Faculty Bibliography

Dr. Leonard Wartofsky, chairman of the department of medicine at Washington Hospital Center, said that he was 'surprised Mr. [William Rehnquist] has done so well.' Wartofsky, a thyroid cancer specialist, said the chief justice's case was 'a big topic' among thyroid experts. 'It's on people's minds' and 'we talk,' he said

[Jeanna Giese] told her pediatrician, Dr. Howard Dhonau, about the bat shortly before she left Fond du Lac, Dr. Willoughby said. Dr. Dhonau passed on the information to Children's Hospital, where Dr. Willoughby initially was skeptical about the possibility that she had rabies, largely because it is so rare. He learned that laboratory researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris had shown that an anesthetic, ketamine, was active against the rabies virus. So Dr. Willoughby proposed giving Jeanna ketamine to induce a deep coma and midazolam, a sedative, to prevent hallucinations. Colour Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Jeanna Giese greets Dr. Rodney Willoughby Jr. The two made medical history when Jeanna contracted rabies from ...; Colour Photo: ...a bat bite and survived -- the first time anyone has lived through the rare illness without vaccination -- thanks to Willoughby's radical treatment involving a drug regimen that put Jeanna into a coma for a week

The booster vaccine for whooping cough, or pertussis, is needed because immunity to it wanes 5 to 10 years after the initial vaccination. But an additional shot will not be needed because the new vaccine would be part of a booster routinely given for diphtheria and tetanus. Many hospitals stopped administering the vaccine because of a controversy over the use of thimerosal, which critics contend causes autism. Health officials say there is no evidence to support the contention. Thimerosal was eliminated from hepatitis B vaccines in 2000, but hospitals have been slow to reinstate orders to administer the vaccine to newborns, said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University. The panel rejected adding a routine second dose of chickenpox vaccine for children 4 to 6 years old. The cost, the feasibility of delivering the vaccine to such a large population and the lack of persuasive data about how long immunity of a second dose lasts were cited as reasons

[Jeanna Giese] told her pediatrician, Dr. Howard Dhonau, about the bat shortly before she left Fond du Lac, Dr. [Rodney E. Willoughby Jr.] said. Dr. Dhonau passed on the information to Children's Hospital, where Dr. Willoughby initially was skeptical about the possibility that she had rabies, a viral disease, largely because it is so rare in the United States. From his search of scientific articles and telephone discussions with the diseases centers, Dr. Willoughby said he learned that only five patients had recovered from rabies and that all had received rabies shots. No one who had not been immunized, as was Jeanna's case, had survived. Dr. Willoughby learned that laboratory researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris had shown that an anesthetic, ketamine, was active against the bullet-shaped rabies virus. So Dr. Willoughby proposed giving Jeanna ketamine to induce a deep coma and midazolam, a sedative, to prevent hallucinations

David Landry, a senior research associate at the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, criticized the Heritage team's reliance on self-reports of sexually transmitted diseases. 'The underreporting problem is so severe that it makes that data highly questionable,' Landry said

The authors of the new studies, Dr. Robert Rector, a senior research fellow in policy studies at the foundation, and Dr. Kirk A. Johnson, a senior policy analyst there, said their findings contradicted those published in March in The Journal of Adolescent Health by Dr. Peter Bearman, the chairman of the sociology department at Columbia University, and Hannah Bruckner of Yale University. The earlier study found that a majority of teenagers who took the pledge did not live up to their promises and developed sexually transmitted diseases about the same rate as adolescents who had not made such pledges. It also found that the promise did tend to delay the start of intercourse by 18 months. Dr. Bearman said: ''Our analyses showed that pledgers are less likely to get tested for S.T.D.'s, be diagnosed as having an S.T.D. and to see a doctor because they are worried about having an S.T.D. Most S.T.D. infections are asymptomatic, and therefore, people don't know that they have an S.T.D. unless they get tested. The use of self-report data for S.T.D.'s is therefore extremely problematic.''

The agency said that about one-quarter of those with H.I.V. did not know they were infected because they had not been tested, limiting the number of H.I.V.-positive Americans whose lives might be extended by the use of newer and more effective drugs. C.D.C. officials said that some prevention programs were substantially reducing sexual risk behavior among people with H.I.V. and those at risk for the infection. Also, H.I.V. diagnoses have steadily declined among adolescent and young adult women in all ethnic groups. Leaders of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the Community H.I.V./AIDS Mobilization Project and other groups advocating for people with AIDS blamed the government for the increase, citing long-term underfinancing for efforts to prevent and treat H.I.V

Dr. Peter Piot, who directs the United Nations AIDS program, said: ''The epidemic has yet to display a natural saturation point. In Swaziland, the country most affected by AIDS in the world, adult prevalence continues to climb; 42.6 percent of pregnant women there tested positive for H.I.V. in 2004. ''In East Africa, for example, in every big city'' there had been declines in the rates for young people, ''and particularly among women and girls,'' Dr. Piot said in an interview. He cited Addis Ababa, Kigali, Lusaka and Nairobi -- the capitals of Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zambia and Kenya -- largely because they are the places with the most extensive AIDS education and prevention programs, particularly for young people. For the first time, truly comprehensive responses to AIDS, including prevention and treatment, are emerging, Dr. Piot said. ''Iran has one of the best AIDS programs,'' he added, citing in particular its needle-exchange efforts

Surgeons can generally learn the on-pump operation faster than the off-pump technique because it is technically less demanding. Also, the report said, surgeons can generally perform more grafts, if necessary, in an on-pump bypass, and the grafts may stay open longer. A controversy has developed over some evidence that a small but significant number of on-pump bypass patients suffer a degree of cognitive impairment like memory and attention deficits and language problems. Such problems tended to occur less among patients whose bypasses were performed with the beating-heart technique compared with the stopped-heart technique, the team said. The extent of the decrease was not detailed. The most conclusive benefit of off-pump over on-pump operations was for patients who had deposits of calcium in their aortas, the body's main artery. When surgeons clamp the aorta in the on-pump technique, small pieces can break off to cause disabling and fatal strokes

The scientists analyzed the genetic makeup of patients taking warfarin in clinics at the University of Washington in Seattle and Washington University in St. Louis and found that they fell into three dosing groups -- low, intermediate and high. The genetic variations identified in the study correlated with the grouping, suggesting the findings hold promise for simplifying warfarin therapy, the scientists reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists identified genetic variations, matched them to the doses warfarin patients were taking, and found that patients with a particular variation of the gene usually took similar doses of warfarin. The VKORC1 gene accounted for 25 percent of the overall variation in warfarin doses in the studies -- what Dr. [Mark J. Rieder] said he believes is the largest genetic variation affecting warfarin