, move and, eventually, breathe. It leaves a perfectly alert mind in a shell of a body.

Despite numerous studies showing that ALS is more common among veterans and a 5-year-old ALS registry by the Department of Veterans Affairs that now has 1,800 names, funding to unravel the mystery is still meager. This year, the Department of Defense has requested $5 million to study possible treatments.

"We're happy to get it, but $5 million is nothing in the realm of medical research," said Lucie Bruijn, national science director and vice president of the ALS Association. "We can absolutely use more. I think what he [] is doing is fantastic."

Not 'going to crawl in a hole'

Since his diagnosis with ALS in November 2006, has had plenty of time to consider potential culprits.

Was it the jet fuel he was exposed to as a paratrooper? Did it have anything to do with being a gunner on an anti-tank missile system? Was it all the vaccines he was given -- as many as a dozen at a time? Or perhaps the exposure came later, in his work as a safety engineer for the Kennedy Space Center.

"You don't have enough space to write all the possibilities," he said, his words already slurred from the disease.

A one-time firefighter and paramedic, first went to a doctor in late 2005 for what he thought was a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome. His right hand hurt all the time, and his grip was slipping. He couldn't turn his ignition key without using two hands.

It took three doctors, a gamut of tests and 11 months to get the answer: He had a disease he didn't know anything about and a prognosis of two to five years left to live.

"I got drunk," he said. "I couldn't have what they said. I thought, 'I'm just getting to where I want to be in life. I'm still a young man.' "

Divorced and the father of a son, he had been dating Glenda House for nearly a year. He was about to begin work on his master's degree. And at Kennedy Space Center , he was on track for a big promotion.

In January 2007, quit work to spend what time he had left with his family, and that spring he drove with Glenda to Washington for an ALS candlelight vigil at the Capitol.

"I didn't see one news reporter, not one cameraman," he said. "Nobody cared about ALS. Somebody had to do something. I wasn't just going to crawl in a hole and die."

He began planning his mission. And in July, he and Glenda, 36, married.

All services susceptible

On the way to Washington, the two plan to stop at Fort in Georgia and Fort in South Carolina . They want to tell soldiers there what scientists have learned: that it doesn't matter whether you've been in the Army or Navy, Air Force or Marines. It doesn't matter whether you've ever deployed overseas or fought in combat. never made it out of Fort Benning , Ga.

Any time in the service raises the risk, though there might be no sign of ALS for years or decades afterward. And for those who fought in the Persian Gulf War of the early 1990s, the risk is higher still. Again, the reason is unknown.

Since the disease was identified in 1869 -- decades before it struck baseball great Lou Gehrig -- the prognosis of two to five years has remained unchanged. And only one drug -- Rilutek -- has been approved by the FDA for treatment. It is thought to extend life by about eight to 12 weeks and costs about $1,000 a month.

"The disease is still a rare one," said Bruijn, a molecular biologist. "It's not as if everyone in the military is suddenly going to get ALS. But the fact that it is increased leads us to the theory that there is some sort of environmental exposure involved, and we need to identify what that might be."

Earlier this year, scientists isolated a gene that causes some forms of ALS, indicating a genetic predisposition.

The most likely scenario, experts say, is that the disease comes from that genetic vulnerability coupled with exposure to an environmental toxin.

Realistically, Ken probably won't live long enough to find out. But he likes to think otherwise.

"I'm going to stick around another 90 years just to piss the world off," he said.

Thank you for supporting Hadcorp.

http://www.freewebs.com/implants/

To unsubscribe from these mailings, click here: please unsubscribe me