Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. drug reviewers said Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc’s drug to prevent gout flares worked, but questioned its side effects and whether it did enough to help patients.

The Food and Drug Administration staff on Friday said the injectable drug, called Arcalyst, was meant to be used for only 16 weeks to prevent gout flares – the first treatment for the condition with such a limited timeline.

Shares of Regeneron, the maker of eye drug Eylea, fell 2.4 percent to $130.75 in morning trading on Nasdaq, underperforming the broader market.

The FDA staff review comes ahead of an advisory panel of outside experts, which will vote on whether to recommend the drug next Tuesday. The FDA will make a final decision by July 30, taking into account the panel’s recommendations.

Regeneron’s drug, known generically as rilonacept, is already approved to treat a group of rare genetic auto-inflammatory diseases. But the small biotech company is hoping to expand its use to prevent gout flares in people starting uric acid-lowering therapy.

Gout is a painful condition that occurs when the bodily waste product, uric acid, is deposited in the joints and soft tissues. It affects about 5 million to 6 million Americans.

While there are already treatments for gout flares in general, none exist specifically for people who are starting therapy to lower their uric acid, and none is meant to be used for only 16 weeks, the FDA staff said.

“From an efficacy standpoint, it will be important to address whether 16 weeks provide for an adequate duration for flare prophylaxis during initiation of (uric acid-lowering therapy),” the staff said, according to documents posted online on Friday.

The FDA staff also said Regeneron’s drug, which is an injectable biologic, suppresses the immune system, which could increase the number of cancerous cells. Six people treated with Arcalyst during clinical trials developed malignancies, or cancerous cells that could spread, compared to zero for those taking a dummy drug during the trials.

However, the FDA staff said the treatment duration of 16 weeks was relatively short, making it less likely the drug caused tumors – though the imbalance between Arcalyst and placebo still raised concerns.

(Reporting by Anna Yukhananov; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Dave Zimmerman)

Story By: by The Associated Press

The Obama administration on Wednesday set the first-ever national standards to control air pollution from gas wells that are drilled using a method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, but not without making concessions to the oil and gas industry.

President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address strongly backed natural gas drilling as a clean energy source, and recently announced an executive order calling for coordination of federal regulation to ease burdens on producers. But he has come under criticism by the industry and Republicans for policies they say discourage energy development.

Top EPA officials said Wednesday that the new regulations would ensure pollution is controlled without slowing natural gas production.

“By ensuring the capture of gases that were previously released to pollute our air and threaten our climate, these updated standards will protect our health, but also lead to more product for fuel suppliers to bring to market,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in a statement.

Much of the air pollution from fracked gas wells is vented when the well transitions from drilling to actual production, a three- to 10-day process which is referred to as “completion.” An earlier version of the rule limiting air pollution from gas wells would have required companies to install pollution-reducing equipment immediately after the rule was finalized.

Drillers now will be given more than two years to employ technology to reduce emissions of smog- and soot-forming pollutants during that stage. The Environmental Protection Agency will require drillers to burn off gas in the meantime, an alternative that can release smog-forming nitrogen oxides, but will still slash overall emissions.

Industry groups had pushed hard for the delay, saying the equipment to reduce pollution at the wellhead during completion was not readily available. About 25,000 wells a year are being fracked, a process where water, chemicals and sand are injected at high pressure underground to release trapped natural gas.

Besides the new standards for oil and gas wells, the EPA also on Wednesday updated existing rules for natural gas processing plants, storage tanks and transmission lines that will reduce amounts of cancer-causing air pollution, such as benzene, and also reduce methane — the main ingredient in natural gas, but also one of the most potent global warming gases.

There were other changes made since the EPA proposed the rule last July under a court order that stemmed from a lawsuit brought by environmental groups.

Wells drilled in low-pressure areas, such as coalbed methane reserves, would be exempt because they release less pollution during completion. And companies that choose to re-fracture wells using the pollution-reducing equipment prior to the January 2015 deadline would not be covered by other parts of the regulation.

