By Christopher Wanjek
LiveScience

Sex education is failing to reduce adolescent birthrates in conservative states, according to a new study.

Perhaps paradoxically, states with a majority conservative population and higher degree of religiosity tend to have higher teen birthrates. The findings suggest that the social structure of the state, such as the degree of conservatism, can undermine the effect of the sex curricula.

The researchers, from Washington University in St. Louis (WUSL), do not recommend abstinence-based education, but rather crafting sex education curricula that take into account the influences of a state's sociopolitical composition. The study appears today (Feb. 6) in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The U.S. adolescent birthrate is by far the highest among industrialized nations. The birthrate among girls ages 15 to 19 was 39.1 per 1,000 teens in this age group in 2009, the most recent year for which statistics are available. The rate in Western Europe ranges from about 24 per 1,000 teens in the U.K. (slightly lower than the U.S. white non-Hispanic rate) to four in the Netherlands.

Broken down by race, the U.S. rate ranges from 70.1 among Hispanic Americans to 14.6 among Asian Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The rate is falling, however, and is at its lowest point since recordkeeping began 70 years ago. Health experts cannot fully explain the cause for the decline after a recent peak in the 1980s, nor do they know the reason for disparity from state to state. Thus, there is an ongoing debate over the efficacy of comprehensive sexuality-based programs, which teach about both abstinence and condom use to reduce the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, compared with abstinence-based programs, which exclude information about birth control and safe sex.

Researchers led by Patricia Cavazos-Rehg of WUSL narrowed their analysis to birthrates among girls ages 15 to 17 in 24 U.S. states during years of steady decline from 1997 to 2005. (The national birthrates climbed slightly in 2006 and 2007 before declining again in 2008 and 2009.) They found what many researchers have stated previously — that an increase in comprehensive sex education in school is associated with lower adolescent birthrates. [ 10 Surprising Sex Statistics ]

The association disappears, however, when the researchers controlled for state characteristics, such as religiosity and abortion policies. The apparent irony is that states with higher religiosity rankings and greater political conservatism had higher adolescent birthrates.

That much was not a total surprise. Researchers at Drexel University reported a similar finding in 2009 in the journal Reproductive Health. The latest findings provide the added twist that a state's level of conservatism might compromise the value or quality of sex education.

The WUSL researchers postulate that girls living in conservative states or counties either get a watered-down version of the sex education curriculum, disregard the lesson, or are less willing or able to have an abortion, all leading to higher statewide teen birthrates.

"State adolescent births vary widely, and these disparities across states should be acknowledged as a major public health concern," Cavazos-Rehg told LiveScience. She noted the difference in birthrates among girls ages 15 to 17 in Arkansas and New Hampshire. Arkansas, with high conservatism, had the highest birthrate in this study, 34.8 per 1,000 girls in this age range. New Hampshire, with high liberalism, had the lowest birthrate, 9.7. [ Teen Pregnancy: A 'Winnable' Public Health Battle? ]

Yet the analysis failed to consider pregnancy rates, which Cavazos-Rehg said are more difficult to obtain than birthrates. Could it be that, despite sex education, girls in both conservative and liberal states are getting pregnant at about the same rate, and that the girls in Arkansas are carrying their babies to term, perhaps as a result of higher religiosity, a lack of access to abortion services, or both?

The analysis also assumed that statewide data faithfully represented all schools within the state. But states are large geographic entities with many different school districts and schools, which individually make choices about what to offer in terms of sex education. Policies are made primarily at the local and individual school level.

"The study shows the difficulty of mounting an intervention at the state level that would be sufficient to shift teenage birthrates," said Freya Sonenstein, director for the Center for Adolescent Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "But at the local and school levels, there is plenty of other evidence that implementing particular curriculums can produce improvements in students' risk-taking behaviors."

Cavazos-Rehg said she hopes to conduct a follow-up study with data on pregnancy and sexual behavior. Yet for now, she added, "though it still remains unclear as to what 'truly effective' sex education is, what we now know is that any future evaluations of sex education must consider the effects of sociopolitical characteristics in comprehensive analyses."

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By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

Facebook's initial public offering of stock is likely to make a lot of developers and designers of the site very wealthy. But for many users, frequent Facebooking may not be so beneficial.

According to three new studies, Facebook can be tough on mental health, offering an all-too-alluring medium for social comparison and ill-advised status updates. And while adding a friend on the social networking site can make people feel cheery and connected, having a lot of friends is associated with feeling worse about one's own life.

The thread running through these findings is not that Facebook itself is harmful, but that it provides a place for people to indulge in self-destructive behavior, such as trumpeting their own weaknesses or comparing their achievements with those of others.

