Friday, May 17, 2013

Larry Page: You Worry Too Much About Medical Privacy

What reason do you possibly have to look at another person's medical history unless you are a physician or are put into a situation where you have to make medical decisions for another person? It's one thing to decide to share something if you feel it might be beneficial to help raise awareness (see Angelina Jolie) or if you're in an important position where people might have money riding on your health (see Steve Jobs or Larry Page) and a case could be made for ascertaining that you are healthy, but otherwise, there's no good reason.

I don't want to come off as some tin-foil hat wearing nut-job, but one can't help making a connection between Google wanting to know as much information as possible about a person to influence search results and Page's comments.

I just think there's no good reason to open up if people don't want to. There are a lot of things that could be stigmatizing in a person's medical history and open them all to all kinds of forms of discrimination outside of being able to get health insurance. Things as simple as "Oh, you had an abortion once. You're not welcome here."

And for what it's worth, I'd like to see better privacy laws in place. The kind of data that companies are so easily able to gather these days is getting out of hand is probably going to lead to an entirely new set of problems in the future. For example, it's already been proven possible to out a gay person [firstmonday.org] by analyzing their friends on social networks. If the world were a better place that wouldn't be a big deal, but it isn't. I'm reminded a short story [blogspot.com] where information gathering becomes so sophisticated that computers are able to generate targeted ads to influence a person in a single regard:

?Push combs the online footprint of our targets to determine everything we can about them,? said Yaroslava. ?We use social networks, we use search histories, we use cell phone data, we use gaming protocols. All data is useful to us. Not only do we find out exactly what our target likes to consume, but we also find out how they like to consume it. We see how they browse to determine their specific attention spans and intelligence. We scan their pornography habits to learn about their libido, their obsessions, and their fears. We aggregate vast amounts of data about the way they use the internet to create a complete psychological profile of our targets, and then we use cognitive behavioral techniques to triangulate patterns in this profile. We make as robust a model of their operating intelligence as we possibly can. And then we make little movies meant only for our specific subjects. We make movies designed to steer them toward our products, whatever these products may be. These movies are designed to make each subject breathless, pliant, confused, over-stimulated, and highly amenable to suggestion.?

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/yHgR7OIuIQQ/story01.htm

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Sunday, May 5, 2013

Share gains pause as jobs report eyed, euro recovers

LONDON (Reuters) - A rally in global share markets paused on Friday as investors braced for monthly jobs data from the United States, while the euro recovered slightly from losses driven by the European Central Bank's decision to cut rates.

Analysts expect the April nonfarm payrolls report, due at 1230 GMT (8.30 a.m. ET), to show American employers hired 145,000 people last month, up from March's dismal pace of 88,000 but not enough to erase fears the world's biggest economy is losing steam.

"I think we will see a weak payrolls number, but we'll have to wait and see whether markets take that as good news or focus on the fact that the economy is really weakening," said Fred Goodwin, cross-asset strategist at State Street.

The jobs data caps a big week for markets, following the U.S. Federal Reserve's decision on Wednesday to stick with its aggressive monetary policy easing, and Thursday's move by the ECB to cut rates and to signal a further easing may be ahead.

By increasing liquidity, the central banks have fuelled a rally in world share and bond markets, though the actions come in response to signs the global economic recovery is faltering.

MSCI's world equity index <.miwd00000pus> was steady around its best levels since June 2008 on Friday, while Europe's broad FTSEurofirst 300 <.fteu3> index of leading shares was flat in early trade. <.eu/>

London's FTSE 100 <.ftse> was also flat, but Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> inched up 0.1 percent.

The euro was up 0.2 percent at about $1.31, having seen a broad sell-off on Thursday when the ECB indicated it was willing to consider further rate cuts and even charging banks for holding their money, known as negative interest rates.

The single currency's recovery was helped on Friday when ECB policymaker Ewald Nowotny said the markets may have over-interpreted the comments about possible negative interest rates.

Most euro zone bond yields were easier following the ECB announcement as investors were drawn to bonds offering higher returns than German debt.

French, Austrian and Belgian 10-year yields fell to new record lows of 1.65 percent, 1.436 percent and 1.905 percent, respectively, while Spain's fell below 4 percent for the first time since October 2010.

The premium demanded by investors to hold 10-year Italian bonds compared with German bonds narrowed to its tightest since July 2011 at 251 basis points.

(Editing by Will Waterman)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ecb-rate-cut-cheers-stocks-euro-subdued-032758865.html

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Saturday, May 4, 2013

Hartford VA Reducing Backlog On Veterans&#39; Disability Claims ...