Since companies could capture the natural gas and sell it, the EPA estimates that they would save about $11 million – $19 million a year starting in 2015.

The American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, said that much of the industry was already doing that.

“We don’t need (the EPA) to come and tell our members we will save you money,” said Howard Feldman, the institute’s director of regulatory and scientific affairs. “Their business is natural gas. They get it that they are trying to capture as much gas as they can.”

The reaction from environmental groups was mixed on Wednesday, in large part to the two-year delay on requiring companies to perform so-called green completions.

“This concession only promotes wasteful drilling,” said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians, an advocacy groups which sued the EPA in 2009 to force regulation. But, he said, “these rules promise to safeguard our communities and keep the dirty process of drilling in check.”

Hydraulic fracturing is largely responsible for a natural gas drilling boom, but the technique has raised environmental concerns for its toll or air and water.

Last March, pollution from natural gas drilling in the Upper Green River Basin in western Wyoming triggered levels of ground-level ozone, the main ingredient in smog, worse than those recorded in Los Angeles, one of the smoggiest cities in the U.S.

In Dish, Texas, a rural town northwest of Dallas, the state’s environmental regulators detected levels of cancer-causing benzene, sometimes at levels dangerous to human health, likely coming from industry’s 60 drilling wells, gas production pads and rigs, a treating facility and compressor station.

At the same time, a state study in Pennsylvania of air quality near Marcellus Shale drilling sites in four counties found no emissions at levels that would threaten the health of nearby residents or workers.

Story By: by Nancy Shute

The brains of people who grow up speaking two languages are wired differently, and those differences protect them from dementia as they age.

That’s the news from two studies out this month from a scientist in Canada who has spent decades trying to figure out whether being bilingual is bad or good. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, tells Shots. “Suddenly people are interested. I figure it’s because everybody’s scared about dementia.”

Since about 20 percent of Americans are bilingual and as many as 60 percent of people in big cities like Los Angeles grew up speaking two languages, this is no small issue.

Not so long ago, it was thought that being bilingual was a disadvantage, because bilingual children have smaller vocabularies in both languages and are slower in word recall. But more recent research finds that bilingual children are better at “executive processing,” which includes being able to pay attention, plan and organize thoughts.

That’s the focus of one of the studies, which concludes that kids who grow up speaking two languages are better at switching between tasks than kids who spoke only one language. Researchers gave 104 children a common executive function test on a computer that asked them to sort images of either colors or animals on a computer screen. This “switching” task tests working memory and the ability to change from one rule to another.

The children who were bilingual in French, Chinese or Spanish were better at switching categories – in essence, multitasking. That may well be because they learn early on to toggle between the two sets of rules for English and their other language. Bialystok is one of the authors of this study published in the journal Child Development.

So does it do you any good when you’re grown up? That’s been a big question in research on the bilingual brain. The second recent study adds to growing evidence that being bilingual as a child helps a lot later in life.

It reviews the state of research on bilingual adults, and finds they maintain better executive functioning later in life than monolingual people. That extra “cognitive reserve” may allow the brain to better cope with the damage caused by dementia, thereby delaying symptoms. (Being physically and mentally active has also been shown to have cognitive benefits.) The article, also co-authored by Bialystock, is in the current issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

But what about those of us who aren’t bilingual? Are we doomed?

“The kind of story we’re telling about bilingualism and dementia is not that bilingualism is the only inoculation against dementia, but rather, bilingualism is one of the many things we know that contributes to cognitive reserve,” Bialystok says. “It’s why you’re supposed to do crossword puzzles and exercise and learn a musical instrument. If you’re not bilingual but you’re active and engaged, you’re getting cognitive reserve.”

Still, bilinguals do have a natural advantage, she notes, because they can stay active and engaged without making a huge effort.

“Nobody spends all day every day doing crossword puzzles, but everybody spends all day every day talking,” Bialystok says. “It’s a way to get massive doses of this stimulating activity without doing anything special.”

