Illnesses and deaths tied to listeria-tainted cantaloupe continued to rise Tuesday, with federal health officials reporting 123 sickened and 25 dead in the ongoing food poisoning outbreak.

More than 310,000 cases of cantaloupe recalled by Jensen Farms of Holly, Colo., are long gone from the shelves and pantries of stores and should be long past storage in refrigerators. But all of the victims in the outbreak that has now affected 26 states became sick on or before July 31, and more are likely to be diagnosed because people can develop listeriosis up to two months after eating contaminated food, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The deadliest outbreak of food poisoning in more than 25 years has caused fatalities in a dozen states: six in Colorado, five in New Mexico, two each in Kansas, Louisiana, New York and Texas and one each in Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Wyoming. People who've died have ranged in age from 48 to 96 years, with a media age of 87.

Illnesses have occured in people younger than 1 to 96, with a median age of 78. Most illnesses have occured in people older than 60. Four illnesses were related to pregnancy, including a newborn who fell ill. One miscarriage has been reported.

Federal Food and Drug Admnistration officials have not disclosed the cause of the outbreak cause by four strains of listeria monocytogenes.

By Robert Bazell

Among the infectious horrors facing humanity, malaria stands at or near the top. That’s why the somewhat positive results of a large clinical of a malaria vaccine may seem at first like excellent news. Unfortunately, it is not so simple.

First malaria vaccine works in major trial

The trial of the vaccine called RTS,S/AS01 enrolled 15,460 children in 11 African countries ages 6 to 12 weeks and ages 7 to 17 months. The results reported Tuesday describe the outcome from the first 6,000 children after 14 months. Put simply, after a year, about one-third of the kids who had the vaccine got sick, compared to one half of those given a placebo.

With malaria causing more than three-quarters of a million deaths a year in African children and making 250 million people a year sick -- often with terrible lasting consequences such as liver and kidney damage  --  why not just give the vaccine, even with its limits? After all, in some flu seasons and in some populations, flu vaccine is no more effective, yet the U.S. government pushes hard for all Americans to be immunized against influenza.

The problem with the malaria vaccine is that its limited effectiveness could devour resources better spent on interventions like mosquito netting that provide protection and faster access to care that saves lives and prevents complications from the disease. A malaria vaccine could also create a sense of security among both the affected population and public health officials -- making a terrible situation even worse.  The parasite that causes malaria mutates rapidly –- just like the flu virus -- and the results do not yet predict how long the immunity will last, or how well the vaccine will work in the future.

There will be, with the best of intentions, an enormous push to use the vaccine. Since 1987 the drug company GlaxoSmithKline has spent a fortune developing it and the Gates Foundation and other charities have generously helped fund the trials. Everyone who thinks about the malaria problem wants a vaccine. But a half-effective one is not the answer.

Robert Bazell is NBC's Chief Science and Medical Correspondent.

By Rachel Rettner
MyHealthNewsDaily

Children under age 2 should avoid watching TV as much as possible, according to a new policy statement from the nation's largest group of pediatricians, who suggest the tots should play instead.

The idea that TV programs are beneficial to the learning of children this young has not been proved, the American Academy of Pediatrics says. In addition, TV viewing may lead to sleep problems and a delayed use of speech in young kids, recent research suggests.

Even merely having the TV on in the background may be less than optimal for a child's development, the AAP says. Background television may distract from playtime activities that benefit children's learning. And it may distract parents, preventing them from speaking and interacting with their kids, the AAP says.

However, the recommendations run counter to what most parents actually do. About 90 percent of parents say their kids younger than 2 watch some type of media, according to a 2007 study. By the age of 3, nearly one-third of kids have a TV in their bedrooms.

As a compromise, parents should come up with a strategy to manage TV viewing in their young children, the AAP says. Ideally, when kids younger than 2 watch TV, their parents should watch it with them.

The new policy statement was released today (Oct. 18) here at the AAP National Conference & Exhibition. The policy statement specifically addresses the viewing of TV programs and does not comment on the potential benefits or risks of using phone applications, video games or other programs a child may encounter on a screen.

Young kids and TV

The AAP first released guidelines on media use by young kids in 1999, concluding that media use by kids under 2 should be discouraged. Since then, a lot more research has been done on the subject. The AAP reviewed this research for its new policy statement and essentially came to the same conclusion.

That's not to say that kids can't benefit from TV. Children older than 2 can improve their language and social skills by watching TV, some studies have shown.

However, in order to gain a benefit from a TV program, kids need to be able to understand and pay attention to it. Young kids may lack the mental ability to comprehend what they are watching. In fact, two studies have found that, for kids 2 and under, watching programs such as “Sesame Street” may have a negative impact on language development, the AAP says. 

"There's a great developmental digital divide," Dr. Ari Brown, a pediatrician in Austin, Texas, and lead author of the new policy statement, said at a news conference. Studies show that children under 1¹/² years old have the same reaction to a TV program regardless of whether it's going forward or backward, Brown said. In contrast, older children prefer to watch the program forward.

All in all, instead of spending time in front of the TV, young kids are likely better off spending that time engaged in unstructured play, which promotes creative thinking, problem solving and reasoning skills.

Setting limits

If parents choose to let their young kids watch TV, they should set limits, the AAP says. They should also avoid placing a TV in the child's bedroom

Parent should be aware TV programs may affect their child's development, even if the child cannot understand the program. They should turn the TV off if no one is watching it and try to watch their adult programs when the kids are not around, Brown said.

If parents cannot play with their kids directly, even having the children play with toys by themselves can be beneficial, the AAP says.

The AAP also recommends further research in this area to examine the long-term effects of early TV viewing on toddlers’ development.

The new policy statement will be published in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics.

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By Rachel Rettner
MyHealthNewsDaily

A baby's risk of dying while he sleeps is reduced when he is vaccinated, breast-fed and has no "bumpers" lining the sides of his crib.

Those are the new recommendations pediatricians made today (Oct. 18) to promote safe sleep for babies and decrease the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), also called crib death.

"Our goal is to ultimately eliminate these deaths completely," said Dr. Rachel Moon, a pediatrician at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., who worked on the new guidelines.

The new recommendations join longer-held advice, such as keeping all loose bedding — including pillows and blankets — out of the crib and avoiding "bed-sharing," in which an infant sleeps in the same bed as a parent or another child.

"There needs to be more education for health care providers and trainees on how to prevent suffocation deaths and to reduce SIDS and other sleep-related infant deaths," Moon said.

The recommendations were part of a new official policy on SIDS prevention from the American Academy of Pediatrics, released here today at the group's annual meeting.

In 1992, the AAP recommended all babies should be placed on their backs, rather than their tummies, while they sleep. The public health campaign, known as "Back to Sleep," has reduced the incidence of SIDS by 50 percent since its inception, according to the AAP. SIDS now accounts for about 2,300 deaths a year, according to the CDC. However, sleep-related deaths from other causes, including suffocation and choking, have increased.

To further reduce these deaths, the AAP is updating its safe sleep guidelines for children 1 year old and younger.

Infants should be breast-fed, when possible, and immunized with all their shots, the new guidelines say, because studies have shown both reduce the risk of SIDS.

The ideal baby bed consists solely of a firm crib mattress covered by a fitted sheet, according to the AAP. There should be no gaps between the mattress and the crib.

While items such as stuffed toys, blankets and bumper pads may make a crib look "cute," these things can be dangerous in an infant's crib, Moon said.

Bumper pads pose a risk of suffocation (if the baby rolls up against the pad and doesn't roll away), and strangulation (if the baby gets tangled in the bumper pad ties.)

"There is no reason to have bumpers," Moon said. "They don’t prevent serious injury," she said. Infants don't have enough muscle strength or motor ability to fling themselves against the sides of their cribs with enough force to cause injuries, she said.

