Plan B One-Step, the so-called "morning after pill," won't be made available over the counter to girls younger than 17, regardless of a previous Food and Drug Administration recommendation, according to a statement by U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

In a surprise move, Sebelius invoked her authority as the agency's head to overrule the recommendation of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research -- and the conclusions drawn by FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, according to statements issued today.

The move drewswift condemnation from ethicists and leading medical groups.  

“In facing a tough call, HHS has put politics over science when it comes to sex,” said Art Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and a frequent contributor to msnbc.com.

Dr. Robert Block, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, called the decision "medically inexplicable," saying that it defies strong data that shows emergency contraception is safe and effective for girls and women of all ages.

But Sebelius said she wasn't convinced that Teva Pharmaceuticals Inc. had proven that non-prescription use of emergency contraceptives containing the drug levonorgestrel should be broadened. She expressed concern that girls reaching reproductive maturity at age 11 -- or even younger -- could have access to the medication.

"It is common knowledge that there are significant cognitive and behavioral differences between older adolescent girls and the youngest girls of reproductive age," her statement said. "If the application were approved, the product would be available, without prescription, for all girls of reproductive age."

Plan B One-Step is a single-dose pill that decreases the chance of pregnancy if taken within three days after unprotected sexual intercourse. It contains higher levels of a hormone found in some types of daily use birth control pills. It was originally approved in July 2009 for use without a prescription for girls and women older than 17 and with a prescription for those younger.  Teva Women's Health Inc., the drug's maker, sought to broaden that use in an application submitted in February. Under that plan, it would have been available on store shelves.

Hamburg said she believed CDER's decision to approve wider use was both thoughtful and appropriate for all females of child-bearing age.

"I reviewed and thoughtfully considered the data, clinical information, and analysis provided by CDER, and I agree with the Center that there is adequate and reasonable, well-supported, and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of child-bearing potential," her statement said.

However, Sebeluis' decision trumps Hamburg's view, so the FDA sent a letter today telling Teva that the product would remain a prescription medication for girls and women older than 17, who must show ID to purchase the medication, and that younger girls would require prescriptions and consultation with health care providers.

Teva officials expressed surprise at the last-minute timing of Sebelius' decision.

"We commend the FDA for making the recommendation to approve providing women with increased over-the-counter access to Plan B One-Step and we are disappointed that at this late date, the Department of Health and Human Services has come to a different conclusion," Teva spokeswoman Denise Bradley wrote in an e-mail.

The firm had not yet received the FDA's letter for review, Bradley said.

Msnbc.com health writer JoNel Aleccia and freelance health writer Rita Rubin contributed to this report.

What do you think of the decision? Tell us on Facebook. Related story:
Bioethicist: Plan B ruling trump good science with bad policy

After a  mammogram, Dorothy Warren learned she had something called DCIS -- almost breast cancer, but not quite the same.

"You're gonna tell me I have cancer and I have stage zero, and it's not real invasive cancer?  I was not only fearful, but confused," Warren said.

Dr. Pamela Otto, a breast radiologist at the University of Texas, San Antonio, says DCIS consists of cancer cells that are inside the milk ducts.

Doctors cannot be sure if it will spread -- or if the patient needs to be treated with radiation or mastectomy.

Today's study, presented at a major breast cancer conference in San Antonio, finds that a genetic test called Oncotype Dx  can help with decisions about how to treat these cases. It gives a score, indicating how high the risk is.

Dr. Kathy Miller, a cancer expert at Indiana University School of Medicine, calls this "huge news" for women: “It allows us to make individualized treatment decisions.”

These results are part of a big movement to try to use genetic markers to tailor the care to each patient.

Experts say only about one-quarter of DCIS patients need radiation.

"Now we can look and say what is your specific risk?  Are you in the three-fourths who have a very low risk,” said Dr. William Wood, a cancer surgeon at Emory University School of Medicine.

This finding could give useful guidance for tens of thousands of women every year.

Shaun Best / Reuters file

Former president George W. Bush, shown with former president Bill Clinton in 2001, is significantly less grayer than in this 2009 photo, below, with President Barack Obama.

When presidents start to sprout gray hairs and look a little wrinkly around re-election time, people often blame the stresses of holding the office for causing accelerated aging. But a new study finds that the presidency isn't so hard on elected officials after all; in fact, presidents are likely to live longer than men born in the same year as them. 

Additionally, 23 of 34 U.S. presidents who have died of natural causes lived well beyond what would have been expected if they were aging twice as fast while president, as some doctors have asserted, said study researcher S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Most likely, Olshansky said, the privilege of wealth, education and medical access lengthened these men's life spans.

"To me, it's a classic illustration of the benefits of socioeconomic status," Olshansky told LiveScience. "All but 10 of the presidents were college-educated, they were all wealthy, and they all had access to medical care."

