The Global Peace Coalition is honoring President George W. Bush for his “unprecedented level of contribution” to the fight against HIV/AIDS as U.S. president during the Saddleback Civil Forum in Washington D.C. Global on Monday, World AIDS Day.

“No U.S. president or political leader has done more for global health than this administration,” said Dr. Rick Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California, noting that the conservative Bush “has raised the bar on America’s role and responsibility for providing critical humanitarian assistance around the world.”

Warren said that over the past eight years, the President and Mrs. Bush, both evangelical Christians, have traveled around the world to bring awareness and solutions to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

President Bush will be the first recipient of the “International Medal of PEACE” from the Global PEACE Coalition.

The award is given on behalf of the Global Peace Coalition to individuals that exemplify outstanding contribution towards alleviating the five global problems recognized by the coalition: pandemic diseases, illiteracy, self-centered leadership and spiritual emptiness.

The Coalition is a network of churches, businesses and individuals working together to solve humanitarian issues.

Under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), crafted by President Bush and his aides, more than $18.8 billion has been provided to combat global HIV/AIDS during the last five years.

Congress authorized an additional $48 billion for ongoing efforts to tackle the HIV/AIDS pandemic as well as tuberculosis and malaria – the other deadly killers in third world countries – over the next five years.

Warren, in addition to presenting the president with the award, will also engage both President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush in candid conversations regarding past accomplishments and priorities in the future regarding international health issues – including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

President Bush, First Lady recognized by Rick Warren for AIDS policy.

Posted: November 29th, 2008 under Diseases, HIV.
Comments: none

BOSTON — On September 8, Nantucket’s newspaper, The Inquirer and Mirror, reported the number of confirmed cases of Lyme disease had reached 262 for 2008. This represented an increase of almost 40% over all of 2007. In 2006 there were only 23 cases confirmed.

It was only 33 years ago that Lyme disease was recognized as the cause of a mysterious cluster of juvenile arthritis cases in the town of Lyme, Conn. In 1982 the causative agent, a bacteria named Borrelia burgdorferi, was isolated from the mid-gut of deer ticks. Since that time Lyme disease has become the most common vector-borne disease in the U.S. and has vaulted into the top ten of all infectious diseases. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reports the incidence of Lyme disease as confirmed cases per 100,000 population. In 2005 there were 36.3 reports per 100,000 statewide compared to the national average of 8.2 cases. At the current rate Nantucket will surpass 1,000 cases per 100,000 giving it one of the highest incidences in the world.

According to Massachusetts native Constance Bean, former coordinator of health education at MIT and author of Beating Lyme: Understanding and Treating This Complex and Often Misdiagnosed Disease, the Lyme disease problem on Nantucket is just the tip of the iceberg. “The higher numbers are not due to improved diagnosis, “she tells Infection Protection. “By all estimates only one in ten cases is reported. We don’t have true numbers on the Lyme epidemic because we don’t have reliable tests. It is estimated that 1.7 million Americans are infected. We have more ticks. The ticks have no natural enemies and more of the ticks are being infected.”

Dr. Dan Cameron is an epidemiologist and an expert in Lyme disease. He is board president of the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society. “Yes”, he tells Infection Protection, “Lyme disease is certainly the epidemic of our time”. He agrees that Lyme disease is under-reported and under-treated. “The most effective way to address Lyme disease is to foster greater understanding of the disease within the medical community. Increased incidence of Lyme disease can be attributed to several factors, including the continued spread of human populations into wooded habitats with increased exposure to ticks, global warming that has increased survivability of ticks, and the geographic spread of infested tick populations to all 50 states.”

– by Dr. Chris Iliades, MD,  Boston Correspondent, Infection Protection

Posted: November 29th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, Diseases, Impaired Immunity, Lyme disease.
Comments: none

The Wall Street Journal is openly fretting about President-elect Obama’s appointment of a radical leftist as the new domestic policy council czar. “The only troubling personnel note was Melody Barnes as Domestic Policy Council director,” opines the paper of record for the U.S. business establishment.  “Putting a former aide to Ted Kennedy in charge of health policy after tapping universal health care advocate Tom Daschle to be Health and Human Services Secretary sends a clear signal that Mr. Obama didn’t mean it when his campaign ads said he wouldn’t run to the extremes with government run health care.”