Shift workers getting too little sleep at the wrong time of day may be increasing their risk of diabetes and obesity, according to researchers.

The length of the day was extended to 28 hours, creating an effect similar to a full-time flyer constantly getting jet lag.

Lead researcher Dr Orfeu Buxton said: "We think these results support the findings from studies showing that, in people with a pre-diabetic condition, shift workers who stay awake at night are much more likely to progress to full-on diabetes than day workers.

"Since night workers often have a hard time sleeping during the day, they can face both circadian [body clock] disruption working at night and insufficient sleep during the day.

"The evidence is clear that getting enough sleep is important for health, and that sleep should be at night for best effect."

The research group called for more efforts to reduce the health impact of shift working.

Dr Matthew Hobbs, head of research at Diabetes UK, said: "This is an interesting study which shows that under extreme conditions involving sleep deprivation and 'tricking' the body clock, participants produced less insulin and therefore had higher blood glucose levels then when they were able to sleep normally and live according to normal daily rhythms."

He cautioned that the laboratory conditions were not the same as working nights.

"Clearly, this does not equate to the normal experience of shift workers who are able, for example, to use bright lights when not sleeping.

"The study also involved only 21 people. For these reasons, it is not possible to conclude that the findings would translate to real conditions in the wider public."

“It was an embarrassment, somebody having that photograph,” she said, who at her heaviest weighed 338 pounds. “They told the truth. It haunts you.”

But when Kozerski got married in 2009, she had to face the camera for obvious reasons, as every bride does.

“I hadn’t taken a photo in 10 years,” she said.

When she saw her wedding pictures, Kozerski said, “I didn’t see that happiness. I saw someone scared of the camera — that wasn’t me.”

Her inhibitions about being photographed are upended in her self-portraits chronicling her weight-loss, called “Half.”

See Kozerski’s self-portraits

In a society where perfection and Photoshop are givens, Kozerski disrobes and photographs herself just the way she is — no makeup, no clothes, no hairstyles, no computer tricks to nip and tuck.

In the series, a somber Kozerski faces a mirror, a scale in another scene, and a refrigerator stocked with food — “They serve as reflections of my experience and address and explore my physically and emotionally painful, private struggles with food, obsession, self-control, and self-image,” the photography student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design wrote on her website.

She came from a family with a history of weight problems and grew up on fast food. The family made halfhearted attempts to lose weight and tried Slim Fast shakes and Weight Watchers, but these efforts fizzled.

“I don’t think we knew the steps to take, we had never been introduced to diets or proper food,” she said.

At school, she never felt like she fit in and began shopping at plus-size stores during middle school.

By the time Kozerski got married, her body mass index was 49.9 — a BMI over 30 is considered obese. When she saw her wedding photos, that was the last straw. She woke up one day and told herself, “I’m done being sad.”

She started a weight-loss blog and used a free online calorie counter. She kicked the habits of eating out and drinking soda, and picked up more fruits and vegetables. Her exercises started with small steps — walking her dog every day, taking stairs instead of the elevator and parking far away from the store.

As she shed weight, Kozerski chose her project for her photography class. She started with close-up shots of her back, her abdomen. These were faceless photographs that she brought to class.

“It was shocking in a way that provoked conversation,” Kozerski said.

“This is a story people relate to and talk about. I was just being as honest as I can. It becomes less about my experience and more about this greater story.”

Everyone has something to hide that he or she is embarrassed about, Kozerski said. And here she was showing body parts that women tried to hide. She gradually started showing her face in the photographs.

Her husband, family and friends wanted to know why she’d put revealing images of herself into the public sphere. About her husband, Kozerski said, “He began to understand the emotions, although I couldn’t verbalize them. He realized it’s more universal.”

Her photos show her in distraught, hopeless and difficult moments. There are tears in her eyes.

“It’s an internal struggle, this whole thing — it just bottled up. I couldn’t express myself, even through the photos,” Kozerski said. She called certain photos of her naked body “casing” or “ruins.”