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U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki

Peggy McCarthy Photo

U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki

Shinseki visited the regional office where officials announced a 65 percent drop in Connecticut veterans waiting more than 125 days for disability claims to be processed since January, 2012. The VA defines waits longer than 125 days as backlogged and has a goal of no such waits by July, 2015.

Last September, the Hartford VA became one of the first offices in the country to? convert to a paperless process designed to reduce the backlog. Shinseki said all 56 regional offices should make the change by the end of this year.

?We owe our veterans everything we can do to make them to be as successful in their communities as they were in the military,? Shinseki said at a news conference at the regional office, which is located in Newington. He also visited the VA in West Haven.

But, Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, called the VA system ?still very much a work in progress.? He said there are ?a lot of angry veterans? who complain about ?seemingly endless delays.?

?Of all the problems I see in government today, this is the most vexing and perplexing,? said Blumenthal who was invited by the VA to speak at the Shinseki news conference.

Blumenthal was among 67 senators who sent a letter Tuesday to President Obama, asking him to take action to reduce the disability claims backlog.

In Connecticut, 2,628 veterans are waiting for their disability claims to be processed with an average wait of four months (122.3 days), according to VA figures released Thursday by the Hartford office. The number of veterans waiting more than 125 days in Connecticut has been reduced from a peak of 2,938 cases in January, 2012 to 1,023 now.

Nationally, as of the end of April, 796,731 are waiting for claims to be processed, with 70.8 percent waiting more than 125 days, according to VA statistics compiled by the Center for Investigative Reporting. ?The average national wait is nearly 10 months, 292 days, figures show.

Shinseki said a record 4.1 million disability claims have been processed across the country in the last four years. But, the VA hasn?t kept up with the total 4.6 million claims filed in that period.? He attributed the volume to: the fact that after decades veterans are now able to file claims for Agent Orange, dating back to the Vietnam War, and for nine new diseases recognized as connected to service in Desert Storm; and claims for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.

U. S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, a New Haven Democrat, pointed out at the news conference that ?the complexity of claims? has increased with succeeding wars. She said World War II veterans reported one to two disabilities, Vietnam veterans, three to four disabilities, Gulf War veterans nine to 11 disabilities, and Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, 15 to 20 ?or more.?

?The increase is staggering and exponential,? she said, ?we have an urgency here.?

In another effort to reduce the backlog, the VA also announced that veterans waiting the longest for disability claims to be processed will be given provisional decisions so they can start collecting benefits for up to a year before final decisions are made in their cases. After the final decisions, they will have another year to appeal.

Jessica Maki, Hartford?s veterans service center manager, said there are five Connecticut veterans who have been waiting more than two years and their claims will be processed within the next 40 days. Then, the claims of 66 veterans waiting more than one year will be processed. She said this number has dropped from a high of 120 at the end of last October.

In the letter to Obama, the senators wrote that nationally ?the number of claims pending for over a year has grown by over 2,000 percent, despite a 40 percent increase in the VA?s budget.?

They stated that Congress has added funding and employees for the VA, without a resultant elimination of backlogs. ?We need direct and public involvement from you to establish a clear plan to end the backlog once and for all,? they wrote.

Source: http://ctwatchdog.com/health/hartford-va-reducing-backlog-on-veterans-disability-claims

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Friday, May 3, 2013

Hey, it's a meteor shower from Halley's Comet!

NASA

This is an image of the full Halley's Comet taken in 1986.

By Joe Rao
Space.com

Early Sunday, just before dawn, we'll have an opportunity to see some of the remnants of the most famous of comets briefly light up the early morning sky.

The famed Halley's Comet made its last pass through the inner solar system in 1986 and is not due back until the summer of 2061. But each time Halley sweeps around the sun, it leaves behind a dusty trail ?? call it "cosmic litter" ? that is responsible for two meteor showers on Earth each year. The first of those "shooting stars" displays, the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, will peak on Sunday.

The Eta Aquarid meteor shower occurs each year in early May because the orbit of Halley's Comet closely approaches the orbit of Earth in two places. The first is the May timeframe, which leads to the Eta Aquarids. The other point occurs in mid-October, producing the Orionid meteor shower. [Meteor Shower Quiz: Do You Wish on Shooting Stars?]

When and where to watch
The Eta Aquarid meteor shower is predicted to peak?early on Sunday morning, but dark skies and clear weather are vital to observe them. Under ideal conditions (a dark, moonless sky) about 55 to 60 of these very swift meteors might be seen per hour.?