Any soft objects or bedding that isn't tightly tucked in beneath the mattress also present risks of suffocation and entrapment, Moon said

More advice

Other recommendations from the AAP include:

• Always place your baby on his or her back for every sleep time.
• The baby should sleep in the same room as the parents, but not in the same bed (room-sharing without bed-sharing). This arrangement reduces the risk of SIDS by 50 percent, research shows.
• Infants should not be fed on couches or in armchairs when there is a high risk that the parent will fall asleep.
• Mothers should not smoke before or after pregnancy, as smoking is a major risk factor for SIDS.
• Offer a pacifier at nap time and bedtime. Researchers aren't sure why, but using a pacifier is linked with a reduced risk of SIDS, even if the pacifier falls out of the baby's mouth during sleep.
• Avoid covering the infant's head or allowing him to overheat.
• Do not use home monitors or commercial devices marketed to reduce the risk of SIDS (there is no evidence such devices are safe, or that they reduce SIDS).
• While awake, infants should spend some supervised time on their stomachs. This "tummy time" avoids putting constant pressure on the back of the skull. It also strengthens the baby's neck muscles, which reduces the risk of head deformities that can occur when the baby's head lies on one spot for too long.

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Giuliana Rancic’s recent diagnosis of breast cancer at age 36 has generated a lot of emotional support for the E! host -- and some worries about the connection between fertility treatments and the disease.

During an interview with TODAY’s Ann Curry Monday about her efforts to have a baby, Rancic revealed that her cancer was discovered through a mammogram ordered up by her fertility specialist. Rancic, who has no family history of breast cancer, said she was dragged “kicking and screaming” to the breast screening after the specialist insisted on the mammogram before he would start a third cycle of in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

“He said, 'I don't care if you're 26 or 36, but I will not get you pregnant if possibly there's a small risk that you have cancer because the hormones will accelerate the cancer,'" Rancic told Curry Monday.

That advice may have helped save Rancic’s life, but it raised worries among some women. Could Rancic's breast cancer be connected in any way to the fertility treatment she had undergone?

 "No," said TODAY's Dr. Nancy Snyderman in a follow-up on the show Wednesday. The hormones used in both in vitro fertilization and birth control pills have been studied and "there's no known cause and effect," she told Curry. "What we do know is that women who are older usually ask for IVF because they're having a harder time getting pregnant -- and women who are older have a higher chance of getting breast cancer, so there is an age relation, but not a hormonal relation."

On Tuesday Rancic underwent a lumpectomy in both breasts and is now recovering.  Rancic was fortunate her doctor insisted on the screening. Mammograms are not a standard part of fertility treatment in patients her age, said Dr. Mark Perloe, medical director at Georgia Reproductive Specialists.

 “We certainly want people to have a full health evaluation before beginning fertility treatments,” Perloe added.  “But we wouldn’t recommend a mammogram unless there was a family history of breast cancer or a genetic risk.”

Breast cancer is unusual in women under 40 -- only 5 percent of all cases -- although the tumors can be faster-growing and harder to treat.

While many supporters on The Clicker Facebook page praised the benefits of mammograms, several commenters feared that "bad estrogen" or other hormones may have been connected to Rancic's diagnosis.

Hormones used in IVF cycles include estrogen, progesterone, follicle-stimulating hormone, and luteinizing hormone.

Despite the hormone paranoia, it's even possible that IVF might be protective.

“The evidence is that IVF has no effect or lowers incidence, said Adrian V. Lee, a professor of pharmacology and chemical biology and director of the Women’s Cancer Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh’s Magee-Womens  Research Institute. “The largest study in Sweden -- of 25,000 women who had IVF compared to 1.4 million without  -- showed a 25 percent reduction in breast cancer and a 40 percent reduction in cervical cancer in those who had IVF.”

Theoretically, Perloe said, if a woman had breast cancer, higher levels of estrogen and progesterone could stimulate the tumor to grow. But that would be true even if the woman got pregnant on her own because hormone levels rise as a pregnancy progresses.

"My concern is that this is going to cause a lot of people to be afraid," Perloe said. "My advice to anyone who has concerns is to speak to their doctor and learn to do breast self-exams -- and to check to see if anyone in their family had cancer before thet age of 40."

As for routine mammograms in infertile women aged 26 to 36, Perloe said, that would be a mistake. That's because mammograms come with some radiation exposure.

"So you have to balance the risk of exposure to radiation from testing against the likelihood that there might be something there," Perloe said.  

When women should begin mammogram screening is controversial. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Forces recommends breast cancer testing start at age 50, although the American Cancer Society advises yearly mammograms beginning at age 40 for women with an average risk.

So, women with infertility problems can relax, about their breast cancer risk at least. IVF treatments may not guarantee a baby, but they won't worsen your odds of developing cancer, doctors say.

Related:

• E's Giuliana Rancic reveals she has breast cancer
• Mastectomy and the single girl: A bucket list for boobs
• Cancer kiss-off: Getting dumped after diagnosis

Schiketantz family

Cindy and Erich Schiketantz horseback riding while on vacation. After Cindy's gastric bypass, she has been leading a healthy lifestyle. As a result, husband Erich has become more active, too.

Since research suggests obesity is contagious — if you hang out with people who are packing on the pounds, you’re more likely to gain as well — weight-loss surgeon John Morton wondered whether the opposite might be true.

Could slimming down be catching, at least among the families of gastric bypass surgery patients?

To answer that question, he enlisted 35 patients scheduled to undergo the operation.  As is typical for such patients, four out of five were women. Their average age was about 43, and they had a total of 35 adult family members and 15 children under 18 living in their home.

Many of their relatives were also obese at the beginning of the study. They were asked to accompany the patient to all pre-op educational sessions and post-op visits at which healthy lifestyle changes were and post-op sessions.

A year after surgery, adult family members on average had lost a little more than 3 percent of their weight (a drop of eight pounds from 234). That might not sound like much, but, Morton says, it’s comparable to what women lost in a year in studies of weight-loss programs like Atkins and Ornish. And, he notes, it’s sure better than keeping on gaining, which is usually the case. In addition, the kids’ BMIs weren’t as high as their previous growth curves had predicted.

Talk about it on the Vitals Facebook page

The scale didn’t tell the whole story. Family members in the home started turning off the TV and exercising more, Morton and his coauthors explain today in a report in the journal Archives of Surgery. And adult relatives reported cutting way back on emotional eating and drinking booze (people are much more sensitive to the effects of alcohol after gastric bypass surgery).

As for the patients, they lost about 80 percent of their excess weight by the end of that first year. “My hope and belief is if you’ve got good family support,” says Morton, director of bariatric surgery at Stanford Hospital & Clinics, “that’s going to help you stay on the straight and narrow.”

Cindy Schiketantz can relate. The Kitchener, Ontario, woman has blogged about her weight-loss journey at “Sweeping Cindy” since undergoing gastric bypass surgery in July 2009. Schiketantz, 41, who’s not Morton’s patient, says she weighed 444 pounds when she walked into her surgeon’s office. She’s lost 250 since her operation.

Her husband, Erich, was never extremely overweight, but he’d been a lot more active before they hooked up, Schiketantz says. “I kind of dragged him down with me.”

No more. “Since I lost weight, we go out and do all sorts of things together. We’ve been canoeing, we’ve been hiking, we went zip lining together,” Schiketantz said. As a result, Erich has resumed an active lifestyle.

Not to put a damper on things, but it doesn’t always work out so well for patients’ spouses. In 2005, University of Tennessee Health Science Center researchers reported that three out of four obese spouses in their study actually gained weight in the first year.  After all, the researchers suspected, with the bypass patients cutting back on their calories, somebody had to eat all that extra leftover food.

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They make us look fabulous by cutting, coloring and styling our hair, but hair stylists and barbers could also serve on the front lines of detecting skin cancers on the scalp, neck and face, a new study suggests.

