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WHO Recommends Vaccine Makers Move Forward In Mass Production Of H1N1 Vaccine
"Saying the new H1N1 [swine flu] virus is "unstoppable", the WHO gave drug makers a full go-ahead to manufacture vaccines against the pandemic influenza strain on Monday and said healthcare workers should be the first to get one," Reuters reports (Fox, 7/14). This, as "Britain, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, the Philippines and Thailand all reported deaths on Monday, while Saudi Arabia shut an international school after 20 students were diagnosed with the A(H1N1) virus," AFP/Google.com reports (7/13). "As of last week, the WHO had reported nearly 95,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of pandemic flu and 429 deaths," the Los Angeles Times reports (Maugh, 7/14).

Palliative Care Research To Benefit From $1.5 Million Award
The American Cancer Society and the National Palliative Care Research Center (NPCRC) are awarding $1.5 million in research grants to researchers at eleven institutions for studies aimed at reducing suffering for seriously ill patients and their family caregivers. The studies will be conducted over the next two years. The NPCRC, in collaboration with the American Cancer Society, has directed over $5 million towards supporting 38 palliative care research projects since starting this initiative three years ago.
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Rep. Wolf Says Entitlement Programs Could Affect U.S. Bond Rating
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) on Friday in a letter to President Obama said that the U.S. could lose its triple-A bond rating if Congress does not act quickly to overhaul U.S. entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and reduce federal debt, the AP/Detroit News reports.Several lawmakers in Congress over the past two years have introduced bills to create a bipartisan task force to address the growing costs and potential insolvency of entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid. Wolf is a co-author of one such bill (HR 1557). A federal report issued earlier this month found that the trust fund Medicare uses to pay for beneficiaries" hospital care will be insolvent by 2017, two years earlier than previously predicted.According to the legislation, the task force would be responsible for developing a "grand bargain" package of recommendations to Congress on tax increases and benefits related to the entitlement programs. However, the task force has been opposed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), several top congressional committee leaders and White House aides who said that other priorities, such as a health care system overhaul, need to be addressed first.Wolf said, "The fact that the leadership has been opposed to it has been a problem," adding, "There"s an economic tsunami off the coast and it"s ready to wipe us out." David Walker, president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said that currently the potential for the task force is not good but that it should improve as the economy recovers and Congress can offer more attention to the plan (Raum, AP/Detroit News, 5/24). Opinion Pieces
Oncology

Cigarette Smoking Does Not Affect Everyone In Same Way

Cigarette smoking induced COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is a disease that results in severe breathing difficulty. According to World Health Organization (WHO) it is the fourth leading killer worldwide. However the mechanisms responsible for some smokers developing COPD and others evading the disease have not been well understood. Dr.Manuel Cosio from the McGill University Health Centre, in collaboration with Italian and Spanish scientists, reports in the New England Journal of Medicine that an autoimmune mechanism, compounded by genetic predisposition in COPD, would explain the progression of the disease in some smokers and the evasion in others. COPD has a family connection and next of kin of patients with COPD have a much higher chance of developing the disease, a characteristic of autoimmune diseases. Although smoking is the primary risk factor for COPD in the western world, open fire pollutant cooking and heating fuels in the home is an important risk factor for the development of COPD in women in developing nations. "Smoke can play an important role in autoimmune diseases such as COPD, and other diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, because it accentuates genetic predispositions to the disease," warns Dr. Cosio. Yet contrary to previous scientific beliefs, COPD does not progress in the same way in all smokers. The authors describe three steps in the potential progression to COPD in smokers: "COPD does not go from stage one, two and three in all people," Dr. Cosio says. "Depending on their personal balance between immune response and immune control some people would stop at stage one, others at stage two, and some will progress to stage three, full autoimmunity and lung destruction." "Hopefully investigators will now see the disease in a totally different way," Dr Cosio stresses. "Our hope is that our research will open the door for a different investigation on COPD, where scientists learn more about the immunological processes and how these processes could be controlled and modulated to eventually provide the right treatment." Notes: Dr Manuel Cosio: Dr Manuel Cosio is Professor of respiratory medicine at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) and an investigator in "Respiratory health" at the Meakins Christie laboratories of the Research institute of the MUHC. Funding: This study was supported by the Lloyd-Carr Harris Foundation, the Italian Ministry of University and Research and CIBERES (Centro de investigaci̚n biom̩dica en red sobre enfermedades respiratorias). Partners: This article was authored by Dr.Manuel G. Cosio of the McGill University Health Centre (Canada), Dr.Marina Saetta of the University of Padua, (Italy) and Dr.Alvar Agusti of the Hospital Universitario Son Dureta, (Spain). Isabelle Kling McGill University Health Centre


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