The meteor shower appears at about one-quarter of its peak strength for several days before and after May 5. This is a very good year to look out for the Eta Aquarid meteors from Halley's Comet because the moon will be at a thin, waning crescent phase, and just 20 percent illuminated and providing little interference for viewing these swift streaks of light.

NASA / MSFC / B. Cooke

An Eta Aquarid meteor streaks over northern Georgia on April 29, 2012.

From places south of the equator, the Eta Aquarids typically put on?a very good show. Australian stargazers consider them to be the best meteor display of the year. ?

But for those?watching from north of the equator, it's a much different story.

Where to look
The apparent origin point of a meteor shower in the night sky is known as its radiant. For the Eta Aquarids, the radiant is found within the "Water Jar" of the constellation Aquarius, which begins to rise above the eastern horizon around 3 a.m. your local time. Unfortunately, this constellation never really gets very high as seen from north temperate latitudes.? And soon after 4 a.m. local time, the morning twilight will begin to brighten the sky.

So if you are hoping to see up to 60 meteors per hour, forget it. With the radiant so low above the horizon, the majority of those meteors will be streaking below the horizon and out of sight.

In fact, from North America, typical Aquarid rates are only 10 meteors per hour at 26 degrees north latitude (Miami, Fla., or Brownsville, Texas), 5 per hour at around 35 degrees latitude (Los Angeles, Calif., or Cape Hatteras, N.C.) and practically zero?to the north of 40 degrees (New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia).

?"So," you may be thinking, "What's the point of getting up before dawn to watch?"

The answer: Despite the long odds, you still just might see something spectacular.

Catch an Earthgrazer, or comet crumb
For most,?perhaps the best hope is perhaps catching a glimpse of a meteor emerging from the radiant that will skim the atmosphere horizontally ? much like a bug skimming the side window of an automobile.

Meteor watchers call such shooting stars "earthgrazers" and they are known for spectacularly long, colorful, long-lasting trails.

"These meteors are extremely long," Robert Lunsford of the International Meteor Organization explained. "They tend to hug the horizon rather than shooting overhead where most cameras are aimed."

"Earthgrazers are rarely numerous," NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke, a member of the Space Environments team at the Marshall Space Flight Center has said. "But even if you only see a few, you're likely to remember them."

If you do catch sight of one early these next few mornings, remember that you are likely seeing the incandescent streak produced by?material that originated from the core of Halley's Comet.

So it is that the shooting stars that we have come to call?the Eta Aquarids?are really an encounter with the traces of a famous visitor from the depths of space and from the dawn of creation.

Editor's note:If you have an amazing picture of any night sky view that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send photos, comments and your name and location to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer's Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y. Follow us on?Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2b7b4638/l/0Lscience0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A50C0A30C180A387960Ehey0Eits0Ea0Emeteor0Eshower0Efrom0Ehalleys0Ecomet0Dlite/story01.htm

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CA-NEWS Summary

Three men charged with undermining Boston bombing probe

BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. authorities on Wednesday charged three men with interfering with the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombing, saying they hid fireworks and a backpack belonging to one of the suspected bombers as a manhunt was under way. The three, two students from Kazakhstan and a U.S. citizen, were described as college friends of surviving bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. They were not charged with direct involvement in the April 15 marathon bombings, which killed three people and injured 264.

Italy's Letta wins French backing for focus on growth

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's new prime minister Enrico Letta won French backing on Wednesday for calls to spur economic growth alongside budget rigor, but problems lay closer to home with coalition partners demanding tax cuts that would blow a hole in the budget. Letta, who took his message to Berlin on Tuesday, met French President Francois Hollande and said he was "100 percent satisfied" with the meeting and Hollande's response to his calls for Europe to start focusing on growth as well as consolidation.

EU considers trade action after Bangladesh factory collapse

DHAKA (Reuters) - The European Union is considering trade action against Bangladesh, which has preferential access to EU markets for its garments, to pressure Dhaka to improve safety standards after a building collapse killed more than 400 factory workers. Duty-free access offered by Western countries and low wages have helped turn Bangladesh's garment exports into a $19 billion a year industry, with 60 percent of clothes going to Europe.