Researchers surveyed more than 200 stylists and barbers from 17 Houston-area salons and found that while few of them had formal training in detecting cancer, more than half of them already had found a cancerous mole or lesion on customers. They also expressed interest in learning more about how to better detect cancers on their customers’ scalps, faces and necks.

Alan C. Geller, a senior study author says researchers conducted the survey because 10 percent of fatal melanoma is found was on the scalp. They were concerned about the gap between who was diagnosed with melanoma and who died from it, and wanted to see if there was a need for more training among hair dressers. Their findings are released today in the Archives of Dermatology.

“The scalp is not a place that people can easily look at on their own, and we don’t think a lot of physicians are looking for melanoma on the scalp,” says Geller, a senior lecturer at the Harvard University School of Public Health. “Most people make 10 visits or more a year to see their hair dressers and barbers and they tend to look more carefully for mold and legions on the scalp.”

Aubree Carpenter is glad the stylist she saw only once noticed that she had a strange-looking mole on the back of her left ear in June 2003. Carpenter, then a teen, went home and told her mother. Within days, she was diagnosed with melanoma. Because the cancer was detected so early, she had surgery, but didn’t require chemotherapy or radiation.

“She saved my life,” says Carpenter, 27, of Chattanooga, Tenn. “She said, ‘There’s something like a mole back here, and it looks pretty bad.’ If she hadn’t told me that, I would have gotten my hair cut, gone off to summer camp to be a counselor and lifeguard and never would have known anything about it.”

It’s that kind of action that Geller is hoping for.

The group of researchers already has begun efforts to train stylists in the Houston area. In fact, the study’s lead author, Dr. Elizabeth Bailey, who practices in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, found legions and mole in a participants’ hair while she trained 100 Houston area stylists to detect cancer on the scalp.

A group of doctors and medical students also are training stylists through the Melanoma Foundation of New England, Geller says.

“We think this is very positive,” he says. “The next step is to give more training so people will know to ask their stylists and barbers to take a good look. We’re cautiously optimistic of what this can do.”

Dr. Eliot Mostow, a dermatologist in Akron, Ohio, says other professionals such as massage therapists, manicurists and other professionals who have close contact with clients also can serve as “eyes in the field.”

“This is not primary prevention because you are not preventing sunburn, but it’s secondary prevention looking for problems in screening,” says the professor and chair of the Dermatology Section at Northeastern Ohio College of Medicine. “The concept in this case is to look at how we can close the gap in screening for skin cancer. This might close a clinical practice gap.”

Rachael Rettner
MyHealthNewsDaily

BOSTON — Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can now be diagnosed in children as young as 4 and as old as 18, according to the nation's largest organization of pediatricians.

The new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) expand the age range over which doctors can diagnose and manage ADHD in children, and are based on recent research; previous guidelines released in 2000 and 2001 covered children ages 6 to 12.

"Treating children at a young age is important, because when we can identify them earlier and provide appropriate treatment, we can increase their chances of succeeding in school," said Dr. Mark Wolraich, a pediatrician at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and lead author of the report.

The guidelines were released today in Boston at the pediatricians' annual conference.

But with ADHD now the most common neurobehavioral disorder in children, some experts worry about changes that could lead to even more kids being diagnosed -- and medicated.

A text-message survey of 100  U.S. pediatricians conducted by Truth On Call for msnbc.com found that 60 of them think ADHD is overdiagnosed in kids, 35 feel it’s diagnosed appropriately and 5 think it might be underdiagnosed.

As of 2007, 9.5 percent of U.S. children had been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. And cases of ADHD are already on the rise; between 2003 and 2007, rates of ADHD diagnoses increased 5.5 percent per year, the CDC says.

Any child ages 4 to 18 who has behavioral problems or problems in school and has symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity should be evaluated for ADHD, Wolraich said. To be diagnosed as having the condition, the child must display these problems in more than one setting (for instance, both at home and at school).

Although the new guidelines allow for children as young as 4 can be diagnosed with ADHD, there are challenges in diagnosing these kids, Wolraich said. For instance, children too young to have started school may be under the supervision of only their parents, in which case, there are no teachers or daycare providers to confirm behaviors.

In making diagnoses in these young kids, doctors should look for symptoms to last at least 9 months, instead of the 6 months required for older children, Wolraich said.

"These are the kids who are really getting into trouble," and may have been kicked out of two or three preschool programs, Wolraich said.

In some cases, parents could undergo training to help manage behavior problems in their kids before a diagnosis is made, he said.

Diagnosing teens, on the other hand, likely requires talking to adults other than their parents, who may have little contact with them, Wolraich said. Doctors should try to obtain information from teachers, couches, counselors and other community leaders who may interact with the teen.

In children ages 4 and 5, doctors should first try to treat ADHD with behavioral therapies. Only if such therapies fail, and a child has problems functioning in everyday life because of ADHD, should doctors prescribe the ADHD drug methylphenidate (known by its brand names Ritalin, Concerta and others) to kids in this age group, according to the new guidelines.

For elementary school children and adolescents, both behavioral therapy and FDA-approved ADHD medications are recommended.

The guidelines emphasize that ADHD is a long-term condition that may last into adulthood.

"As a chronic illness, you have to do all the things that are important to managing a chronic condition," including educating the family and following the children closely as they grow up, Wolraich said.

The new guidelines will be published in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics.

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Commentary:

An old ethical principle holds that we ought not speak ill of the dead. After all, they can’t defend themselves. That rule is getting kicked around quite a bit just a week after the death of Steve Jobs.

Tabloids and bloggers, citing cancer experts who never treated Jobs and have no access to his medical information, are speculating that Jobs “doomed” himself with alternative medicine.

After Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2003, he allegedly delayed surgery to remove the tumor -- the conventional treatment -- for nine months.

During that time, he also -- allegedly -- attempted treat his cancer with alternative medicine and diet, some news reports claim. 

That choice, the headlines proclaim, may have cost him his life by letting his cancer grow and spread.

 In a detailed post to Quora, an online forum popular among the Silicon Valley crowd, Harvard cancer doc Dr. Ramzi Amri wrote:

Let me cut to the chase: Mr. Jobs allegedly chose to undergo all sorts of alternative treatment options before opting for conventional medicine.

This was, of course, a freedom he had all the rights to take, but given the circumstances it seems sound to assume that Mr. Jobs' choice for alternative medicine could have led to an unnecessarily early death.

There are some major holes in this kind of speculation from Monday-morning medical analysts.

For one, reports that Jobs rejected mainstream medical advice after his diagnosis remain unconfirmed. Very few people know exactly what Jobs chose to do when he found out he had cancer. None of them are blogging. 

Plus, Jobs lived eight years after his diagnosis with a neuroendocrine tumor. As MyHealthNewsDaily explained today, the average life expectancy for someone with a metastatic neuroendocrine tumor is about two years, according to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. (It’s unclear when Jobs cancer turned metastatic.)

It’s fair to assume that a person of his means and intelligence could access any and all expertise that existed to decide how best to try and fight his disease. 

Beyond that, it just doesn’t do anybody any good to guess or gossip.

Nearly two months after problems were first announced, contact lens giant CooperVision Inc. and federal health regulators have amped up public warnings about nearly 780,000 recalled contact lenses, urging users to return the potentially defective products and to seek medical care if they show symptoms of harm.

The federal Food and Drug Administration on Friday posted a Class I recall warning about CooperVision's Avaira Toric contact lenses, which were first recalled Aug. 19 because of residue left behind during manufacturing. In a safety alert, the FDA identified the substance as a silicone oil residue.

Class I recalls are the most serious kind of recall and involve problems in which there is a reasonable chance of serious adverse health consequences or death.

“If your lenses have been recalled, immediately remove your existing lenses, discontinue lens wear and return your lenses to your eye care practitioner or point of purchase,” CooperVision officials wrote in a statement posted Friday on the FDA's website.

Consumers have reported problems with hazy vision, discomfort, severe pain and eye injuries requiring medical treatment, the release said.