The way Kozerski presented her journey is “revealing in every way,” said body image expert Robyn Silverman.

Society has a definitive view of what it means to be fat. People associate the word “thin” with positive words like popular, sexy, and controlled. With the word “fat,” they associate traits like laziness, ugliness, lack of control in a way that “the term fat is no longer a descriptor of weight and size, but an assessment of character,” Silverman said.

The words Kozerski uses to describe her body — like “ruins” — still serve as “a reminder of the feeling of worthlessness, not being good enough” and how she and others who are overweight or obese struggle with these character labels, said Silverman, author of “Good Girls Don’t Get Fat.”

Kozerski had the classic grass-is-greener mentality that everything would be fine after she lost weight.

“It’s not related to a number or a size, or where you shop — I thought it was about that,” she said. “I’ve realized it’s about who you are. If you’re confident and healthy, that’s where you want to be and that’s where you need to be as a person.”

She lost 160 pounds — essentially the weight of another person. She has maintained her weight for a year. It doesn’t take an army of nutritionists, personal trainers or experts to get healthier, Kozerski said.

“I’m just a 27-year-old, Midwestern wife and fulltime college student. By definition, I am the ‘Average Jane,’ I just realized that I was unhappy about myself and about my health and made simple changes to my lifestyle by eating better and moving more.

“Before I was horrified of imperfections, now I see the imperfections as battle scars. I’m proud of what I’ve gone through and what I’ve done now.”

Story By: by Greg Allen

Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott, seen here speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last month, says of Medicaid, “It is absolutely not sustainable. If we do nothing, this line will bankrupt our state.”

When the Supreme Court hears arguments over President Obama’s health care law this week, one item on the table will be a program that has been in place for nearly 50 years.

Medicaid, a joint federal-state program that provides health care for the poor, was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. Under the Affordable Care Act, it will be greatly expanded and provide coverage for millions of uninsured, including low-income adults without children.

Opponents say the expansion is unconstitutional because it challenges states’ authority and forces them to spend more. And in Florida and other states, there is already a lot about Medicaid that officials don’t like.

Medicaid spending is one of the largest items in many states’ budgets, and it has been growing especially fast since the recession began.

When Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott rolled out his 2012 budget, he brought along a chart — a graph with two lines. One showed that since 1999, Florida’s budget has grown 30 percent. The other line showed that Medicaid spending is up 180 percent.

“It is absolutely not sustainable. If we do nothing, this line will bankrupt our state,” Scott said at a news conference.

Health care advocates dispute that, noting that Medicaid spending in Florida is a third less than state economists predicted eight years ago. Most of the growth came over the past four years, when the recession threw tens of thousands of Floridians out of work and into Medicaid.

An issue that rankles Scott and officials in other states is the way Medicaid is set up as a joint federal-state program. The federal government pays about half the costs, but requires states to meet its standards on eligibility and level of care.

Scott says that means the federal government ends up deciding how much states have to spend on Medicaid.

“Every state is dealing with the exact same issue,” he says. “General revenue — what taxpayers are willing to give government, what they think is fair to give government — is not going to grow at the same amount that the federal government basically forces us to spend on Medicaid.”

Since taking office, Scott and Republican leaders in the Legislature have targeted Medicaid spending. Florida has asked federal regulators for permission to move all 3 million of the state’s Medicaid recipients into privately run managed-care plans.

The federal government has been wary, already rejecting some key elements of that proposal. So, while waiting for federal approval, Florida’s Legislature ordered another round of Medicaid cuts in this year’s budget.

Throughout the legislative session, health care activists from around the state have converged on Florida’s Capitol in Tallahassee to fight the cuts, holding rallies and news conferences.

Tish West was at the Capitol along with her daughter, Caroline, a 15-year-old who suffers from a rare neurological disease. West spoke out against cuts in reimbursement rates to the state’s pediatric hospitals.

“I’m a realist, and I understand that we have to cut the budget,” she said. “But please, let’s not do it on the backs of children that can’t speak for themselves, and that have no other safety net but these.”