From Toronto to Dagestan; Canadian jihadi draws parallels with Tsarnaev

UTAMYSH, Dagestan, Russia (Reuters) - A mess of rubble, ash and charred vehicles is all that's left at the desolate farmhouse where a Canadian Muslim convert died fighting his last battle alongside Islamist insurgents in the Russian region of Dagestan. At the time, few people beyond local villagers noticed William Plotnikov's death in a region where skirmishes occur daily. But almost a year on, Plotnikov has emerged into the limelight following the Boston Marathon bombings.

Most Americans do not want U.S. involved in Syria: Reuters/Ipsos poll

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most Americans do not want to intervene in Syria's civil war, although the percentage in favor more than doubles if President Bashar al-Assad's forces use chemical weapons against their people, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday. Only 10 percent of those surveyed in the online poll said the United States should intervene in the fighting. Sixty-one percent opposed getting involved.

Turkey investigates use of chemical weapons in Syria

REYHANLI, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkey is testing blood samples taken from Syrian casualties brought over the border from fighting in recent days to determine whether they were victims of a chemical weapons attack, local government and health officials said on Wednesday. The samples were sent to Turkey's forensic medicine institute after several Syrians with breathing difficulties were brought to a Turkish hospital on Monday in the town of Reyhanli in Hatay province along the Syrian border.

Bolivia expels U.S. aid agency after Kerry 'backyard' comment

LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivian President Evo Morales expelled a U.S. development agency from his country on Wednesday, marking the latest confrontation between Washington and a bloc of left-wing governments in Latin America. Morales said he was kicking out the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as a "protest" after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently referred to Latin America as Washington's "backyard." The term evokes strong emotions in the region, which experienced several U.S.-backed coups during the Cold War.

At least 22 killed in Iraq attacks

RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - At least 22 people were killed in attacks across Iraq on Wednesday, police and medics said, after weeks of intensifying violence that threatens all-out sectarian conflict. Iraq has become increasingly volatile as the civil war in neighboring Syria strains fragile relations between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Tensions are at their highest since U.S. troops pulled out of the country more than a year ago.

Japan PM's "stealth" constitution plan raises civil rights fears

TOKYO (Reuters) - Shinzo Abe makes no secret of wanting to revise Japan's constitution, which was drafted by the United States after World War Two, to formalize the country's right to have a military - but critics say his plans go deeper and could return Japan to its socially conservative, authoritarian past. Abe, 58, returned to office in December for a second term as prime minister and is enjoying sky-high support on the back of his "Abenomics" recipe for reviving the economy through hyper-easy monetary policy, big spending and structural reform.

Venezuelans hold rival May Day marches as vote dispute drags on

CARACAS (Reuters) - Opposition and government supporters flooded Venezuelan streets in rival May Day marches on Wednesday as a continuing dispute over the results of last month's presidential vote kept political tensions high in the OPEC nation. On Tuesday, opposition deputies were beaten in a fracas in Congress resulting from their refusal to recognize the presidency of Nicolas Maduro, who narrowly won the April 14 election triggered by the death of socialist leader Hugo Chavez.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ca-news-summary-005657182.html

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Lenders eye $1 billion credit line for Sharp: Nikkei

(Reuters) - Mizuho Corporate Bank and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ are considering a roughly 100 billion yen ($1 billion) credit facility to help electronics manufacturer Sharp Corp meet an upcoming bond redemption, the Nikkei said.

The banks are close to creating a credit line to ensure that Sharp can meet redemption requests for roughly 200 billion yen in convertible bonds maturing in September, the Japanese daily said.

In addition, the lenders will give Sharp an extension on 360 billion yen in collateralized lending that matures in June. The new lending facility will bring the total credit extended to Sharp by the two banks to around 800 billion yen, the daily said.

Sharp, which supplies Apple Inc with screens for its iPhone and iPad, will post a bigger-than-forecast net loss for the year ended March 31, in part because low output at its factories forced it to write off excess capacity, two sources with knowledge of the result told Reuters on Wednesday.

Mizuho had already announced its intention to send high-ranking officials from group firms to Sharp to serve as directors or take similar posts. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi has decided to follow suit and will send former executives well-versed in rehabilitation and investing, the Nikkei said.

($1 = 97.3450 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Aditi Shrivastava in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lenders-eye-1-billion-credit-line-sharp-nikkei-181901683.html

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Thursday, May 2, 2013

Micro-Finance Loan Projects | Red Island Restoration



Posted by Jamie and Alissa on May 1, 2013 in Blog | 0 comments

In early 2012 we started a small micro-finance loan project after some friends gave a generous gift to get this started. ?Last month, we did a year-end review of the project. ?We?re thrilled to share that in the last 12 months, 108 women and men have a received small loan to start or grow their existing businesses!! ?So far, all 108 individuals who received loans are people who are known by the micro-finance committee from different churches within town.

