Daily News Thread

[lawyerlee]

Brazil may break Aids drug patent (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4621735.stm) BBC News

Brazil has threatened to break the patent on an anti-Aids drug in order to make a cheaper generic version.

Health Minister Humberto Costa said the price of the Kaletra drug was so high it represented a risk to public health.

The government has given US company Abbott Laboratories 10 days to either agree to lower its prices or allow generic copies.

Abbott said patients would lose out in the long run if Brazil went ahead with its threat.

If Abbott does not make an adequate offer, Brazil will start producing a generic drug at a state-run laboratory in Rio de Janeiro, Mr Costa said.

Chicago-based Abbott said in a statement that such a move would put "the government's desire to cut health care spending ahead of patients' need for new and better treatments."

The company said it already sold its drugs to Brazil at a financial loss, but it said it was "willing to work with the government to find a mutually agreeable solution".

Brazil's health ministry estimates that 600,000 of the country's 183 million citizens have HIV/Aids.

The country has won praise internationally for providing free anti-retroviral drugs to anyone who needs them.

Under Brazilian law, the government can break drug patents if it is deemed to be in the public interest. This would be the first time it would have done so.


Death toll rises to 567 in China flooding (http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/06/25/death_toll_rises_to_567_in_china_flooding?mode=PF) Boston Globe

By Joe McDonald, Associated Press Writer | June 25, 2005

BEIJING --The death toll in two weeks of flooding in areas throughout China has risen by 31 to at least 567, with roads and rail lines cut in its southern industrial heartland and more rains forecast, the government said Saturday.

Another 165 people were missing and more than 2.45 million people have been evacuated from flood-prone areas, mostly in the south, state media said, citing the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

State television showed people clinging to rubber hoses to avoid being swept away. Soldiers placed babies in straw baskets to be lowered with ropes and pulleys into wooden rowboats. Soldiers and civilians formed brigades to fill and carry sandbags to shore up faltering dams and riverbanks, in a country where most labor is still done by hand.

Roads and railroads were cut in the southern province of Guangdong, the heart of the country's export-driven manufacturing industries, although there was no indication of major disruptions in exports. The province is also China's most populous, with 100 million people.

The Pearl River, a major trade route that flows through the southern business center of Guangdong, was suffering "the largest flood peak in the region's history," the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Economic losses were estimated at $2.8 billion, the China Daily newspaper said. It said about 60 percent of those losses were in Guangdong and other southern provinces. President Hu Jintao ordered local authorities to check the status of flood dikes and reservoirs, Xinhua said.

[lawyerlee]

3 missing N.J. boys found dead inside trunk of a car NY Dailys News

A tragic ending

By DEREK ROSE in Camden, N.J.
and MAKI BECKER in New York
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
The Desperate search for three New Jersey boys missing since Wednesday ended in tragedy yesterday when the father of one of the youngsters found all three dead in the trunk of a beatup car parked right outside one of their homes.

Camden police said it appeared Jesstin Pagan, 5; Daniel Agosto, 6, and Anibal Cruz, 11, died of suffocation hastened by high heat.

It wasn't clear how the boys got into the trunk, Camden County Prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi said.

[lawyerlee]

Jewish Settlers to Move Out of Gaza Homes (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/25/AR2005062500532_pf.html) Washington Post

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 25, 2005; 12:30 PM
JERUSALEM -- A group of 40 Jewish settler families said Saturday they expect to move out of their Gaza Strip homes next month, becoming the first to announce definite plans to leave ahead of the Israeli withdrawal from the coastal area.

The families from northern Gaza make up only a small fraction of the 1,600 families slated for evacuation this summer. But Saturday's announcement is the latest sign that Jewish settlers are coming to terms with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to evacuate the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements.

At least 500 families have already reached agreement with the government on compensation and relocation, but none have officially announced when they will move.

Many Jewish settlers have vowed to resist the evacuation to the end. Dozens have holed up in a Gaza Strip hotel, stocking up on food and water in expectation of a fierce battle - which they say will be nonviolent - with Israeli security forces who come to remove them.

[lawyerlee]

Italy seeks 'CIA kidnap agents'[/b] (]BBC News[/i]

[b]The imam was allegedly driven to a US military base after his abduction
Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for 13 people they claim are agents "linked to the CIA".
The suspects are accused of abducting an Islamic cleric in Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt for interrogation.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, was already being investigated in Italy as part of a terrorism inquiry.