Stress and aging
Olshansky, who researches health and longevity, became interested in the question of presidential aging when President Barack Obama turned 50 in August 2011. News reports were rife with pictures of the graying president next to snapshots from inauguration day, Olshansky said, and some doctors and psychologists told reporters that the stress of the job was aging Obama prematurely.

In fact, there is disagreement among experts whether presidential stress, or any stress, strongly affects the color of your tresses. Genetics plays a major role in graying hair, and most presidents are of an age when graying hair and wrinkling skin are common.

No one dies of wrinkles and gray hair, Olshansky said, but if presidents really age at double-speed during office, it should show in their longevity: For every day they sit as president, their life spans should be cut short by two days.

 Top 10 Ailing Presidents

As presidential birth, inauguration and death dates tend to be well-recorded, Olshansky had all the data he needed to see if presidents suffer from truncated life spans. He compared the life expectancies of all presidents who have died of natural causes with the life expectancies of same-age contemporaries, using data from the Social Security Administration and the Human Mortality Database. (Presidents who died by assassination were excluded, as their deaths were unrelated to aging.) For the 1800s, Olshansky used life expectancy data from France, because the U.S. did not keep reliable population records during that time.

Healthy living
The results revealed that presidents were no more likely to die young than men who were the same age on Inauguration Day. The average estimated life span of the average age-matched man between 1789 and the present was 73.3 years, Olshansky reports in the Dec. 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The 34 presidents lived to an average age of 73 years.

On the whole, Olshansky added, presidents had already won the life-span lottery by the time they were inaugurated. The average age of inauguration was about 55, and many male babies born on the same date as the presidents wouldn't have made it that far, especially early in the country's history. For example, Olshansky said, the average life span of the first eight presidents, from George Washington to Martin Van Buren, was 79.8 years. The life expectancy for the average man born in those presidents' birth years was under 40.

Once inaugurated, the presidents showed no evidence of a shortened life span compared with other men who had likewise survived the perilous years of youth. If presidents did, in fact, age at twice the normal rate while in office, their expected average life span would have been 68.1 years, Olshansky found. If that number were accurate, he said, you'd expect to see half of the presidents die before age 68 and the other half after. In reality, two-thirds of the presidents outlived that estimate.

Olshansky's study doesn't answer the question of whether presidents show the outward signs of aging faster than the average Joe, but he said most seem to be undergoing a perfectly natural process.

"If you take a picture of anyone in their mid-to-late 50s and then take a picture four to eight years later, they're all going to experience outward signs of aging," he said. "Presidents are just experiencing the same thing everyone else is experiencing. You know, join the club."

Either way, he said, his study reveals that presidents are relatively youthful where it counts.

"The outward signs of aging don't necessarily tell us much about the inward signs of aging," Olshansky said. "These individuals do, in fact, mostly live longer than you would have predicted."

• Extending Life: 7 Ways to Live Past 100
• The Most Powerful Modern Women Leaders
• 7 Ways the Mind and Body Change With Age

Weight-loss products containing the hormone HCG are illegal and potentially dangerous, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said today, and consumers are advised to steer clear of the oral drops, pellets and sprays that can be found online and in retail stores.

The FDA, along with the Federal Trade Commission, issued warning letters today to seven companies selling over-the-counter, homeopathic weight-loss products marketed as containing HCG.

The products are marketed with claims that hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, which is found in the urine of pregnant women, is a "natural" way to increase metabolism and spur weight loss.

But the products are labeled with the recommendation to consume no more than 500 calories a day, and there is no evidence that HCG contributes to weight loss beyond what comes with such severe a calorie restriction, said Elizabeth Miller of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, speaking at a news conference today.

There are no FDA-approved weight-loss products that contain HCG, and HCG products that are marketed for weight loss are unproven and potentially unsafe, Miller said.

Moreover, limiting calorie intake to 500 calories a day is unhealthy, and increases risk of developing gallstones, heart arrhythmias and electrolyte imbalances, Miller said.

"The weight-loss industry, perhaps more than any other, is fad-driven," said Richard Cleland, an assistant director at the Federal Trade Commission. "It's also fraud-driven," Cleland said, citing the past examples of products containing the plant Hoodia gordonii and acai berries, which were also marketed as weight loss products without evidence of being effective or safe.

Neither agency had data available on how many consumers have bought such products, but the heavy marketing on the Internet indicates there are many purchasers, Cleland said. A recent survey showed  that almost 5 million Americans each year are victims of weight-loss fraud, he said.

The warning letters inform the companies that they are violating federal law because they are advertising products without having reliable scientific evidence that their claims are true. Letters were issued to Nutri Fusion Systems, Inc, Natural Medical Supply, LLC DBA HCG Complete Diet, HCG Platinum, LLC, Theoriginalhcgdrogs.com, HCG Diet Direct, LLC, Hcg-miracleweightloss.com and HCG Drops, LLC.

