"Health & Medical News"

Washington — About one in six eligible physicians and other health professionals participated in a new Medicare quality reporting program during its first five months, according to preliminary figures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. About half of them are on track to get up to a 1.5% bonus for their efforts.

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A Texas law that went into effect on Sept. 1 allows police to write tickets for misdemeanor marijuana possession rather than arresting and imprisoning offenders, but so far few jurisdictions appear to be embracing the law, the Dallas Morning News reported Dec. 31.

Lawmakers hoped the law would help ease jail overcrowding, but only one county?  has adopted it, and officials in others say they don’t have procedures for processing the misdemeanor citations and don’t plan to develop any.

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With a Congressional funding ban finally lifted, the District of Columbia government announced that it will spend $650,000 of local taxpayers’ money to establish needle-exchange programs aimed at cutting HIV/AIDS transmission among drug users, the Washington Post reported Jan. 3.

In its FY2008 budget plan, Congress ended a ban on D.C. using public funds to fund needle exchanges, although a ban on federal funding for the harm-reduction programs remains in place. D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said the clean-needle programs are needed to help reduce the HIV/AIDS rate in the city, which is among the highest in the nation.

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… certain white blood cells called mast cells and basophils by a type of antibody, … hives, hay fever, asthma, food allergies, and reactions to the venom …

Allergies: Fight Them With The Blood Type Diet by D’Adamo, Peter J., M …
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Warnings about a flood of released prisoners by federal officials and others opposed to lowering penalties for crack-cocaine offenders don’t hold water, the Chicago Tribune reported Dec. 18.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission recently voted to reduce the crack penalties and make them retroactive to offenders already imprisoned. Opposing that decision, acting U.S. deputy attorney general Craig Morford said it would “make thousands of dangerous prisoners, many of them violent gang members, eligible for immediate release.”

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Carrots, tomato juice and spinach contain nutrients called … Allergies During Pregnancy. Allergy Medications: Questions To Ask Your Pharmacist …

You Say Tomato - RealAge Tip of the Day
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Medical-marijuana supporters in Michigan say they have gathered more than enough signatures in a petition drive to get the issue on the ballot, the Detroit Free Press reported Nov. 21.

The Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care said it has submitted 496,000 signatures from registered voters to the state; only 304,000 are needed to get a medical-marijuana question before the state legislature. If lawmakers don’t act on the proposal — which would make medical use of the drug legal under state law — it would be placed on the 2008 ballot.

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Chinese-made toys made with a chemical that converts to gamma hydroxyl butyrate (GHB) when ingested have been pulled from store shelves in the U.S. and Australia after at least five children were hospitalized, the Associated Press reported Nov. 7.

The toys, called Spin Master Aqua Dots in the U.S. and Bindeez in Australia, are popular arts-and-crafts beads that can be arranged in designs and stuck together when sprayed with water. A chemical coating on the beads metabolizes to GHB if the beads are ingested, possibly causing unconsciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma, or death.

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Peer-led prevention efforts aimed at reducing adolescent alcohol and other drug use are about 15 percent more effective than other programs, researchers say.

Medical News Today reported Oct. 9 that researcher Thomas Valente, Ph.D., and colleagues tracked the outcomes of two cadres of youths enrolled in the Project Towards No Drug Abuse (TND) prevention program. One group was led by a health educator or teacher, while the other was led by peers.

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Jaspal tipped me off to this story that some of you may have heard of before. The state of recall related to China is getting is at a ridiculous level. No time to write a detailed post on this, but you will find below a few headlines for this recall and for the one on the fake diabetes test strips. The first article on fake diabetes test strips (link) provides the most detail and is worth reading. Also worth checking out or bookmarking is a blog devoted to these issues: Made (Deadly) in China.

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