Month: January 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — Maybe the health care law was about wealth transfer, after all.

By Kevin Murphy KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) – The University of Missouri’s president called on Wednesday for an independent counsel to investigate how school officials responded to the alleged 2010 rape of a student on the female swim team who later committed suicide. The Missouri case comes in the wake of growing concern about sexual assaults in schools and in the military. Last week, President Barack Obama announced the creation of a White House task force to look into the problem of sexual assaults on campus. University president Tim Wolfe said at a news conference that he wants to determine if the university acted properly in matters related to Sasha Menu Courey.

As the obesity problem grows, so too does the weight loss market. … eating out the most common pitfalls, it is not surprising sales of diet food rose … than the more long-term healthy balanced approach,' said Ayela Spiro, nutrition …

By Brendan O’Brien MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – A Wisconsin man was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in prison for imprisoning his teenage daughter in a basement for six years and forcing her to eat her own excrement, a local prosecutor said. Chad Chritton, 42, was also sentenced in Dane County Circuit Court to an additional five years of extended supervision after a jury found him guilty in November of four felonies, including child abuse and neglecting a child, according to district attorney Ismael Ozanne. His wife Melinda Drabek-Chritton, 44, was sentenced to five years in prison in July on similar charges. Prosecutors had accused the Madison couple of holding the girl in the basement of their home for about six years.

LONDON (AP) — An experimental therapy that fed children with peanut allergies small amounts of peanut flour has helped more than 80 percent of them safely eat a handful of the previously worrisome nuts.

As the first human cases of H7N9 bird flu infection outside of China begin to emerge—in Taiwan and Hong Kong—health officials around the world are preparing for a potentially perfect storm for a massive flu outbreak. On Thursday, billions of Chinese will be on the move to celebrate the Lunar New Year, creating ripe conditions for the spread of the influenza virus from those already infected. And that means the next plane could bring a pandemic to the U.S. or anywhere else around the world. “The bottom line is the health security of the U.S. is only as strong as the health security of every country around the world,” says Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

BAYONNE, N.J. (AP) — Passengers aboard a cruise ship on which hundreds fell ill recalled days of misery holed up in their rooms as it returned to its home port Wednesday from a Caribbean trip cut short by what is suspected to be among the largest such norovirus outbreaks in the last 20 years.

By Victoria Cavaliere BAYONNE, New Jersey (Reuters) – Passengers staggered off a Royal Caribbean ship reeking of vomit and diarrhea at its home port on Wednesday after their cruise was cut short by an apparent stomach bug that felled nearly 700 vacationers and crew. Cheers erupted from the Explorer of the Seas as the vessel pulled into Bayonne, New Jersey, in New York Harbor. Passengers disembarking soon afterward recalled the nightmare of falling ill during the Caribbean cruise, being quarantined in their rooms, and putting everything they touched into biohazard bags. "I had three days of sickness and quarantine," recalled Susan Rogutski of Catawissa, Pennsylvania, who came down with gastrointestinal symptoms so severe the first day of the trip that she had to be physically dragged to the sick bay.

(Reuters) – Shares of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc fell nearly 50 percent in extended trade after the company said it would stop developing an asthma drug that failed in a mid-stage study. The drug, KB003, failed to bring about a clinically meaningful improvement in the pulmonary function of patients with severe asthma when tested against a placebo in 160 patients. The San Francisco-based company said it would focus on developing other treatments in its pipeline, which include a drug for cancer and another to prevent a common gram negative bacterium. KaloBios shares fell to a low of $2.65 in extended trading.