In the end, the Legislature approved more than $300 million in Medicaid cuts. In doing so, it placed limits on the number of days patients can see a doctor: two per month. It also limited the number of emergency room visits: six per year.

“The important thing is for people to understand that, ‘You know what? I need to be responsible for my health. And that chronic disease that I might have shouldn’t be managed in an emergency room,’ ” says Republican state Rep. Matt Hudson, chairman of the House Health Care Appropriations Committee. “It should be managed in a primary care or an urgent care facility, not in an emergency room.”

Health care advocates note that when Medicaid patients exceed their number of ER visits, hospitals won’t turn them away. Instead, they’ll be treated — and those costs will be passed along to other health care consumers.

Laura Goodhue is the director of Florida Chain, a health care advocacy group that represents patients and care providers. She says there are proven patient-centered strategies for cutting Medicaid costs while improving care — but that, so far at least, state officials haven’t been interested.

“I think that it’s easier to just look at the overall budget and say, ‘Hey, here’s some places we can cut. Here’s a line item here, and a line item there,’ ” she says. “But the bigger picture is that Medicaid recipients are very poor people, and they really don’t have a voice in politics.”

Under the new health care law, 1 million Floridians will be added to the state’s Medicaid rolls by 2014 — but not if state officials have anything to say about it.

Florida is one of the states fighting the law before the Supreme Court. Because of that opposition, Florida Republican leaders recently turned down $400 million in federal money to improve Medicaid payments for doctors.

The problem, they said, is that the money is part of the new health care law.

Programming note: For more on U.S. soldiers who secretly tested drugs and chemicals, watch “Sanjay Gupta | MD” on Saturday and Sunday morning at 7:30 ET and “CNN Presents” on Saturday night at 8 and 11 ET/PT

With those words, Stephen Coffman reached out to CNN last week after seeing its stories about Edgewood Arsenal, where the Army conducted top-secret drug and chemical tests on soldier volunteers.

Coffman was just 22 years old when he was recruited for testing at Edgewood, one of about 7,000 soldiers who took part in the program from 1955 to 1975. The Army field computer operator says that in December 1974, Edgewood Arsenal recruiters came to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he was stationed and told him he could help design the new field artillery computer system.

In January 1975, he reported to Edgewood. His first test was non-chemical, simply determining what size keyboard to use, he remembers. A display would flash a series of numbers, and he would try to input them using the test keypad and his bare hands. Next, he repeated the task wearing gloves. Then mittens.

“Then it was with a gas mask on,” Coffman said. “Then with a gas mask on in a gas chamber. Then it was ‘try to input the numbers after being exposed to some gas.’ My accuracy rate went from 99% barehanded to 57% gassed.”

The testing continued. One in particular haunts him to this day: He recalls being in a “padded cell” with just a thin exercise mat and a blanket. The room was orange; the walls “flowed down onto the floor like lava.”

“I remember putting my finger in the lava and watching it flow around my finger,” he says. “There was a nurse who would come in and take blood samples, urine — I had to wait till they came in to void — and give me water. I do not know how many days I was in there. I lost seven pounds during this ‘lost period.’ “

Coffman said that after that test, he was told to report to the medical center and was shown a piece of paper that he had signed, volunteering for other experiments. He didn’t remember signing but says it was his signature.

“I was told that if I did not do the experiment as I had agreed, I would be listed as UNSAT and returned to Fort Campbell.”

UNSAT is a military term that means the service member is “unsatisfactory.” In other words, the service member failed to complete his or her assignment. “It is not a label one wants to have applied to them,” Coffman said.

“We were isolated and given injections. I secretly wrote down what the vials said, but my notes were taken from me by a doctor. I was threatened with punishment. The tests continued.”

In an effort to find out what drugs he had been given and what his health files contained, Coffman filed a Freedom of Information Act request. He got his records in 1985. They showed that he had been given a potentially deadly nerve agent called sarin gas — and its antidotes.