Italian prosecutors believe the operation was part of a controversial US anti-terror policy known as "extraordinary rendition".

The policy involves seizing suspects and taking them to third countries without court approval.

Human rights organisations say some of the countries to which terror suspects have been deported are known to use torture, and critics have branded it "torture by proxy".

The US embassy in Rome has not commented on the arrest warrants issued against the 13 people - 10 men and three women.

[lawyerlee]

Scorned Granny Guns Down Beau, 85 (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/24/national/printable704223.shtml)
ATLANTA, June 24, 2005

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b395/lawyerlee2/granny.jpg

Furious that their romance was ending, a 78-year-old great-grandmother shot her 85-year-old ex-beau to death as he read the newspaper in a senior citizens home, police said.

"I did it and I'd do it again!" Lena Driskell yelled to officers who arrived at the home June 10, according to testimony. Police said she was wearing a bathrobe and slippers, waving an antique handgun with her finger still on the trigger.

She is accused of plotting the shooting of Herman Winslow because she was angry that their yearlong romance was ending and he had found another companion.

Driskell was released on a $25,000 bond and placed under house arrest after a hearing Friday. Fulton County Magistrate Richard Hicks stipulated she must wear an ankle monitor and live with her granddaughter Lena Holt.

"I don't want her on the streets," Hicks said. "Who knows how many other guns she has?"

After the nasty breakup with Winslow, she kept showing up uninvited at his apartment in Hightower Manor, the complex for seniors where they lived, Detective D.B. Mathis said. A security guard tried to calm her down, but Driskell drew out her gun, pressed it to Winslow's head and fired up to four times, Mathis said.

At the hearing Friday, defense attorney Deborah Poole stressed Driskell's clean criminal record and said she had had the gun since 1957. "She's not a threat to anyone," Poole said.

Driskell whispered angrily to her lawyer when the detective recounted her confession.

Her granddaughter, who was named for her, said Driskell and Winslow had shared a bank account and a love for traveling

"What drove her to something like this is beyond me," a teary Holt said outside the courthouse.

"We have no control over what she did, but we are very sorry," Holt said.

[lawyerlee]

Retired Verizon Exec Gordon Will Lead NAACP (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050625/ap_on_re_us/naacp_president&printer=1;_ylt=Amh1PR0LYlZt8MofNUBUJxBH2ocA;_ylu=X 3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-)
By ERIN TEXEIRA, AP National Writer
Turning to a businessman to lead one of the nation's seminal civil rights groups, the NAACP's board of directors announced Saturday that Bruce S. Gordon, a retired Verizon executive, will be its next president.

"Civil rights leaders throughout this country did what they did and died, so my generation has full responsibility to walk in the doors those brave people opened," Gordon said after the board voted. "It's fabulous, exciting, humbling."

Gordon was selected by a large majority of the board to succeed Kweisi Mfume, former U.S. representative and a candidate for Senate in Maryland who resigned abruptly in December. Several months later, a report surfaced that his personal relationships with NAACP staffers had contributed to widespread mismanagement at national headquarters in Baltimore. One staff member threatened to sue.

[lawyerlee]

Debate Over Vaccines, Autism Continues (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050625/ap_on_he_me/autism_debate&printer=1;_ylt=Ak5s2frMqgZlWc3QEKfr0uda24cA;_ylu=X 3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-)
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE and KRISTEN GELINEAU, Associated Press Writers
Sat Jun 25,12:23 PM ET
Wesley Sykes is in a rage. Dinner was late. His cup held water, not soda. Strangers had stolen his mother's attention all afternoon. It is too much for the 9-year-old autistic child to bear. He begins to flap his arms and shriek, working himself into murderous screams that shatter his suburban home and all hope of a normal life.

His mother, the Rev. Lisa Sykes, has her own rage, against the demon she blames for Wesley's condition. It is thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative she received in a shot during pregnancy and he received in childhood vaccines.

To the Richmond, Va., pastor, this is a just crusade. To most scientists, it's a leap of faith. The levels of mercury in vaccines — now and in the past — do not cause autism, they repeatedly have declared.

But not everyone is convinced. Seven years after it began, the debate over vaccines and autism just won't die.

In fact, it appears to be finding new life. Several churches have started a grass-roots movement to rid vaccines of mercury. A new book on the issue is getting attention. A Kennedy has entered the fray.

