Antidepressants don’t raise stillbirth risk: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Taking common antidepressants during pregnancy doesn’t increase a woman’s risk of having a stillbirth, according to a new study of over one million Nordic women.

The drugs, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, include fluoxetine (marketed as Prozac) and citalopram (Celexa).

Earlier studies have tied SSRIs to a slightly higher rate of some kinds of birth defects and newborn lung problems. But whether the drugs also raise a woman’s chance of stillbirth – when the fetus dies in the uterus after at least 20 weeks of pregnancy – has been unclear.

“Studies previously have not really been large enough to answer this question,” said Dr. Olof Stephansson, the lead author of the new report from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

“From our study, we don’t find any reason to stop taking your medication, because untreated depression may be harmful for the pregnancy and the baby,” he told Reuters Health.

Stephansson and his colleagues consulted prescription drug registries and birth records from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, including more than 1.6 million births between 1996 and 2007. Just over 29,000 of the mothers, or close to two percent, had filled a prescription for an antidepressant during their pregnancy.

Overall, between three and four of every 1,000 births was a stillbirth, the research team reported this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In addition, about two of every 1,000 babies died within four weeks of being born and one in 1,000 died between one and 12 months of age.

Antidepressant use at any time during pregnancy was initially tied to a slightly higher risk of stillbirth. But when Stephansson and his colleagues took into account women’s general health, age and whether they smoked, any effect of the drugs disappeared.

Moms-to-be who were on SSRIs tended to be older and were more likely to smoke and have diabetes and high blood pressure than those who weren’t taking antidepressants, Stephansson said.

There was still a slightly higher chance of stillbirth among women who took the drugs very early in their pregnancies – the time when a fetus is thought to be most vulnerable to its mother’s medications and environmental exposures. But because less than 100 women fit into that category and had a stillbirth the finding “should be interpreted with caution,” the researchers said.

Blaming pregnancy complications on any specific drug is always a challenge, according to one researcher not involved in the new study.

“It’s difficult and under most circumstances impossible to separate the effects of SSRIs and depression itself or the lifestyle associated with depression,” said Dr. Richard Shelton, a psychiatrist who has studied antidepressant use in pregnancy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

For example, even when women’s general health and behavior are accounted for, they might not mention drinking and illegal drug use – which can be tied to both depression and pregnancy complications.

But so far, the evidence suggests the effects of antidepressant use during pregnancy are “pretty neutral,” Shelton told Reuters Health.

IF YOU NEED THEM, TAKE THEM: RESEARCHERS

Women who are taking antidepressants and planning a pregnancy should talk with both their obstetrician and psychiatrist to figure out what will be safest for them and their baby, Stephansson said.

But the bottom line, he added, is that “you should stick to the lowest dose possible and not stop with the medication if you need it.”

“The general recommendation is if a woman can be off an antidepressant medication during pregnancy, that’s probably a good idea. I think that’s probably a good idea for any kind of medication,” said Shelton, because all drugs may have small, unknown risks.

“But if a woman is depressed enough to warrant treatment, then treatment is probably reasonable,” he added. That can mean antidepressants or other options such as talk therapy.

Shelton said women should also seek treatment for other health and lifestyle issues tied to depression, such as being overweight and smoking, preferably before getting pregnant.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/VvAQrl Journal of the American Medical Association, online January 1, 2013.

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Most countries offer the Pill over-the-counter

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Unlike women in the U.S., Canada and much of Europe, most women in the world can access the birth control pill without a prescription, according to a new study.

As medical organizations and other groups push to ease the prescription requirements for the Pill in the U.S. and elsewhere, “we can start to use this information to… get a sense of the safety of women having access to this method where no prescription is required,” said Kari White, who studies birth control at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

The Pill is generally considered safe, said White, who was not involved in the new work, and some studies have shown that, without a doctor’s input, women can accurately screen themselves for risk factors to steer away from using the Pill if it’s not appropriate for them.

Earlier this year, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a leading group of women’s doctors, endorsed the idea of making the birth control pill available without a prescription (see Reuters Health report of November 20, 2012 here: http://reut.rs/UH0Zz9).