According to the records, he had also been exposed to physostigmine, scopalmine and 2-PAMC1, and these were used “to treat anticholinesterase inhibitor overdoses.”

He was also given a chemical called TAB. He still has no idea what it was.

Coffman says that before the testing began, he was given a complete physical. His EKG — a test that records the heart’s electrical activity — was perfect, and he was rated in perfect shape.

“According to the FOIA, I was subjected to the same chemical twice within 25 days,” Coffman said. “The doctor’s note … noted that two exposures so close together caused a negative reaction to the subject’s heart.”

For most veterans in the program, the stay was two months, but Coffman’s stay was extended to four. When his Edgewood tour was up, he went back to Fort Campbell.

“I was sent back with the threat of ‘don’t tell anyone anything, and if anyone asks, say you are fine.’ “

He was honorably discharged from the Army in 1977. He spent a year with the National Guard and joined the Coast Guard Reserve in 1988.

In 1995, another EKG showed abnormalities.

His began seeing a private cardiologist. An MRI revealed 98% blockage in one of his arteries, and the cardiologist asked whether he had ever had an injury to his heart. “He said it looked like the heart had been damaged but not due to a heart attack.”

In 2007, Coffman had a quadruple bypass. To this day, he wonders whether the damage was related to Edgewood.

All things considered, the married father of two says, he does not regret his service.

“I believe it may have helped save the lives of other soldiers in the case of chemical attacks. I recall that (the doctor) who conducted the tests was instrumental in helping the victims of the Tokyo subway terrorist attack,” Coffman said. “I guess it is like when a service member goes to war and gets wounded but does not regret their decision to go to war.”

‘Time bomb’

His only concern, he says, is for his two children.

“There is nothing in the file about the experiments where I was kept in the padded cell. That is what I would like to know about for my children’s sake. Considering Agent Orange has been shown to affect veterans’ offspring and possibly second generation, it is like having a time bomb that may go off or may be a dud.”

This was just one of the stories CNN got from Edgewood Arsenal test veterans responding to the special investigations of the Army’s top-secret Cold War drug and chemical testing program.

Buck Conder, 70, said he volunteered at Edgewood in 1964. He remembers putting on a hospital gown, getting in bed and having six or seven doctors arrive bedside in gas masks. They put a drop of liquid on the inside of his forearm.

“Whatever happened, I have no idea. I woke up in the same bed” 24 hours later, Conder said.

In 2000, Conder received a call notifying him that he’d been exposed to sarin gas.

Conder, who says he was wounded while serving two tours in Vietnam, has a blood disease and a related skin condition that he blames on chemical exposure at Edgewood. Conder also said he was more nervous and irritable after his two-month temporary duty at the Maryland base.

Read about widow who blames VA for her husband’s death

Jeff Jefferson went to Edgewood in 1966 to be closer to his home in Reading, Pennsylvania. He recalls getting an injection on a Monday; he “woke up” on Wednesday. In the past year or two, Jefferson says, he applied for his records and learned that he’d been given BZ, an incapacitating agent.

Jefferson says he remembers little of what happened while he was under the influence of BZ, but he thinks they went to the rifle range, because his thumb was bruised, apparently from getting caught in the breech of an M1 rifle. Jefferson, now 65, says his health has been good.

Dr. James Ketchum, a former Edgewood researcher, took issue with veteran Tim Josephs, who said he was coerced into taking part in the tests after arriving at Edgewood.

“No one was forced to participate nor told they would be punished or imprisoned if they chose not to take part,” Ketchum commented on CNN.com. “Those who participated all received letters of commendation and all received thorough medical evaluations before and after being in the program.”

Gordon Erspamer, the attorney who has filed a lawsuit seeking health care for Edgewood veterans, said Josephs’ story is not unique. A number of Edgewood veterans have told him superiors threatened repercussions for soldiers who quit:

“You’re going to get a bad conduct discharge, or we’re going to write you up and send you back, and we’re going to send you right to Vietnam,” Erspamer said.

