Faculty Bibliography

Doctors have trained many police, fire, airline and other workers to use defibrillators as the devices have become standard equipment in many airports, shopping malls, convention centers and health clubs. Still, in the United States alone, more than 1,200 people die from cardiac arrest each day before they can be admitted to a hospital. The survival rates vary widely depending on the geographic area, in part because of the time it takes for emergency medical technicians to reach victims. The vast majority die before reaching a hospital

The stent is coated with taxol, a drug long and widely used in treating breast cancer. But use of taxol in the heart stent, which Boston Scientific of Natick, Massachusetts, manufactures as Taxus, is experimental. There is no indication yet that it is safer or more effective than another type of drug-coated stent, already in use, that the government has linked to blood clots and deaths in about 60 patients since its approval last spring

A different one-year study of 76 health clubs in Great Britain with defibrillators found that using them along with CPR saved the lives of six of eight people who suffered sudden cardiac arrest, reported a team headed by Dr. Kyle McInnis. Fifty cardiac arrest cases were shocked with defibrillators before emergency medical technicians arrived. Half were later discharged from the hospital with survival rates similar to those who were treated only by emergency workers. Addressing concerns about brain damage among cardiac arrest survivors, a Dutch study of 57 such patients found that most did not experience cognitive impairment as of six months after the event. Of these, 58 percent scored ''unimpaired'' on all eight cognitive tests. However, one in four survivors did suffer severe cognitive impairment

The Geneva-based UN agency expressed optimism last week after convening a panel of 50 experts from 15 countries to review reports on a number of candidate SARS vaccines. Scientists in Canada, China, the United States and possibly other countries began developing them after the SARS epidemic this year. [Marie-Paule Kieny] said by telephone that for many reasons it was too difficult to predict which research team would inject the first human with a SARS vaccine, and when, if ever, a vaccine might be available. If SARS does not return, and an experimental vaccine is found safe and able to produce antibodies in humans, ethics would preclude deliberately trying to infect a vaccine recipient with the SARS virus as a scientific challenge. The reason is the high death rate from SARS, about 11 percent

The stent is coated with taxol, a drug long and widely used in treating breast cancer. But use of taxol in the heart stent, which Boston Scientific of Natick, Mass., manufactures as Taxus, is experimental. There is no indication yet that it is safer or more effective than another type of drug-coated stent, already in use, that the government has linked to blood clots and deaths in about 60 patients since its approval last spring. Last month the agency issued its second health warning to doctors about the Cypher device, saying that it had received more than 290 reports of blood clots among Cypher recipients and that in more than 60 of the cases the device was linked to patient deaths. The clots occurred up to 30 days after the stent had been implanted. The new update on the taxol-coated stent involved 1,326 patients at 73 American hospitals who had never received a stent. Repeat angiographic tests of 559 of the participants, or 76 percent, showed that the stents were effective at varying lengths, as determined by the degree of blockage, and in arteries of varying diameters, Dr. [Gregg W. Stone] and Dr. [Stephen G. Ellis] said

The longstanding threat of bioterrorism turned real with the deliberate release of anthrax spores in 2001. When SARS suddenly appeared, there was speculation that it was bioterrorism. Experts dismissed that. No one was ''smart enough to invent a SARS from scratch,'' said Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist. Now, he said, ''SARS may end up being a biological weapon.'' If SARS does not return in the next few years, will companies have a continuing incentive to develop a vaccine that might never be needed? If industry lacks incentive, yet SARS returns, the consequences could be devastating. Plagues past and present, from 14th-century Florence to the Hong Kong airport during the SARS scare to the AIDS Quilt in Washington in 1996 and the AIDS virus. (Photo by Corbis-Bettmann, plague; Agence France-Presse, SARS screening; Associated Press, AIDS quilt)

The Geneva-based UN agency expressed optimism last week after convening a panel of 50 experts from 15 countries to review reports on a number of candidate vaccines for SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. Scientists in Canada, China, the United States and possibly other countries began developing them after the SARS epidemic this year. [Marie-Paule Kieny] said that for many reasons it was too difficult to predict which research team would inject the first human with a SARS vaccine, and when, if ever, a vaccine might be available

The Geneva-based U.N. agency expressed optimism after convening a panel of 50 experts from 15 countries to review reports on a number of candidate SARS vaccines. Scientists in Canada, China, the United States and possibly other countries began developing them after the SARS epidemic earlier this year. [Marie-Paule Kieny] said in a telephone interview that it was too difficult to predict which research team would inject the first human with a SARS vaccine, and when, if ever, a vaccine might be available

The Geneva-based U.N. agency expressed optimism after convening a panel of 50 experts from 15 countries to review reports on a number of candidate SARS vaccines. Scientists in Canada, China, the United States and possibly other countries began developing them after the SARS epidemic earlier this year. [Marie-Paule Kieny] said in a telephone interview that it was too difficult to predict which research team would inject the first human with a SARS vaccine, and when, if ever, a vaccine might be available. Members of [Anthony S. Fauci]'s institute, a federal agency in Bethesda, Md., participated in the WHO panel meeting. In a telephone interview, Fauci said he shared the belief that clinical tests of a SARS vaccine could begin early next year

In another experiment with mice, the scientists documented the strength of the mouse antibody protection against SARS. The scientists took the portion of blood that contains antibodies, injected it into the mice and then deliberately exposed the animals to the SARS virus. That process, known as passive transfer of antibody, completely protected against reinfection, Dr. [Anthony S. Fauci] said. Dr. [Brian Murphy] has not developed an experimental SARS vaccine but the neutralizing antibody he found in his experiments provide an important measure for determining the effectiveness of experimental SARS vaccines, Dr. Fauci said. If SARS does not return, and an experimental vaccine is found safe and able to produce antibodies in humans, ethics would preclude deliberately trying to infect a vaccine recipient with the SARS virus as a scientific challenge. The reason is the high death rate from SARS, about 11 percent