Take status updates. Most people know that their Facebook friends tend to craft these online-wall memos on what they're up to in a way that puts their lives in the best light, said Mudra Mukesh, a doctoral candidate in marketing at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid. But when it comes down to actually using the site, reading other people's status updates still makes Facebookers feel worse. [Facebook's Global Reach (Infographic)]

In research presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychologists (SPSP) in San Diego, Mukesh and her co-author Dilney Goncalves found that when people think about the last time someone asked to friend them on Facebook, they get a boost in feelings of belonging and social connectedness ­— the kind of feeling that makes people "sing 'Kumbaya,'" Mukesh told LiveScience.

But once you've collected all those friends, viewing their status updates is a downer, Mukesh said. When asked how they felt about their place in life and their achievements, people with lots of Facebook friends gave themselves lower marks if they'd just viewed their friends' status updates, compared with people who hadn't recently surfed the site.

For people with just a few friends, viewing status updates wasn't a problem.

"A small number of friends means a low probability of viewing others showing off," Mukesh said. For people with lots of friends, though, the Facebook Newsfeed turns into a parade of good news about other people's live: promotions, engagements, weddings and new babies. Even if someone knows intellectually that people use Facebook to show off, Mukesh said, all of this information can make them feel worse about their own achievements or lack thereof. [10 Technologies That Will Transform Your Life]

(In Mukesh's study, 354 friends was the cut-off point for when participants started to feel bad about viewing status updates. But that's not a universal number, she cautioned, just the number that applied given the statistics of her sample.)

In another study presented at the SPSP conference, researchers at the University of Houston surveyed college students and found that time spent on Facebook is linked to depressive symptoms. That doesn't mean Facebook causes depression, but that depressed feelings and lots of Facebooking tend to go hand in hand, for whatever reason. For young men, the study found, the link seemed to be a tendency to compare oneself with others.

"It appears as if males, when they socially compare themselves on Facebook, they tend to experience depression systems," study researcher and University of Houston doctoral student Mai-Ly Nguyen told LiveScience.

In this case, Facebook seems to be a new medium for men to compete with one another, Nguyen said. Outside the digital realm, men often compare themselves with one another, she said. It may be that women more often use the site to connect with one another and men to compete with one another.

Some people, however, don't use their Facebook status updates to pump themselves up. Instead, they complain.

People with low self-esteem view Facebook as a safer place to express themselves than in face-to-face interactions, according to new research published in the March issue of the journal of Psychological Science. All this venting may actually alienate friends.

Researchers led by Amanda Forest of the University of Waterloo in Ontario collected recent status updates from 117 participants who also reported their average time spent on Facebook and answered questions to reveal their self-esteem levels. Some statuses were chipper, such as "[Poster] is lucky to have such terrific friends and is looking forward to a great day tomorrow!" Others wallowed in bad news: "[Poster] is upset b/c her phone got stolen :@."

Next, the researchers had another group of participants read the status updates and rate how much they liked the person who wrote each. Unsurprisingly, people responded more positively to posters whose updates were positive.

Of course, you'd expect friends to be a little more caring than strangers. So the researchers set up another experiment in which they collected recent status updates from 98 undergraduates and also asked the students to submit the number of likes and number of comments on each.

It turned out that for users with high self-esteem, a negative post garnered more responses than a positive one, presumably because those people's friends were concerned about the out-of-character update. For users with low self-esteem, though, negative posts seemed to exhaust friends: They got few responses.

"Indeed, [low-self-esteem users'] friends rewarded their posts with more validation and attention the more positive they were, perhaps trying to encourage this atypical behavior," Forest and her colleagues wrote.

The takeaway of all this work is not to dump your Facebook account — the site has its benefits, some psychological. But researchers suggest being mindful about your online social life, just as most people are about friends in the real world.

"You have to be careful," said University of Houston psychologist Linda Acitelli, who advised Nguyen on the social comparison study. "I think parents, especially if they have teenage kids, need to be monitoring how much time they spend on Facebook."

Because Facebook provides more opportunities to peer into others' lives, it helps to keep Facebook pitfalls in mind, according to the Instituto de Empresa's Mukesh. She found that reminding people in the moment of what they already know ­— that people brag on Facebook — can ease the self-recriminations that come with hearing about friends' accomplishments.

"At the end of the day, have more friends, there's no problem with that. Just be sure to remember that when you start feeling crappy about your life, think about the fact that you have a large number of friends and that increases your probability of viewing more ostentatious information," Mukesh said. "So, it's not you, it's them."

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By Linda Thrasybule
MyHealthNewsDaily

Spanking or slapping your child has long-term, harmful effects on their development, according to a new review of 20 years of research.

Over the past two decades, research has increasingly found links between such "everyday" types of physical punishment and higher levels of child aggression, according to the review. In fact, no studies have found this type of child discipline to predict a positive long-term effect.

