Faculty Bibliography

Because Hepatitis B is endemic in many Asian countries, growth in the number of Asian immigrants in New York and across the country has made the disease a broad, expensive, emerging health problem. In the 2000 census, there were 800,000 Asians in the city, with roughly half from China. Hepatitis B, like hepatitis C, is generally contracted through the blood, and is not transmitted through casual contact with infected people. Hepatitis A, which is caused by a different virus, can be transmitted through food, but hepatitis B cannot, with very rare exceptions. Early detection and suppression of the virus can interrupt the cycle of mother-to-child transmission. An adult immune system can usually fight off a new hepatitis B infection, though a small number of cases become chronic. But, Dr. [Henry J. Pollack] said, ''If you get it when you're an infant, your chance of getting chronic hepatitis B is greater than 90 percent.''

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, said that failed to resolve the issue of leadership. ''Under the president's plan,'' Mrs. Clinton said, ''we still don't know who is accountable within our federal government.'' ''In the Northwest, we have 42,000 travelers going and coming from Asia every week,'' Ms. [Mary Selecky] said. ''We don't want to have to deal in an isolated way with a plane carrying potentially infected people.'' ''They gave us a list of work that they expect us to do,'' Ms. Selecky said, ''but they've only given us a little bit of one-time money. We need a sustained effort.''

Since AIDS first made headlines 25 years ago, it killed 25 million people worldwide and infect 40 million more in one of the worst epidemics in history. Altman relates that in 1985 he was greeted with skepticism about AIDS in Africa, even though the disease had begun to take a devastating toll there. Here, he details the outbreak of AIDS and why many people, including doctors, did not recognize an epidemic in the making and take steps to try to contain it

The show stopped. In a test of the crew's agility and ingenuity, [Gary Razon] supervised the eight stewards it took to dislodge the woman and carry her to the infirmary. Razon said he 'was so scared because the ship was bouncing and feared she might be bleeding from the hip fracture.' Razon could not reach the nephews. From other calls, he learned that the passenger's mother also was also demented. Her nurse provided the name of the woman's psychiatrist, who was skiing. Razon could not reach the covering physician and sent the woman to a hospital after the ship docked in Nassau. A colleague who was a ship's doctor whetted Razon's appetite for a chance to see the world while practising medicine. Razon said he has travelled to many areas but has had less time ashore than he had expected. Still, he said, 'Being a ship's doctor is an offer I cannot refuse.'

As a cruise ship physician, Dr. Gary Razon's most harrowing moments are when passengers and crew become injured or seriously ill hundreds of kilometers from shore. Sudden life-threatening emergencies like internal bleeding, heart attacks, strokes and broken bones can leave little, if any, time to divert a ship to the nearest port. The challenge for a ship's doctor is to stabilize a patient until the ship reaches land. Razon could not reach the nephews. From other calls, he learned that the passenger's mother also was also demented. Her nurse provided the name of the woman's psychiatrist, who was skiing. Razon could not reach the covering physician and sent the woman to a hospital after the ship docked in Nassau. He became a ship's doctor after a colleague, who was one, whetted his appetite about the chance to see the world while practicing medicine. Razon said he had traveled to many areas but with less time ashore than he had expected. Still, Razon said, 'Being a ship's doctor is an offer I cannot refuse.'

It takes about two months to grow the new bladder on a scaffold outside the body. After implantation, the engineered bladder enlarges over time in the recipient. The researchers say they expect that the new bladder will last a patient's lifetime, but the longevity will be known only as the children grow older. A major advantage of his technique is that rejection cannot occur because the cells used to create a new bladder are from the patient, not from another individual. So an ultimate aim -- still years off -- is to develop the technique to grow a wide variety of other tissues, possibly even organs, to help relieve the shortage of donor organs available for transplanting, said the research team's leader, Dr. Anthony Atala. He directs the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. After the new bladder formed, in about seven to eight weeks, Dr. Atala removed a large portion of the patient's bladder. Then he sewed the newly created tissue to what is known as the neck of the bladder and to the rest of the remaining portion of the patient's natural bladder

Many health officials have predicted major increases in H.I.V. in India, which has the world's second highest number of infected people, after South Africa. But new infections among young adults declined by more than a third from 2000 through 2004, according to a statistical study by Dr. Rajesh Kumar and a team of researchers reported in the journal Lancet. A second is that routine monitoring of H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases are powerful and cost-effective ways to control AIDS in India. But experts urged constant vigilance for signs of a reversal of the favorable trend. The prevalence of H.I.V. among women aged 15 to 24 in the southern states fell to 1.1 percent from 1.7 percent during the period of study. But H.I.V. prevalence did not fall significantly among women aged 25 to 34

The dilemma often concerns the influenza virus because it continually mutates, leading to human pandemics that predictably occur unpredictably. Although scientists lack the knowledge to predict when and what strain will cause the next influenza pandemic, they say they are convinced that another one is inevitable and so preparation must start as soon as a threat is detected. That kind of immediate action occurred in 1976 after four cases of swine influenza were detected at Fort Dix, a military base in New Jersey. Fearing that the cases represented an early warning of an impending pandemic of influenza, Public Health Service officials rushed President Gerald R. Ford, who was running for re-election, into recommending a swine influenza shot for every American. Warnings about A(H5N1) avian influenza began in 1997, when scientists in Hong Kong discovered that that strain of virus had jumped directly to cause disease in humans without first mixing in pigs, which had been the pattern until then. With the spread of the virus among birds, officials have warned that it could mutate, combine with a human influenza virus and create a new one to cause a human pandemic

Mr. [George E. Pataki], 60, said he had taken a number of telephone calls in his hospital room from well-wishers. His spokesman, David Catalfamo, said that Mr. Pataki had spoken with former President Bill Clinton and Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky. Mr. Catalfamo said that one of the reasons Mr. Pataki appeared at the news conference was to reassure his mother, Margaret, who was concerned about news reports about his medical condition. On Tuesday, Mr. Pataki's doctors revealed that his ruptured appendix left him more seriously ill than his staff and doctors had previously acknowledged. For the first week that Mr. Pataki was at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital, his doctors and staff gave little information about his medical condition, not fully explaining the need for his second operation or revealing the peritonitis and abscesses. Yesterday, Mr. Catalfamo defended the staff's handling of the information about Mr. Pataki's illness, saying, ''We are doing our best to provide the public with as much information as we understand.''

They used the word ''peritonitis'' -- the name of a potentially fatal inflammation of the abdominal lining -- only after being pressed repeatedly by reporters. They also described abscesses but declined to use that word, and declined to say how high a fever Mr. [George E. Pataki] had. And although they said that his bowel function was impaired but improving, they would not elaborate despite repeated questioning. Dr. Dennis L. Fowler said yesterday that the adhesions were new and probably caused by the ruptured appendix and the first operation. Dr. [Spencer E. Amory] said that after examining Mr. Pataki and reviewing his records, ''I thought the governor received excellent care at Hudson Valley.'' When asked whether Mr. Pataki had peritonitis, Dr. Amory said there was ''a spread of infection within the abdomen.'' He was asked again, and gave a similar answer. When asked a third time, he said the condition he described ''is defined as peritonitis.''