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Blogs Comment On Media Coverage Of Abortion Issues In Health Reform Debate, Other Topics
The following summarizes selected women"s health-related blog entries. ~ "Mainstream Media Reinforces Unexamined Arguments Against Public Funding for Abortion," Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check: It "seems that mainstream media s ... believe that abortion is an effective cudgel to beat health care reform to death," Marcotte writes. According to Marcotte, the "unvarnished truth" is that there is "no way that any kind of public health care plan will have elective abortion coverage. Nor is there any real chance of abortion becoming mandated coverage." However, "you wouldn"t know it to read the media coverage of this issue," she writes, continuing that "we"ve got the toxic mixture of pants-on-fire lying anti-choicers and cowardly media outlets that give the opponents of health care reform an opportunity to lie about the potential for taxpayer-funded abortions." Those who defend health care reform are "so busy trying to shut down the misinformation about abortion coverage that we"re not having the more interesting discussion about whether or not abortion should be covered," Marcotte says. She adds, "And by not having that discussion, we"re allowing the belief that some people"s moral objections to abortion should dictate federal policy lay unchallenged," she continues. She writes that she "suspect[s] that anti-choicers latched onto taxpayer-funded abortions because they can count on a lot of the public to imagine the government funding female licentiousness." Marcotte concludes that the "good news is that this contempt for female sexuality has receded enough that the media debate hasn"t -- yet -- turned to whether or not health care reform should cover contraception" (Marcotte, RH Reality Check, 7/28).~ "Privileging Opposition to Abortion," Jamison Foser, Media Matters for America: Some reporters "have skewed their reports in favor of those who oppose" coverage of abortion in federally subsidized insurance plans, according to Foser. For example, Foser writes that on a recent episode of MSNBC"s "Hardball," host Chris Matthews asked Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) "leading questions that encouraged them to state their opposition to insurance coverage of abortion" but never asked them "one simple question: Why shouldn"t abortion be covered, given that the procedure is legal?" Foser adds, "Nor has he asked if there are any other legal procedures that shouldn"t be covered." The "premise that taxpayers who oppose abortion shouldn"t have to pay for them with their tax money carries obvious implications the media ignores," Foser writes. He adds that the "idea that taxpayers shouldn"t pay for insurance that covers medical services they don"t support is fundamentally incompatible with the very concept of insurance." He continues, "If every interest group wields veto power over the medical care insurance can cover, insurance simply can"t work." However, this is not the "only logical inconsistency on the part of abortion foes that the media fail to examine" in their coverage of abortion issues in the health reform debate, he writes. "Many of those who are most adamant that the government not allow abortion to be paid for by health insurance plans are the same conservatives who argue against health care reform by warning of the prospect of a government bureaucrat getting between you and your doctor," according to Foser. He continues that the "same people who want a government ban on insurance coverage for a legal medical procedure turn around and demagogue about government bureaucrats making medical decisions," which is "a pretty obvious inconsistency, the kind any reporter should be able to spot easily." However, the "tension between those two positions has gone unexplored in news reports about the abortion controversy," Foser concludes (Foser, Media Matters for America, 7/24).~ "Obama Abortion Backtrack Shows He"s All Rhetoric, No Fight," Bonnie Erbe, U.S. News & World Report"s "Thomas Jefferson Street": "[O]ne thing we know will not be incl
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Mesoblast Limited's First Patients In Bone Marrow Transplant Trial Show Earlier Engraftment
Australian regenerative medicine company Mesoblast Limited has announced successful results from the first five patients who underwent bone marrow transplantation with haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells expanded by the patented allogeneic, or "off-the-shelf", Mesenchymal Precursor Cells (MPCs).
News of the day
Physicians Frequently Fail To Inform Patients About Abnormal Test Results
New research shows that physicians failed to report clinically significant abnormal test results to patients -- or to document that they had informed them -- in one out of every 14 cases of abnormal results. In some medical groups, the failure rate is close to zero; in others it is as high as one in four abnormal results.
Nutrition

