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Welcome to the Media Center
The Media Center provides coverage of investigative efforts concerning economic, political and governmental regulatory issues associated with the treatment of chronic illnesses, amd more recently the latest information on biological war agents such as ANTHRAX and SMALLPOX.
We offer these articles to inform you on the many issues shaping the recognition and treatment of chronic illnesses and emerging infectious diseases. It is our hope that solutions co-created by patients, caregivers, researchers, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies will help reduce the suffering of all.
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Newspaper Article
Bush Acts to Drop Core Privacy Rule on Medical Data
By ROBERT PEAR
March 22, 2002 - New York Times
ASHINGTON, March 21 — The Bush administration today proposed dropping a requirement at the heart of federal rules that protect the privacy of medical records. It said doctors and hospitals should not have to obtain consent from patients before using or disclosing medical information for the purpose of treatment or reimbursement.
The proposal, favored by the health care industry, was announced by Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, who said the process of obtaining consent could have "serious unintended consequences" and could impair access to quality health care.
The sweeping privacy rules were issued by President Bill Clinton in December 2000. When Mr. Bush allowed them to take effect last April, consumer advocates cheered, while much of the health care industry expressed dismay.
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Newspaper Article
AIDS Set to Surpass Black Death as Worst Pandemic
By REUTERS
January 25, 2002
LONDON (Reuters) - AIDS will surpass the Black Death as the world's worst pandemic if the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS do not get life-prolonging drugs, a public health physician said Friday.
The illness has killed 25 million people since the early 1980s and an estimated 14,000 people are infected each day with HIV, which destroys the immune system.
Without antiretroviral drugs most people living with HIV/AIDS will die, pushing the death toll beyond the 40 million killed by the Black Death that ravaged Asia and Europe in the 14th century.
The Black Death, or bubonic plague, was caused by a bacterium carried by rats. Infection spread through rat fleabites.
``Despite the impressive advances in medicine since then, HIV/AIDS is likely to surpass the Black Death as the worst pandemic ever,'' said Peter Lamptey, president of the Family Health International AIDS Institute a non-governmental agency based in Arlington, Virginia.
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Newspaper Article
Draft for Medical Monitoring Circulated
Alliance Against Infectious Diseases -
World Health Organization
Global Monitoring, Research and Training To Control Infectious Diseases
Infectious diseases are the world’s leading cause of premature death, killing more than 13 million children and young adults each year. The world seemed on the point of conquering this scourge when, in 1980, the World Health Assembly declared that smallpox was eradicated; but since then over thirty new infections have been identified for the first time in humans. Diseases with epidemic potential are emerging or re-emerging at an unprecedented pace as a consequence of the conditions of modern life, including globalization, which facilitates the rapid spread of infectious agents worldwide. “One could hardly have concocted a better-calculated recipe for a tinderbox, as AIDS already harshly teaches. We have never been more vulnerable,” writes Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg. "Infection knows no national boundaries, and we will pay dearly if we ignore the smoldering of infection anywhere.” In the competition between people and pathogenic microbes, eternal vigilance is the price of survival.
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