Other companies marketing similar products should also take action to correct any violations, Cleland said.

More from My Health News Daily:

4 Fad Diets That Don't Really Work

Lose Weight Smartly: 7 Little-Known Tricks that Shave Pounds

Dieters, Beware: 9 Myths That Can Make You Fat

obtampons.ca/apology

J&J is really sorry -- in fact, grand piano and rose petal sorry -- that its popular line of tiny tampons has been hard to find.

Just in case you missed it, Johnson & Johnson would like to say they're sorry. Triple sorry, in fact, that their popular o.b. tampons have become so scarce the last couple of years, women have begun hoarding them like Elaine Benes conserving her precious Today sponges.

Go to the company's website and type in your name and you'll get a personalized musical apology, complete with hot young singer, white grand piano, fluttering rose petals, sky writing, and, yes, even a coupon.

What prompted this elaborate (and literal) song and dance?

Apparently, a "temporary supply interruption" has made the feminine hygiene product increasingly difficult to find. So much so, that boxes of the highly sought-after no-applicator tampons have sold for as much as $99 on eBay. And o.b. devotees have even begun stockpiling what few boxes they've been able to track down.

"Still no OBtampons in stores," Barbara Rice, executive editor of Penthouse Magazine tweeted recently. "So I just ordered many boxes from drugstore.com. This might get me through 'til menopause!"

According to a story in the New York Times (even the Gray Lady likes the brand, it would seem), many women prefer o.b. because of their comfort and convenience.

"They're ... smaller and more convenient to carry in a purse or pocket than some competing ones," the Times wrote in a story last year. "In addition, unlike most other tampons, they don't contain a plastic or cardboard applicator tube so they're considered to be more environmentally friendly than other kinds of feminine hygiene products."

While o.b. lovers are quick to tout the many benefits ("I love OB," one woman wrote on the review site, www.rateitall.com, in 2009. "They are easy to insert and silky smooth ... It's the best product ever."), the tampon does have its detractors.

In fact, the brand may just be the most polarizing tampon every sold.

"I hate o.b.," LeahB wrote on the same review site last year. "They're painful, messy and I have never once been able to properly insert the stupid thing."

Getty Images stock

Flu Near You, a new tracking system, uses individual reports of symptoms to monitor the spread of influenza.

Getting the flu may be miserable, but if there’s any comfort, it’s in the perverse pleasure of cataloging symptoms. The sneezing, the coughing, the aches and the chills. The sudden high fever. The terrible sore throat.

Usually, finding anyone to listen -- except for spouses bound by duty and a shared mortgage -- is a tough task.

But not this year.

Thanks to a just-launched effort that aims to track the spread of influenza in real time, flu sufferers now have a place where they can whine to their hearts’ content, all the while contributing to the public good.

It’s called Flu Near You, a human sentinel system that uses first-person reports to monitor the illness nationwide. Unlike other reporting systems, it relies on tallies of specific symptoms in specific places to gauge spread and severity of infection.

“We’re actually getting people to tell us that they’re sick,” said John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, with joint appointments at Children’s Hospital Boston.

The project, a joint effort of Children's Hospital Boston, the Skoll Global Threats Fund and the American Public Health Association, already has attracted more than 2,000 people willing to report weekly how terrible they feel.

The point, said Brownstein is to speed up monitoring to better be able to predict when, where -- and, possibly, whom -- the flu will strike next.

“Automatically, you’ll see yourself where you are on the map compared to other people reporting,” he said. “You’ll be able to see other people who are sick around you.”

flunearyou.org

Participants register, and then agree to fill out weekly surveys that ask whether they’ve suffered flu symptoms such as aches, chills, fever and coughing in the past week, or whether they’ve had no symptoms at all. They’re also asked to report whether they’ve received flu shots.

Researchers already know that monitoring behavior can offer a heads-up for impending illness. Google Flu Trends, an analysis based on users’ search terms related to flu symptoms, lets experts detect flu at least two weeks faster than the laboratory-confirmed surveillance system used by public health officials, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But Flu Near You could be even quicker, Brownstein said.

Early evidence suggests that a self-reporting system works. In Australia, the FluTracking project started in 2004 and now boasts 10,000 people online every week. Researchers there have used the tool to demonstrate the efficacy of seasonal vaccines and to respond quickly to small communities with high rates of self-reported illness. Ten countries in Europe participate in InfluenzaNet, which tracks illness there.

Organizers eventually would like to see tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of United States users enrolled in Flu Near You, populating the national map with little green, yellow or red pins depending on whether they’re well, showing a few symptoms or coming down with a full-blown case of the flu.