But, other observers are noting that the appointment by Obama of so many ex-Clinton administration officials — Clintonistas — is making many wonder who actually won the Democratic Primaries and then the General Election on Nov. 4, former First Hillary Clinton or the the party’s new love, the dauphin of democracy, Barack Hussein Obama.

Writes Kelley Beaucar Vlahos in The American Conservative, in an article entitled, The Clinton Cabinet: The Politics of Change Looks Surprisingly Familiar, “at one point during the campaign, Republicans nearly succeeded in painting a picture of a post-election Washington in which radicals with bright red parachutes would drop onto the National Mall like the Hollywood Soviets in 1984’s Red Dawn.”But, writes Vlahos, so far, the invasion looks more like a sprawling downtown reunion of “spry old war buddies from another time—about eight years ago, in fact. So ascendant are the Clintonistas that it’s hard to believe Hillary lost.”

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Happy Days Are Here Again for Bill and Hill. Obama won, but they’re driving policy and personnel for the aspiring president.

Posted: November 28th, 2008 under News.
Comments: 1

GOP political consulant Christopher Coffey is telling Fox News that Barack Hussein Obama has not even taken the oath of office, and he is “already distancing himself from his campaign promises.”

News reports now claim Obama will focus on providing a huge stimulus package that could cost as much as $700 billion over two years. “There are vague promises of spending cuts to accompany this proposed stimulus. The details of his campaign tax plan are now in flux and earlier promises of a balanced budget seem destined for the back burner,” said Coffey. “In the days leading up to the election, Barack Obama was the candidate who wanted to balance the budget, cut taxes for 95% of working Americans and provide universal health care. He made these promises notwithstanding the financial crisis and subsequent bailout.”

What, exactly, has changed since Election Day?

“We are in the midst of a financial and economic crisis, just as we were in the weeks leading up to the election. The real difference is that now Obama must govern, and his pledges were designed to secure an election, not to secure an economic recovery,” Coffey told Fox. “His promises to balance the budget, cut taxes and provide universal health care are as untenable today as they were last month and he has no choice but to reverse course.”

Coffey said that he is “delighted” that Obama is retreating from many of his “impractical” ideas. “Tax hikes, like the ones he supported just a few weeks ago, would devastate the economy. So would the taxes he would need to levy to support his myriad spending proposals while balancing the budget,” said Coffey.

But the president-elect is aiming for “truly staggering levels” of government spending, undoubtedly supported by increased borrowing, raises many questions “that should give us all pause,” said Coffey.

Can the U.S. afford another $700 billion in spending, especially if is it spent over two years? “What effect will this stimulus have on the deficit? Can we continue to saddle American taxpayers with more and more debt without any consequences? Where will the Democrats in Congress and the White House set future taxes? Should we expect some old fashioned taxing and spending to accompany the current round of spending and borrowing? What happens if this $700 billion in spending, like the last plan, fails to stimulate the economy?” said Coffey.

The sooner we know the answers to these questions, the sooner we will know Obama’s “real intentions” and the sooner the economy will regain a sense of certainty. Until then, “change” could very well mean that our new president will change his mind on the issues every few days, Coffey told Fox News.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Obama to voters: keep the change.

Posted: November 27th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none

The pathogen that causes AIDS may be eliminated in 10 years if all people living in countries with high infection rates are regularly tested and treated, according to a new study.

The proposed solution to end the AIDS epidemic is compelling. But, experts said, it is based on assumptions rather than simply data data, and is suffused with logistical problems. The study was published online Tuesday in the medical journal, The Lancet.

“It’s quite a startling result,” said Charlie Gilks, an AIDS treatment expert at the World Health Organization (WHO), and one of the paper’s authors. “In a relatively short amount of time, we could potentially knock the epidemic on its head.”

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Posted: November 26th, 2008 under Diseases, HIV.
Comments: none

The AARP — a leading special interest group that lobbies for socialized medicine for senior citizens  — is exceptionally enthused about the nomination of career government bureaucrat Peter Orszag to head the White House office of management and budget in the Obama administration.

“President-elect Obama’s selection of Peter Orszag is great news for anyone who cares about fixing our broken health care system,” said the statement, released by spokesman Jim Dau, in Washington, D.C. “While many in Washington focus on the impact of programs like Medicare on our country’s fiscal health, Mr. Orszag understands that the federal budget is actually threatened by skyrocketing health care costs that drive spending throughout the entire system. In other words, he is looking to cure the disease and not just treat the symptoms.”