In a survey of government health officials, pharmaceutical companies, family planning groups, medical providers and other experts in 147 countries Dr. Daniel Grossman, of Ibis Reproductive Health in Oakland, California, and his colleagues found that women in the U.S. and 44 other countries need a prescription to get birth control pills.

The group reported in the medical journal Contraception that while another 56 countries had laws requiring prescriptions, in practice women could access the contraception over-the-counter.

Thirty-five countries legally allowed access to oral contraceptives over-the-counter, and 11 countries allowed over-the-counter access as long as the woman is screened to ensure that she is a good candidate.

“The patterns we saw were interesting,” said Grossman. “Higher income countries – western Europe, Australia, Japan and North America – generally require a prescription.”

Grossman told Reuters Health he couldn’t explain why these patterns have emerged.

“Perhaps in places like China and India that have pills available over-the-counter formally without a prescription might be consistent with strong national family planning programs,” he speculated.

Dr. Ward Cates, of FHI 360, a research organization in Durham, North Carolina, said the lack of a prescription requirement might also reflect a general approach to making health care more accessible in countries where it is less available.

In some countries, “healthcare tends to be more fragmented and healthcare oversight tends to be more fragmented. Therefore the availability of products tends to percolate to outlets that tend to be more accessible to the public,” said Cates, who was not part of the study.

Grossman said it will be useful for countries looking to ease restrictions on birth control access to look to the experiences of these countries.

“Will this information about the availability of pills being over-the-counter in other countries influence policy here? Probably not,” Grossman told Reuters Health.

“But I do think it helps to put it in perspective that this is not something revolutionary.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/S51BnH Contraception, online December 10, 2012.

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Biden will discuss “fiscal cliff” deal with House Democrats

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Vice President Joe Biden will meet with fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives on Tuesday to discuss the “fiscal cliff” deal that he forged with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a Democratic aide said.

The meeting is to be held at the Capitol at 12:15 p.m. ET (1715 GMT).

Biden needed to help sell Senate Democrats on the deal before they joined Republicans at about 2 a.m. ET (0700 GMT) in approving the measure. The Republican-led House may vote on the bill as early as later in the day.

(Reporting By Thomas Ferraro; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Eleven Ways to Avoid Answering a Question: A Year in Review

When my grandfather was alive, each of his children and grandchildren was responsible for reporting to him about the world in which they worked. He loved knowledge; he always had. As the only scientist in the family, I was in charge of “science.” This never quite seemed fair and yet I did what I could until the day he asked me to explain dark matter. I am a broadly trained scientist. I have worked on bacteria, birds, plants, insects and a great deal else. But, when pressed, late in the evening, dark matter was beyond my comfort zone. I faltered. Sometimes with my grandfather, faltering could be propped up with grandstanding, but on this particular day there was no such doing. He knew I was guessing. His shoulders slumped and he announced softly, “I don’t think I am ever going to learn everything.” My ignorance was the BS that broke the camel’s back.

