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CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio President [George Bush] on Saturday criticized Sen. [John Kerry] for suggesting that pre-emptive military action by the United States would have to pass a 'global test,' saying that the 'Kerry doctrine' would cede national security decisions to other countries

[John Kerry]'s doctors said they had told him that he was cured. They based their optimism on an array of tests and concluded that he had a less than 3 percent chance of a recurrence in the next nine years. Even if the cancer came back, it could be treated without seriously interfering with presidential duties, Kerry's doctors and experts said. CT scan X-rays taken at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston document that two pieces of metal shrapnel are embedded deep in Kerry's left thigh, next to the femur, said Dr. Gerald J. Doyle, Kerry's personal physician in Boston. Doctors treating the wound in 1969 decided to leave the shrapnel in place. '

The World Health Organization said it planned to find every child younger than 5 in 23 African countries -- more than 80 million in all -- and immunize them against polio starting on Oct. 8

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization convened a meeting in Geneva of representatives of the drug industry to demand that they speed vaccine production. In the United States, scientists with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are racing to complete a genetic sequence of the virus from the case. If the virus has acquired any mammalian influenza genetic material, it could make it more transmissible. The U.S. government has also ordered two million doses of experimental vaccine. The United States, like governments in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and a small number of other countries, is also stockpiling the only antiviral medicine that may work against the strain, Tamiflu, but there have been too few human cases to document its effectiveness. The symptoms of human bird flu appear to be indistinguishable from severe cases of conventional flu, with fevers, sneezing, coughing and aches. 'You're dealing with very conservative Swiss bankers to me, they don't see the opportunity yet,' said Arnold Monto, a University of Michigan influenza expert, pointing out that Tamiflu not used for an avian influenza pandemic could be used instead to make human influenza less severe

P/>BANGKOK, Thailand - A day after national and international officials confirmed the first probable human-to-human transmission of a virulent strain of avian influenza in this country, public health systems around the globe were scrambling to prepare for a possible pandemic.<P/>Scientists say they can't predict how quickly, if at all, the strain may develop the ability to spread easily among people, or whether it will remain as lethal as it has proved so far.<P/>The strain, A(H5N1), has killed 30 of the 42 Southeast Asians it infected in the past year, and millions of chickens and wild birds, across wide areas of Asia.<P/> It also has infected pigs, household cats and even zoo tigers.<P/>A handful of cases of human-to-human transmission may have occurred during bird flu outbreaks in Hong Kong in 1997 and in Europe a year ago, but neither resulted in a pandemic.<P/>Nevertheless, public health experts say it would be irresponsible not to prepare for a worst-case scenario.<P/>The so-called Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 to 1919 - believed, like the current strain, to have been a mutant virus that jumped from animals - killed an estimated 20 million to 100 million people.<P/>And that was before the development of the modern transportation system, with its fleets of jets linking remote..

Health officials would normally look to vaccines and antiviral drugs to control a pandemic, but in this case, those tools have yet to be fully developed and tested. Conventional flu vaccines are not believed to provide any protection against A(H5N1) avian influenza. Human trials of the new vaccine ordered by the U.S. government are not expected to begin until the end of this year, at the earliest

Health officials would normally look to vaccines and antiviral drugs to control a pandemic, but in this case, those tools have yet to be fully developed and tested. Conventional flu vaccines are not believed to provide any protection against A(H5N1) avian influenza. Human trials of the new vaccine ordered by the U.S. government are not expected to begin until the end of this year, at the earliest. The United States -- like governments in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and a small number of other countries -- is also stockpiling the only antiviral medicine that may work against the strain, Tamiflu, but there have been too few human cases to document its effectiveness. The symptoms of human bird flu appear to be indistinguishable from severe cases of conventional flu, with fevers, sneezing, coughing and aches

Other drug makers have given several reasons for not making vaccines: that production is expensive and investment may not be recouped if there is no pandemic, and that intellectual property rights on new techniques used to make the vaccine remain unsettled. The standard method for making flu vaccines -- growing virus in chicken embryos -- does not work because the A(H5N1) virus is so deadly that it kills the developing chicks before they can grow enough virus to be worth harvesting. The new techniques alter the strain's genetics so it can be grown in the fertilized eggs. Tamiflu is made only by Roche Holding, a Swiss company, at a single small factory in Europe, although the company has said in recent months that it plans to build another production line in the United States. Some public health experts are strongly critical of Roche for not increasing production of Tamiflu sooner, saying the company should have expanded production early this year, when avian influenza started becoming a problem across much of Asia. ''You're dealing with very conservative Swiss bankers -- to me, they don't see the opportunity yet,'' said Arnold Monto, a University of Michigan influenza expert, pointing out that Tamiflu not used for an avian influenza pandemic could be used instead to make human influenza less severe

BANGKOK, THAILAND - A day after Thai and international officials confirmed the first probable human-to-human transmission of a virulent strain of avian influenza in this country, public health systems around the globe were scrambling to prepare for a possible pandemic. The United States, like governments in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and a small number of other countries, is also stockpiling the only antiviral medicine that may work against the strain, Tamiflu, but there have been too few human cases to document its effectiveness. The symptoms of human bird flu appear to be indistinguishable from severe cases of conventional flu, with fevers, sneezing, coughing and aches. Only Aventis Pasteur Inc. of Swiftwater, Pa., and the Chiron Corp. of Emeryville, Calif., are braving a thicket of patent issues and financial feasibility concerns to try to use advanced genetic techniques to develop vaccines against so-called bird flu. And they have proceeded only with National Institute of Health contracts to do so

Dr. [Craig R. Smith] said in an interview that this was ''pretty common.'' He added that stress tests ''are simply imperfect ways to assess the situation,'' whether the tests are the type in which patients are hooked up to an electrocardiogram or scans taken after patients have received a radioisotope like thallium. ''They have a fairly high false negative rate,'' Dr. Smith said. In Mr. [Bill Clinton]'s case, the timing of the exercise test may have been critical. It can take years for fatty deposits to build up enough to block coronary arteries, producing angina and ultimately, a heart attack. But angina and heart attacks also can result from so-called vulnerable plaques, when small deposits in largely open coronary arteries rupture and cause the sudden formation of blood clots to block an artery. So results before and after such rupture could differ. Standard exercise tests measure the heart's physiologic responses and cannot show the anatomical contour of coronary arteries, as angiogram X-rays do. But standard angiograms have risks because they are invasive techniques, involving the insertion of a tube into an artery in the leg or arm to inject dye to outline blood vessels