A flu pandemic more severe than the H1N1 virus in 2009 could lie ahead, the British Medical Journal reports.
Health experts gathered at the UK Health Protection Agency’s Pandemic Influenza conference in London last week to assess the world’s response to the swine flu pandemic last winter.

Director of the Health Protection Agency’s Centre for Infections Maria Zambon said the emergence of new pandemics was as certain in this world as “death and taxes”.
Nancy Cox, Director of the Influenza Division of the US National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she expected the H1N1 virus to change within the next year.
All of the agencies involved need to remain vigilant, Gordon Duff, Chairman of the UK Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, added.
BMJ 2010;340:c3410

The man whose research scared scores of people into believing there may be a link between MMR and autism was struck off the medical register by the UK’s General Medical Council, which stated that he had “abused his position of trust” and “brought the medical profession into disrepute” in studies he carried out on children.
From the Guardian:
Wakefield said he had never opposed vaccination or claimed to have proof that MMR was linked to autism.
“I never made the claim at the time, nor do I still make the claim that MMR is a cause of autism,” he said.
“You are conflating the two things. You are conflating the link with autism with the overall review of the vaccine.”
In a statement after the verdict, he claimed that efforts to “discredit and silence me through the GMC process” had provided a screen to shield the government from exposure over the the MMR vaccine “scandal”.

“This is what change looks like,” said US President Barack Obama following the approval by the US House of Representatives of major healthcare reform yesterday. When President Obama signs the bill into law, however, a new battle begins.
“Attorneys general in three states — Virginia, Florida and South Carolina — have indicated they will file legal challenges to the measure, on the grounds that it violates the Constitution by requiring individuals to purchase insurance,” according to the New York Times.
Non-partisan politics are finished in America. They were, of course, finished before President Obama ever took office, but his dream of change in Washington, and pursuing consensus leadership, has collapsed following the healthcare reform showdown.
This was perhaps inevitable, but the bitterness will spill over from yesterday’s vote to courtrooms all over the US, into television commercials, talk-show debate, etc. The reform will bring healthcare to 31 million Americans who otherwise could not afford it, and it will guarantee coverage for children with pre-existing conditions.
In his speech to the House on the eve of the vote, President Obama reminded people that liberty and individuality need not be sacrificed by neighborliness and a sense of community.
There are a lot of Americans who think differently, and a lot of them truly hate the fact that their hard-earned money is going toward an expansion of government (forget for a moment that George Bush led the largest expansion of government in US history) and coerces them to support the most vulnerable in society.
There are many good reasons to resist expansion of government, and a lot of bad ones. The healthcare debate revealed all that is delusional, greedy, irrational, selfish, and uninformed about the US Republican party.

From www.msf.ie, the latest update on doctors working in Haiti:
“On the fifth day on their response to the disaster in Haiti, the MSF teams remain focused on trying to cope with the huge demand for life-saving surgery from those who suffered terrible injuries in the quake. They are doing that by stretching their existing resources, running operating theatres to the limit by working around the clock, while at the same time trying to create more capacity by finding new premises and transporting in mobile structures.
“In the newly working hospital in the Carrefour district, the MSF surgical team carried out 90 operations within 24 hours of getting the theatre usable. And that was only two hours after they found the hospital. The surgical team at Choscal hospital also completed around 90 operations so far. Another team is working from a container and carried out twenty. More capacity is on its way, but the twin theatre inflatable hospital has been delayed because one of the planes it was on did not get permission to land at Port au Prince airport and was re-routed to the Dominican Republic. The other half of the hospital did arrive today but MSF is still concerned that vital supplies are being held up.”
Work with MSF.

Research in England suggests that child obesity trends suggest that there will soon be a class divide: wealthier, skinnier children and poorer, fatter children, according to the BBC.
From the website:
Currently 6.9% of boys and 7.4% of girls are obese – with the difference between the lower and higher classes 0.6% and 1.5% respectively for boys and girls.
But using historical trends, they predicted that by 2015 obesity rates could be above 10% for boys and 8.9% for girls…
The obesity rates for girls are likely to diverge from now on, the team said.
Among those from lower classes it is expected to keep rising to 11.2%, while for those from professional backgrounds it is likely to fall to 5.4%.
Among boys, both groups are likely to see a rise, but it will be faster in the lower class group, meaning 10.7% of this class boys will be obese compared with 7.9% of those from wealthier backgrounds.