"I think it's important for parents to understand that although physical punishment might get a child to do something in the immediate situation, there are many side effects that can develop over the long term," said co-author Joan Durrant, a child clinical psychologist at Family Social Sciences at the University of Manitoba in Canada.  

"For example, the more often a child sees a parent respond to conflict or frustration with slapping or spanking, the more likely that child will do the same when confronting their own conflicts," Durrant said.

The review is published today (Feb. 6) in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Some parents still use spanking for discipline
One recent poll found that 22 percent of parents reported being "very likely" to spank their children, but most said they disciplined their kids in other ways, by taking away privileges or putting them in "time out."

In one U.S. study, researchers looked at 2,400 mothers who spanked their 3-year-olds twice the previous month, and found that children had an increased risk for higher levels of aggression when they were 5 years old.

"In the U.S., physical punishment is such an entrenched part of the culture that virtually no one has experienced growing up without it," Durrant said. "This situation makes it difficult for parents to visualize raising a child without it."

Durrant also pointed out that a major factor could be that some parents have little knowledge or understanding of why children behave like they do.

"They are more likely to believe that their child is being defiant or intentionally bad, but in most cases, children are simply doing what is normal for their development," she said. 

Start early with positive discipline
Based on years of research, however, more and more doctors are encouraging parents to discipline their children with positive, nonviolent approaches.

"Parents should start out really young — as early as 12 months old," said Kimberly Sirl, a clinical psychologist at St. Louis Children's Hospital, who was not involved with the research.

"Kids have to learn how to cope with frustration, how to share and how to be patient," Sirl said. "Parents teach them how to do that."

For example, Sirl said that toddlers say no to everything, so the best thing to do when they're acting out is either ignore them briefly (for roughly 10 seconds) or redirect their negative behavior.

"If you want to encourage good behavior, provide them with reward or praise," she said.

Instead of saying, "do this [be]cause I told you so," Sirl said, it's best to explain to kids why there are rules.

"We should let them know that grownups have to follow rules too," she said. "Essentially, time out for grownups is called jail."

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Some participants in Susan G. Komen for the Cure events, like this run in San Diego, have reconsidered their support in the wake of a controversy over Planned Parenthood funding this week.

Fierce controversy over a policy that cut -- then apparently restored -- funding for Planned Parenthood by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer charity has left some longtime supporters of both groups feeling whipsawed by the fallout.

Fans who’ve worn pink ribbons and jogged in Race for the Cure runs and those who’ve supported women’s reproductive health services had mixed reactions following news Friday that Komen had agreed to amend criteria that would have barred Planned Parenthood from future grants.

Some Komen supporters said the organization had alienated them forever by cutting funding in the first place based on perceived political pressure from anti-abortion groups.

“It’s difficult for me to want to continue to support Komen now,” said Peg Callaway, 63, a lawyer from Omak, Wash. “It makes me mistrust the organization.”

As the Associated Press first reported Tuesday, Komen had adopted criteria excluding Planned Parenthood from future grants for breast-cancer screening because it was under government investigation, citing a probe launched by a Florida congressman at the urging of anti-abortion groups.

The decision was made in December, but became public this week, igniting a firestorm of protest. By Friday, Komen appeared to back off the plan, saying it would fund existing Planned Parenthood grants, and that the agency would be eligible for future grants. Some critics said it wasn't clear how the decision actually would affect future grants.

Still, Callaway remained suspicious.

“They’ve done a lot of damage to themselves,” she said.

Others, however, said that Komen’s quick reversal made them want to give an agency another chance. Dina Lalli-Bender, 47, of Laurel Springs, N.J., said she participated last year in a Race for the Cure event in Philadelphia in memory of close friends and family members lost to breast cancer.

“I’ll continue to do the run now,” said Lalli-Bender, a senior manager at a trade show labor firm. “Now that they’ve changed their minds, maybe they’ve seen that people were outraged by it.”

But avid Komen supporters who had been cheered by what they saw as a strong stand against Planned Parenthood were dismayed that the agency appeared to back off.

“I was very disappointed to hear that the decision was reversed so quickly,” said Rita C. Hruschak, 69, a retired nurse from Webster, N.Y. “It was barely warming up the griddle. The hope for a positive change to some good morals was lost too soon.”

She pointed to Planned Parenthood’s huge base of support -- including $3 million and 10,000 Facebook fans raised during the three days of the controversy -- as evidence that the agency could fund breast cancer screenings on its own. Planned Parenthood previously had received about $700,000 a year from Komen.

“So you know, they don’t really need Komen’s help or support,” she said.

In an informal msnbc.com poll Thursday, more than 6,000 respondents considered whether the controversy would alter their donations to either group.

Some 73 percent of people of took the poll said it would increase their donations to Planned Parenthood, while about 17 percent said it would increase funding to Komen. Nine percent of respondents said they don’t donate to either group.