Computer Cooling Technology To Help Diagnose Digestive Disorders

Some things in life are multi-purpose. Now miniature technology used to cool the central processing units in computers may have found a use in mainstream medicine! Temperature-controlling "Peltier technology" is set to help doctors give a quicker diagnosis of people who suffer with acid-related disorders of the stomach. Over seven million adults in the UK - up to 15% of the UK"s total adult population - suffer with digestive disorders of the oesophagus. Now they stand to benefit as researchers develop the technology which prides itself on precise heating and cooling and accurate temperature control. Oesophageal disorders range from reflux, chronic heartburn to aggressive oesophagus cancer. How would the gadget work? The miniature device when complete, would act a bit like a thermometer, once inserted into the patients" oesophagus (gullet) it would investigate changes to the thermal sensitivity of tissue. It could help identify those patients with abnormal acid exposure in the gullet who have heightened sensitivity in specific nerves which respond to acid. And it would also be used to measure a patient"s sensory response to thermal stimulation in their oesophagus. This would then be used to determine their level of sensitisation and to guide response to therapy. Once doctors have all this information, they will be in a much better position to treat the problem as tissue temperature can be a key feature of digestive disorders. Scientists at The Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, east London are adapting the computer cooler with the help of a ÷£113,000 two-year Healthcare Scientist Research Fellowship grant awarded by the Chief Scientific Officer for England (CSO) and managed by the National Institute for Health Research. Healthcare scientist, Dr Jonathan Reeves from The Royal London"s Clinical Physics Clinical Academic Unit is working in collaboration with the team from neurogastroenterology. Dr Reeves said: "Typically, Peltier technology is used to cool high performance components in computers so people may be surprised to hear that we are using this technique to help diagnose disorders of the oesophagus. There is no comparable existing product that provides the fine control and rapid changes in temperature that this technology delivers. "Acid-related digestive disorders of the stomach are a burden on patients, the NHS, and society in general because they are highly prevalent, have varied signs and symptoms, and are costly to treat. "By the end of the two years, we hope to have a tested thermal device ready to be trialled within a large scale clinical study. "Unfortunately, current conventional tests do not always result in a definitive diagnosis or explanation of a patient"s symptoms. What we need is new sensory testing techniques to better understand the underlying mechanisms of oesophageal pain. " Prototypes will be developed to enable easy insertion into the patient"s oesophagus. The current prototype device has a diameter of only 7mm. Professor Qasim Aziz, Professor of Neurogastroentorology at The Royal London Hospital, explained: "While there are excellent drugs currently available that can suppress acid secretion from the stomach and hence reduce symptoms in patients with acid reflux in the gullet, a proportion of patients fail to respond to this treatment. Current theories suggest that failure to respond to standard therapy may be due to the fact that repeated acid reflux has now caused increased sensitivity of the nerves in the lining of the gullet so that these nerves are activated even by small amounts of acid which would be considered normal. "Currently it is difficult to determine if the nerves in the gullet have become sensitised or not. We know that nerves that respond to acid also respond to changes in temperature. However, thus far it has been difficult to devise methods for stimulating these temperature sensitive nerves in the gullet. The Clinical Physics Department at Barts and The London has pioneered the use of the Peltier device for use in the gullet, and now with the help of the new grant we can begin to test the device in human volunteers and eventually patients. It is hoped that this novel adaptation of technology will help us to understand the reason why some patients don"t respond to standard treatment and may help us to improve our management strategies for these patients." Notes 1. The miniature monitoring device is based on the "Peltier effect." This involves transfer of heat from one side of a device to the other against a hot and cold scale of the temperature of the oesophagus. This effect bears the name of Jean-Charles Peltier (a French physicist) who discovered it in 1834. 2. Currently, sensory testing is conducted using a range of techniques, for example the acid perfusion test, where a tube is inserted into a patient"s oesophagus via their nose; mild hydrochloric acid is then sent down the tube, followed by salt water, in an attempt to reproduce symptoms of reflux. 3. The oesophagus is a tube of smooth muscle that transports food from the throat to the stomach. 4. Dr Reeves from The Royal London Hospital"s Clinical Physics Clinical Academic Unit is working in collaboration with the Neurogastroenterology Group within the Department of Gastroenterology in Whitechapel, east London. 5. Nine other healthcare scientists from across England were also awarded research fellowships worth a total of over ÷£1million for projects that will lead to improvements in patient care. The scheme is funded by the Department of Health (CSO) and managed by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). Barts and The London


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