It’s taking a while to catch on, but there are some strong incentives, Brownstein noted. Members of the APHA, for instance, are now competing for $150,000 in prizes for individuals and groups who recruit thousands of flu reporters. The top prize, $25,000 will go to the member who amasses the most users above the minimum of 10,000 surveys. That’s equal to recruiting at least 200 people who complete the survey once a week for 50 weeks in the competition that started in October and runs for a year.

“Actually the nursing association is banding together and they’re way out in front,” Brownstein said.

Ordinary people however, will have to settle for the comfort of complaining to a willing audience -- and knowing their flu symptoms may benefit society as a whole.

“We hope the people recruited into the system are doing it for their civic duty,” Brownstein said.

When were you the sickest? Tell us on Facebook.

Related story:

New flu virus in 3 Iowa kids raises worries about wider spread

www.quorn.us

Matt Ernst started worrying when his face swelled up and turned deep red. Panic hit when his throat began to feel tighter and tighter, till he was gasping for air.

Figuring that Ernst was having an allergic reaction, his girlfriend handed him some Benadryl. It didn’t take long for the antihistamine to take hold and for Ernst’s throat to begin to open up.

As the couple tried to figure out what might have caused the reaction, Ernst recalled the last thing he’d eaten: a fake chicken cutlet. Then the 48-year-old Florida software salesman remembered the scratchy, itchy feeling he’d had in his throat the last time he’d eaten the meat substitute made by Quorn Foods, Inc.

A quick web search and Ernst discovered he wasn’t the first to have a reaction after eating a Quorn cutlet. The website for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) described similar episodes in others and the group's nearly decade-long campaign to get the Food and Drug Administration to either pull Quorn’s fungus-based meat substitutes or to add a warning to the products’ labels.

Quorn products, sold at popular grocery chains including Whole Foods, come in the shape of artificial “Chik’n” patties or nuggets – or even cylindrical beef approximations or turkey “roasts."  The main ingredient is a so-called mycoprotein --  protein extracted from a microscopic fungus. Quorn has sparked a yum or eww debate among vegetarians since it hit the U.S. market nearly a decade ago.

CSPI, dubbed the “food police” for picking on makers of fattening foods, recently provided a report to the FDA detailing 500 adverse reactions to Quorn’s mycoprotein in U.S. customers. The consumer watchdog group also says that it has also compiled a list of 1,200 more adverse events from European and Australian customers.

In a letter to the FDA, CSPI’s executive director Michael Jacobson described several accounts in detail, including the case of a 20-year-old man Texas man who said he began to feel nauseous soon after eating Quorn’s Chik’n Nuggets and then blacked out, fell, and hit his head. Also detailed was the case of a 75-year-old Maryland woman who, four hours after consuming a Quorn Chik’n patty, began vomiting uncontrollably while at a Les Miserables performance, passed out and eventually ended up in the emergency room treated with an anti-nausea medication.

Jacobson told the FDA, “we believe, and we suspect that any reasonable person would believe, that any novel food ingredient that causes hives, anaphylactic reactions, or vomiting so violent that blood vessels burst, cannot, indeed, must not, be considered by the FDA to be ‘generally recognized as safe.’”

But Steve Marinker, a spokesman for Quorn Foods, said the products "have been extensively tested and approved as safe by the relevant regulator in each market. The level of intolerance to Quorn products is extremely low and much lower than for other protein foods such as soya, nuts, shellfish, dairy and eggs."

For its part, the FDA argues that while there may have been some reactions to the Quorn product, they are rare – and most likely not due to allergies to the food.

The agency took a close look at the adverse event reports forwarded to it by CSPI as well as those reported in the medical literature and concluded that there was “no evidence that mycoprotein-containing products cause a heightened allergic risk or other food safety concern,” said Douglas Karas, an FDA spokesperson.

The bottom line, Karas said, is that most of the reactions are probably due to “intolerance” rather than allergic reactions. “In the case of mycoprotein, some highly sensitive consumers appear prone to adverse gastrointestinal effects after eating mycoprotein, which are, judging from the reports very unpleasant,” he added.  

That response doesn’t sit well with Gary Ebert, a 43-year-old software engineer from Silver Springs, Md. Ebert has been a vegetarian most of his life and was happy when he found Quorn’s line of foods. But after one of the products made him violently ill, Ebert said he thinks mycoprotein should come with a warning on its label.

“I for one don’t think unreasonable for the label to say that this might make you so sick you won’t be able to eat solid food for 24 to 36 hours,” Ebert said.

The Star-Ledger

Organ transplant experts are worried that proposed new federal health guidelines will limit the number of available donors and recipients willing to accept organs newly classified as risky.

If you've had sex with two or more partners in the past year, you may be considered a risky organ donor, at least according to proposed new federal health guidelines that have drawn sharp protests from transplant experts who say they're far too broad. 