Only 1 percent said they’d continue donating to both.

Has the Komen decision, and then apparent reversal, changed how you feel about the organization? Tell us on Facebook.

Related:

Komen backs off decision on funding cuts

Too little, too late for Komen, bioethicist says

Under fire, Komen CEO denies politics in Planned Parenthood cuts
 

It is almost too little, too late for Susan G. Komen For the Cure. When the organization chose to cut funding to Planned Parenthood that paid for breast cancer screenings, it planted itself clumsily and unnecessarily in the middle of America’s wars over abortion and mortally wounded its reputation. It doesn't matter that they have now have apparently reversed that decision.

By even raising the possibility that they would pull the plug on the hundreds of thousands of dollars they give to Planned Parenthood to support breast cancer detection, they have lost the single-minded focus on finding a cure for a horrid disease that allowed them to become a charity giant envied by every other disease advocacy organization in the world.

In the highly competitive world of medical charities, Komen was the 800-pound gorilla. It could light up the night in pink, dress the monsters of the NFL in pink, stick a button on every lapel and convince women to walk 60 miles in three days for the cause.

Those battling Alzheimer’s, Parkinson's disease, prostate cancer, melanoma, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and all the rest could only sigh and hope that there might still be a spot on a coat to stick another button or one last footstep that might be taken in the service of their plague.  And behind the scenes they let that frustration be known. The unimaginable blunder of the Komen leadership opens the door for the rest of those trying to help the afflicted to rush through with hands out and fingers pointing.

There is one last step that can be taken to save the mighty Komen from running aground permanently. The entire executive leadership and board must resign. Now. Anything less means that the prominence that Komen achieved will become simply one more in a long list of worthy causes that Americans may or may not choose to support.

Komen reversal illustrates political battle over Planned Parenthood

Komen backs off decision on funding cuts

Rachel Rettner
MyHealthNewsDaily

We've heard obesity can be "spread" between friends when we copy each other's eating habits, but a new study in mice suggests obesity could actually be infectious.

That's right, infectious. As in, something you can catch.

In the study, mice engineered to have a particular immune deficiency developed fatty liver disease and got fatter when fed a Western-style diet. But strikingly, when these immune-deficient mice were put in the same cage as healthy mice, the healthy mice started to come down with symptoms of liver disease, and also got fatter.

The culprit? Microbes in the stomachs of the mice. Because the mice had their immune systems disturbed, the bacteria in their guts got "out of wack," said study researcher Richard Flavell, a professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine. We normally live in symbiosis with the bacteria in our guts, but in the study, the number of "bad," disease-associated bacteria increased 1,000-fold in mice with immune problems, Flavell said.

And it's these bad bacteria that were transmitted from mouse to mouse, causing the healthy mice to also experience changes in their gut microbes -- and making them fat.

"We could make a mouse fatter just by putting it in the same cage as the other mouse," Flavell said.

The crucial question is: Could this happen in people?

It's possible, but we'll need much more research to find out, Flavell said. The contagiousness of obesity  seen in this study is probably more likely in mice than in people because mice eat each other's poop, a very efficient way to transmit gut bacteria (add this to your list of reasons not to eat poop).

At minimum, the study suggests "this should be very seriously looked at in people," Flavell said. Fatty liver disease is very common among obese people, affecting 75 percent to 100 percent of the obese population, the researchers say. In about 20 percent of these individuals, the disease progresses and becomes severe.

Previously, if two family members living in the same household both developed liver disease or became obese, people would have blamed genetics. But the new study suggests the environment may play a role as well.

If the findings apply to people, they would suggest we need to take approaches to obesity and fatty liver disease that address gut microorganisms — perhaps antibiotics or probiotics — in addition to traditional treatments, Flavell said.

"This is a very thought-provoking study that underlines the role of the bugs that we all carry inside us in determining our susceptibility to liver disease and its complications," said Dr. Jasmohan Bajaj, an associate  professor of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition at Virginia Commonwealth University,  who was not involved in the study.  More work is needed in humans, who are much more complex than mice, to understand the role of gut bacteria in liver disease, but "these experiments form a key step forward," Bajaj said.

The study was published online Feb. 1 in the journal Nature.

Follow MyHealthNewsDaily staff writer Rachael Rettner on Twitter@RachaelRettner. Find us onFacebook.

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The founder and chief executive for Susan G. Komen for the Cure on Thursday flatly rejected accusations that the organization caved to political pressure in cutting ties to Planned Parenthood, a move that has ignited a firestorm of controversy.

In one of her first live comments since the Tuesday announcement, Ambassador Nancy G. Brinker told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that the decision was made to revamp and strengthen the way the organization makes grants.