In part because of my grandfather I have always felt a responsibility to answer questions people ask about science. This year, I decided I would make this responsibility more conscious. I would try to focus much of my writing on answering questions that came up in my daily life, questions that I am responsible for because I am a scientist. It was a sort of New Year’s resolution. My other resolution was to write shorter articles.1–Sitting around enjoying a glass of wine with my family and our friends Ari Lit and Michelle Trautwein, Ari asked, Hey dude, why do we drink alcohol? Do monkeys drink alcohol? This led me to think about the big story of alcohol and, in as much, to write a whole series about our complex relationship with the yeasts that, as waste, produce our favorite drinks. It ended up becoming a forty thousand word online series, about alcohol, civilization and yeast. So much for the resolution to write short articles. Also, I forgot to check on the monkeys.2–My favorite questions tend to come from kids and earnest parents. This year at my daughter’s school, every third student and then every other students and then, jeez, almost every student seemed to have lice. Parents asked me, “what should we do about lice?” This was a follow-up to an article I had written years prior in response to a similar query. I was able to tell the story of how the louse problem (or success, depending on your perspective) came to be, over the last million years. But I failed to really answer what a parent should do if their kid gets lice. It turns out parents whose kids have lice don’t want to hear about ancient hominids and their lice. Go figure.Image 1. Picture of the louse species, Pthirus pubis, descended from an interaction between a human ancestor and a gorilla ancestor and that is all I am saying. Photo courtesy of the CDC. 3-In the last chapter of my book The Wild Life of Our Bodies I argue for a more serious gardening of nature in the places we live. Reading this, someone wondered about the ways in which we garden evolution itself. She emailed asking, Could we favor the evolution of good species in our houses? I wasn’t sure and am still not, but the question prompted me to reconsider the ways in which we have gardened evolution historically. I wrote the Garden of Our Neglect about this history. I then started to consider how we might favor the presence (if not evolution) of beneficial species on our bodies and in our homes. This led me to propose the Ecological Theory of Disease and to write Letting Biodiversity Get Under Our Skin, and How Clean Living is Bad for You. I also wrote an article about what our body might be doing to favor beneficial species in Your Appendix Could Save Your Life. None of these articles really told anyone which species to plant much less engender in their invisible gardens of indoor life.4-Another night with friends, we sat around talking about paleo diets. Ari asked who we should count as our ancestors, which ancestors should we consider if we were to eat ancestral diets? This debate inspired the piece Were Our Ancient Ancestors Vegetarians and then How to Eat Like a Chimpanzee. Later when Ari tried an essentially all nut and fruit super-fiber diet I found myself writing about the Hidden Truth about Calories. With these articles, I learned about diet, but I also learned that people can get very angry when it comes to discussing food. I never really answered Ari’s question.5-At one evening talk associated with the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC, someone asked me why her armpits smell sweet when she lives in the desert. She asked me that question in Durham, not in a desert, so I felt compelled to take her word for it rather than sniff around the story, but I did begin to wonder about what we do and don’t know about the microbial smells produced on our bodies and those of, for example, dogs, so I wrote Why Sick People Smell Bad. The article was fun, but I still don’t know why the woman had sweet pits; perhaps it is just her nature.6-My daughter (who sometimes seems to channel the pure inquisitivness of my grandfather) asked me “Why are our bodies warm and not cold?” This is the kind of question she asks so as to avoid going to bed. It led me to write the article How Killer Fungus May Have Made us Hot Blooded. The article offers a partial, possible, speculative answer to her question, which is her favorite kind of answer because it means she can stay up later as she asks follow-up questions.7–My son has started asking, “papa, who took your hair?” I told him, as I told my daughter when she was smaller, that the squirrels took it for their nest. This just seemed to make him afraid of squirrels so I decided to figure out the real answer, the result was a story in New Scientist (unfortunately pay-walled) about the mystery of baldness and its evolution. Balding, it turns out, is fascinating, but why we bald is still largely unresolved. Back to the squirrels.8–I sometimes introduce talks about social insects by mentioning the similarities between insect and human societies and the idea that insect societies can allow us to learn about our own. In response (and during election season), someone recently asked “who would the ants vote for?” The closest I could get to an answer was to discuss how other animals (mostly honey bees) choose their leaders. I figured out that we know far less about leaders in other societies, including those of ants, than I had thought.9–Piotr Naskrecki visited my house and found, in my basement, a species of camel cricket apparently native to Japan. He also found, to my wife’s dismay, two species of “interesting roaches.” This spurred me to ask other people about their camel crickets, which caused me to have to answer how a Japanese camel cricket has come to take over our basements? I don’t really have an answer yet, though if you check out the website there are ways for you to help me find one.10–For a number of years now, people have been offering me story ideas. “Man, you should totally write about…” Its often difficult to follow up on such ideas, but this year I tried. When my family and I were living in Parma, Italy Donato Grosso asked me if I knew about the species of crab living under Rome. “That,” he said, “would be a good story.” It was. It became “new species of crab living in Rome.” A visit to Girona, Spain where a friend had built a niche in his house for animals to colonize got me wondering about the niches in our cities that we have built for wild species. Pera said, “you should write about it.” I did, in the form of a story about the most common bird in the world, the house sparrow. There were no questions here, but even without a question to answer I seem to have written something slightly different from what Donato or Pera might have imagined.11-Finally, I have started to try to answer the question I have heard most often throughout my career, including from my grandfather, “what do I do about the ants in my kitchen?” Answering this question has required figuring out what the heck is going on with ants in kitchens and backyards and so I wrote one article about a backyard discovery made by English majors, another about a discovery made by an eight year old and another still about how little we seem to know about the most common ant species in eastern North America. I also recruited Eleanor Spicer to write Dr. Eleanor’s Book of Common Ants. None of these answered the question about what to do about the ants in your kitchen, though maybe the distraction bought me some time.Image 2. Camponotus pennsylvannicus, a common backyard (and occasionally kitchen) ant. Photo by Alex (the great) Wild.In short, although I’ve written something like 200,000 words this year, very few seem to have directly answered the questions I was asked. So much for my New Year’s resolution, though maybe part of the problem is that we still know so little about so many fields that it is nearly impossible to make it to the end of a story without encountering the unknown. Perhaps I can try to write shorter answers, answers short enough that I don’t get to what we don’t know. History is not on my side. I seem incapable of writing short articles (one of my shortest articles this year was repeatedly described as “long form”). Also, I come from a long history of “long form” people. My grandfather’s stories went long and, well, his father was apparently worse. When asked to comment on the history of the Episcopal church in his town, Greenville, Mississippi, my great grandfather wrote that he could not write about the history of the Episcopal church in Greenville without commenting on the history of the Episcopal church more generally. And he could not, he said, write about the Lutheran church in general without commenting upon the history of religion. And so he began. My people. It seems we start at the very beginning and answer a question similar too but not identical too the one we were asked. In this light, if my granddad were still around, I’d tell him now that, yes, I can explain dark matter now, but before I do I need to explain the big bang, which, ironically is what I do in my first article of 2013. So stay tuned and send me your questions. But don’t be surprised if, in commenting upon the history of your question, I need to comment on a broader church, the history of life or even the universe.Go ahead and post your science questions you think should be answered in 2013 here…   

