"The Daily Dose"

Tubes, capsules and pellets of used radioactive material are piling up in the basements and locked closets of hospitals and research installations around the country, stoking fears they could get lost or, worse, stolen by terrorists and turned into dirty bombs.

For years, truckloads of low-level nuclear waste from most of the U.S. were taken to a rural South Carolina landfill. There, items such as the rice-size radioactive seeds for treating cancer and pencil-thin nuclear tubes used in industrial gauges were sealed in concrete and buried.

“Instead of safely secured in one place, it’s stored in thousands of places in urban locations all over the United States,” said Rick Jacobi, a nuclear waste consultant and former head of a Texas agency that unsuccessfully tried to create a disposal site for that state.

State and federal authorities say the waste is being monitored, but they acknowledge that it is difficult to track and inspected as little as once every five years. Government documents and dozens of Associated Press interviews with nuclear waste generators, experts, watchdogs and officials show that thousands of these small radioactive items have already been lost, and that worries are growing.

Flea markets and eBay; landfills and recycling plants
“They’ll end up offered up on eBay and flea markets and sent to landfills, or metal recycling plants — places where you don’t want them to be,” said Stephen Browne, radiation control officer at Troxler Electronic Laboratories, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of industrial gauges that use radioactive material.

There are millions of radioactive devices in use for which there is no long-term disposal plan. These include tiny capsules of radioactive cesium isotopes implanted to kill cancerous cells; cobalt-60 pellets that power helmet-like machines used to focus radioactive beams on diseased brain tissue; and cobalt and powdered cesium inside irradiation machines that sterilize medical equipment and blood.

Most medical waste can simply be stored until its radioactivity subsides within a few years, then safely thrown out with the regular trash. Some institutions store their radioactive material in lead-lined safes, behind doors fitted with alarms and covered with yellow-and-black radiation warning signs.

Over the past decade, however, 4,363 radioactive sources have been lost, stolen or abandoned, according to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report released in February. Though none of the material lost was rated “extremely dangerous” — meaning unshielded, up-close exposure can cause permanent injury within a few minutes and death within an hour — more than half the radioactive items were never recovered, the NRC said.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, owners of dangerous amounts of radioactivity have been told by the government to take greater precautions, such as having 24-hour surveillance, erecting barriers and fingerprinting employees, regardless of whether the devices are in use or stored as waste.

Close to a crisis?
Yet in 2003, the federal Government Accountability Office reported there wasn’t even a record of how many radioactive sources existed nationwide. In June, the GAO concluded that while there has been progress, more must be done to track radioactive material to prevent it from falling into terrorists’ hands and ending up in a dirty bomb, or one that uses conventional explosives to scatter radiation.

“I don’t think we’re yet in crisis, but certainly there’s information out there to suggest we may be closer to that than is comfortable for me,” said Gregory Jaczko, a commissioner with the NRC, one of the agencies charged with tracking the material.

In 1987, four people died and hundreds fell ill after looters in Brazil found a cancer-therapy machine in an abandoned medical clinic and sold it as scrap metal. More recently, 19 small vials of cesium-137, implanted for cervical cancer treatments, disappeared in 1998 from a locked safe at Moses Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro, N.C. The tubes were never found and were believed stolen.

A terrorist would need to gather far more of those vitamin-sized capsules to create a dirty bomb capable of killing anyone within one city block, said Kelly Classic, a health physicist at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

For decades, the government urged states to build low-level nuclear waste landfills, either on their own or in cooperation with nearby states. But those efforts have run into strong not-in-my-backyard resistance of the sort that led South Carolina lawmakers to close the Barnwell County landfill to all but three states. Only one low-level landfill, in Utah, has opened in the past 30 years. One more could open in Texas by the end of next year, but it would accept trash from only Vermont and the Lone Star State.

The government never set up penalties for states that failed to build landfills.

“Congress should have gotten involved a long time ago,” said Richard Gallego, vice president of Thomas Gray and Associates Inc., a California company that prepares low-level waste for disposal.

Rich Janati, chief of nuclear safety for Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, said: “It’s a national issue, and we should look at it as a national problem and come up with a solution.”

The government this week did move to shore up security by requiring hospitals and labs to better secure machines used to irradiate blood. Also, dirty-bomb fears have prompted the National Research Council to urge replacing the roughly 1,300 such machines in the U.S. with less hazardous but more expensive equipment.

Article found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26891309/

Mooove over, Holsteins. PETA wants world-famous Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream to tap nursing moms, rather than cows, for the milk used in its ice cream.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is asking the ice cream maker to begin using breast milk in its products instead of cow’s milk, saying it would reduce the suffering of cows and calves and give ice cream lovers a healthier product.

The idea got a cool reception Thursday from Ben & Jerry’s officials, the company’s customers and even La Leche League International, the world’s oldest breast-feeding support organization, which promotes the practice — for babies, anyway.

PETA wrote a letter to company founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield on Tuesday, telling them cow’s milk is hazardous and that milking them is cruel.

“If Ben and Jerry’s replaced the cow’s milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers — and cows — would reap the benefits,” wrote Tracy Reiman, executive vice president of the animal rights advocacy group. She said dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies and obesity.

