From the [UK] Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, CNN,  BBC:

The British government offered  “sympathy” and “regret” yesterday to survivors of the Thalidomide scandal, and unveiled a government plan award more than £20 million in compensation to survivors.

The statement, by Health Minister Mike O’Brien, comes more than 50 years after one of the worst public health and political scandals in Britain’s recent history. Thalidomide had not been fully tested before it was prescribed to pregnant women  as a treatment for morning sickness or insomnia starting in 1958. The drug was withdrawn in 1961 after thousands of babies were born with missing or foreshortened limbs, blindness, deafness, and other disabilities.

“The government wishes to express its sincere regret and deep sympathy for the injury and suffering endured by all those affected,” said O’Brien.

Advocates have fought a long and bitter battle for compensation, and for public acknowledgment that the government should have done more to avert or minimize the drug’s disastrous consequences.

Guy Tweedy, of the Thalidomide Trust, said: “I’m highly delighted and so glad that it actually came, 50 years too late but never mind. It’s an apology not just to thalidomide victims but to the parents who lost their children in the early days. The apology means as much in some ways as the money.”

Earlier posts here.

From the New York Times, CBS News:

A study by a researcher at Emory University projects that 43 percent of American adults will be considered obese by the year 2018, an increase of almost 40 percent over today’s obese population. Kenneth E. Thorpe concluded that obesity is growing faster than any other public health condition in the nation’s history, and will cause spikes in obesity-related conditions like hypertension and diabetes.

If trends continue, the study said, health care costs related to obesity would total $344 billion in 2018, amounting to more than one in five dollars spent on health care.

Related post: Disabilities on the rise among older Americans

From the New York Times:

As the possibility of a flu epidemic looms, public health officials around the country are developing triage plans to address one of medicine’s most troubling questions: Who should receive medical treatment when demands are high and resources are scarce?

The draft plans vary and have attracted little publicity. All involve methods for rationing care and diverting it away from vulnerable and impaired patients during a disaster.  Health officials defend formal rationing as the last in a series of steps taken to stretch scarce resources to serve the maximum number of people.

Employees at New York-Presbyterian Hospital were recently asked, in a hypothetical exercise, whether a man with cystic fibrosis who was rushed to a hospital during a flu pandemic could be relieved of his mechanical ventilator so that another healthier patient might have a chance to survive. (The employees couldn’t agree on what to do.)

Earlier posts:

Who should MDs let die in a pandemic? Panel makes a list

Report: People with disabilities left out of disaster planning

From the Des Moines Register,

Early data suggests that children with disabilities are at a higher risk of death if they contract the H1N1 swine flu. (Earlier post here.) This leaves parents with a tough choice: leave kids with disabilities in school to keep things as normal as possible, or keep them home to avoid exposure.

In Iowa, school officials and health care agencies say most parents are keeping their kids with disabilities in school. They are taking precautions, like frequent hand washing and avoiding ill people, and are hoping to be among the first to receive H1N1 vaccinations as they become available.

See also:

CDC: Children with medical issues should get first H1N1 flu shots — CNN

(Des Moines Register photo)

From a press release from the National Council on Disability:

People with disabilities face significant barriers to health care and are in need of immediate health care reform, according to a federal report released yesterday.

The report by the National Council on Disability found that people with disabilities frequently lack health insurance or coverage for necessary services, are disproportionately in poor health because their health conditions are not well managed, and are less likely to use preventive health care measures.

Among barriers faced by people with disabilities, the report found, are stereotypes about disability; medical personnel who haven’t been trained in meeting their needs; a lack of accessible medical facilities, equipment, and sign language interpreters; and a health care system that is more concerned with preventing disability than with improving the quality of life of people who have disabilities.

(more…)

From the Los Angeles Times:

California parents of young children are increasingly reluctant to vaccinate against the H1N1 influenza, citing fear of autism and distrust of authority.

This new generation of vaccine skeptics has been forged by the stubbornly persistent belief — discredited by a welter of studies — in a link between vaccines and autism. And it is further fueled by a combustible mix of distrust of drug manufacturers, media outlets and the federal government.

And although many pediatricians are readying stern lectures in support of vaccinating children, several in Southern California contacted by The Times acknowledged they have doubts about recommending a vaccine that is still in testing for all of their young patients.

See also: Racial and ethnic minorities join vaccine skeptics — Los Angeles Times

Earlier posts here.

Writing in the Archives of Disease in Childhood (subscription required for full text), Dr. Brian Skotko reports that the number of babies born with Down syndrome has been steadily decreasing around the world as prenatal testing and selective termination have become more widespread.

Skotko reports that a trend toward later childbearing in the United States would have been expected to cause a 34 percent increase in the number of babies born with Down syndrome between 1989 and 2005 in the absence of prenatal testing. Instead, there were 15 percent fewer such babies born, a decrease of 49 percent between expected and observed rates.

With new and more sophisticated prenatal tests expected soon, Skotko called on the medical community to address the ethical questions raised by medical technologies that allow nations to decide what forms of human genetic variation are valued. He urged the medical community to:

– Develop guidelines for delivering a diagnosis of Down syndrome;

– Assemble current and accurate information on Down syndrome, in collaboration with parent support organizations, to be distributed to prospective parents;

– Offer comprehensive training to professionals on how to deliver a non-directive prenatal diagnosis; and

– Develop curriculum to give medical, nursing and genetic counseling students a richer understanding of Down syndrome.

An excerpt:

… In its support for Down syndrome prenatal screening, has the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology endorsed a climate in which disability discrimination could more easily flourish?

… The age is swiftly coming where not all possible technologic advances may bring welcomed change. Parents who have children with Down syndrome have already found much richness in life with an extra chromosome. Now is the time for the rest of us to discuss the ethics of our genetic futures.

Dr. Brian Skotko is a clinical genetics fellow at Children’s Hospital Boston. ADC is the journal of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Press release from Children’s Hospital Boston here.

Full article available for purchase here.