Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:
S. Korean Scientist Bought Stem Cell Research Eggs
A scientist who's part of South Korea's world famous stem-cell research program admitted Monday that he paid 20 women for contributing their eggs to be used in human embryonic stem cell research.
The eggs were used for research in what was the first successful attempt to clone human embryos and harvest stem cells from them. The embryo is destroyed in the process of harvesting the stem cells.
At a news conference, Roh Sung Il, head of Miz Medi Hospital in Seoul, told reporters that he had suspected his purchase of the embryos might be controversial and kept the information from fellow researchers, the International Herald Tribune reported.
Roh said he gave each woman $1,440, which was meant to compensate them for time off work and other inconveniences.
The purchase of the eggs occurred before South Korea adopted a bioethics law that banned financial rewards for egg donors, the International Herald Tribune reported.
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China Tightens Bird Flu Measures
Chinese officials have ordered a tightening of already strict anti-bird flu measures in response to two new bird flu outbreaks in poultry, the Associated Press reported.
These latest outbreaks are the 16th and 17th in Chinese poultry in recent weeks and occurred even though the country has been pushing to vaccinate billions of poultry against bird flu.
The new regulations require local authorities to establish bird flu warning networks and to stockpile disinfectant and other supplies, the AP reported.
Also on Monday, Romania announced plans to destroy 2,000 poultry after bird flu was detected in hens in a village along the Danube River.
In related news, more than 67,000 ducks and geese will be killed in the Canadian province of British Columbia after a bird in the Chilliwack area tested positive for avian flu, but not the deadly H5N1 strain.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said the virus was a mild North American strain of bird flu that's been present on the continent for decades. However, they decided on the cull because this mild strain of bird flu virus does have the potential to mutate into a more dangerous version, the Globe and Mail reported.
The CFIA also announced that two wild ducks in the province of Manitoba tested positive for the H5N1 strain. However, it was a low-pathogenic version of H5N1 and not as dangerous as the strain currently plagued Asia.
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FDA Appoints New Director for Women's Health
Dr. Kathleen Uhl is the new director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Office of Women's Health, the FDA announced Monday.
A physician at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Uhl most recently served as supervisory medical officer in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. She has worked in laboratory and clinical research, clinical practice, drug application review, drug safety oversight and women's health issues. She'll begin her official duties as the new director in mid-December.
Uhl replaces Susan Wood, who resigned in August to protest the agency's delay in allowing over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception.
"Kathleen brings a breadth of professional experience, as well as a strong science background and passion for women's health, to her new position," FDA Acting Commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach said in a prepared statement.
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40 Million People Infected With HIV: WHO Report
Almost five million people around the world were infected with HIV last year, bringing to 40 million the estimated number of people with the AIDS virus, says a World Health Organization (WHO) report released Monday.
About 3.1 million people died from the virus last year, which means that AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized in 1981, the Associated Press reported.
However, efforts over the past five years to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS are finally starting to show results in some countries, the WHO report noted.
Previously, there were declines in HIV infection rates noted in countries such as Senegal, Uganda and Thailand.
"Now we have Kenya, several of the Caribbean countries and Zimbabwe with a decline," UNAIDS chief Peter Piot told the AP, adding that all these countries have heavily promoted safe-sex and other HIV prevention.
Pregnant women in urban Kenya have shown the most dramatic decline in HIV prevalence, from about 28 percent in 1999 to 9 percent in 2003, the AP reported.
The WHO said that HIV epidemics continue to grow in southern Africa and expanding epidemics are occurring in Central and East Asia and Eastern Europe. There are indications that Indonesia and Pakistan could be on the brink of serious epidemics.
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Health Official: U.S. Won't Have Enough Bird Flu Vaccine for 3-5 Years
It will take the United States at least three years to have enough doses of flu vaccine to stave off a pandemic, according to Health and Human Services Secretary MIke Leavitt.
Speaking on the NBC TV progam, "Meet the Press," Leavitt said the U.S. doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to make and distribute the 300 million doses of a vaccine to protect the country's population, and it won't have that capacity for three to five years.
The issue of a major fatal flu outbreak has been heightened because incidents of avian flu killing 67 people in Asian countries in the past year have caused health officials to become concerned. So far, however, there have been no reports of the bird flu being transmitted from person to person.
"What we all learned from (Hurricane) Katrina is sometimes we have to think clearly about the unthinkable," the Associated Press quotes Leavitt as saying. "We're probably closer to a pandemic at any time in the last 37 years. We're not as prepared as we need to be."
While scientists can't predict what type of virus the avian flu could mutate into so that it would cause a pandemic, the wire service says The U.S. has only enough doses for 4.3 million people. And says the A.P., President Bush has proposed stockpiling enough of the anti-flu drugs Tamiflu and Relenza for 81 million people. There is some evidence that these drugs might be effective against a bird flu virus.