The notice comes after FDA officials demanded that the Fairport, N.Y., firm broaden its notification of the recall of Avaira Toric lenses manufactured from Nov. 1, 2010 to Aug. 3. The FDA now says some 778,301 lenses were distributed. CooperVision officials originally said about 600,000 lenses were affected.

FDA officials had threatened to issue independent notice of concerns about the contact lenses if CooperVision didn’t adequately publicize the potential for problems caused by unidentified and unintended residue left behind during manufacturing.

"CooperVision's public communications are consistent with the agency's expectations for a Class I recall," Morgan Liscinsky, an FDA spokeswoman, said in an e-mail Friday."The FDA will continue to monitor this recall's effectiveness to ensure that the affected devices are moved from the marketplace and not used by consumers."

CooperVision had issued what Phyllis Entis, author of the blog eFoodAlert, called a “stealth recall” of the products in the United States after issuing more detailed recalls in several other countries, including Australia, Hong Kong and Spain. Entis first raised concerns in August, when she started receiving reports of serious eye injuries tied to the Avaira Toric lenses.

"In my opinion, CooperVision is engaging in damage control, now that their problem is no longer stealthy," Entis said.

The early release said that consumers experienced only hazy vision and discomfort.

Since then, Entis said dozens of consumers have reported problems ranging from blurry vision and eye irritation to corneal abrasions and tears that required emergency department visits. Some reports involved CooperVision brands other than Avaira Toric, but FDA officials said no other brands have been recalled.

Most of the users said they were not notified by the retailers who sold the products, including Costco, Walmart and LensCrafters about the recall. Nor were they told about the potential for injuries by their eye care providers. Some consumers said they intend to sue CooperVision for financial and medical harm blamed on the recalled lenses.

FDA officials had received at least 15 reports of injuries related to the recalled lenses, including severe injuries such as corneal tears, said Liscinsky, the FDA spokeswoman.

Consumers can check to see if their contact lenses are affected by the recall at www.coopervision.com/recall. Or they can call a toll-free consumer hotline at 1-855-526-6737 for more information. 

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Timothy A. Clary / AFP - Getty Images

Demonstrators with 'Occupy Wall Street' protest at Zuccotti Park.

It began as Occupy Wall Street in New York, and now it's going global -- inspiring protests around the world planned this weekend from Detroit to London, and Frankfurt to New Zealand. Thousands are fed up, not taking it anymore and are taking it to the streets.

But which streets? When? And for how long? How does an angry, seemingly disorganized and leaderless group of people ever get anything done?

The angry protestors who call themselves the “99 percent” have started a movement, but to many it’s unclear what their demands are except to shine a spotlight on the “greedy and corrupt” rich -- especially bankers -- and politicians who have lost touch with the people. Critics of the largely unstructured demonstration point to examples like Detroit's take on the matter: protesters had planned for their city's occupation and march to begin today, but as of late last night, no permit had been filed.

But the group likely has more leadership than meets the eyes, says Violent Arnold, who heads Company Works, a multicultural leadership development firm in St. Paul, Minn.

“Every group that comes together has some form of leadership,” Arnold says. “But the current leadership of top-bottom is not working, and that’s why they’re protesting. We are looking for the organized group being the CEO, middle management and workers. If you walked into one of these groups, the leaders are there; you just won’t be able to identify them.”

In the book, “The Horizontal Organization: What the Organizations of the Future Actually Looks Like and How it Delivers Value to Customers,” Frank Ostroff explained more American organizations may begin looking more like this movement, where no leader is apparent.

The protestors may be able to get some goals accomplished, but with so many people coming together from all walks of life with different viewpoints and no apparent agenda, it all can quickly come unglued, says Dr. Alan Manevitz, a clinical psychiatrist in New York City.

“Horizontally-structured organizations or movements have the best morale because there’s less red tape and less leadership. That’s the way most small organizations start off,” he says. “They can reach people through the Internet, but if you don’t have some sense of what the staged goals are, you can start to have spin-offs that can carry the agenda to smaller, more organized vertical structures that will feed off the general anger.”

Psychologically speaking, these protests are mentally healthy -- whether they accomplish anything or not, Manevitz says.

“Unemployment rates have remained high, and people are feeling demoralized, despondent and desperate. They need an outlet,” he says. “If people turn their feelings inward, they get depressed. If they turn it outward, they get angry. Right now, there’s this healthy pro-activism in protest. Where it’s going remains to be determined.”

Related: 

• Clashes as Occupy protesters march on Wall Street
• Occupy Wall Street protesters clean Zuccotti Park encampment
• Stressed brokers can't keep their hands off their faces. Why?

After Richard Mangino lost his arms below the elbows and legs below the knees from sepsis in 2002, prostheses enabled him to continue to follow his passion for painting and drawing.

But the 65-year-old Massachusetts man longed to be able to feel his grandchildren’s faces and stroke their hair, pleasures not even the most sophisticated artificial limbs could afford.

Inspired by his family, Mangino last week became the fourth person in the United States to receive a double hand transplant, according to his doctors at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“Today my miracle has come true,” Mangino said Thursday at a press conference at the hospital, his new hands and forearms resting on pillows in his lap piled nearly to shoulder height. He’d had his limbs amputated after developing a bloodstream infection.

The hospital isn’t disclosing the exact date of the 12-hour operation to protect the donor’s anonymity. Registering as an organ and tissue donor on a driver’s license isn’t considered consent for this type of donation, so the New England Donor Bank had to obtain permission from the donor’s family.

At the press conference, Richard Luskin, executive director of the New England Donor Bank, read a statement from the donor’s wife.  “He would have wanted to continue helping people,” the donor’s wife said. “My husband always said, ‘it’s just a body.’ I didn’t have to struggle with the decision.”

Simon Talbot, the hand surgeon who directed the 40-member team involved in Mangino’s transplant surgery, said “the results so far have been an amazing success.” Within a few days of the operation, Talbot said, Mangino could move his fingers.

Still, Mangino faces months of therapy and healing, Talbot said. He should be able to feel his grandchildren’s faces with his hands in six to nine months, Talbot said, and his fine muscle movement should return in nine to 18 months.

When asked whether Mangino will ever be able to play the guitar again, as he had before his amputations, Talbot said, “we never say never.”

Sarah Baker

Family nurse practitioner Sarah Baker, 49, of Bismarck, N.D., works at the Northalnd Community Health Center in McClusky, N.D., thanks in large part to the National Health Service Corps program, which forgave her loans for training in exchange for service in the rural area.

Sarah Baker drives 130 miles round-trip every weekday from her home in Bismarck, N.D., to her job as the sole provider of primary health care in McClusky, N.D. -- population 500.

“I’m it,” says the 49-year-old family nurse practitioner, whose duties have ranged from an office visit for a 2-day-old newborn to a surgical session with a 75-year-old man who nearly lost an ear in a fall down an elevator shaft.

“I give them their flu shots, I give them their shingles shots,” she said. “I know I’ve kept some of them out of the hospital.”

Baker has held her position at the Northland Community Health Center for three years, thanks in large part to a growing federal program that will pay off some $34,000 in nursing school debt in exchange for her rural work.

She’s a member of the National Health Service Corps, which has more than tripled its numbers in the past three recession-stricken years, U.S. Health and Human Services department officials announced Thursday. The program helps would-be primary care doctors, nurses, dentists and other health care providers pay for training -- and repay medical debt -- in exchange for working in rural and medically under-served areas.

Since 2008, the number of NHSC members has climbed from about 3,600 providers serving some 3.7 million patients to more than 10,000 clinicians serving some 10.5 million patients, HHS officials reported.

“Thanks to the National Health Service Corps, more Americans can see a doctor and get the health care that they need,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

At the same time, health professionals themselves have gotten a helping hand with the high costs of medical training.