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Palestinians say 9 dead from swine flu outbreak

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A Palestinian health official says an outbreak swine flu has killed nine people.

Deputy Health Minister Asad Ramlawi also said Monday more than 225 people have been infected by the H1N1 influenza strain, known as swine flu. He said more than 25,000 vaccinations have been administered this year to prevent it. The West Bank has 2.5 million residents.

The West Bank has been struck by swine flu before. Dozens died in the Palestinian territories during the 2009 worldwide pandemic.

The first outbreak was discovered in Mexico in March 2009. Thousands died around the world, causing a global panic. The World Health Organization declared swine flu the first global flu pandemic in 40 years.

H1N1 is now considered a seasonal flu and included in the standard annual flu vaccine.

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Factbox: U.S. “fiscal cliff,” tax impact of no deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Higher federal taxes for millions of businesses and individuals will become law on Tuesday unless Congress acts to stop them. These taxes, worth $ 500 billion, comprise the bulk of what is known as the “fiscal cliff” problem.

The following shows the probable impact on taxpayers if Congress does not act on Monday, or does not come back later and undo these tax increases, based on data from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

INDIVIDUAL TAXES

If midnight passes with no deal, lower individual tax rates enacted in 2001 on a temporary basis under former President George W. Bush will expire on December 31.

The income tax brackets will rise to 15, 28, 31, 36, and 39.6 percent from the current 10, 15, 25, 28, 33 and 35 percent for nearly 160 million taxpayers.

The poorest fifth of taxpayers, about 40 million households, will see an average tax increase of about $ 412.

The most affluent fifth, about 23 million taxpayers, will typically pay about $ 14,173 more in income tax.

The wealthiest 1 percent, about 1.1 million taxpayers, will see an average tax hike of about $ 120,000.

PAYROLL TAX

About 160 million workers will pay higher Social Security payroll taxes. The rate goes up to 6.2 percent on January 31 when the current, temporary 4.2 percent rate expires. The lower rate was extended in 2012 to give workers a little extra in their paychecks as a way to boost the economy. Unlike some of the other tax measures, there appears to be little interest from Republicans or Democrats in continuing the lower rate.

INVESTMENT TAXES

The capital gains tax rate will rise to 20 percent from 15 percent for most taxpayers who have income from gains on their investments. The tax rate on dividends will rise to the top income tax rate, 39.6 percent, from the current 15 percent dividend tax rate.