Ashley Byrne, a campaign coordinator for PETA, acknowledged the implausibility of substituting breast milk for cow’s milk, but said it’s no stranger than humans consuming the milk of another species.

“We’re aware this idea is somewhat absurd, and that putting it into practice is a stretch. At the time same, it’s pretty absurd for us to be drinking the milk of cows,” she said.

It takes about 12 pounds — or 1 1/2 gallons of milk — to make a gallon of ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s, which gets its milk exclusively from Vermont cows, won’t say how much milk it uses or how much ice cream it sells.

As a standardized product under federal regulations, ice cream must be made with milk from healthy cows. Ice cream made from goat’s milk, for example, would have to be labeled as such.

Presumably, so would mother’s milk ice cream.

Ben & Jerry’s will stick to cows
To Ben & Jerry’s, the idea is udderly ridiculous.

“We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child,” spokesman Sean Greenwood said in an e-mail. He didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

Leon Berthiaume, general manager of the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery, which provides milk products to Ben & Jerry’s, called the dairy products “among the safest in the world.”

“Milk from cows has long-term health benefits and has been proven to be safe and healthy and an important part of the American diet for generations,” he said. “I’m not ready to make that change.”

Cow’s milk and mother’s milk aren’t interchangeable, according to La Leche spokeswoman Jane Crouse, who says breast milk is a dynamic substance that’s different with each woman and each child and might have difficulty being processed into ice cream.

Then there’s the question of who would provide the milk, and whether they’d be paid.

“Some women feel compelled to donate milk to a milk bank for adopted babies, or for someone who’s ill or unable to breast feed. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence about sisters who nurse each others’ babies. There’s a population of women very willing to share their milk. Whether there’s enough to do it for a commercial entity, who can say?” she said.

Read the entire article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26892950/

To all the second year nursing students nearing graduation-hang in there To the first year students finishing your first semester or quarter…..enjoy your free time now!

This time of the year is particularly difficult for nursing students. Not only is there the demanding schedule of clinical rotations and work associated with finals and nursing exams, but you also have the upcoming holidays, sporting events, and work! Balancing these responsibilities can often be difficult-so remember……you are almost done with school! It might seem like school will never end but it will. And once you are done you can enjoy the holidays like never before. Imaging just how thankful you will be next Thanksgiving when you are working amongst the world’s kindest and brightest, earning a generous wage, and helping people in distress. Imagine Christmas with extra money for the holidays. Sounds good right! So keep your focus and keep your eyes on the prize.

Many of you may in fact have secured jobs and positions with your current employer or at a facility in which you are performing clinical. But many of you are also still feeling out the job market and interested in exploring some of the many exciting opportunities soon to be available to you. For the latter, look for a Medical Staffers booth at a college job fair or university career fair near you! Please take the time to stop by and visit, ask questions, and enjoy some of our free merchandise and snacks while you visit. We look forward to seeing you there!

Autumn and Winter are special times for many traveling medical professionals. While many travelers in the industry scamper South to obtain assignments in warmer climates, a few brave souls embrace the opportunity and adventure that can only be found spending the Holidays and New Year in the great northern parts of the United States.

If like the many before you, you have ever dreamed of walking through the Autumn leaves of the gorgeous New England States, skiing or snowboarding Vail and Aspen, relaxing with a good book and cup of hot cocoa in Montana, or going to Soldier Field to catch a Bears game, then now is the time to take the challenge of bundling up for great assignment with Travel Nurse Career and go north for the fall and winter season!

TNC offers a vast array of fall and winter positions in the Northern US. And what’s better than a real white Christmas-a white Christmas with GREAT PAY and bonus*!

*Any candidates who sing up by Nov 1 will receive a real Christmas courtesy of medical staffers.

When doctors told Andy Lees he had no more than six weeks to live he set about the sombre task of preparing for his death.

He divided his £18,000 life savings among his nearest and dearest, leaving enough to pay for his funeral. Then he waited for the cancer to take him.

But a year later Mr Lees is still in the land of the living – and has just been told he does not have cancer after all.

Now penniless, the 72-year-old is planning to sue the hospital which wrongly diagnosed the terminal illness.

He said: ‘The doctors told me I had cancer of the liver and the lungs, I had only four to six weeks to live and there was nothing they could do for me.

‘But they’ve now said they were wrong and, although I’m still very ill, I’m not dying.

‘I’ve given away my life savings because I didn’t think I’d need it. Now I’m absolutely skint.’

Mr Lees gave his four sons and his daughter £1,000 each and told them to use it as they wished.

Two grandchildren received £2,000 each while a further £3,000 was divided among friends.

To ensure he would not be a burden on his family after he was gone, he paid £6,000 for his funeral and headstone.

To make matters worse, the headstone was placed at the spot where he was to be buried at the cemetery near his home in Blackburn, West Lothian.

He later asked for it to be removed. He said: ‘Discovering your own tombstone is quite an experience.’

Mr Lees was taken to St John’s Hospital in Livingston last year after lapsing into a diabetic coma.