That’s an important boost, especially for would-be primary care providers in a down economy, said Dr. Amy McIntyre, 29, who was a NHSC scholar while attending the Alpert Medical School at Brown University in Providence, R.I., and is now in her third year of residency at the Family Medicine Health Center in Boise, Idaho.

Students of all kinds, even medical students, have needed extra assistance with rising tuition. And the downturn has made it even more difficult for rural and under-served areas to attract health care providers to their clinics and hospitals, health experts say.

Next year, with NHSC help, McIntyre hopes to find her first job as a primary care doctor at a community health center in the rural Northwest.

She estimates the program paid for about $100,000 in medical school tuition, a huge boon in a country where the average med student graduates with median debt of about $160,000, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges.

The program essentially allows primary care doctors, who are paid less than specialists, to work in places that need them most, McIntyre said. In 2010, for instance, family care doctors were paid a median salary of $208,861, compared with a median salary of $402,000 for cardiologists and $500,672 for orthopedic surgeons, according to the American Medical Group Association.

Health workers in the program receive full salaries, but they're working in places that otherwise have a difficult time attracting primary care providers for a variety of reasons ranging from remote locations and scarce resources to very disadvantaged patients.

Idaho, for instance, where McIntyre works, ranks last in the U.S. with only 76 primary care doctors per 100,000 population, according to the United Health Foundation. That compares with Massachusetts, which has 191 primary care providers per 100,000 population.

“Programs like National Health Service Corps match dedicated primary care providers with communities in need, when otherwise forces in our health care system often drive providers away from our communities,” said McIntyre.

The program helps place health care providers at some 17,000 under-served and rural sites across the U.S. Though they’re free to leave after their required service is complete, some 82 percent of NHSC clinicians stay in the high-need areas where they start, HHS officials said.

This year’s NHSC program includes some 5,418 awards totaling $253 million for loan repayments through the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and annual appropriations. About 62 percent of eligible applicants were accepted.

In addition, some 247 scholarship awards totaling $46 million were paid for through the Affordable Care Act. Only about 20 percent of eligible applicants were accepted.

Still, demand for the program is even higher. Applications have jumped 500 percent for the loan repayment program and 600 percent for the scholarship program since 2008, HHS officials said.

Related:

•  No relief: Shortage keeps older docs on the job
•  Hospital garb harbors nasty bacteria, study says
•  Nurse's suicide hightlights twin tragedies of medical errors

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

If you were taking contraceptive pills when you met your husband, you may have a happier marriage. But your sex life might be meh.

Ladies, if you feel your partner is a great provider -- but meh in the love-making department -- it may have something to do with your birth control.

Women who were taking contraceptive pills when they met their significant other were more likely to stay in the relationship than women who weren’t on the Pill, according to new research. While the partners of the non-Pill taking women tend to be more handsome and better in the sack, their relationships just didn’t have the same staying power.

Good-looking and sexy or dull and nice. Seems there's always a trade-off when it comes to love.

The study was posted online Wednesday by the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Scottish and Czech scientists asked 2,500 women who were the biological mothers of at least one child about the father of the child and their relationship with him (not all the couples were married). And they also asked about the birth control they used when they met. The women were told only that the study was about their experiences of pregnancy and children and their relationship satisfaction.

Previous research has shown that hormonal variations over the menstrual cycle affect how women size up men as mate material. For example, studies have shown that women prefer more masculine men during ovulation than at other times of the month -- because the more macho, the more successful he is as a breeder.

Because the Pill smooths out those hormonal variations, researchers suspected that a muscle-bound hunk might not turn users' heads as much as a nice, average-looking guy with a steady job. And that's pretty much what they found. Women who'd been taking contraceptive pills when they met their partner were more likely to still be in the relationship. And while they rated their partner's body lower in attractiveness than women who hadn't been on the pill, they rated his "financial provision" more favorably.

"Our results show some positive and negative consequences of using the pill when a woman meets her partner," psychologist Craig Roberts of the University of Stirling in Scotland, said in a statement.

Other research by Roberts has found that oral contraceptives can also alter women’s preferences for men’s body odor. On the Pill, they gravitate toward the odor of men who are more genetically similar to them. But off the pill, they’re attracted to the odor of genetically dissimilar men when they’re ovulating.

“Women tend to find genetically dissimilar men attractive because resulting babies will be more likely to be healthy,” Roberts said in the release. “It’s part of the subconscious ‘chemistry’ of attraction between men and women.”

Because contraceptive pills smooth out those monthly hormonal variations, Roberts and his coauthors suspected Brad Pitt might not turn users’ heads as much as a nice, so-so-looking guy with a steady job. And that, pretty much, is what they found.

By Rachael Rettner
MyHealthNewsDaily

The bacteria in your mouth could one day be used as an early test for pancreatic cancer, a new study suggests.

In a small study, pancreatic cancer patients were found to have different levels of certain bacteria in their saliva than healthy people did. While researchers weren't sure if the differences were linked to the cancer's cause or were an effect, the findings suggest there could someday be an oral test that screens for pancreatic cancer, said James Farrell, a gastroenterologist at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.

Currently there are n screening tests for the disease, and because it is typically caught only in its late stages, pancreatic is one of the most deadly cancers. About 95 percent of pancreatic cancer patients die within five years of their diagnosis.

Because the study was small, involving about three dozen patients, the results would have to be confirmed in a larger group of people. The study was published online Wednesday in the journal Gut.

Farrell and colleagues began by analyzing the spit of 10 people with early-stage pancreatic cancer, which had not yet spread to other organs, and of 10 healthy people. The levels of 31 bacterial species were elevated in pancreatic cancer patients, and the levels of 25 other bacterial species were reduced, as compared with the health people.

The researchers then validated their findings in 28 additional patients with pancreatic cancer and 28 healthy people. Two bacteria species, Neisseria elongata and Streptococcus mitis, were found to be consistently different between groups.

By measuring the levels of these bacteria, the researchers could distinguish between patients with cancer and those without cancer 80 percent of the time.

The findings aren't a surprise, said Jun Sun, a researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center who studies the interaction between bacteria and their hosts.

Bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract have been linked with human diseases, including pancreatic cancer, said Sun, who was not involved in the new study. However, this study is the first to find a link between bacteria in saliva samples and pancreatic cancer. If a biomarker in spit is found, saliva samples could offer a noninvasive way to screen for the disease, Sun said.

Farrell said it's possible that bacteria in the mouth trigger the immune system to release factors that, in turn, stimulate cancer in other parts of the body.

Certain bacteria also could act as protectors against cancer by preventing the growth of "bad" bacteria in the gut.

If the findings are confirmed, researchers may be able to suggest good oral hygiene as a measure to reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer, Farrell said. Right now, quitting smoking is one of the only ways known to reduce pancreatic cancer risk.

"This might be another piece of advice" for people at risk for pancreatic cancer, such as those with a family history of the disease, Farrell said.

Ferrell and colleagues have started another, larger study that will examine the spit of patients suspected to have pancreatic disease. Patients will be followed forward in time to see if bacteria in their spit are linked with pancreatic cancer risk.

• 10 Do's and Don’ts to Reduce Your Risk of Cancer
• Why Is Pancreatic Cancer So Deadly?
• 7 Cancers You Can Ward Off with Exercise
  

A maker of more than half a million recalled contact lenses blamed for reports of corneal tears and other injuries acknowledged Wednesday that some of its users may have experienced “severe eye pain.”

Officials with CooperVision Inc. of Fairport, N.Y., urged wearers of Avaira Toric contact lenses who believe they’ve suffered harm to stop the using the products, which were first voluntarily recalled on Aug. 19 because of problems with residue left behind during manufacturing.

“Not everyone experiences the same symptoms,” company officials said in a statement, which recommended that affected users seek medical care.

The advice came in a press release issued after federal health officials pressured CooperVision to more broadly publicize its recall of an estimated 600,000 contact lenses. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the federal Food and Drug Administration said the agency was continuing to review CooperVision’s response.

