Kevorkian out of prison after 8 years
Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:22:48 GMTBy KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN, Associated Press Writer
COLDWATER, Mich. - Jack Kevorkian, the retired pathologist dubbed "Dr. Death" for claims that he participated in at least 130 assisted suicides, left prison after eight years Friday still believing people have the right to die.
A smiling Kevorkian, now 79, said it was "one of the high points in life" as he walked out with his attorney.
Mike Wallace, the correspondent for "60 Minutes," whose airing of a Kevorkian-aided suicide led to the charges and his prison term, met Kevorkian outside with an embrace and the words, "What do you say, young man?"
Kevorkian is to appear in a "60 Minutes" segment Sunday, and his attorney Mayer Morganroth said his client planned a news conference Tuesday.
"He thanks everybody for coming. He thanks the thousands who have supported him, have written to him and the enormous amount of people who have really been comfortable in supporting him," Morganroth said. "He just wants a little privacy for the next few days."
Throughout the 1990s, Kevorkian challenged authorities to make his actions legal — or try to stop him. He burned state orders against him and showed up at court in costume.
"You think I'm going to obey the law? You're crazy," he said in 1998 shortly before he was accused — and then convicted — of murder after injecting lethal drugs into Thomas Youk, 52, an Oakland County man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. Kevorkian had videotaped Youk's death and sent it to "60 Minutes."
The conviction earned Kevorkian a 10- to 25-year sentence for second degree murder, but he earned time off his sentence for good behavior.
He is expected to now move to Bloomfield Hills, just outside Detroit, where he will live with friends and resume the artistic and musical hobbies he missed in prison. His lawyer and friends have said he plans to live on a small pension and Social Security while doing some writing and make some speeches.
Kevorkian has promised never to help in another assisted suicide. But Ruth Holmes, who has worked as his legal assistant and handled his correspondence while he was in prison, said his views on the subject haven't changed.
"This should be a matter that is handled as a fundamental human right that is between the patient, the doctor, his family and his God," Holmes said of Kevorkian's beliefs.
In a recent interview, Kevorkian also made it clear that his support for letting people decide when they want to die hasn't wavered.
"It's got to be legalized. That's the point," he told WJBK-TV in Detroit. "I'll work to have it legalized. But I won't break any laws doing it."
The Michigan Catholic Conference says it will oppose any effort to renew the push for assisted suicide in Michigan.
The state has had a law banning assisted suicide since 1998, the same year voters rejected a ballot proposal that would have made physician-assisted suicide legal for terminally ill patients. Oregon is the only state in the nation in which a terminally ill patient with six months or less to live can legally ask a doctor to prescribe a lethal amount of medication.
Kevorkian will be on parole for two years, and one of the conditions he must meet is that he can't help anyone else die. He is also prohibited from providing care for anyone who is older than 62 or is disabled. He could go back to prison if he violates his parole.
He will report regularly to a parole officer and won't be able to leave the state without permission. He can speak about assisted suicide, but can't show people how to make a machine like one he invented to give lethal drugs to those who wanted to die, Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said.
Kevorkian did not have many possessions to take out of prison with him, in part because many of them have disappeared.
"Strange as this may seem, last month ... someone stole his manuscript he'd been writing and his belongings," Morganroth said, adding that he expects someone took Kevorkian's clothes and medicine to sell on eBay.
Holmes said Kevorkian was looking forward to eating some of the things he couldn't freely get in prison, including a sandwich of plain sliced turkey on thin lavosh bread.
"He's looking forward to some grapes and apricots," she said. "He loves pistachios."
Working with Kevorkian, Holmes already has sent to a book publisher about 250 of the thousands of letters he got while in prison.
"He wasn't able to answer all of them, but it was very heartwarming to see the number of people who wrote to him from all over the world," she said.
Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian's former attorney, said that once Kevorkian is off probation, he should continue assisting people who want to commit suicide.
"He's on a short leash for the next two years," Fieger said Friday. "After that, it will be another story. After two years, he no longer is going to be under their thumb."
Avoid toothpaste made in China FDA says
Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:44:04 GMTBy KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The government warned consumers on Friday to avoid using toothpaste made in China because it may contain a poisonous chemical used in antifreeze.
Out of caution, the Food and Drug Administration said, people should throw away toothpaste with labeling that it was made in China. FDA is concerned that these products may contain diethylene glycol.
The agency is not aware of any reports in the United States of poisoning from toothpaste, but it did find the antifreeze ingredient in a shipment at the U.S. border and at two retail stores: a Dollar Plus store in Miami and a Todo A Peso store in Puerto Rico.
Officials said they are primarily concerned about toothpaste sold at bargain retail outlets. The ingredient in question, called DEG, is used as a lower-cost sweetener and thickening agent. The highest concentration of the chemical found in toothpaste so far was between 3-4 percent, but health officials said it does not belong in toothpaste even in small concentrations.