Doctors carried out tests and told him he was dying of cancer, but after several return visits to the hospital they have changed their diagnosis.

Now they say he is suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which causes the airways to narrow.

Mr Lees said his family were shattered when they heard the initial diagnosis.

He said: ‘My family and I went through hell.’

Now the pensioner is housebound and unable to afford the mobility scooter he needs.

NHS Lothian medical director Dr Charles Swainson said: ‘We have met Mr Lees and his family and apologised for any distress caused.’

Undertakers William Grieve and Son said Mr Lees had specifically asked for the headstone to be put in place when he made his funeral arrangements.

Article found at Article found at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053750

Back in the early 1990s, email was a privilege granted only to those who could prove they needed it. Now it has turned into a nuisance that’s costing companies millions. We may feel that we have it under control, but not only do we check email more often than we realise, but the interruptions are more detrimental than was previously thought.In a study last year, Dr Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University, England, found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email (bit.ly/email2). So people who check their email every five minutes waste 81/2hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.

It had been assumed that email doesn’t cause interruptions because the recipient chooses when to check for and respond to email (bit.ly/email3). But Dr Jackson found that people tend to respond to email as it arrives, taking an average of only one minute and 44 seconds to act upon a new email notification; 70% of alerts got a reaction within six seconds. That’s faster than letting the phone ring three times.

Added to this is the time people spend with their inbox. A July 2006 study by ClearContext, an email management tools vendor, surveyed 250 users and discovered that 56% spent more than two hours a day in their inbox (bit.ly/email4). Most felt they got too much email - by January 2008, 38% of respondents received more than 100 emails a day - and that it stopped them from doing other things.

Karen Renaud, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and her colleagues at the University of the West of Scotland discovered that email users fall into three categories: relaxed, driven and stressed. “The relaxed group don’t let email exert any pressure on their lives,” Dr Renaud says. “They treat it exactly the way that one would treat the mail: ‘I’ll fetch it, I’ll deal with it in my own time, but I’m not going to let it upset me’.”

The second group felt “driven” to keep on top of email, but also felt that they could cope with it. The third group, however, reacted negatively to the pressure of email. “That causes stress,” says Dr Renaud, “and stress causes all sorts of health problems.”

Dr Renaud’s team discovered that while 64% of respondents claimed to check their email once an hour, and 35% said they checked every 15minutes, they were actually checking it much more frequently - about every five minutes. For some people, checking email is no longer a conscious and deliberate act, but a compulsion they are barely aware of (bit.ly/email5).

CHICAGO - Only 2 percent of graduating medical students say they plan to work in primary care internal medicine, raising worries about a looming shortage of the first-stop doctors who used to be the backbone of the American medical system.

The results of a new survey being published Wednesday suggest more medical students, many of them saddled with debt, are opting for more lucrative specialties.

The survey of nearly 1,200 fourth-year students found just 2 percent planned to work in primary care internal medicine. In a similar survey in 1990, the figure was 9 percent.

Paperwork, the demands of the chronically sick and the need to bring work home are among the factors pushing young doctors away from careers in primary care, the survey found.

Read the entire article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26628074/

PARIS - A 59-year-old woman has given birth to triplets at a Paris hospital after seeking fertility treatment in Vietnam, a hospital spokeswoman said on Monday.

News of the woman’s pregnancy has drawn widespread criticism in the French media since it was made public last week. It is illegal in France to provide fertility treatment to women who are no longer at an age when they can procreate naturally.

“On this particular point, scientific progress is not good for mankind,” said Andre Vingt-Trois, a Catholic archbishop, quoted by Monday’s Le Parisian newspaper.

Read the entire article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26606585/

Some of history’s most important figures have been rewarded with mountains, cities, even states that bear their names. Stephen Colbert got a spider. The host of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central recently had a California trapdoor spider, found last year, named after him: Aptostichus stephencolberti. He’s not alone. Rocker Neil Young has a spider namesake too. In fact, it turns out that plenty of celebs have lent their name to a creature. Here are nine favorites. - Ryan E. Smith

1. Agathidium bushi. A slime-mold beetle honoring President George W. Bush. Other slime-mold beetles were named for Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

2. Avalanchurus lennoni. John Lennon doesn’t have a beetle named for him as you might expect. Instead, the famous Beatle has prehistoric trilobites, as does Ringo Starr.

3. Sylvilagus palustris hefneri. An endangered marsh rabbit named for Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine with its famous bunny logo.

4. Cryptocercus garciai. A cockroach named for Grateful Dead icon, Jerry Garcia.

5. Agra katewinsletae. Titanic actress Kate Winslet had this beetle named for her.

6. Dendropsophus stingi. The rock star Sting, who has worked to preserve rainforests, gave his moniker to this Colombian tree frog.

7. Bufonaria borisbeckeri. This sea snail shares a name with German tennis great Boris Becker.

8. Eristalis gatesi. This flower fly found in Costa Rica is named for Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Another carries the name of co-founder Paul Allen.

9. Avahi cleesei. Comedian John Cleese had this species of lemur named after him in tribute to his promotion of the plight of the primate in the film Fierce Creatures and a documentary.

I found this at

 http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080905/ART16/809050322