“This is not a political decision,” Brinker told Mitchell. “We operate from one set of standards every day."

Brinker said Komen’s motivations had been “mischaracterized” and that they stemmed from an overhaul of criteria for awarding funds.

“Many of the grants we were doing with Planned Parenthood do not meet the new standards,” Brinker said.

Her comments were challenged by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who also appeared on the show. Boxer accused Brinker of trying to “change the story,” in which officials first said that Planned Parenthood funds were being cut because of pending investigations.

“This is a complete revisionist comment she is making about why suddenly Planned Parenthood lost this funding,” Boxer said.

Mitchell questioned Brinker about the apparent growing anger over the decision, including a huge swell of response on Facebook and Twitter in which long-time supporters say they’re cutting up pink ribbons, a longtime symbol of the Komen group.

However, Brinker said she’s heard from many who back the decision.

“The responses that we are getting are really, really favorable,” Brinker said.

Reuters

One million packets of birth control pills, including Lo/Ovral-28, have been recalled because they may not contain enough contraceptive to prevent pregnancy.

If you’ve been taking the birth control pills that were recalled Wednesday, there are some simple steps you can take to protect yourself against an unwanted pregnancy.

Pfizer announced that it had voluntarily recalled14 lots of Lo/Ovral-28 tablets, which contain the hormones norgestrel and ethinyl estradiol and 14 lots of generic versions of the pill—a total of 1 million pill packs—because of a packaging error.

The problem, according to Pfizer, was that some of the packs contained an incorrect number of inactive or active ingredient tablets and the tablets might be in the wrong order.

The pills come in blister packs of 28. The active ingredient pills, taken for the first three weeks, are white-ish in color, while the inactive pills, taken for the last week to help women keep track of when they should begin their next pack of pills, are pinkish.

On YouTube, Pfizer’s chief medical officer, Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, said perhaps as few as 30 packets were affected, but the company pulled entire lots to be on the safe side.

“We understand that this news can be very concerning and confusing for any woman who takes birth control pills to protect against unintended pregnancies,” Lewis-Hall said in the video.

If you’ve been taking one of the recalled pills, check the lot number on the package to see if it’s one that’s been recalled. Both Pfizer and the Food and Drug Administration have posted the lot numbers.

If you discover you have been taking pills from an affected lot, “assume that you do not have any birth control protection,” advises Dr. Kristen Eckler, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and instructor at Harvard Medical School.

If you’ve had sexual intercourse in the last few days, Eckler says, she would “strongly encourage” you use emergency contraception as soon as possible if you want to avoid an unintended pregnancy. Plan B, available without a prescription to those 17 and older, is effective up to three days after unprotected sex, while prescription ella works up to five days afterward.

When you return your recalled pills to your pharmacy, you could obtain a new pack and start taking pills right away, Eckler says. You might have some minor breakthrough bleeding, breast tenderness or digestive tract upset, she says, but those should pass in a few days.

Because you can’t be sure where you are hormonally, Eckler says, you “absolutely have to use a barrier method (a male or female condom) during that first new pill pack.”

If birth control pills have been an effective method of birth control for you in the past, don't give up on them, she says.

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is trying to find a kidney donor for his ailing mentor and Tom Martinez, whose kidneys began to fail five years ago after he got a staph infection.

Tom Martinez figures he first set eyes on Tom Brady when the New England Patriots quarterback was 10 and tagged along with his sisters to a softball clinic Martinez ran at the College of San Mateo in California.

At 13, Brady signed up for Martinez’s quarterback clinic, and the rest, as they say, is history. Brady, now 34, has worked with the coach every year since and has said he would never have been the Pats’ quarterback without Martinez as his mentor.

Now Brady, bound for his fifth Super Bowl on Sunday, is trying to repay his ailing 66-year-old coach by finding him a kidney donor. On his Facebook page a month ago, Brady posted a photo of himself and Martinez and a link to a website, www.matchingdonors.com, whose goal is to match altruistic living organ donors with strangers in need.

A staph infection after leg surgery five years ago caused his kidneys to fail, Martinez says, and he has required dialysis four hours a day, four days a week. He also suffers from diabetes and heart problems.

Now he’s one of the more than 90,000 U.S. patients who are waiting for a kidney, according to Anne Paschke, spokeswoman for the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, the nonprofit that manages the U.S. organ transplant system under contract with the federal government. UNOS works with organs only from deceased donor and has no official guidance about living donors.

About a dozen Americans die every day while waiting for a kidney donor, according to the Alliance for Paired Donation, which helps facilitate transplant “chains” involving patients who have a willing but incompatible donor.

Since 1988, nearly half of all transplanted kidneys, or about 110,000 out of about 243,000, have come from living donors, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Usually, living donors are relatives or friends, although they might be strangers involved in paired donation.