ESTATE TAX

The estate tax will rise to 55 percent from 35 percent. The value of assets exempted also drops to $ 1 million per person from its current $ 5 million per person.

ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX

About 27 million Americans could be required to pay the alternative minimum tax (AMT), a tax that initially was intended to make sure the wealthy paid some tax. The AMT fix that Congress has enacted annually had resulted in only 4 million Americans paying the AMT.

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

About 2.1 million long-term unemployed Americans will see their extended jobless benefits cut off as of January 1, according to the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy groups.

EXTENSIONS OF TAX BREAKS

A mix of tax breaks for individuals and businesses worth tens of billions of dollars annually, including the research and development tax credit for business, will lapse. These include deductions for payments of state and local taxes and tax benefits for college tuition.

MEDICARE PAYMENTS TO DOCTORS

Doctors treating elderly and disabled patients who make up the Medicare population will see a double-digit cut to in rates paid by the federal government health care program. Medicare patients could have a tougher time finding doctors who will treat them.

(Editing by Fred Barbash and Jackie Frank)

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Italian Nobel scientist Montalcini dies at 103

ROME (Reuters) – Rita Levi Montalcini, joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine and an Italian Senator for Life, died on Sunday at the age of 103, her family said.

The first Nobel laureate to reach 100 years of age, she won the prize in 1986 with American Stanley Cohen for their discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF), a protein that makes developing cells grow by stimulating surrounding nerve tissue.

Her research helped in the treatment of spinal cord injuries and has increased understanding of cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer’s and conditions such as dementia and autism.

One of twins born to a Jewish family in Turin in 1909, Montalcini was the oldest living recipient of the prize.

During World War Two, the Allies’ bombing of Turin forced her to flee to the countryside where she established a mini-laboratory. She fled to Florence after the German invasion of Italy and lived in hiding there for a while, later working as a doctor in a refugee camp.

After the war she moved to St. Louis in the United States to work at Washington University, where she went on to make her groundbreaking NGF discoveries.

She also set up a research unit in Rome and in 1975 became the first woman to be made a full member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1975. She won several other awards for her contributions to medical and scientific research.

Her face was instantly recognizable in Italy and she was well known as a dignified and respected intellectual, a counterbalance to the image of women succeeding through their looks and sexuality, exacerbated during the scandal-plagued era of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Two days after her birthday in April this year she posted a note on Facebook saying it was important never to give up on life or fall into mediocrity and passive resignation.

“I’ve lost a bit of sight, and a lot of hearing. At conferences I don’t see the projections and I don’t feel good. But I think more now than I did when I was 20. The body does what it wants. I am not the body, I am the mind,” she said.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said in a statement that Montalcini’s Nobel prize had been an honor for Italy, and praised her efforts to encourage young people, especially women, to play a central role in scientific research.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Italian Nobel scientist Montalcini dies at 103

ROME (Reuters) – Rita Levi Montalcini, joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine and an Italian Senator for Life, died on Sunday at the age of 103, her family said.

The first Nobel laureate to reach 100 years of age, she won the prize in 1986 with American Stanley Cohen for their discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF), a protein that makes developing cells grow by stimulating surrounding nerve tissue.

Her research helped in the treatment of spinal cord injuries and has increased understanding of cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer’s and conditions such as dementia and autism.

One of twins born to a Jewish family in Turin in 1909, Montalcini was the oldest living recipient of the prize.

During World War Two, the Allies’ bombing of Turin forced her to flee to the countryside where she established a mini-laboratory. She fled to Florence after the German invasion of Italy and lived in hiding there for a while, later working as a doctor in a refugee camp.

After the war she moved to St. Louis in the United States to work at Washington University, where she went on to make her groundbreaking NGF discoveries.

She also set up a research unit in Rome and in 1975 became the first woman to be made a full member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1975. She won several other awards for her contributions to medical and scientific research.

Her face was instantly recognizable in Italy and she was well known as a dignified and respected intellectual, a counterbalance to the image of women succeeding through their looks and sexuality, exacerbated during the scandal-plagued era of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Two days after her birthday in April this year she posted a note on Facebook saying it was important never to give up on life or fall into mediocrity and passive resignation.