The FDA increased its scrutiny of toothpaste made in China because of reports of contamination in several countries, including Panama.
The agency is particularly concerned about chronic exposure to DEG in children and in people with kidney or liver disease.
TB quarantine raises legal questions
Fri, 01 Jun 2007 09:46:48 GMTBy MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer
ATLANTA - The case of a jet-setting tuberculosis patient might soon shift from the hospital wards to the courts. The patient, Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta personal injury attorney, could sue the federal government for being quarantined on the basis of federal regulations that some scholars see as unconstitutional.
Or Speaker could be sued by fellow airline passengers, especially if any caught the disease from him — which some legal scholars say is much more likely.
"He may be personally liable if someone contracts TB" from being near him on his recent flights to and from Europe, said Peter Jacobson, a University of Michigan professor of public health law. "I can see a jury coming down very hard on someone like that who willfully ignored advice not to travel."
Speaker flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon after being advised by health officials not to make the trip because he had TB. Then, while he was in Rome, U.S. health officials told him to stay put because further tests showed he had an even more dangerous, drug-resistant type of TB than previously thought.
The 31-year-old newlywed disregarded those instructions, taking commercial jets to Prague and then Montreal in an attempt to sneak back into the United States.
In an interview earlier this week with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Speaker said he declined to report to Italian health officials because he believed the only lifesaving care for his condition was available in the U.S.
"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person," he told the newspaper. "This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing."
A barrage of criticism was posted Thursday on the Web site of a Georgia newspaper that carried Speaker's engagement announcement and allows outsiders to post comments.
Under a picture of the smiling couple on the Appen Newspapers Web page, a person signed as 'Concerned Citizen' wrote: "Warned not to fly but just put your personal pleasure above the safety of other passengers. I hope you get sued by potential victims for your actions."
Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University, agreed with those who feel Speaker has exposed himself to possible litigation.
"There are a number of cases that say a person who negligently transmits an infectious disease could be held liable," he said.
Perhaps the most significant legal issues in Speaker's case concern the federal quarantine law, and the difficulty federal health officials had trying to learn the identities of those who were exposed to Speaker, Gostin said.
The quarantine order was the first issued by the federal government since a patient with smallpox was isolated in 1963, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC officials have been requesting changes in the nation's antiquated quarantine laws to gain easier access to airline and ship passenger lists, provide patients a clearer appeals process when subjected to quarantines and give health officials explicit authority to offer vaccinations and medical treatment to quarantined people.
In the past week, Speaker was quarantined in New York City and then again — under guard — at an Atlanta hospital. The quarantine order was not approved by a judge, but rather issued under the CDC's administrative powers.
There's a reason for that, Jacobson said: In certain rare instances, such action is deemed necessary to avoid legal delays in rapidly protecting the public from a disease-carrying person.
While Speaker was still in Atlanta on Wednesday, a CDC official said Speaker had the right to request an administrative hearing to appeal the quarantine order but had not.
The legal rights of a quarantined person, including the right to request a hearing, are not clear under current law, Gostin said. Some legal scholars said the absence of clear guidelines could lead to a legal tangle that might stall government quarantine actions during an outbreak of pandemic flu or other contagious diseases.
Speaker can challenge the constitutionality of the quarantine order, and might even be able to seek a federal payment for damages, Gostin said.
Airlines can be slow to hand over passenger information because of concerns of violating customer privacy. It was not until late Wednesday that the CDC got full information from Air France about U.S. passengers on Speaker's May 12 flight from Atlanta to Paris.
One proposed change in the law would require airlines and cruise lines to electronically submit passenger and crew lists to the CDC upon request.
628 sickened by recalled peanut butter
Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:30:20 GMTBy JOSH FUNK, AP Business Writer
OMAHA, Neb. - The number of people sickened since August by peanut butter tainted with salmonella has grown by more than 200, according to a new federal report. The outbreak, first reported in February, now includes 628 cases in 47 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
It is the first update on the number of cases linked to the outbreak since early March, when officials said 425 cases had been confirmed in 44 states.
ConAgra Foods Inc. recalled all its peanut butter after government investigators linked the bacteria outbreak to the Omaha-based company's Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter.
The http://www.conagrafoods.com
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: http://www.cdc.gov
New diet shrinks calories carbon footprint
Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:30:52 GMTby Helene Labriet-Gross
SAN FRANCISCO - A soon-to-be-published weight-loss book helps dieters reduce not just their intake of calories, but the negative impact of their food consumption choices on the environment.
In their new &;Global Warming Diet,&; American chef Laura Stec and climate change expert Eugene Cordero posit that it is not sufficient that a good meal be presentable and delectable -- it must also be environmentally friendly.
&;One of the most positive effects you can have on the environment begins on your dinner plate&; -- particularly in reducing one's carbon footprint, the authors maintain in promotional literature plugging their book.