“With the new guidelines, every college student in America will be high risk,” said Dr. Harry Dorn-Arias, a transplant surgeon at the University of Virginia. “Right now, it's probably a prostitute or a guy with a needle in his arm. Next time, it will be just a young guy."

Under the new policy proposed this fall by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deceased and living donors who were not monogamous in the previous 12 months would be considered at increased risk of transmitting HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C -- even if they had no other risk factors

CDC officials say the proposed guidelines are aimed at making the organ supply safer and preventing accidental transmission of life-threatening infections. The policies wouldn’t absolutely ban anyone from donating, especially in an exceptional or life-saving situation, but they would call for more scrutiny and testing.

“It’s geared for the patient so the patient knows as much as they can about the organ being transplanted in them,” said Dr. Matthew J. Kuehnert, director of the CDC’s office of Blood, Organ and Other Tissue Safety.

But transplant experts are outraged because they say the proposal arbitrarily focuses on monogamy and could limit both the number of available donors and the number of recipients willing to accept organs newly classified as risky.

They worry that potential living donors may balk at donating if they know their sexual history alone could raise questions about their suitability, particularly if the situation involved a family member.

“If you were going to give your organ to your mom or dad or sister, you’re going to be ashamed of that,” said Dorn-Arias. “You’re either going to say no, or you’re going to lie.”

The proposed policy could also require families of deceased donors to answer uncomfortable questions -- ones they may not even know the answers to -- about the specific sexual behaviors of their loved ones.

“It’s probably going to triple what we consider high risk at this point,” said Tracy Giacoma, transplant administrator at the University of Kansas Hospital. “It may scare patients off from taking these organs. More patients may die because they don’t take these organs.”

More than 28,000 organs are transplanted each year, but more than 112,000 people are on organ waiting lists, according to figures from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.  

The guidelines could affect a wide swath of potential donors, particularly younger people. About a quarter of women and nearly 30 percent of men ages 20 to 24 said they had two or more sexual partners in the past 12 months, according to a 2006-2008 report by the National Center for Health Statistics.

When tragic deaths occur, those are precisely the people who should donate their organs, if possible, Giacoma said.

"If you have a [donor] that's 19 years old and he had multiple partners, we'll have to tell the recipient, this is a high-risk organ," she said.

The sexual partner tally is only one of several new factors that could tag a potential donor as being at increased risk of infection. It’s part of a larger set of guidelines that would update 1994 Public Health Service policies for preventing transmission of HIV through human tissue and organs.

"Our priority here is patient safety," said Kuehnert, who noted that the guidelines describe "increased risk," not "high risk," of infection. "[Patients] should know if they're getting an organ at elevated risk."

The 1994 guidlines exclude certain groups as donors, including men who have had sex with other men within the past five years, people who've used IV drugs or exchanged sex for money or drugs in the past five years, hemophiliacs, those exposed to HIV, and people who've had sex with anyone in those categories. They also limit people who've been incarcerated.

The new plan calls for the first-ever guidelines for testing living donors and it adds hepatitis B and hepatitis C to the list of must-test viruses, along with HIV, Kuehnert said.  As it stands now, only HIV is included in the guidelines, though most organ transplant centers do test for a range of other potential diseases. 

The proposal also calls for use of the most sensitive tests available to detect infection and for shorter testing windows to avoid transmitting infections, which occurs in an estimated 1 percent of transplant cases and has been fatal, Kuehnert said.

Between 2007 and 2010, the CDC participated in more than 200 investigations of suspect unexpected transmission of infections including HIV and hepatitis B and C, with dozens of cases confirmed, Kuehnert added.

The risk of infection from organs may be rare, but it's real. Helen Boucher's husband, George, 54, of Pawtucket, R.I., died in 2005 after receiving a kidney tainted with a rare infection traced back to a virus from the donor's pet hamster. The new guidelines wouldn't have helped detect the Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis virus -- known as LCMV -- but Helen Boucher, now 61, said preventing the trauma her family endured is worth any extra scrutiny.

"My gut feeling is if you want to be a donor, you’re doing a wonderful thing, but you also have to think about what could happen to the recipient," she said. "If I’m willing to be a donor, I’m willing to answer any of those questions that someone is going to ask of me."

The proposed guidelines shorten the time frame for many of the higher-risk behaviors from five years to one year. But they also classify as risky people who have used kidney dialysis during that time; people who have snorted cocaine or heroin nasally; those who've been in prison, jail or juvenile detention centers for more than three consecutive days in the past year; those who currently have or who have been treated for syphilis, gonorrhea or genital ulcers in the past year and people who have immigrated to the United States within the last year from a country with a high prevalence of hepatitis B.

Other aspects of the plan have drawn fire from transplant experts who object to tests that might be too expensive and too slow for all centers to administer.

