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Virginia Supreme Court launches State mental health law review

Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leroy Hassell last Thursday launched the Commission on Mental Health Reform, "the broadest review of the state's mental health laws in three decades" intended to produce an "omnibus mental health reform package" to present to the 2008 General Assembly, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.

16 Oct 2006

U.S. consumers' health care concerns

USA Today on Monday published three articles addressing U.S. consumers' health care concerns as part of a week-long series titled "Prescription for Change," which examines possible improvements to the U.S. health care system.

16 Oct 2006

Few candidates discuss health care in detail as part of campaigns

Health care "almost always gets mentioned in campaigns, but often not in detail," and it "is always somewhere on the list of serious voter concerns" but "almost never at the top," in part because of the complexity of the issue, the Baltimore Sun reports.

16 Oct 2006

Missouri tobacco tax proposal to appear on November ballot

The Missouri Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled unanimously that a proposed constitutional amendment to raise tobacco taxes should be placed on the Nov. 7 ballot, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

16 Oct 2006

McClellan touts lower projected cost of Medicare prescription drug benefit

Mark McClellan, who left his position as CMS administrator this weekend, said he believes his greatest accomplishment during his tenure was improving quality of care in Medicare, CQ HealthBeat reports (Reichard, CQ HealthBeat, 10/13).

16 Oct 2006

One-fourth of U.S. adults would purchase generic medications

About one-fourth of U.S. adults would purchase generic medications, rather than brand-name treatments, in all cases, according to a Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive poll released on last week, the Wall Street Journal reports.

16 Oct 2006

Cocaine addicts have an altered perception of reward

People addicted to cocaine have an impaired ability to perceive rewards and exercise control due to disruptions in the brain's reward and control circuits, according to a series of brain-mapping studies and neuropsychological tests conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.

16 Oct 2006

Ohio wild bird samples undergo additional bird flu testing

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of the Interior (DOI) has announced a detection of H5 and N1 avian influenza subtypes in samples from apparently healthy wild Northern pintails in Ottawa County, Ohio, that were killed by a hunter.

16 Oct 2006

Updates on pandemic flu vaccine trials to be presented at 44th Annual IDSA meeting

Preliminary results from clinical trials testing two different pandemic flu vaccine approaches - one a prime-boost strategy using different subtypes of H5N1 vaccines, the other an H5N1 vaccine delivered into the skin (intradermal) rather than the muscle - will be presented at the 44th Annual Meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

16 Oct 2006

Keeping our children safe and secure: Pandemic flu and emergency preparedness

Scientists predict that the world is due for an influenza pandemic - a global outbreak from a new strain of flu - that would have a dramatic impact on our nation's communities, schools, and families.

16 Oct 2006

New guide to help countries prevent violence against children

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a practical new guide to help countries prevent violence against children. Children are the victims of startling levels of violence, often at the hands of those who should be protecting them.

16 Oct 2006

Indonesia confirms three more cases of bird flu

The Ministry of Health in Indonesia has confirmed an additional three cases of human infection with the H5N1 avian influenza virus. All three cases were fatal.

16 Oct 2006

Co-delivery of drugs and DNA from cationic core-shell nanoparticles self-assembled from a biodegradable copolymer

Efforts to treat cancer using genes and other oligonucleotides, such as short interfering RNA (siRNA), that turn off the biochemical processes that trigger malignancies have been hindered by difficulties in delivering nucleic acids to tumors.

16 Oct 2006

A nanoplasmonic molecular ruler for measuring nuclease activity and DNA footprinting

The interactions between proteins and nucleic acids play a critical role in some of life’s most crucial biochemical processes, including gene expression and protein production, and some promising anticancer agents exert their effects by interfering with these interactions.

16 Oct 2006