The book, to be published next year, advocates &;eating more local, more organic, adding more seasonal food, ... using less packaging, buying in bulk, growing your own food,&; Stec said.
While former US vice president Al Gore's bestselling book and Oscar-winning documentary &;An Inconvenient Truth&; awakened Americans to the impending environmental crisis caused by global warming, it did not deal with the impact from food consumption choices -- a huge oversight, according to the authors.
They said it takes 5.5 kilograms of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to make just a half-kilo hamburger.
&;When growing meat, you have to feed the cows,&; said Cordero.
&;In the US, we feed them corn, and corn is a very carbon-intensive crop to grow, because it's growing in a manner that requires a large amount of fertilization because the land is nearly given no time to recover,&; the environment professor said.
A 1999 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists also found that eating too much beef and poultry and non-organic fruits and vegetables were the most harmful activities a consumer could engage in, with the exception of driving a gasoline-powered car.
The book advocates the use of sustainable agriculture and local family farming; eating more plant-based foods; reducing food waste through composting; limits on bulky packaging; and the use of fewer pesticides.
Stec and Cordero also rail against the ubiquitous plastic shopping bags, 30 billion of which are used each year in this country, to say nothing of the 10 billion paper bags it takes some 14 million trees to make.
Only about one percent of Americans bring their own bags to the store when making their food purchases, they note.
And the environmentally conscious dieter also will buy foods in season, Stec said. &;If you want to eat cherries in December, or tomatoes, they will be flown over from Australia,&; she said.
&;We are not asking anything that is too crazy. We are asking to return to our roots, when we were paying more attention to our food, when we enjoyed food and spent little time preparing it,&; she said.
Lab study hints Viagra may harm male fertility
Thu, 31 May 2007 19:28:43 GMTNEW YORK - Laboratory studies conducted at Queen's University Belfast, UK suggest that taking the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra may adversely affect sperm function and possibly male fertility.
Recreational users of Viagra need to be informed of the drug's potentially harmful effects on sperm function, the investigators say.
In their experiments, Dr. David R. J. Glenn and colleagues observed that exposure of cultured sperm to Viagra, compared to no exposure, led to a &;sustained enhancement of motility,&; both in numbers of progressively motile sperm and their velocity.
However, exposure to Viagra -- at concentrations equivalent to the average maximum total blood concentration present 30 minutes after a single oral dose of 100 milligrams -- also caused a premature &;acrosome reaction.&; Acrosomes are structures that cover the head of the sperm and contain a variety of enzymes that help the sperm penetrate the outer membrane of the egg.
That Viagra may induce early activation of the acrosome reaction has &;important clinical implications because sperm that acrosome-react before contact with the oocyte are incapable of fertilization,&; the researchers note in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
&;Given that the majority of sperm acrosome react on exposure to , the drug may cause significant impairment to their fertilizing potential,&; they write.
This is a concern, Glenn and colleagues say, given that Viagra and other like-drugs are widely available on the Internet and are increasingly being used &;recreationally&; by young healthy men of reproductive age as sexual enhancers -- not just by older men who have erectile dysfunction.
SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, May 2007.
Apple juice may help protect kids from asthma
Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:41:02 GMTBy Anne Harding
NEW YORK - Drinking apple juice from concentrate daily may help ward off asthma symptoms in children, a study from the UK hints.
In a previous study, Dr. Seif O. Shaheen of the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London and colleagues found that eating apples seemed to protect adults from developing asthma symptoms. A number of other studies have linked higher fruit consumption to better lung function.
It's possible that the antioxidants contained in fruit counteract harmful oxidative stress due to pollution and ease inflammation, thus reducing asthma symptoms, Shaheen explained. And the antioxidant content of apples is particularly high, the researcher added.
Shaheen's team analyzed fruit intake and asthma symptoms in 2,640 children aged 5 to 10 years.
While there was no association between asthma symptoms and apples, children who drank apple juice from concentrate at least once a day were at 47 percent lower risk of wheezing than children who drank apple juice less than once a month. &;That's a bit of a puzzle,&; Shaheen said, adding that it is possible that juice might have a higher antioxidant concentration than fruit.
Shaheen urges caution in interpreting the study results. &;It would be wrong to say that our data suggest that drinking apple juice reduces the risk of asthma,&; the researcher said in an interview. &;We've only shown an association, and we've yet to provide definitive evidence that the link is causal.&;
The study also found that children who ate bananas at least once daily, compared to those who ate them less than once a month, were also at significantly lower risk of wheezing. But given that the fruit have never been associated with asthma symptoms previously, Shaheen said, this finding is &;less convincing.&;
The investigators followed up with the same group of children a year later and are currently analyzing the results. If the association persists, Shaheen said, the next step would be to conduct a clinical trial of the effect of apple juice consumption on asthma symptoms.
&;Until we have trial data we really can't be sure,&; Shaheen added.
SOURCE: European Respiratory Journal, June 2007.