“The FDA is evaluating the notification that CooperVision issued today and will advise CooperVision of any concerns that it raises. Failing resolution of those concerns, the FDA may issue separate public communication,” spokeswoman Morgan Liscinsky said in a statement.

CooperVision originally said they’d received only limited reports of problems including hazy vision and discomfort. But more than a dozen people contacted by msnbc.com reported more serious problems, including corneal abrasions and corneal tears that required emergency care.

The FDA has received about 15 complaints through its adverse event reporting system about the Avaira Toric lenses, which were introduced in April and recalled in August, Liscinsky said. Those reports included complaints of corneal tears, she added. Recalls are voluntary, with the FDA advising companies about appropriate levels of public notification and other action.

Some users have indicated that other brands of CooperVision contact lenses have caused problems as well, but Liscinsky said she couldn’t speculate about other brands being implicated in a recall.

CooperVision officials said they’ve sent worldwide notifications to more than 9,000 Avaira Toric customers and contacted more than 7,000 U.S. eye care practitioners who have received or sampled the lenses.

Customers can check to see if their lots are affected on the company’s website, www.coopervision.com/recall, or call a toll-free consumer hotline at 1-855-526-6737.

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An outbreak of listeria infections tied to contaminated Colorado cantaloupe has now sickened 116 people and left 23 dead, federal health officials reported Wednesday, making this the deadliest outbreak in more than 25 years. In addition, one pregnant woman who became ill had a miscarriage.

The rising toll reflects illnesses and deaths in 25 states caused by four outbreak strains of listeria, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All of the illnesses began on or after July 31, but more are expected because people can develop listeriosis up to two months after eating contaminated food.

An investigation into the cause of the outbreak linked to recalled cantaloupe from Jensen Farms in Holly, Colo., has not yet concluded, a federal Food and Drug Administration spokesman said.

Deaths have been reported in a dozen states, including five in Colorado; five in New Mexico; two each in Kansas, Louisiana and Texas; and one each in Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma and Wyoming.

Miscarriage blamed on listeria-tainted cantaloupe

The 23 deaths have surpassed 21 deaths tied to a listeria outbreak in 1998 tied to contaminated hot dogs and deli meat.

Illnesses have been reported in people aged 22 to 96, with a median age of 78. Most of those sickened are older than 60. Four of the illnesses were related to a pregnancy; one was diagnosed in a newborn and three were diagnosed in pregnant women.

Recalls tied to the outbreak include more than 300,000 cases of whole cantaloupes from Jensen Farms, and two different recalls of cut cantaloupe: A Sept. 23 recall of nearly 600 pounds of fresh cantaloupe from Carol's Cuts LLC of Kansas and an Oct. 6 recall of nearly 5,000 individual packages of cantaloupe by Fruit Fresh Up Inc. of Depew, N.Y.

Read more on food safety issues:

As farmers thrive, so do concerns

Flood of food imported, just 2 percent inspected

COMMENTARY

It was only a matter of time. The Tea Party has risen up in Pinellas County, Fla., and ensured that kids who live there will face a lifetime of dental problems, risky oral infections and big hits to their wallets, all done in the name of moral blindness and scientific stupidity. They have gotten the county commissioners to agree to take fluoride out of the water supply.

Pinellas County — basically Tampa-St. Petersburg— provides water to about 700,000 people. Like most Americans, those people, particularly children, have benefited from the addition of fluoride to the water supply. The rate of tooth decay in the U.S., Europe and many other nations has fallen dramatically, between 18 to 40 percent, since the pre-fluoride days of many decades ago. Dentists and scientists know why — fluoridation.

Cavities are not just a minor nuisance. They lead to the loss of teeth, chewing problems, dangerous infections that can kill, and ultimately to a lousy quality of life as you get older and cannot eat. Since access to dental care in America is crummy, this is a huge problem.

Too many kids don’t learn to practice good oral hygiene, a whole bunch eat too much sugary food and way too many live in families that cannot afford to see a dentist at all. For them, fluoridation is far and away their best hope. 

Yet, despite overwhelming evidence that fluoridation is safe, it somehow remains controversial.

Aside from some tooth discoloration, which may be able to be fixed by lowering the amount of fluoride used, there is no health risk. In January, in response to the cosmetic issue, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a proposal to change the recommended fluoride level to 0.7 milligrams per liter of water. That’s down from a range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams per liter, the standard since 1962, reported the Associated Press.

Story: Florida county to take the flouride out of water

The fears of the far-right John Birchers of yesteryear, the spiritual forefathers of the Tea Party of today, have not proven true.  No one has grown a second head, had his or her pure bodily fluids corrupted or become a dupe of the Soviet Union or its rapacious capitalist successor Russia due to fluoride in the water.

What we are left with is kids being harmed by know-nothing ignorance from a group of people more interested in talk of freedom than the facts of science and public health. Morally, fluoridation is something we do to help one another and to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Apparently the Tea Party of Pinellas County, and the county commissioners who bought their drivel, do not give a damn about either.

Just five weeks after her heart transplant, Kylee Faith Jones is recovering exceptionally well.

It's especially remarkable considering Kylee is just five months old, born with a congenital heart defect that required a pacemaker when she was three days old, according to NBC's Miami affiliate, WTVJ.

She’s also the youngest transplant patient ever at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, in Hollywood, Fla. In fact, little Kylee is only the third case at the hospital, which started its pediatric heart transplant program in December 2010.

Over 2,000 patients received heart transplantations in 2010, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. About 88 percent of patients survive the first year, and about 72 percent survive for five years, says the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute.

Infant transplantation, though, is much riskier. A recent study from Children’s Hospital Boston showed that 1 in 9 babies who undergo transplantation die before leaving the hospital.

But without a transplant, baby Kylee faced difficult odds.  An ultrasound detected a heart defect when mother Trace Jones was 16 weeks pregnant.

“Her heart was flipped. It was on the right side of her body and it was a mirror image,” Jones told the station. “She had third degree heart block which meant the top of her heart and the bottom didn’t fire at the same times.”

Kylee did well on the pacemaker for three months, but then became very ill, and was unresponsive at the hospital's emergency room, . “When I picked her out of the baby seat, I realized her body was limp. It was a very scary feeling,” said John Jones, the baby's father.

Doctors resuscitated Kylee, who spent the next seven weeks in the pediatric intensive care unit waiting for a donor heart. Donor hearts are in short supply, with over 3,000 patients currently waiting, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

But Kylee got lucky, receiving a donor heart, and transplant surgery on August 31. She “required maximal medical support in order to sustain her until the time of transplant, “ Dr. Maryanne Chrisant, director of pediatric cardiac transplants at the hospital told WTVJ.

An ultrasound of Kylee's own malfunctioning heart showed it was contracting very poorly and the rhythm was abnormal. A recent ultrasound done after the transplant is a different story. “It’s pumping beautifully, it’s ejecting blood perfectly, it’s really doing great,” said Chrisant, monitoring Kylee’s progress.

That's the best possible news for the Jones, who feel forever indebted to the donor family.

“It was sort of a mixed feeling in the sense that you feel guilty for another family that lost their child in order to give our child life,“ said Kylee's father, John. “We would love to meet them and just thank them,” added a grateful Trace. And now, all family members have registered to be organ donors.

Interested in becoming an organ donor? Visit organdonor.gov to get more information.

About 43 percent of teenagers age 15-19 have had sexual intercourse at least once according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s periodic National Survey of Family Growth released today. That’s about the same percentage as in the 2002 survey, but there was an important positive difference: Boys are using condoms more often both as the sole method of contraception, and also in combination with a girl’s hormonal contraception.

Eighty percent of the teen boys surveyed used a condom the first time they had sex, an increase of 9 percentage points from 2002.

Meanwhile, girls are using hormonal contraception at about the same rate they did in 2002, but are making increasing use of new versions, including the birth control patch, emergency contraception, and injectables.