As to be expected there?s been a learning curve in the process. ?We?ve learned that loans cannot be distributed during the months of June, September and December because of Malagasy Independence Day, the start of school with the accompanying school fees and Christmas. ?We?ve learned that women have a better track record at consistently returning the loan over men. ?We?ve learned that a little can go a?really long way?in extending a?hand-up?rather than a?hand-out. ?How much exactly is ?a little?? ?$95.

Stay tuned this week and in the future as we highlight some of these small businesses and the people who are benefiting from these micro-loans.

Source: http://redislandrestoration.com/?p=1556

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Researchers look to mathematics, nature, to understand the immune system and its role in cancer

May 1, 2013 ? Can the patterns in tree branches or the meandering bends in a river provide clues that could lead to better cancer therapies? According to a new study from Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, these self-similar, repeating patterns in nature known as fractals help scientists better understand how the immune system is organized and may one day be used to help improve stem cell transplant outcomes in leukemia patients by predicting the probability of transplant complications.

Recently published in the journal Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, the study led by Amir Toor, M.D., found a fractal pattern in the T cell repertoire of 10 unrelated stem cell transplant donors and recipients. T cells are a family of immune system cells that keep the body healthy by identifying and launching attacks against pathogens such as bacteria, viruses or cancer. T cells have small receptors that recognize antigens, which are proteins on the surface of foreign cells. Once T cells encounter a foreign cell, the antigen fits into the T cell's receptor like a key in a lock and the T cell's deadly arsenal is unleashed on the threat. Once activated, T cells divide into many clones with receptors designed to recognize and guard against that specific pathogen. Over the course of a person's life, he will develop millions of these clonal families, which make up his T cell repertoire and protect him against the many threats that exist in his unique environment.

"The technological advancements of high throughput sequencing have only recently allowed scientists to sequence the genetic material responsible for T cell repertoire. At first glance, the data looks like a chaotic jumble of information," says Toor, a hematologist in the Bone Marrow Transplant Program and researcher in the Developmental Therapeutics program at VCU Massey Cancer Center. "However, if you study a person's T cell repertoire by analyzing the DNA segments responsible for the various types of T cell receptors, you begin to notice a fractal pattern based on segment usage." Toor and his team are hopeful that this information will give them clues that will help them better understand the recovery of immune function following stem cell transplantation and possibly predict complications such as graft-versus-host disease in transplant recipients.

Much like a child can assemble Lego blocks to create a range of different models, humans have evolved a highly efficient process by which a short span of the genome called the T cell receptor locus rearranges gene fragments to create a multitude of different T cell receptor families. In this process, DNA segments known as variable (V), diversity (D) and joining (J) segments are rearranged to create the millions of T cell receptor families, or clones, that the body uses to combat disease. Similar to how the branching pattern of a tree is faithfully replicated from the trunk all the way to its farthest branches, T cells have families that are created from DNA segments branching out from one another to form a shield that provides protection from diseases.

Toor's team looked at the frequency of T cell clones bearing different V, D and J segments in stem cell transplant donors and recipients following stem cell transplantation. Using a circular diagram designed by researcher Jeremy Meier, B.S., to better visualize the arrangement of the different DNA segments, the team observed a similar fractal order in the T cell receptor families of the donors. This order was even apparent in donors of different ethnicities living on different continents. In patients who had received a stem cell transplant, Toor found that this pattern was disrupted and the patients displayed a lower level of complexity in their T cell receptor repertoire at three months after transplant, followed by a modest improvement when a full year had elapsed after transplantation.

"Attempting to restore the fractal order of a patient's T cell receptor repertoire by optimizing the stem cell transplant process could serve as a valuable therapeutic target," says Toor. "Additionally, our findings lend an insight into nature, such that even in complex biological systems bereft of physical form, mathematically determined organization is observed."