But it's the new emphasis on two or more sexual partners that has ignited most ire, judging from public comments about the proposal being accepted through Dec. 21 at www.regulations.gov.

“I am opposed to the guidelines as written,” wrote Dr. John Radomski, chief of surgery at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, N.J. “The list of high risk behavior seems way too broad.”

CDC officials downplayed the controversy, saying that the proposal is a draft and can be changed, particularly if there's strong evidence to support any alteration. They said the primary goal is to obtain as much information about transplanted organs as possible, whether that comes from personal histories or advanced screening tests.

Using a set of behaviors to gauge risk makes sense, Kuehnert said, and studies suggest that having more than one sexual partner raises the risk of infection.

“We can quibble about whether it should be two sexual partners or three or five or 10, but we’ll have to have a cut-off point,” he said.

Should donors who had sex with more than two people in a year be considered high risk? Tell us on Facebook.

Related stories:
Infected organs pose deadly transplant risk
Killer's quest: Allow organ donation after execution
Agencies consider new organ donation rules

By Cory Hatch
MyHealthNewsDaily

Sexting -- the phenomenon of teens using phones or computers to send each other sexual photographs -- is not as widespread as once thought, a new study suggests.

University of New Hampshire researchers conducted a telephone survey to ask 1,560 Internet users between the ages of 10 and 17 whether they'd made, sent or received sexual photographs in the past year.

Only about 1 percent of kids were sexting sexually explicit photographs.

"It's somewhat reassuring," said study author Kimberly Mitchell, an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire. "The media … has portrayed it as a big problem."

But chances are, your children are not sexting, Mitchell said.

Researchers asked questions such as "Have you ever taken nude or nearly nude pictures or videos of yourself?" and "Has anyone ever sent you nude or nearly nude pictures or videos of kids who were under the age of 18 that someone else took?"

A related study showed that law-enforcement agencies respond to about 1,750 cases of sexting each year in the United States.

Both studies were published today in the journal Pediatrics.

Defining sexting
Kids' answers during the interviews depended upon how the researchers defined sexting. When researchers asked if children had created or appeared in nude pictures or videos, 2.5 percent said yes. However, only 1 percent of children said the photos were sexually explicit, showing bare breasts, genitals or bottoms.

More than 7 percent of children said they had received nude or nearly nude photographs of others, while nearly 6 percent said they'd received sexually explicit photographs.

Children's answers included: "This boy had four pictures of a naked girl — he was showing everyone in the classroom," and "I was just dating a boy and he wanted a picture and I just sent him my picture."

Other studies debunked
The findings debunk other, less rigorous studies of teens and sexting, the researchers said. For instance, one study used an Internet panel and included 18-and-19-year-olds. Some studies also didn't distinguish between nearly nude photographs and sexually explicit photographs.

"Often times, [the photographs] weren't sexually explicit," Mitchell said. "We find, across the board, that kids are pretty smart about using technology."

When sexting was considered serious enough for legal action, two-thirds of the cases involved an aggravating circumstance such as an adult being involved, or nonconsensual or malicious behavior, according to the study of law-enforcement agencies. 

Story: Poll names 'sexting' most annoying tech word

Researchers mailed surveys to a sample of 2,712 law-enforcement agencies and found 3,477 cases involving sexting during 2007 and 2008.

About 36 percent of cases involved adults, and 19 percent involved criminal behavior beyond creation of the sexual image.

About a third of the cases were considered "experimental," meaning that the children involved were in a romantic relationship or were engaged in attention-seeking behavior.

Police made arrests in 62 percent of cases involving an adult, 36 percent of cases where a youth was engaged in aggravated behavior and 18 percent of experimental cases.

The study advances the current understanding of sexting by delving further into the details than any other research to date, said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist with the Pew Research Center, in Washington, D.C.

Story: More kids 'cyberbaiting' teachers

"The researchers have been able to ask very specific questions to target a narrow definition of sexting …  as well as a more-detailed understanding of how the images were created, shared and received," Lenhart said. "Their research findings also closely match my most recent work on this topic, where we found 2 percent of teens 12 to 17 say they have sent a sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude image of themselves to someone else, and 16 percent of all teens say they have received them."

Mitchell acknowledged that her study involved only children who use the Internet, while saying nothing about the small percentage (about 5 percent) of kids who don't. "To be involved with sexting you don't have to be an Internet user," she said. "I don't think we're missing many kids, but we could be missing some."

More from My Health News Daily:
10 Ways to Promote Kids' Healthy Eating Habits
10 Facts Every Parent Should Know about Their Teen's Brain
How to Talk to Kids about Bullying and Abuse

Courtesy the Grice Family via Cr

Kim Grice, shown before and after her face caught on fire during surgery Tuesday to remove cysts in her head.