“I’ve lost a bit of sight, and a lot of hearing. At conferences I don’t see the projections and I don’t feel good. But I think more now than I did when I was 20. The body does what it wants. I am not the body, I am the mind,” she said.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said in a statement that Montalcini’s Nobel prize had been an honor for Italy, and praised her efforts to encourage young people, especially women, to play a central role in scientific research.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Brazil president, cancer survivor, pronounced healthy

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who survived lymphoma cancer in 2009, was pronounced healthy by doctors after a routine exam on Friday.

Rousseff’s health was “within normal levels,” according to a statement released by her office following the check-up at the Sirio-Libanes Hospital in Sao Paulo, one of South America‘s leading cancer treatment centers.

Rousseff underwent chemotherapy in 2009 and briefly wore a wig, but the cancer went into remission and she appeared to be in good health by the time she staged her winning campaign for the presidency in 2010.

Concerns over her health have faded since then, although a bout with pneumonia and a lengthy recovery in 2011 have kept the issue on some investors’ radar screens.

(Reporting by Ana Flor, Writing by Brian Winter; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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Brazil president, cancer survivor, pronounced healthy

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who survived lymphoma cancer in 2009, was pronounced healthy by doctors after a routine exam on Friday.

Rousseff’s health was “within normal levels,” according to a statement released by her office following the check-up at the Sirio-Libanes Hospital in Sao Paulo, one of South America‘s leading cancer treatment centers.

Rousseff underwent chemotherapy in 2009 and briefly wore a wig, but the cancer went into remission and she appeared to be in good health by the time she staged her winning campaign for the presidency in 2010.

Concerns over her health have faded since then, although a bout with pneumonia and a lengthy recovery in 2011 have kept the issue on some investors’ radar screens.

(Reporting by Ana Flor, Writing by Brian Winter; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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Cancer Sucks to donate $150,000 to cancer research

It will be the largest single donation given by Cancer Sucks, stated the organization’s executive director, Rick Horton, in a recent release.

Cancer Sucks, which will be the recipient of funds raised from the upcoming The Party! New Year’s Eve event in Tulsa’s Blue Dome District, will be donating proceeds from the Shiprocked Music Cruise charity auction, as well as the John F. Henry PanSlam Golf Classic for pancreatic cancer research.

Cancer Sucks will donate $ 70,000 to Gateway for Cancer Research, $ 40,000 to Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences and $ 40,000 to the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

Cancer Sucks was established in 1998 by the family of Donna Holland White, who died in 1996. The organization, which is run by volunteers who have been touched by cancer, focuses on raising as much money for cancer research as possible. Corporate partnerships fund overhead expenses, allowing Cancer Sucks to donate all proceeds from events to cancer research.

For more, tulsaworld.com/cancersucks

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Kenya Hospital Imprisons New Moms Who Can’t Pay

The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he’s accused of: detaining mothers who can’t pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it’s the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn’t let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn’t afford were $ 60 and $ 160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women’s behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

“We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient,” Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. “The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers.”

“They stay there until they pay. They must pay,” he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. “If you don’t pay the hospital will collapse.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi’s poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi’s slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $ 12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn’t pay the $ 60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

“We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four,” she said. “They abuse you, they call you names,” she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor’s 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family’s 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $ 18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi’s mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $ 160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

“I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me,” said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $ 5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn’t have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

———

Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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Study finds spiritual care still rare at end of life

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Physicians and nurses at four Boston medical centers cited a lack of training to explain why they rarely provide spiritual care for terminally ill cancer patients – although most considered it an important part of treatment at the end of life.

“I was quite surprised that it was really just lack of training that dominated the reasons why,” senior author Dr. Tracy Balboni, a radiation oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, told Reuters Health.

Current U.S. palliative care guidelines encourage medical practitioners to pay close attention to religious and spiritual needs that may arise during a patient’s end-of-life care.

However, the 204 physicians who participated in the study reported providing spiritual care to just 24 percent of their patients. Among 118 nurses, the figure was 31 percent.

The 69 patients with advanced cancers who took the survey reported even lower rates, saying 14 percent of nurses and six percent of physicians had provided them some sort of spiritual care.