Martinez, the father of three grown children, says no relatives have volunteered to be tested to see if they might be suitable kidney donors for him, and he doesn’t plan to ask them because it would put them on the spot.

“I think it’s something you really have to want to do,” he told msnbc.com.

Martinez says a friend found out about MatchingDonors.com, which was launched in 2004 by CEO Paul Dooley, who previously had run a job-matching website. Over the years, 150 kidney transplants have resulted from matches made through the website, says MatchingDonors medical advisor Dr. Jeremiah Lowney, an internist in private practice in Hyde Park, Mass.

The website charges patients $595 to be listed but has waived the fee for some patients who can’t afford it, Lowney says
More than 10,000 people have signed up to be donors, but only about 500 patients have posted profiles, he says.

“I think people still might have some apprehension about putting themselves out there on a website,” he says. “They might just be worried that there might be people who are going to try to ask them for some kind of payment.”

MatchingDonors warns on its website that “it is absolutely against the law to have any financial benefit from organ donation,” but, Lowney says, he’s heard that some patients have been contacted by people trying to sell a kidney.

Although donors recruited through MatchingDonors might not request payment before the transplant, that doesn’t mean they won’t afterward, cautions Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and a frequent contributor to msnbc.com.

In addition, Caplan says, some patients may not want to become public. And even if they do, he says, they might not be good at marketing themselves to prospective donors. Caplan says he’d prefer to see a national organ donor bank that would protect donors’ and patients’ privacy and allow transplant experts sort out who should get which organs.

On the plus side, Caplan says, websites like Matching Donors might add a few kidneys to the overall pool from donors who might not otherwise be motivated.

“Any time you can take someone off the (waiting) list, other people will move up that list,” Lowney says.
Martinez’s listing on MatchingDonors was just posted Tuesday, but publicity about his need for a kidney has already attracted potential donors for two other patients on the site, Lowney says.

“Coach Tom Martinez is the world’s best father, grandfather and football quarterback coach,” reads his profile on MatchingDonors, which also quotes a Boston Globe article about his impact on Brady’s career.

“It’s unbelievable for me to believe that a person who doesn’t even know you would be willing to give a body part,” Martinez says. “That’s overwhelming to me.”

During the week, dialysis and doctors’ appointments leave Martinez little time for coaching. “God bless Sundays, ‘cause nobody’s around,” he says, leaving him free to coach budding Tom Bradys and watch pro football at his San Mateo, Calif., home. He needs a walker to get around, but says, “I’m able to coach just as well, because I coach with my eyes and I coach with my mouth.”

This Sunday, of course, he’ll be watching The Game.

He’s not one for any of the “opinions and fanfare” leading up to it, although chances are his name will come up during the pre-game broadcast. “I really focus once the game starts on how he’s doing.”

Would you donate an organ to someone you don't know? Tell us on Facebook.

Oklahoma health officials say that Taco Bell restaurants were the source of salmonella food poisoning linked to an outbreak that sickened 68 people in 10 states last fall.

Federal officials who have withheld the identity of the Mexican-style fast-food restaurant chain tied to the outbreak said they have not changed their position.

"Our response remains the same," said Lola Russell, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Kristy Bradley, the state's epidemiologist, had staff forward documents that confirmed that of the 16 Oklahoma residents infected with the outbreak strain of the bacteria, eight consumed food from Taco Bell. That included eight of 12 who were able to be interviewed in connection with the outbreak. 

CDC officials have masked the source, identified only as "Restaurant Chain A," in accordance with what the agency said is a longstanding policy that balances public health risk with the business concerns of firms that could be harmed by bad publicity.

Oklahoma released the documents in response to requests from msnbc.com and others, said Leslea Bennet-Webb, a spokeswoman for the state health department. The agency originally deferred to CDC, and asked the agency if the documents should be protected from public disclosure. When CDC did not respond by a Tuesday deadline, the state agreed to release the information.

But food safety advocates had been putting pressure on state and federal agencies to reveal the name of firms involved in outbreaks in this case -- and those in the future.

"I think it just proves the point that it is always better to be transparent," said Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety lawyer who used his blog to lobby vigorously for the release of the name. "Taco Bell could have looked like a hero by coming out and saying that it was a supplier problem and they are going to work hard to make sure it never happens again."

Rob Poetsch, a spokesman with Taco Bell Corp. a subsidary of Yum! Brands Inc., issued a statement late Wednesday, after msnbc.com reported that the company's name had been released:

"The CDC has stated the public health is not at any risk and this incident is completely over," he wrote.  "They have not identified the food source of the food borneillness that occurred in October and November of 2011. The CDC indicated that some of the people who were ill ate at Taco Bell, while others did not.  They  believe that the problem likely occurred at the supplier level before it was delivered to any restaurant or food outlet. We take food quality and safety very seriously."