Read about Tim Josephs’ time at Edgewood

‘I was easily swayed’

Michael Cooney, now 62, was still a teenager when he started his two-month tour at Edgewood.

“Since I was only 19, I was easily swayed, wanting to do my patriotic duty,” he says. “I have no idea what they injected into me, as I can’t recall much of my two months there.”

Cooney says that since his discharge, he gets a survey every five to 10 years asking how his health is.

“I always responded by asking them for a physical and a request to know what they tested on me,” Cooney said. “Those questions were never answered.”

He knows he was injected with atropine and was tear-gassed. He says that while he’s not in perfect health, he doesn’t blame Edgewood Arsenal but feels the government should take responsibility for those harmed.

He says he’d do it again.

“I’m patriot, but don’t send me out in a war unarmed, and if I come back injured, take care of me. I’d volunteer in a minute if there was a need, but there needs to be government responsibility on the back end.”

Story By: by NPR Staff

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An anesthetized rhino is left to wake up after a dehorning procedure administered to decrease the risk of poaching.

“It is highly unpopular among many traditional conservation lobbies,” he says.

Proponents hope the practice would lower market prices and decrease incentive for illegal poaching, but critics argue the demand could grow beyond legally sustainable levels.

Rhino farming may have its skeptics, but Gwin suggests trying alternative approaches to combat poaching could be beneficial.

South African law allows people to hunt and kill rhinos as long as the horns are taken as trophies. Yet darting a rhino and cutting its horn for medicinal uses is illegal and seen by some as “abominable,” Gwin says.

The different standards raise a question of “cultural bias,” he says, but a fusion of practices may be on the horizon.

“I talked to several doctors, and they felt like we’re headed for a hybrid in our culture,” Gwin says. “[We'll have] science-based medicine, but we’ll also have some traditional treatments. And we see that here in the United States.”

Copyright Health Magazine 2011

Story By: by Nancy Shute

But what if Mommy says no?

Parents are divided on how best to handle teenage drinking. Should they prohibit it outright, or let teenagers drink with parental supervision?

Some parents think they might as well say OK, since the kids will drink anyway.

But researchers in the Netherlands have found that parental disapproval can be a powerful force to keep teens from succumbing to the impulse to drink.

That’s a key piece of information. There’s abundant evidence that the longer teenagers can delay drinking, the less likely they are to have problems with alcohol as adults. Teen drinking also increases the risk of unsafe sex, drunk driving and other hazardous behaviors.

The researchers quizzed 238 Dutch teenagers on their drinking and their parents’ attitudes toward its. The Netherlands, it turns out, is a good place to ask these questions. Alcohol abuse is a serious problem there, and it’s on the rise in teens. Of the 12- to 16-year-olds surveyed, almost three-quarters said they’d imbibed.

These researchers were particularly interested in cues that prompt people to drink, whether that’s something they see, like a beer bottle, or a social situation. Behavioral scientists call these approach tendencies.

They also wanted to find out how teenagers responded to those cues. Anyone who’s had a teenager in the house knows that they tend to be more impulsive than reflective, which means they can be more vulnerable to those cues.

When asked about their parents’ rules about drinking, the teens whose parents were strict were less likely to be motivated to drink when they saw a beer bottle or another trigger they associated with alcohol. They were also better able to reflect on their choice, and consider the consequences.

In other words, those teens were better able to override the “Yeah, sure,” impulse.

The research was published online in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

This correlation between parental permissiveness and teen drinking squares with recent findings in other countries. The French have found that the tradition of letting children drink wine at the family dinner table hasn’t inoculated them from problem drinking, as Sarah Varney reported for NPR.

And a 2010 study in the United States found that while parental rules didn’t necessarily prevent teenagers from taking that first drink, it did reduce the likelihood that they would go on to binge drink. The teenagers with indulgent parents were three times as likely to binge drink as were those whose parents set strict rules prohibiting drinking.

Sounds like no matter where they live, it’s the teenagers who have the impulse, and the parents who do well by exerting control.