Past research has shown that spiritual care for seriously ill patients improves their quality of life, increases their overall satisfaction with hospital care and decreases aggressive medical treatment, which may in turn result in lower overall health spending.

“There was a time when nurses and physicians may have said, ‘That’s not my job,’ but I think the tides are changing,” said palliative care researcher Betty Ferrell of City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment hospital in Duarte, California.

“I think we are realizing we can no longer ignore this aspect of care,” said Ferrell, a professor of nursing who was not involved in the new study.

Yet the reasons why spiritual care is rarely incorporated into patient treatment and dialogue have been poorly understood.

To gain more insight, Balboni and her colleagues designed a survey – the first of its kind, to their knowledge – to compare attitudes toward spiritual care across randomly chosen patients, nurses and doctors in oncology departments at four hospitals.

The questions were geared toward identifying barriers preventing healthcare professionals from delivering spiritual care, beginning with whether anyone felt it was inappropriate for them to be doing so.

The participants’ answers indicated that, on the contrary, a majority of providers and patients supported the appropriateness of eight specific examples of spiritual care, such as a doctor or nurse praying with a patient at his or her request or referring the patient to a hospital chaplain.

Next, the researchers asked participants to rate previous spiritual care experiences. Again, most ranked these as having a positive impact on care. A fourth possibility offered to nurses and doctors was lack of time.

“Indeed we found that on average 73 percent reported time to be a significant barrier to spiritual care provision to patients,” Balboni told Reuters Health in an email.

But those who noted insufficient time as a problem provided spiritual care just as often as those who reported having enough time. That suggested time was not an issue after all, she added.

In fact, a lack of training stood out as the biggest barrier to providing spiritual care in this small study.

Only 13 percent of doctors and nurses reported having ever received spiritual care training.

But those who had training were seven to 11 times more likely to provide spiritual care to their patients than those who hadn’t been trained.

A lack of “models” for training healthcare professionals to tend to patients’ spiritual needs seems to be the underlying problem, Balboni told Reuters Health.

“There are some basic models, but a rigorously developed spiritual care training model has not been established,” she said.

Ferrell, who leads End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium workshops, said such small-scale organized training opportunities are drops in the bucket of a huge unmet training need.

“We can’t practice what we don’t know,” she said. “Physicians and nurses have never been taught to access and respond to spiritual need.”

In addition to training, the field of spiritual care needs a clear definition, said Dr. Christina Puchalski, director of the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health in Washington, D.C.

“There is quite a bit of controversy about asking only about religion,” Puchalski said. “But previous studies have shown that it’s not a patient’s particular religious denomination that matters, but what gives meaning and purpose in peoples’ lives -things such as family, arts, work, nature, yoga and other values.”

Puchalski, who invented a basic spiritual assessment questionnaire that is in wide use, added that the study could have benefitted by asking patients if nurses and doctors acted compassionately toward them, which is another example of spiritual care.

In a country full of diverse cultures, spiritual care may be intimidating to medical workers, but training can help with that, Ferrell said.

“For example, if we have a patient who says, ‘I’m very devout in my faith and I never make decisions without consulting my rabbi,’ then we immediately take that into account – perhaps by giving the patient extra time between procedures,” she noted.

“Patients are telling us spiritual care has to be done with greater intention,” Ferrell said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Zm7Fey Journal of Clinical Oncology, online December 17, 2012

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Obama, Congress set for late push on “fiscal cliff”

WASHINGTON/HONOLULU (Reuters) – President Barack Obama is due back in Washington early Thursday for a final effort to negotiate a deal with Congress to avert or at least postpone the “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and government spending cuts set to begin next week.

No specific bill dealing with the cliff was on the schedule of either the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives, which are expected to return on Thursday after the holiday break. In Congress, the corridors were almost empty and the doors to members’ rooms were locked.

Investors are closely watching the talks, concerned that going over the cliff could throw the economy into recession. U.S. stocks slipped on Wednesday after retailers reported disappointing holiday sales as shoppers tightened belts possibly due to fiscal cliff worries.

Aides and members of Congress have said that a modest, last-minute measure to avoid the spending cuts and most of the tax hikes could pass the Democratic-controlled Senate if Republicans agree not use a procedural roadblock known as a filibuster, a commitment that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has so far not made.