This is the third outbreak involving the restaurant chain since 2006. That year, contaminated lettuce was tied to an outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7. In 2010, Taco Bell was eventually revealed as the source of two outbreaks of rare strains of salmonella that sickened 155 people in 21 states.

The hunt for the name followed an outbreak of salmonella Enteritidis investigated by the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and health officials in 10 states.

The wide-ranging probe found infections in far-flung states, but identified no specific food item or ingredient responsible for the illnesses, likely because several ingredients were mixed together in many menu items, officials said.

However, officials noted that ground beef was an unlikely source of infection because of the safe handling practices used by Taco Bell.

Ultimately, officials concluded that contamination likely occurred before food products reached Taco Bell locations, the report said.

CDC officials confirmed 16 victims in Oklahoma and more in nine other states, including 43 in Texas, two in Kansas and one each in Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio and Tennessee.

Dr. Robert Tauxe, the CDC's director of the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases, said that the agency has long tried to weigh the public health risk of an outbreak with the concerns of the business involved. That ensures future cooperation under a voluntary system, he said.

"If there's not an important public health reason to use the name publicly, CDC doesn't use the name publicly," he said.

This is the second time a state has broken ranks with CDC and FDA officials to name Taco Bell as the source of an outbreak. In 2010, Oregon epidemiologist Dr. William Keene told media outlets that the source was Taco Bell. CDC officials said the information was released "in error," but Keene told msnbc.com it was deliberate, indeed.

"It was a normal release of what we considered public information," Keene said. "There was no compelling reason to keep it secret then."

Related story:

Who's behind that outbreak? Sometimes, CDC won't say

Sugar is often viewed as nothing more than empty calories, but researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have a far more toxic view of the sweet stuff.

Sugar is poison, like alcohol and tobacco, and should be put in the same category as those drugs -- not necessary, easy to abuse and deadly or disabling for far too many people.

At least that’s the view of Dr. Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis, UCSF colleagues who are calling for stronger societal controls on sugar.

In the latest issue of the journal Nature, they argue that the government should start nudging you off your sugar high. 

They say let’s get taxes in place on foods high in sugar.  Let’s restrict places where you can buy sugar-laden food like non-diet sodas, candy and snack foods. Let’s restrict advertising to kids that encourages them to eat foods and drinks high in sugar content.  Let’s even yank sugary foods off the list of products that can be bought with food stamps or served in school lunch programs.

Are they on the right track?  Partly.

These proposals treat each of us as rational agents who can make better choices about what we eat.  If sugary food costs more and is harder to find, we will choose to eat less of it.

Let the public know that sugar is ubiquitous, present in many foods you’d never imagine, and most people will change their ways.

Sure, that’s partly true.  But their strategy ignores the fact that a lot of what we eat is the result of our upbringing, culture, food availability, stress levels and where we live.

Food choices are a lot more than calculating calories, watching prices and keeping an eye on sugar content. We eat for pleasure, to relieve stress, to fit in with our neighbors, to feel the comfort of the familiar, to show love for others and for a bunch of other non-rational reasons that those who sell us food know all too well.

Just think about the images in the soda ads on TV and you will see what I mean. The commercials are heavy on attractive young people, cuddly animals and nostalgia and short on nutrition information and chemical composition.

The battle of the bulge will not be won just by taking steps that make it a bit harder to buy what is bad for us. It will require rethinking everything from our eating habits and how we teach kids about food to the way food is glamorized in the media.

Most important, it requires changing the way in which we subsidize agribusiness to grow the corn that becomes the corn syrup that winds up as sugar in two-thirds of the food in your refrigerator – food that ultimately cause too many of us to go blind, need knee replacements or require kidney transplants.

Victory over sugar would be sweet, but it will not be easy.

Should sugar be controlled like a drug? Tell us what you think on Facebook.

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The child abuse that takes place in one year in the United States will cost the nation $124 billion over the victims' lifetimes, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The findings reveal the financial burden of child abuse is just as high or higher than that of costly health conditions, including Type 2 diabetes.

"No child should ever be the victim of abuse or neglect — nor do they have to be. The human and financial costs can be prevented through prevention of child maltreatment," said Linda C. Degutis, director of CDC′s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

In 2008, there were 1,740 confirmed cases of fatal child abuse, and 579,000 nonfatal cases of child maltreatment, which include physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse and neglect, according to the report.

The cost of health care, child welfare and other services for each victim who survived their abuse will be $210,012 over the average victim's lifetime, which is higher than the lifetime cost of stroke ($159,846 per person) and Type 2 diabetes (between $181,000 and $253,000 per person). The costs of each death due to abuse are even higher, according to the report.