It was supposed to be a routine outpatient surgery to remove some growths from Kim Grice’s head. But something went horribly wrong during the Tuesday morning procedure and a flash fire seared Grice’s face and neck.

The 29-year-old mother of three was rushed by helicopter to the University of South Alabama Burn Unit with burns to her face and neck.

Grice’s mom, who had been waiting in the lobby of the North Okaloosa Medical Center in Crestview, Fla., knew something bad had happened. 

“At 8 a.m. two patients were back there,” Ann Grice told the Crestview (Fla.) News Bulletin. “One was my daughter. At 10:20 emergency medical and the fire department pulled up and there was a fifty-fifty chance that they were coming through the doors for my daughter. I went to the desk and no one would tell me what was wrong.”

When hospital personnel finally explained that Kim’s face had caught fire, Ann was stunned.

“I am in shock,” she told the Bulletin. “This is not what happens with a routine outpatient surgery. She had headaches and the doctor was going to remove three cysts and biopsy them. But something went bad wrong and my daughter is now in a burn unit with burn specialists and I still don’t know what happened. No one will tell me why or how this happened to her.”

What happened to Kim Grice was not an isolated incident. Experts estimate that each year 650 fires flare up in operating rooms around the country. Some patients recover with scars and emotional damage. Some die from burns and smoke inhalation.

Surgeons and other hospital staff are often as surprised as patients when a fire sparks in the OR.

North Okaloosa Medical Center issued a statement with an update on Kim Grice’s condition, promising a full investigation of the fire.

“The hospital deeply regrets today’s event in which a patient sustained burns during a procedure in our ambulatory surgery center,” the statement read. “The staff took immediate steps to respond, including moving the patient to the hospital’s emergency department. The patient was fully alert and able to converse with the ED staff during the examination and initial treatment. She was stabilized and then transferred to the University of South Alabama Medical Center for further care.

Experts say it shouldn’t be a surprise when fires flash in ORs. All the necessary ingredients are on hand to spark a conflagration.

These days more and more operations use electro-cautery devices and lasers. Those devices are what Dr. David Cowles calls the “trifecta” of elements – oxygen, alcohol prep and an ignition source - that lead to flash fires in the OR.

Story: Operating room fires hurt hundreds a year

“There’s a basic simple chemistry and physics principle that when three elements are combined then a fire occurs,” Cowles told NBC’s Dr. Nancy Snyderman in a recent interview. “Likewise, if you remove any one of those elements it makes it impossible for a fire to occur.

The FDA launched a new initiative to prevent surgical fires, noting that though these are rare events, they are also highly preventable. The agency convened a special workshop to look for ways to stop fires from ever happening and to give medical personnel the tools and knowledge needed to deal with a fire if one occurs.

Until more hospitals learn about the danger of fire in the OR, each year there will be more patients like Kim Grice.

"I am so ready to see my babies," she told the Crestview Bulletin in a telephone interview Thursday from the South Alabama Medical Center's burn unit. "But I don't want them to see me this way.”

Today is World AIDS day – and there’s a lot of  rhetoric flying around about progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS, especially in overcoming fear and bigotry.

Except for at one school in Pennsylvania.

The administrators at the Milton Hershey School have single-handedly set back years of hard work tamping down the fear of those with HIV by denying admission to a boy who is HIV-positive, based on what can only be explained as fear, ignorance and bigotry.

The pre-K to 12^th grade boarding school, located in Hershey, Penn., was financed and founded in 1909 by the Hershey’s chocolate company tycoon.  It gives a free education to poor children and kids with behavioral problems.  It has beautiful grounds, first-rate facilities and a dedicated staff.  Its website is full of lofty language with talk of being "a caring community” and a school “that opens new doors for children whose families could not otherwise afford it”.

Unless apparently, the child has HIV.

The 13-year-old boy, described as an honors student, whose name isn’t being made public, and his family filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the school for discriminating against him.

The Hershey School said today in a statement that they can't admit him because “in order to protect our children in this unique environment, we cannot accommodate the needs of students with chronic communicable diseases that pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others.”

Say what? You have got to be kidding me.

The notion that you cannot place a kid who is HIV-positive in a residential school setting because he puts the community at risk is out of step with science, public health, and worst of all, real-world experience. 

Ryan White fought -- and won -- that battle in the mid-1980s, after the teen was expelled from his Indiana school for being HIV-positive. But all these years later, here we are again somehow.

We have known for a long time that you can work or live with someone with HIV with next to no risk. Sexual contact is the primary risk factor, but that is hardly a reason not to allow a boy to go to school.

Shame on the Milton Hershey School for denying this kid the chance the school has given to so many others with special needs for reasons that have no basis in fact.  Shame on the Milton Hershey School for discriminating against a young man who could bring much to their community.  Shame on the Milton Hershey School for invoking a rationale for discrimination that only resurrects the bigotry and fear that it has taken decades to get rid of. 