Whether because of these changes or a combination of other factors, the teen birth rate, which had showed an alarming uptick from 2005 to 2007, fell back once again to 39.1 births per 1,000 girls between 15-19 in the year 2009. That represents a 37 percent drop since 1991.  

Nevertheless, said James Trussell, who directs Princeton University’s Office of Population Research and is an expert on family planning, the new data, based on interviews with 4,662 teens between 2006 and 2010, aren’t necessarily worthy of applause.

Given that the teen pregnancy rate of roughly 70 per 1,000 girls is more than double that of Canada, for example, the U.S. has a long way to go.

“There is a serious lack of education,” about sexuality and contraception, he said in an interview. “We run a website at Princeton where I answer questions and we’ve had 12,000 or more since it began. The amount of ignorance is overwhelming.”

While use of emergency contraception – which was hotly debated when it was introduced – has risen, neither it nor other hormonal methods except implants work that well, Trussell explained, because they require patient adherence. “It’s the same problem adults have,” he said. “They have to comply with instructions or the methods won’t work nearly as well as IUDs and [hormonal] implants. Until we get much greater fractions of women, including teens, using IUDs and implants, we are not going to see huge reductions in unintended pregnancies.”

The issue of sex education may play out once again during the coming election year. Though study after study has shown that abstinence-only sex education “only makes sure that teens having first sex don’t use contraception,” Trussell said, some political candidates still push for it.

Given that the survey showed a strong link between social, family, and educational status and age at first sex, effective educational interventions ought to begin at least as early as junior high school. The survey showed that younger girls whose first sex was with older boys used contraception at a much lower rate than older girls or younger girls who had first sex with a boy their own age. Teaching girls how to say no when they do not want sex, and how to protect themselves when they do, is “extremely valuable,” Trussell argued.

Surgeons rely on their training, experience and skill, but none of that matters if they develop a problem with their hands - the most basic item needed to do their jobs. So, to protect their assets, a number of them insure their hands, according to a new poll.

A survey of 100 surgeons nationwide conducted by Truth On Call for msnbc.com found that 24 insure their hands, 39 don't currently but are thinking about it and 37 don't.

One of those who does is Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor. On Tuesday, during a TODAY segment, Snyderman said she insures her hands because “I’ve always thought that someday there would be an executive who would say, 'I don’t want her face on television anymore,' and my television career would be over. I could always put food on my table being a surgeon.” (You can watch the video here -- she makes the comment around the 7:08 mark.)

Dr. Joseph Colella, a bariatric surgeon in Pittsburgh, insures his hands for about $8 million.

“It doesn’t insure you for your salary; it insures you for your ability to do your job,” says Colella. “I could still be a neurologist or anesthesiologist, but that may not be what I want to do. If something happened to my hands, it may force me to a career choice that I’m not interested in.”

If you were going to insure a body part, which one would you choose?

If Playboy Bunny Holly Madison insures her breasts for $1 million, it makes sense that surgeons, who delicately perform miracles with their hands, may need similar protection.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor, acknowledged she insures her hands Tuesday while being interviewed during a TODAY segment.

While discussing Madison’s policy, Snyderman says she insured her hands because “I’ve always thought that someday there would be an executive who would say, 'I don’t want her face on television anymore,' and my television career would be over. I could always put food on my table being a surgeon.” (You can watch the video here -- she makes the comment around the 7:08 mark.)

She’s not the only surgeon who has considered something bad happening to her hands.

Dr. Joseph Colella, a bariatric surgeon in Pittsburgh, says he also insured his hands for about $8 million. He got the idea about 12 years ago, only a year or so after he began his career, when he met with an insurance agent to discuss his occupational disability insurance.

“It doesn’t insure you for your salary; it insures you for your ability to do your job,” says Colella, who was one of the first surgeons in the nation to perform the weight-loss surgery with a Da Vinci robot. “I could still be a neurologist or anesthesiologist, but that may not be what I want to do. If something happened to my hands, it may force me to a career choice that I’m not interested in.”

Colella says the insurance also gives him peace of mind when he’s not in the operating room.

“You can play with your children,” says the assistant professor and director of robotic surgery at the Magee Women’s Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “You can live your life and never have to worry about getting injured. Now, obviously I don’t do reckless things. That, I can tell you; I don’t play with knives or fireworks.”

Surgeons insure their hands, and celebrities and other professionals insure other body parts more often than we think, says Alan Levin, chair of insurance and re-insurance at Edward Wildman and Palmer, LLP, in New York City.

“Every object has a value. So I’m Jimmy Durante and it’s my nose, I’m Mary Hart and it’s my legs or I’m a surgeon and it’s my hands. If I can’t work without my hands, it’s $5 million a year. I’ve lost 20 or 25 years' income, so an insurer should be able to put a value on that a place a premium on the risk,” says Levin, whose firm represents insurance companies that issue policies on body parts. “When you look at the amount that the party is insured for, there has to be a nexus or an actual sound basis for coming up with a value on the body part.”

1 in 5 surgeons insures hands, Truth On Call poll finds

The practice of celebrities and high-dollar professionals insuring body parts may have started in the 1930’s when Ben Turpin, a silent film actor, took out a $25,000 policy on his cross-eyes.

Levin says the insurance is by no means cheap, and could run people who hold such policies into the millions in premiums.

Colella says he doesn’t pay more than anything the average surgeon can’t afford, but Dr. Jeffrey Spiegel, a facial plastic surgeon in Boston, says he’s insured for more than he cares to share publicly.

A world-renowned surgeon who says he is the last resort for people who can’t find what they want with other plastic surgeons, says he has insured his hands “for considerably more than $8 million,” enough to cover him every year for the rest of his life.

“There are a lot of different ways my hands can be injured,” says Spiegel. “I do very advanced facial surgery, micro surgery, and if my hands were injured, I possibly may not be able to do what I do now.”

Spiegel says he’s not interested in doing anything “slightly less” than what he does now although he knows he could practice as a pediatrician or a psychiatrist with more training.

“I wanted to insure that I can practice at the high level that I do,” he says, “and I had to get a special policy to do that.”

Yet another dietary supplement has backfired.

A daily dose of vitamin E could actually increase a man's risk of prostate cancer, a study out today shows. Researchers discovered the disturbing link while studying the effects of antioxidants on men's health.

The vitamin E study comes on the heels of yesterday's report that common daily supplements, including multivitamins, iron, B6 and magnesium, appear to raise the death rate of older women.

There are big differences between these two studies, but both point to the inevitable conclusion that vitamins and supplements are not the magic potions that many people hope, even though more than two-thirds of the U.S. population takes them and they make up a $28 billion-a-year industry. 

The vitamin E study, called the SELECT trial, began in 2001, used the highest standard of scientific evidence -- a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial -- with the goal of proving vitamin E and selenium reduced the risk of prostate cancer. The rationale was sound. Small studies had suggested that the antioxidant effects of the two substances might reduce a man's cancer risk.

Follow Vitals on Facebook: It's good for you

As part of this major trial, funded by the National Cancer Institute, 35,000 men were recruited to test one or both of the compounds, or a placebo. By 2008, the study was halted because the evidence was clearly showing no benefit. 

Meanwhile, researchers continued to monitor the men. After four more years of follow-up, they found that vitamin E actually increased the risk for prostate cancer by 17 percent among men who took a daily dose of 400 IU, according to the report's conclusion published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. While the verdict on selenium is still not in, the researchers fear it might show negative effects, too, as they continue to follow the participants.

"I was surprised by the results of this trial," says Dr. Eric Klein, a urologist and the study leader from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. "There was a substantial amount of evidence going into SELECT when it was designed in the early 2000s to suggest that vitamin E or selenium might prevent prostate cancer and that's why we did the trial."