Child maltreatment has been shown to have many negative effects on survivors, including poorer health, social and emotional difficulties, and decreased economic productivity. These negative effects over a survivor’s lifetime generate many costs that deleteriously affect the nation's health care, education, criminal justice and welfare systems. 

The estimated average lifetime cost per victim of nonfatal child maltreatment includes:

• $32,648 in childhood health care costs
• $10,530 in adult medical costs
• $144,360 in productivity losses
• $7,728 in child welfare costs
• $6,747 in criminal justice costs
• $7,999 in special education costs

The estimated average lifetime cost per death includes:

• $14,100 in medical costs
• $1,258,800 in productivity losses

The emotional and behavioral problems associated with child maltreatment include aggression, conduct disorder, antisocial behavior, substance abuse, intimate partner violence, teenage pregnancy, anxiety, depression and suicide, according to the report.

Better solutions to prevent childhood maltreatment must be found, the CDC said. A parent's or caregiver's behavior is influenced by a range of inter-related factors, such as how they were raised, their parenting skills, the level of stress in their life, and the living conditions in their community.

"Federal, state and local public health agencies as well as policymakers must advance the awareness of the lifetime economic impact of child maltreatment and take immediate action with the same momentum and intensity dedicated to other high-profile public health problems in order to save lives, protect the public's health, and save money,” Degutis said.

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By Cari Nierenberg
MyHealthNewsDaily

The nation's largest pediatrician group today released its new schedule of recommended childhood vaccinations. It made three major changes to its previous recommendations, after a federal advisory panel of experts reviewed recent evidence from vaccine studies.

The biggest change is the new recommendation that boys should be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV). Since 2006, the HPV vaccine has been recommended for girls, primarily to help prevent cervical cancer, and in 2009, the experts advised that boys "could" be given the shots, too.

The stronger wording in the new recommendations, that boys "should" be given the shots, came about because new data showed giving boys the vaccine can help lessen the odds of HPV-associated cancers in men and in women, said Dr. H. Cody Meissner, chief of pediatric infectious disease at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

Meissner was part of the group of experts updating this year's recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics; the panel also included experts from the Centers for Disease and Prevention, which had previously recommended the HPV vaccine for boys.

The new vaccination schedules are published today (Feb. 1) in the journal Pediatrics.

Routine HPV vaccinations for boys

The new guidelines call for boys to get the first of the three doses of HPV vaccine at age 11 or 12, the same age the shot is recommended for girls.

HPV vaccinations are also advised for young men ages 13 to 21 if they've not yet had all three shots. It may be given to boys as young as 9 and to men between 22 and 26. 

Young people are encouraged to get all three shots, given over a 6-month period, before they become sexually active.

"Every parent likes to think their child is not sexually active in their early teen years," Meissner said. "But if you wait until they're sexually active, you miss the benefit of the vaccine."

The vaccine has been known to protect against genital warts in males and females, and recent evidence has shown it can prevent anal cancer in men and women. The HPV vaccine has also been shown to be protective against penile cancers, as well as head and neck cancers.

Updates to meningococcal and flu vaccines

The meningococcal and flu vaccines are the focus of the other two changes to the guidelines.

A booster dose of the meningococcal vaccine is now recommended for children at age 16. The previous schedule recommended children be routinely immunized against meningococcal disease, which prevents most types of meningitis, when they are 11 or 12.

Infectious disease experts had thought that one dose of meningococcal vaccine would protect a young person through the college years, Meissner said. "But data became available that the vaccine doesn't last that long, and the risk goes up late in the teen years," he said.

Teens are now advised to get a booster dose to make sure that protection is maintained through the high-risk window, which occurs between 16 and 21 years, when many are living in close quarters, such as in college dormitories.

Some slight tweaks were also made to flu shot recommendations. This was the second year the AAP is recommending that children 6 months and older need to get the annual flu shot, Meissner said.

The new schedule clarifies the guidance for giving the flu shot to kids with egg allergies. Studies have shown the amount of egg protein in the flu vaccine is not enough to produce an allergic reaction in those with mild allergies, who can eat cooked eggs, Meissner said. Still, the flu shot may not be appropriate for people with a severe egg allergy, he said.

Advice for parents

A lot of parents are nervous about the number of shots recommended for children and teenagers these days, and they want to know how long each vaccine has been around, and how serious the risk is if their child does not get it, said Dr. Peter Greenspan, medical director of MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston.

He said he has noticed that parents are getting increasingly discerning about immunizations. "I find that parents really want to know the whys about the vaccines, which is entirely appropriate and important information for doctors to share," Greenspan said.

When new changes are made to the vaccination schedule, he said, "it's just a matter of explanation and discussion with your pediatrician."

Pass it on: Experts now recommend that pre-teen boys get vaccinated against HPV, that 16-year-olds be vaccinated against meningitis and that almost all children receive a flu shot annually.

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