"I think this issue has persisted, despite a boatload of scientific evidence...because there are no answers for parents of children with autism," said Dr. Sharon Humiston, a University of Rochester pediatrician with a foot in both worlds. She once worked for the government's National Immunization Program, and she has a son whose autism she refuses to blame on vaccines.

Medical controversies flourish when science is lacking. In this case, both sides have limited science and each criticizes the other's.

Vested interests make it tough to know who to believe. Many parents have filed lawsuits. Many scientists have ties to vaccine makers or are selling their expertise in court cases. Government officials don't want people to turn away from vaccines, which have clearly benefited public health.

Both sides also have credibility problems. Opponents initially accused the measles vaccine, which never contained the preservative, of causing autism. The government defended a troubled pertussis vaccine for more than a decade before switching to a safer version.

"There's conflict on all sides," said David Kirby, author of "Evidence of Harm," a book urging more research.

There are two main questions:

_Did older vaccines, which contained more thimerosal than the trace amounts in modern ones, raise the risk of autism?

_Are there risks today? Flu vaccine sold in multidose vials still contains the preservative, and the government urges flu shots for pregnant women and young children even though not enough thimerosal-free ones are available, critics say.

Finding answers is tough because autism, a little-understood developmental disorder, often is diagnosed at the very ages when children get vaccines.

The stories are remarkably similar: A seemingly normal child gets a shot and days, weeks or months later, withdraws from the world, stops speaking, becomes upset at random stimulation such as a doorbell, and adopts compulsive behaviors like head-banging.

Parents blame vaccines, but "that doesn't make it true, no matter how strongly they believe it," said Dr. Steve Goodman, a Johns Hopkins University biostatistician who served on an Institute of Medicine panel convened last year to take an independent look at the evidence, which it found unconvincing. "There doesn't continue to be scientific argument."

Beliefs and evidence are things that Sykes, pastor of Richmond's Christ United Methodist Church, understands. A soft-spoken, slender woman, she does not come off as a radical. She has a degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. The daughter of two CIA employees, she was brought up to trust the government.

"I dare them to call me hysterical," she said. "I'm the last one who should be screaming conspiracy."

Her son was a normal, active baby. A photo shows Wesley clutching an Elmo doll, his blue eyes shining and aware. But in a later photo, taken after autism had set in, Wesley stares vacantly next to his smiling brother.

Through a local autism group, Sykes heard a doctor was advising cod liver oil as a treatment. She gave it to Wesley for three days, then tried an experiment on her son, who had stopped responding even to screams. "Wesley," she said. He looked up at her.

The pastor was sold. She tracked down the doctor, Mary Megson, who did a test on Wesley, which showed a level of mercury that flowed off the chart.

"That was my baptism into this issue," Sykes said.

During pregnancy, she had been given a shot to prevent problems from occurring because she and her baby had a mismatched blood factor. Now, she learned that the drug contained thimerosal, which is half mercury. The additive was also in most childhood vaccines, and had been used since the 1930s to prevent bacterial contamination, especially in multidose vials.

By November 1997, Congress was getting complaints. It ordered the Food and Drug Administration to review mercury in vaccines, drugs and food. The government and a doctor group said there was no evidence of harm but that vaccine makers should move toward eliminating thimerosal to be safe. It wasn't until 1999 that vaccines with only trace amounts of thimerosal started to be introduced.

By then, parents had organized. Barbara Loe Fisher, a Virginia mom who is president of the National Vaccine Information Center, which had successfully campaigned for the safer pertussis vaccine, was disturbed federal officials didn't order thimerosal out.

"I believe this is a failure to regulate industry, no question," she said.

She believes a theory supported by many, that a subset of kids can't handle mercury because of a genetic or other kind of predisposition. Some scientists say it might be something else in the vaccines, such as aluminum, or a hyper-reaction to the vaccine itself. There's a 3 percent to 8 percent recurrence rate of autism in families and the disorder is four times more common in boys — more suggestion of a genetic link.

A suburban Kansas City family's experiences suggest such a link. The afternoon after Kelly Kerns' 2-month-old daughter Kaylee got several vaccines was "living hell," with the child screaming and arching her back, her mother said.

"I kept telling myself everybody gets vaccinated — this is OK," she said.

When Kaylee was 18 months old, her white-blonde hair began falling out and she stopped talking. Meanwhile, Kerns had twin boys — Andrew and Daniel. When they were 15 months old, they received three vaccines. A week later, they stopped talking. All three children have since been diagnosed as autistic.