Because the government rules for the sales of vitamins and supplements are so much more lax than those for pharmaceuticals, you can still walk into a health food store today and find a bottle of Vitamin E with a label that reads: "Supports prostate health."

"Consumers should be skeptical about claims that are made on bottles and elsewhere unless there is solid scientific evidence," Klein says.

In the multivitamin study, researchers tracked 3,800 older women in Iowa for nearly two decades. The study found women taking vitamin B6, folic acid, magnesium, zinc, copper and iron had higher death rates. Those taking calcium had lower death rates.

It is important to note the multivitamin study was an observational trial where women simply filled out questionnaires regularly about their vitamin and supplement intake. The authors of this study say it is only suggestive and more research is needed to establish cause and effect.

Common vitamins could increase death risk

Despite all those supplements on the shelves, all too often, the evidence is just not there. The two studies together do raise the issue that Americans may be taking far more supplements and vitamins than they need and sometimes it can be harmful. As the Cleveland Clinic study shows, the products may not just waste your money, they could harm your health.

The take-home message: Most Americans get the nutrients they eat from food. As boring as that mantra sounds, you are better off eating fruits and vegetables, exercising regularly and maintaining a normal weight. A pill will seldom substitute.

Robert Bazell is NBC's Chief Science and Medical Correspondent.

Scientists may have found a way to turn off food allergies.

Researchers from Northwestern University found a way to tweak the immune system so that it doesn’t go haywire when foods like peanuts and eggs are encountered – in mice, at least.

That’s very good news since recent studies have shown that food allergies have been on the rise for the past decade or so. And food allergies can be deadly. Just a speck of peanut protein in a sensitive kid’s mouth can spark a life-threatening allergic reaction, called anaphylaxis.

National Institutes of Health scientists estimate that about 4.7 percent of children younger than 5 years old and 3.7 percent of children aged 5 to 17 suffer from food allergies. Each year there are some 15,000 to 30,000 episodes of food-related anaphylaxis, according to the NIH. Currently there is no reliable therapy for food allergies, other than eschewing the offending edible.

The trick to turning that reaction down – or even off - is to convince the body’s immune system that these foods are safe, said Paul J. Bryce, an assistant professor of medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, whose study was published in the Journal of Immunology.

“The key concept here is that we are supposed to be able to eat foods,” Bryce said. “Allergies to peanuts and other foods occur when the immune system goes wrong. We’ve been trying to understand how the immune system tells the difference between what it should and should not respond to.”

Allergic people react to peanuts and other edibles because their bodies interpret proteins in these foods as pathogens that must be killed.

Once a person is sensitized to a food, like peanuts, immune cells called T helper cells go into action. Like army scouts, these cells are constantly on patrol looking for the protein they’ve determined is dangerous. When they find it, they call in the troops and switch on a massive immune reaction that can be so severe that it can kill.

Bryce and his colleagues discovered that they could block that reaction by taking a bit of peanut protein, wrapping a white blood cell around it and then injecting the altered cell into an allergic mouse’s body.  Once the immune system spots the protein lodged in a white blood cell it recalibrates, now designating the protein as safe.

So, how big of a stretch is it to go from mice to humans?

“There are many differences between immune responses in mice and humans,” Bryce said. “There are also many similarities.”

The same principle applies to autoimmune diseases – like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis – which work very much in the same way as allergies do, Bryce said. The only difference is that the protein being attacked is part of the person’s own body, rather than a food that is consumed.

The research in autoimmune diseases is further along.

“This approach to inducing tolerance is in early clinical trials for multiple sclerosis,” Bryce said. “We are hopeful that any success there would justify further trials, including those designed to test its use for food allergy.”

Amid growing reports of eye problems ranging from blurry vision to torn corneas, federal health officials are threatening to issue a public warning about recalled contact lenses manufactured by CooperVision Inc. and sold widely at stores such as Costco, Wal-Mart and LensCrafters.

The Fairport, N.Y., firm has yet to heed a request from the federal Food and Drug Administration to broaden notification of problems with certain lots of its Avaira Toric contact lenses, which were recalled quietly in August because of unidentified “residue.” On Tuesday, CooperVision officials said the recall affected about 600,000 contact lenses, or 10 percent of those sold or issued as samples in the United States.

“Absent prompt and adequate communication by CooperVision, the FDA may independently share its concerns about Avaira Toric contact lenses,” FDA spokeswoman Morgan Liscinsky said in an e-mail.

But for at least a dozen consumers who indicated to msnbc.com they have suffered impaired vision, excruciating pain or landed in emergency rooms after wearing the contacts launched in April and recalled in August, such notice is long overdue.

“It is very frustrating that they’re not more vocal about it and that the FDA hasn’t warned more people,” said Mellisa Cotton, 40, of Atlanta, who said she suffered two corneal abrasions this summer after wearing Avaira Toric contact lenses.

“Next to labor, a corneal abrasion is one of the most painful things you can have," said the mother of two.

Dan O’Neil, 0, of Hampton, Va., said his 15-year-old daughter, Erin, had to be rushed to the local ER on Aug. 21 after using Avaira Toric contact lenses from a newly opened box from Wal-Mart.

"I noticed what first looked like a torn piece of contact on her eye," he said. "Upon closer examination, I realized that what I was seeing was Erin's cornea torn and rolled back."

Doctors confirmed a severe tear and the girl was treated with pain medication and antibiotics. Only after she was injured did O'Neil and his wife learn of the recall.

"The ophthalmologist didn't even seem to be aware of it," he said, adding later.  “Any time your kid’s vision is affected, you’re going to worry.”

CooperVision Inc. officials issued a voluntary U.S. recall on Aug. 19 of what the company called “a limited number of lots” in the U.S. market. On Aug. 25, the company notified the FDA of the recall, officials said.

CooperVision officials said they initiated the recall after investigating a “small number of unexpected wearer reports of hazy vision and discomfort.”

A notice posted on the company’s website includes a fill-in box where customers can check to see if their lots are affected. However, it does not include a list of retailers or a complete list of affected lots.

Major retailers said they notified their customers quickly about the Avaira Toric recall. About 2,600 Costco customers who bought the lenses were notified on or soon after Aug. 19, said Craig Wilson, vice president for food safety and quality assurance. Wal-Mart notified its optical departments on Aug. 24, said spokeswoman Dianna Gee. A LensCrafters spokeswoman who didn’t want to give her name said the company notified customers immediately through its retail stores.

Those moves, however, followed wider international notification of the defective lenses, including recalls issued in Hong Kong, Australia and in Spain, where the public notice included a list of more than 200 affected lots of lenses. The Hong Kong notice indicates that Avaira Toric lenses were also recalled in Canada, Germany, and Italy.

But the company has yet to issue wider notification in the U.S. that the FDA has the authority to seek, but not demand. “We are requesting that the firm issue a broader statement to ensure that users are aware of the recall,” Liscinsky, the FDA spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail.

CooperVision officials, did not respond to msnbc.com questions about why they had not complied with the FDA request.  In a statement, a firm spokeswoman said that the company “has fully cooperated with the FDA and continues to closely monitor the situation and seek advice from FDA during this process." The company's stock, traded as COO, fell on Tuesday.

Critics say that CooperVision has downplayed the recall of hundreds of lots of contact lenses in the United States, exposing vulnerable consumers to ongoing injury.

Phyllis Entis, author of the blog eFoodAlert, which tracks public safety recalls, has been following the Avaira Toric situation since August, documenting what she said “can only be described as a stealth recall.”

The blog includes reports from several consumers who have reported injuries and other problems with Avaira Toric contact lenses from August through October.

They include Deirdre Shapiro, 43, of Villanova, Pa., who said she suffered hazy vision and a scratched cornea that "felt like someone was in there with a sharp instrument stabbing my eye."

She wore the contacts for months, until September, when her doctor finally notified her of the recall.

"Literally, my whole summer, I thought I was going crazy," she said. "I wish I'd known. I would never have put this thing near my eye."