Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008
Hundreds of thousands of children are going to school this fall without protection from deadly diseases. More parents are deciding not to vaccinate their children against mumps, measles, rubella, polio and other dangerous diseases. The parents are refusing to vaccinate because of concerns that the vaccinations themselves are harmful, or because of the growing cost and complexity of getting the shots.
Full story »Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008
Barbara Loe Fisher has been fighting about the safety of childhood vaccines for three decades. But the president of the National Vaccine Information Center says she's not opposed to vaccination so much as she's opposed to a "one-size-fits-all vaccine policy imposed by government health agencies."
Full story »Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008
Some parents are unable to vaccinate their children because the shots are too expensive and too complicated, experts say. The federal government each year buys enough vaccine to inoculate more than 10 million children and subsidizes vaccination through state Medicaid programs.
Full story »Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008
Coreen Costello, a mother of five, decided to not vaccinate her younger children.
Like a growing number of parents, Costello does not want to expose her kids to risks she says she believes are associated with the vaccinations children routinely receive before they start kindergarten.
"I know for certain if we vaccinate, we're taking a risk of side effects that could be damaging. I don't know for certain they'll be exposed to disease," said Costello, who home schools her children in Agoura Hills. "I think coming into contact with those diseases is a smaller risk."
Full story »Friday, Sept. 5, 2008
WASHINGTON — Scientists have mapped the cascade of genetic changes that turn normal cells in the brain and pancreas into two of the most lethal cancers. The result points to a new approach for fighting tumors and maybe even catching them sooner.
Full story »Friday, Aug. 29, 2008
Two more birds in Ventura County have tested positive for West Nile virus, county health officials said Thursday.
Full story »Friday, Aug. 22, 2008
ATLANTA — Measles cases in the U.S. are at the highest level in more than a decade, with nearly half of those involving children whose parents rejected vaccination, health officials reported Thursday.
Full story »Saturday, Aug. 9, 2008
ATLANTA — Could the AIDS virus be stopped with gift cards?
Full story »Two more birds in Ventura County have tested positive for West Nile virus, county health officials said Friday.
Full story »Laura Comer spent three weeks in the hospital. Suspect plasma was flushed out of her body and replaced with fresh quantities. Seven doctors treated her, some of them quoting mortality rates.
Full story »No heroic measures. The words may mean no ventilators and no resuscitation to terminally ill people who plug the phrase into advance directives dictating how they want to die.
Full story » Congress on Tuesday rejected President Bush's veto of legislation protecting doctors from a 10.6 percent cut in their reimbursement rates when treating Medicare patients.
Full story » Harvard researchers have discovered a half-dozen new genes involved in autism that suggests the disorder strikes in a brain that can't properly form new connections.
Full story » Pain patients understand why California's attorney general says he needs to raise $3.5 million to stop addicts and drug dealers who use doctors to stockpile Vicodin and OxyContin.
Abuse of prescription medicine is rampant in part because chronic pain can put your head in a vise and reduce you to a lump of flesh unable to do anything but lie on a sofa, said Bob Ramos of Santa Paula, whose spine has been surgically fused. It can feel as if "someone was grabbing your ligaments and pulling them out of your back," said Terry Kierzek of Agoura Hills, who had a cyst on his spine.
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Anthem Blue Cross has agreed to pay hospitals $11.8 million for healthcare it had refused to cover after canceling patients' insurance policies.
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