Month: May 2014

By David Lawder and Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned on Friday after a political firestorm over widespread delays in veterans' medical care, leaving President Barack Obama with a freer hand to address systemic problems bedeviling the agency. Obama announced that he accepted Shinseki's resignation "with considerable regret," after the two met on Friday to review initial findings of an internal audit of scheduling abuses at VA facilities across the country. The audit found that patient appointment wait times had been misrepresented at least once at over 60 percent of the 216 VA sites surveyed. It also said, with growing demand for services, a 14-day goal for medical appointments instituted under Shinseki was "simply not attainable" for the VA and should be scrapped.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Highlights of The Associated Press interview Friday with Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration:

(Reuters) – A Pennsylvania skin-graft salesman is facing charges that he stole $350,000 worth of human skin from a Philadelphia hospital over a period of nearly two years, police said on Friday. Gary Dudek, 54, is accused of stealing sheets of lab-grown skin intended for use in skin-graft surgeries from Mercy Philadelphia Hospital between November 2011 and July 2013, a local police spokeswoman said. The hospital said in a statement that it called the police after an audit revealed “illegal or improper behavior” from a vendor supplying the skin, which is artificially grown in a laboratory out of human skin cells. Eugene Tinari, Dudek’s lawyer, said his client had done “nothing that amounts to criminality.” He called the charges draconian and said they were better dealt with in a civil rather than criminal case.

While I haven't commented on every episode of violence, I do feel compelled to observe incidents that occur near or on school grounds and college campuses — places that should be safe and fun as they help us develop the promise of our youth and those seeking to better their lives and those of others. Instead they've become all too often a setting of tragedy and a reminder of the fragility of life.

A Michigan high school student accused of sickening a teacher by putting Visine eye solution in her coffee could face felony tampering charges, police said on Friday. The student from Fowlerville High School has already been suspended for a full school year because of the alleged incident, said Wayne Roedel, superintendent of the Fowlerville Community Schools. Roedel said the student, who is under 18 and was not being named, was accused of putting Visine in algebra teacher Mary Aldecoa’s coffee over several days in mid-May. She became sick and has been unable to return to school, he said. The motive for the tampering was unknown, Roedel said, adding that it was possible the student had seen Visine added to a drink as a practical joke in movies.

In an increasingly fast and fragmented world, our incidental friends ground us. The metaphor of a tent comes to mind: If our immediate family and close friends provide the framework and the canvas, incidental friends like Mary are the stakes making sure the canvas doesn't blow away. Until those incidental friends depart.

By Allison Bond MD NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children and teens with type 1 diabetes are already at increased risk for becoming overweight or obese, but certain traits make the odds even higher, according to a new study. Because obesity can compound some of the health problems that go along with diabetes, it’s important to help kids avoid weight gain, researchers say. Elke Frohlich-Reiterer, of Medical University Graz in Austria, and her colleagues analyzed data collected from 250 diabetes centers in Germany and Austria; All the kids were under the age of 20 and had type 1 diabetes, which used to be known as juvenile diabetes because it typically appears during childhood.