Toor and his colleagues plan to continue using high throughput sequencing of patients' T cell receptors to learn more about how the immune system recovers following stem cell transplantation. The team hopes this will give them valuable information about the effectiveness of future stem cell transplant and immunotherapy clinical trials developed in their clinic.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Virginia Commonwealth University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Jeremy Meier, Catherine Roberts, Kassi Avent, Allison Hazlett, Jennifer Berrie, Kyle Payne, David Hamm, Cindy Desmarais, Catherine Sanders, Kevin T. Hogan, Kellie J. Archer, Masoud H. Manjili, Amir A. Toor. Fractal Organization of the Human T Cell Repertoire in Health and after Stem Cell Transplantation. Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, 2013; 19 (3): 366 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbmt.2012.12.004

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/sfhajT0buVY/130501091849.htm

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Wednesday, May 1, 2013

FDA lowers age for buyers of Plan B pill to 15

WASHINGTON (AP) ? In a surprise twist to the decade-plus effort to ease access to morning-after pills, the government is lowering the age limit to 15 for one brand ? Plan B One-Step ? and will let it be sold over the counter.

Today, Plan B and its generic competition are sold behind pharmacy counters, and people must prove they're 17 or older to buy the emergency contraception without a prescription. A federal judge had ordered an end to those sales restrictions by next Monday.

But Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a different approach: Plan B could sit on drugstore shelves next to condoms, spermicides or other women's health products ? but to make the purchase, buyers must prove they're 15 or older at the cash register.

Manufacturer Teva Women's Health, which had applied for the compromise path, said it planned to make the switch in a few months.

The question is whether Tuesday's action settles the larger court fight. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York blasted the Obama administration for imposing the age-17 limit, saying it had let election-year politics trump science and were making it hard for women of any age to obtain emergency contraception in time for it to work.

The FDA said Tuesday's decision was independent of the court case and wasn't intended to address it. The Justice Department remained mum on whether it planned to appeal Korman's ruling by Monday's deadline, and the White House had no immediate comment.

The women's group that sued over the age limits said Tuesday's action is not enough, and it will continue the court fight if necessary.

Lowering the age limit "may reduce delays for some young women but it does nothing to address the significant barriers that far too many women of all ages will still find if they arrive at the drugstore without identification," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The FDA said the Plan B One-Step will be packaged with a product code that prompts the cashier to verify a customer's age. Anyone who can't provide such proof as a driver's license, birth certificate or passport wouldn't be allowed to complete the purchase. In most states, driver's licenses, the most common form of identification, are issued at age 16.

"While an improvement over current policy, today's announcement is still disappointing," said Marcia D. Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center. "Because all women will be required to show an ID to establish their age, those without IDs could be denied access."

Other advocates called the move promising. "This decision is a step in the right direction for increased access to a product that is a safe and effective method of preventing unintended pregnancies," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. "It's also a decision that moves us closer to these critical availability decisions being based on science, not politics."

Social conservatives had opposed any efforts to loosen restrictions on sale of the morning-after pill, arguing that it was important for parents and medical professionals to be involved in such decisions involving young girls.

The group Concerned Women for America charged that health officials were putting politics and so-called progress ahead of the health of children as well as women.

"It makes no sense that kids need parental permission to take aspirin at school, but they're free to buy and administer Plan B," Penny Nance, CEO and president of CWA, said in a statement.

Half the nation's pregnancies every year are unintended, and doctors groups say more access to morning-after pills could cut those numbers. The pills contain higher doses of regular contraceptives and, if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, can cut the chances of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. But they work best if taken in the first 24 hours.

The FDA had been poised to lift all age limits and let Plan B be sold over the counter in late 2011, but Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in an unprecedented move, overruled her own scientists. Sebelius said some girls as young as 11 are physically capable of bearing children but shouldn't be able to buy the pregnancy-preventing pill on their own.

President Barack Obama supported Sebelius' move and a spokesman said the president's position hadn't changed.

The Justice Department could appeal Korman's ruling and seek a stay. If granted, the appeals process would move through the courts, while Plan B is sold over the counter whenever Teva has the product repackaged to meet the FDA's requirements.

Absent a stay, "we will want to go back to court as quickly as possible and ask the judge to hold them in contempt," said Janet Crepps, a senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The FDA said Tuesday that Teva had provided data proving that girls as young as 15 could understand how Plan B works and use it properly, without the involvement of a health care provider. Teva plans to conduct a consumer-education program and indicated it is willing to audit whether stores are following the age requirement, the agency said.

The FDA said its ruling applies only to Plan B One-Step, and not to generic versions of the pill, which would remain behind pharmacy counters with the age-17 restriction.

If a woman already is pregnant, the morning-after pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg. According to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn't begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus. Still, some critics say Plan B is the equivalent of an abortion pill because it may also be able to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, a contention that many scientists ? and Korman, in his ruling ? said has been discredited.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fda-lowers-age-buyers-plan-b-pill-15-064053951.html

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