Dr Tomoaki Kato, a trailblazing surgeon in the US, performed a 43-hour ex vivo surgery to remove a tumor from a 59-year-old man who said it was too early to die, the New York Times has reported.
A massive tumor had engulfed numerous organs, and chemotherapy had no effect. An ex vivo surgery – in which the organs are removed, operated on, then re-inserted into the body – was his only hope.
An amazing surgery. A brilliant surgeon. But even his boss isn’t sure if spending 43 hours on a single patient is ethically correct, in a context of limited resources.

The National Council for Hypnotherapy in the UK has challenged BNP leader Nick Griffin to see if hypnotherapy can ‘cure’ his ‘racism’.
A press release from the Council states:

The ongoing furore over the appearance by British National Party leader Nick Griffin on the BBC’s Question Time has once again brought racism to the forefront of news headlines.
Racism is perceived to be at the very heart of the British National Party. It appears to be racism that separates it from any other political party; and it seems to be racism that attracts many of its members. Whilst the party has tried, in recent times, to tone down the words, the message is apparently unchanged.

The Council thinks it might have a solution. Here’s what they say:

“…The key to reducing racial bias — at least in a short-term, laboratory setting — is exposure to people in personalised ways that challenge stereotypes. And this is where hypnotherapy can play an important role.
Healing by a ‘cognitive’ set of attitudes and motivations (or an altered state of awareness) is among the oldest phenomena known to man and is found, in one form or another, in virtually every culture throughout the world. It could also be legitimately described as the original psychological therapy and somewhat more contentiously, as the basis for many of the more recent styles of psychological intervention.”

Here’s the rest of the press release:
So, what is racism and can it be “cured”?
Now that Barack Obama, the first African-American president in United States history has taken office, researchers have shown that it may be possible to scientifically reduce racial bias.
The results are still preliminary and the real-world effects of reducing bias in a controlled laboratory setting are not clear. But despite this, the findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that science can battle racism.
“Any time you can get people to treat people as individuals, you reduce the effect of stereotypes,” said Brown University cognitive scientist Michael Tarr. “It won’t solve racism, but it could have profound real-world effects.”
Tarr’s findings overlap with other results suggesting that the key to reducing racial bias — at least in a short-term, laboratory setting — is exposure to people in personalised ways that challenge stereotypes.
And this is where hypnotherapy can play an important role.
Healing by a ‘cognitive’ set of attitudes and motivations (or an altered state of awareness) is among the oldest phenomena known to man and is found, in one form or another, in virtually every culture throughout the world. It could also be legitimately described as the original psychological therapy and somewhat more contentiously, as the basis for many of the more recent styles of psychological intervention.
Although such altered states have been known for thousands of years, the term ‘hypnosis’ (from the Greek ‘hypnos’, meaning ‘sleep’) was only coined in 1841 by James Braid, a Scottish surgeon and remains a somewhat less than accurate description of the experience, as the hypnotic state is, in most respects, entirely dissimilar to sleep. He defined hypnotism as focused conscious attention on a single dominant idea or mental image, accompanied by heightened expectation.
Renowned psychologist Hans Eysenck found that, by means of careful statistical analysis, measures from many hundreds of subjects indicated those who suffered from phobia, anxiety, depression, and related problems, tended to be considerably more responsive to hypnotic suggestion than average.
This includes people perceived to be racist. He also discovered that cognitive-behavioural therapy could change racist views and other prejudices in a large sample of another study.
What is racism really? Is it a fear, a phobia or associated with certain personality types?
Often it is the result of one’s attitudes towards others which are formed during childhood.
If someone is taught to be racist from an early age by a family member, for example, these attitudes are likely to stick with the person throughout their life. Often racists are unable to explain why they hate people of a different skin colour, nationality or culture. Racists commonly use people of different ethnic backgrounds as ‘scapegoats’ on whom to blame their problems and make sweeping generalisations about these groups of people.
Often the best way of explaining these types of phenomena is to draw distinction between ‘feelings’ (emotions) and cognitive processes; is it indeed the case that racists feel threatened, feel hatred and they feel an innate superiority to other ethnic groups and it is these feelings that make racists able to make sweeping generalisations without supporting evidence or intellectual rigor.
Hypnotherapy, recognised by the British Medical Association as a valid modern medical treatment since 1955, can be used to modify a subject’s emotional content, behaviour, and attitudes, as well as a wide range of conditions like dysfunctional habits, anxiety, stress-related illness and pain management.
Eysenck wrote an important analysis of experimental data on hypnotic suggestion in his book Dimensions of Personality (published 1947).
The fifth chapter, ‘Suggestibility and Hypnosis’, looks at evidence relating to the classification of different types of suggestion and the relationship between suggestibility and personality types.
His research led him to conclude that it was necessary to make a distinction between two main factors or types of suggestion. And he found a third.
He said primary suggestion, associated with traditional hypnosis, was a direct command or instruction given to the subject in which the response desired is explicitly stated. In essence, it is the power of mind over body.
Secondary suggestion, he says, is suggestion by indirection or indirect methods, leading to a manipulation of the subject’s beliefs and expectations.
Then Eysenck adds a third category, prestige suggestion.
This form of suggestion employs the authority, charisma, or ‘prestige’ of the hypnotherapist to influence the client.
Many experimental studies demonstrate the tendency of individuals to imitate the attitudes and opinions of others whom they admire or identify with. The prestige, traditionally attached by many to medical practitioners whom they trust, can lead to a social compliance and suggestibility.
In a study on the causes and cures of prejudice using 6,796 male subjects aged between 45 and 55, Eysenck and other researchers found that all sources of prejudice correlated positively together and that each was related to personality.
Importantly, the team found that attempts to change personality through a type of cognitive behaviour therapy led to significant changes in prejudice.
While it took more than two hundred years for hypnotherapy to become incorporated into medical treatment, modern trends show a greater acceptance of this treatment.
Only three years after Britain recognised hypnotherapy as a valid medical treatment, the American Medical Association gave its approval in 1958.
The challenge now would be for Nick Griffin to perhaps visit a qualified hypnotherapist and seek a “cure”…
The National Council for Hypnotherapy is the UK’s largest independent, not-for-profit governing body for Hypnotherapy practitioners. The high standards it requires for membership ensures that all of our therapists must have achieved a certain level of training and demonstrated competence in practice. In addition all our members are bound by a strict Code of Ethics & Practice, which includes the requirement for Professional Indemnity Insurance.