Dau’s statement added that Orszag’s nomination, along with HHS nominee Tom Daschle and the leadership of long-time champions on Capitol Hill, “gives us (the socialized medicine lobby) great hope that overdue health care reform is on the way for 2009.”

The AARP was formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, but changed its name to sound more alluring to aging baby boomers who don’t want to be stigmatized by issues like age and death, experts note.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

More change — more of the same.  Obama picks old director of Congressional Budget Office to head the OMB.

Posted: November 26th, 2008 under News.
Comments: 1

The nation’s biggest pharmaceutical trade association is readying a multimillion-dollar ad campaign to tout the importance of free-market health care and undercut an expected onslaught by the incoming Obama administration for price controls of prescription drugs.

The effort will include a national television commercial scheduled to begin airing next week. This is expected to be the first sortie in what likely will be a huge war over health care reform during the Obama presidency.

Other major businesses are also gearing up for the fight, including insurance companies. But the stakes are especially high for drug developers, which stand to lose as much as $30 billion in revenue if President-elect Barack Obama’s collectivist plan to let the federal government negotiate Medicare drug prices is implemented, according to an independent report.

“There’s no question that next year will be a challenging year,” said Ken Johnson, senior vice president with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, which is organizing the ad campaign.

Obama attacked drug companies repeatedly during his presidential election campaign; a lawsuit filed by former presidential candidate Alan Keyes is pending in California, questioning whether Obama meets the constitutional requirements to be president, including being a native born American citizen.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Controlling drug prices is patriotic, according to Obama.

Posted: November 25th, 2008 under News.
Comments: 1

Barack Obama promised voters that he would slash health care costs if he were president. But an examination of his plan shows that the boy president-elect will have a very difficult time making good on that promise. Obama said that he would cut health care premiums by $2,500. That figure comes from an estimate by Harvard University advisers to Obama’s campaign. The campaign strategists calculated that if the government spent more on information technology (IT) for health care, managed diseases better and cut extraneous paperwork, the U.S. could save about $200 billion a year in health spending — or about $2,500 off the average family’s health insurance bill. Obama’s shadow advisers figure that more IT would save $77 billion, based on a report from the RAND Corp., a think tank.IT saves money in the private sector by improving efficiency. But when the Congressional Budget Office looked at the RAND report, it found serious problems, including that researchers had excluded studies, even those published in peer-reviewed journals, “that failed to produce results” by adding more IT in health care.

Posted: November 25th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none

Medicaid covered nearly $198 million in costs between 2004 and 2007 for more than 100 unauthorized medications for pain, colds, and other problems, according to media reports.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that it is trying to remove unapproved drugs from the market, as a potential health threat.

But certain federal laws allow Medicaid to continue to cover the drugs. Officials in charge of the Medicaid program say they are aware of the issue, but they say congressional help is needed to fix the problem. Both Medicaid and the FDA are under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

– by The Editors

Posted: November 24th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none

Experts are saying that the selection of former Sen. Tom Daschle as the secretary of health and human services by President-elect Barack Obama suggests that a significant health information technology spending increase is on tap for the incoming administration.

Daschle’s book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, published in early 2008, notes that “we are years, if not decades, behind European nations in harnessing health care information technology’s potential.” The book calls for removing much health care policy-making from the political arena but states that at the same time the executive branch of the federal government should promote creation of an IT infrastructure for health information.

Obama and Daschle are on record as favoring more health IT spending.

Praise for the appointment came from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a Republican and founder of a think tank, the Center for Health Transformation. Gingrich, a passionate advocate of improved health IT, said, “given the current state of health care in America and the opportunity for real progress in Washington next year, President-elect Obama has chosen a proven leader. Senator Daschle has long been committed to reforming health care so that all Americans can get quality, effective care.”

Though not considered a health care innovator during his 26 years in Congress, Daschle served on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees Medicare and Medicaid. He also was an adviser to first lady Hillary Clinton’s failed health care reform effort in the Clinton administration.

The Healthcare Information Management Systems Society was among those applauding the news of his pending nomination to the HHS post. “HIMSS believes Sen. Daschle understands the critical health care issues and how IT can be leveraged to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care,” the society said in a statement.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Former Speaker Gingrich sees a major increase in health IT spending coming.

Posted: November 24th, 2008 under News.
Comments: 3