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One goal is to help her anticipate and react to what friends and other people might say about her new appearance and to adjust to eventual exposure to hordes of photographers and journalists, said Bernard Devauchelle, the surgeon who performed the transplant operation in Amiens with Jean-Michel Dubernard, also a leader of the transplant team, assisting. Two days after the operation, the woman was transferred to the Edouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon where Dubernard and a team of immunologists could monitor her course. Dubernard led the team that performed the first hand-arm transplant in Lyon. The woman's recovery has gone so well that on Wednesday she will be transferred to Amiens, closer to her home, for continuing care with psychiatrists and social workers, Dubernard and Devauchelle said. Medical teams from the two cities will confer daily on her progress, and she is expected to return periodically to Lyon for further immunologic tests

The French team, headed by Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard of Lyon and Dr. Bernard Devauchelle of Amiens, was loudly applauded after members showed detailed pictures of the procedure and answered technical questions about the experiment that was performed in Amiens in November. The patient, identified as Isabelle Dinoire, 38, was transferred Wednesday to Amiens, near her home, from Lyon. In Lyon, experts at Dr. Dubernard's hospital, which is a leader in immunology, monitored her immuno-suppressive drugs and treated her for one rejection reaction. Some critics also charged that the French doctors were breaching ethics by simultaneously conducting two experiments in the same patient. One experiment was the face transplant. The other was injecting Ms. [Dinoire] with bone marrow that the doctors had taken from the donor in hopes of reducing the amount of antirejection drugs she will need

Ten years ago I assumed the care of a woman with advanced pancreatic cancer that had spread to her spine. She was a well- known writer, and we quickly became friends. I would travel to her apartment and visit her for hours there, something I'd rarely done before and haven't done since. She had a close group of friends who visited her constantly, and an Irish nursing agency that cared for her impeccably around the clock. At first her cancer wasn't causing her pain, though it paralyzed her below the waist and bound her to her bed and wheelchair. Still, she enjoyed the visits, mine and everyone else's, until the fateful day when the cancer spread to her bones and began what was clearly an escalating pain. I dialed up the morphine to compensate, until the day came when the amount of morphine necessary clearly hastened her death. I was able to predict roughly the time she would die, and her friends said their goodbyes. I used morphine in the name of relieving suffering, not as a murder weapon. No one who knew her seemed upset by the trade-off, a tortured life for a peaceful death, and all thanked me for my care at the end

One goal is to help Ms. Dinoire anticipate and react to what friends and other people might say about her new appearance and to adjust to eventual exposure to hordes of photographers and journalists, said Dr. Bernard Devauchelle, the surgeon who performed the transplant operation in Amiens with Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard, also a leader of the transplant team, assisting. Before Sunday's visit, Ms. Dinoire had walked around the hospital, often wearing a mask until she took it off two weeks ago. On a brief visit to Amiens last week, Ms. Dinoire stopped to shop, and she was very pleased no one recognized her or saw anything unusual, Dr. [Devauchelle] said. To monitor Ms. Dinoire's progress in gaining new sensation in the transplanted face, the doctors said they were obtaining M.R.I. scans to pick up subtle changes in brain activity as they prick her skin with a pin or touch it with a wad of cotton. An M.R.I. test on Sunday showed that Ms. Dinoire was beginning to gain some sensitivity in her new upper lip. The doctors also plan to use M.R.I. to monitor if and when she will begin to contract muscles to smile, open and close her mouth and make other facial expressions

Two days after the operation Ms. [Dinoire] was transferred to the Edouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon where Dr. [Jean-Michel Dubernard] and a team of immunologists could monitor her course. Dr. Dubernard led the team that performed the first hand-arm transplant in Lyon

Heparin, a short-acting anticoagulant, is given to prevent a recurrent stroke, not to dissolve the offending clot. But giving it can be dicey in the early stages of a stroke because it can help turn a mild ischemic stroke into a devastating bleeding one. Ischemic strokes account for a vast majority of strokes. They occur because the brain is starved of oxygen and other vital nutrients from a clot that forms in a brain artery or that breaks off from a larger artery elsewhere in the body and travels to lodge in a brain artery. Also, a long-term buildup of fats in the walls of brain arteries can narrow the vessels and reduce flow to critically low levels, causing an ischemic stroke. The two categories make it imperative to use CT and M.R.I. imaging scans in the initial care. The distinction between ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes is critical because drugs like T.P.A. and urokinase can rapidly reverse the damage from an ischemic stroke, but giving them for a hemorrhagic stroke is like pouring gas on a fire

The new findings concern only the strain of influenza causing regular seasonal influenza, and not avian influenza or pandemic influenza, said the centers' director, Dr. Julie L. Gerberding. She said 91 percent of the human influenza A (H3N2) virus samples isolated in her agency's laboratories this flu season were resistant to both amantadine and rimantadine. A (H3N2) is this season's dominant strain. The agency's influenza surveillance program studies samples from state health departments. Influenza viruses constantly mutate. One theory is that the A (H3N2) influenza strain suddenly developed a mutation against amantadine and rimantadine. Another theory is that the resistance developed from inappropriate use of the two drugs, which are widely available over the counter in many countries. In the United States, all marketed antiviral drugs effective against influenza require a prescription

Over the last few days, the Israeli news media, along with a number of Israeli doctors, have raised questions about the treatment Mr. [Ariel Sharon] received after he had a mild stroke on Dec. 18, before he had a major one on Jan. 4. The condition, which is relatively common in elderly people, is marked by weakened blood vessels in the brain, and blood-thinning medicine can increase the risk of cerebral hemorrhage, according to doctors. Mr. Sharon suffered a hemorrhagic stroke on Jan. 4. If Mr. Sharon had not received such medicine, he could have suffered another clot in the brain instead of bleeding in the brain, Dr. Jose Cohen, one of his neurosurgeons, told Israeli television this week

[Rodier] said that transmission seemed to be occurring in families with children in an epidemiologic picture that closely resembled the one seen in East Asia. The recent cases identified in Turkey are the first outside of East Asia. The sudden appearance of a number of cases of avian influenza in different parts of Turkey is worrisome, Rodier said, but is probably linked to the complexities of bird migration

Dr. [Joseph Domenech] said there was now a risk that the virus had become so entrenched in Turkey that it would be impossible to eradicate it, meaning that a permanent reservoir of the dreaded virus would exist on the fringes of Europe and along bird migration routes to Africa. A senior United Nations official urged Turkey's neighbors to be ready to respond quickly and effectively to outbreaks of bird flu in their countries. The official, Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations coordinator for avian and human influenza, urged countries to hold drills to confirm that their laboratories have all the necessary materials and competent staff. In many ways, the outbreak in Turkey is a cautionary tale about how rapidly avian influenza can become a widespread problem if it is not detected early and attacked aggressively. In the far eastern part of Turkey, where most of the human cases and deaths have occurred, officials waited for weeks to investigate widespread bird deaths that started in mid-December, villagers say, even after the deaths were reported to government veterinarians. In that time window, the virus spread from bird to bird and -- to a lesser extent -- from bird to man