A fatality has been reported in the UK HPV vaccine immunisation programme, and pharma giant GSK has issued a statement.
GSK makes the cervical cancer vaccine Cervarix, which is used in the programme. IMT understands that the girl, a 14-year-old, died one hour after receiving the vaccine.
The press release:
GSK was notified by the UK’s Department of Health on Monday 28th September of the death of a 14 year old girl who was vaccinated with GSK’s cervical cancer vaccine, Cervarix, as part of the national HPV immunisation programme.
Dr Pim Kon, Medical Director, GlaxoSmithKline UK said: “Our deepest sympathies are with the family and friends of the young girl.
“We are working with the Department of Health and MHRA to better understand this case, as at this stage the exact cause of this tragic death is unknown. As a precautionary measure, the batch of vaccine involved has been quarantined until the situation is fully understood.”
More than 1.4 million doses of Cervarix have been given as part of the national immunisation programme in the UK.
To date the vast majority of suspected adverse reactions reported to the MHRA in association with Cervarix vaccine have related either to the signs and symptoms of recognised side effects listed in the product information or were due to the injection process and not the vaccine itself.

The Director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has been nominated as the new WHO Regional Director for Europe at a meeting in Copenhagen.
Hungarian Zsuzsanna Jakab was one of five candidates for the post; the others being from Georgia, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands.
She is scheduled to take up her new position on February 1 next, succeeding Dr Marc Danzon, who has served as the Regional Director for Europe for the past 10 years.
The appointment is subject to confirmation by the WHO’s global Executive Board next January.
Prior to joining the ECDC in 2005, Jakab was Secretary of State in Hungary’s Ministry of Health, and before that worked at the WHO Regional Office for Europe in Denmark for 11 years.
Under Mrs Jakab’s leadership, the ECDC has become an essential EU Agency providing technical and scientific advice and supporting the European Commission and EU Member States in responding to public health threats, including the current Pandemic (H1N1) 2009.
The European Commission has already initiated the recruitment procedure for a new ECDC Director, since the five-year mandate was due to expire in 2010. -D.G.

The BBC has reported that the first baby conceived with the help of a new egg screening technique has been born to a 41-year-old woman who had had 13 failed IVF treatments.

The new screening method, developed in Nottingham, allows a rapid analysis of the genetic material in fertilised eggs to check for chromosomal abnormalities.