The school should do the right thing and do it today — admit this kid, hold a seminar soon on HIV and risk for their trustees, teachers and administrators and then renew their public commitment to “open their doors” to ALL who can both benefit and contribute to the school community by their presence.

Related stories:Double whammy of setbacks cripple war on AIDS

Few Americans with HIV have virus under control

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Getty Images stock

Working moms multitask about 10 hours a week more than working dads, a new study finds. When women multitask, it often centers on taking care of the kids and doing housework, while men are more likely to multitask by socializing and doing self-care.

It's 7 p.m. You're e-mailing your boss, doing the dinner dishes, checking your 10-year-old's homework, and trying to calm your angry 3-year-old, who is screaming like a howler monkey. You'd like to scream, too. At your husband, who thinks everything is just fine.

According to a new study published in the December issue of the journal American Sociological Review, working moms not only multitask more frequently than working dads but also experience more negative emotions.

“The mother-nurture-care concept is part of our social unit,” says co-author and sociologist Barbara Schneider of Michigan State University. “That’s not a bad thing, but the pressures of everyday life have made it very difficult.”

The study participants were part of the 500 Family Study, which collected data from 1999 to 2000 in eight urban and suburban communities to find out how middle-class families balance family and work obligations.

The researchers found that working moms spend 48.3 hours per week, or about 40 percent of their waking hours, doing the multitask shuffle, compared to dads, who spend 38.9 per week doing two or more things at once.

Moms are more likely to get stuck with labor-intensive housework or childcare activities, while dads generally multitask by talking to several people at once or performing self-care. Dads are also more involved in kids' recreational activities.

While multitasking is generally a positive experience for dads, moms feel stressed and conflicted when they multitask at home as well as in public places, mostly due to the type of activities performed, which could leave them open to scrutiny and judgment.

To help ease the strain, the authors suggest sharing the load by getting dad more involved in the mundane aspects of home and child care.

“Simply doing things together as a family in the context of the home can go a long way,” says Schneider.

Although the study did not look at the current situation of these families, there’s no reason to think things have improved, says University of Notre Dame sociologist Elizabeth Aura McClintock. For example, among dual-income married couples working 35 or more hours a week, men's median weekly housework hours increased in the 1970s to about 5 hours per week, but have not changed much since then.

Today’s economic climate is also likely taking a toll.

“Families are stressed,” says Schneider. “With resources it was tough; imagine what it’s like now when there are probably fewer resources due to layoffs and rising expenses.”

Moms, how do you juggle everything? Tell us on Facebook.

Related stories:

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Workers hang a huge red ribbon on the North Portico of the White House ahead to commemorate World AIDS Day.

World AIDS Day is about recognizing how far we’ve come -- and how far we still have to go -- in the fight against a plague that has infected 60 million people and killed half of them. 

But today, now 30 years into the epidemic, a series of setbacks threatens to dash hopes for the goal of an “AIDS-free generation.”

“Just when we were beginning to make the most progress, the rug was pulled from under us,” says David Barr, a leading activist with the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition.

Through the efforts of activists and government leaders, 6.6 million infected people around the world are now getting the drugs that stave off death.  But just as important as the health effect for individuals is the discovery that the drugs drop the amount of HIV in a person’s blood to near zero so they seldom infect others. As a result of the widespread treatment, the worldwide infection rate dropped 25 percent in the past decade, according to UNAIDS.

In response to the heartening news, the UN pledged in June to raise the number treated to 15 million by 2015. 

But that won’t happen. In fact, far fewer people will soon be getting the lifesaving medication.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an international agency that pays for about half of HIV treatment around the world, announced last week that its last pledge round had fallen so far short of expectations that it will give no new grants until at least 2014.  It will also scale back on many of its current commitments. 

And here at home, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just announced that its latest numbers reveal that only 28 percent of this nation’s1.2 million infected individuals are getting the medications they need.  Twenty percent of the infected have never been tested so neither they nor their sex partners know of the danger.  The CDC called for more testing.

But even if people in the U.S. know they are infected, will they get treatment? More than 50 million Americans lack access to health insurance.  The U.S. does have the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) to get medications to those who cannot afford them.  But it is not clear whether or at what level Congress will re-authorize the program.

Even at current funding levels, the Kaiser Family Foundation counts more than 6,400 people in 12 states who are the waiting list for medications from ADAP.  Though financed by the federal government, ADAP is administered by states, and 25 states are considering cutbacks to these programs.

These major blows to the war on AIDS require more than a day of red ribbons to set right.

Read more by Robert Bazell:

Malaria vaccine a half-effective, temporary protection

More bad news on supplements: Vitamin E risky for prostate

Robert Bazell is Chief Science and Medical Correspondent for NBC News.