The legislative focus continues to shift from deficit reduction to averting the immediate shock of the December 31 cliff dive.

“This is the ‘Break Glass’ scenario that we have long believed would rise in probability the closer we go to December 31, which essentially calls for extending all the rates for those individuals making under $ 200K and households under $ 250K and does not address the debt ceiling or the deficit,” analyst Chris Krueger of Guggenheim Securities wrote in a research note.

But to win approval in the Republican-controlled House of any bill that raises taxes on anyone, a rare bipartisan vote would be required. All 191 Democrats would have to team with up with at least 26 Republicans to get a majority if the bill included tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans, as Obama is demanding.

Some of those votes could conceivably come from among the 34 Republican members who are either retiring or were defeated in the November elections and no longer have to worry about the political fallout.

JANUARY SCRAMBLE?

In the alternative, Congress could let income taxes go up on everyone as now scheduled and then during the first week of January, scramble and get a quick deal to cut them back except for the highest brackets, along with a measure putting off the $ 109 billion in automatic spending cuts that most lawmakers want to avoid.

Once the clock ticks past midnight on December 31, no member of Congress would have to vote for a tax increase on anyone – taxes would have risen automatically – and the only votes would be to decrease tax rates for most Americans back to their 2012 levels.

Americans’ optimism that Obama and congressional leaders will reach a budget agreement before January 1 has waned in recent days, according to a Gallup poll released on Wednesday. Fifty percent believe a deal will be reached – a drop of 7 percentage points from the previous week – and 48 percent are doubtful. The poll was taken just after talks ran into trouble last week.

Obama and congressional lawmakers left Washington on Friday for the Christmas holiday with negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff in limbo.

The president will cut short his vacation in Hawaii and leave for Washington later on Wednesday, arriving in the capital early on Thursday.

Obama is expected to turn to a trusted Democratic ally, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to help craft a quick deal.

White House aides began discussing details of the year-end budget measure with Senate Democratic counterparts early this week.

Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz is urging workers in the company’s roughly 120 Washington-area coffee shops to write “come together” on customers’ cups on Thursday and Friday to send a message to sharply divided politicians.

“We’re paying attention, we’re greatly disappointed in what’s going on and we deserve better,” Schultz told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan in Washington and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Eric Beech)

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‘Bumping’ Your Way to Safer Sex With a Smartphone App

Reported by Dr. Lauren Browne:

Let’s face it.  Teens have sex.  Parents may choose to ignore it, and teens may choose to deny it, but almost 50 percent of American high school students are having sex, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. And each year, millions of those sexually active teens contract sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes and HIV.

Now one doctor hopes to curb the spread of STDs in this tech savvy group with a smartphone app that lets users “bump” their STD status.

It’s called ‘safe bumping,’” said Dr. Michael Nusbaum, the New Jersey developer of MedXSafe, a feature of the new app called MedXCom.  “If you happen to be out at a bar or a fraternity house or wherever, and you meet someone, you can then bump phones and exchange contact information and STD status.”

The app’s special feature, according to Nussbaum, encourages dating singles to go to the doctor for regular STD checks.  Those who screen negative can ask their doctors to document their STD-free status on the app, allowing users to share the information with whomever they choose.

An alarming 19 million new sexually transmitted infections occur each year, and rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea are on the rise, according to a new report released this month by the CDC.  More than 1.4 million chlamydia infections were reported in 2011, up 8 percent from the previous year.  Cases of gonorrhea were up by 4 percent, marking the second consecutive year of increases.

Nearly half of all infections occur in young people, between the ages of 15 to 24, a group that can be particularly devastated by the associated health effects.

“[Some] undetected and untreated STDs can increase a person’s risk for HIV and cause other serious health consequences, such as infertility,” said Mary McFarlane, an acting chief in the Division of STD Prevention at the CDC.  Harnessing modern social networking technology to prevent these infections may appeal to a younger tech-savvy generation.

MedXSafe is just one of several Internet-based programs devoted to easing confidential STD-status sharing between sexual partners.  Services like Qpid.me, whose slogan is Spread the Love, Nothing Else and U Should Know, designed by a former college student and his girlfriend, also allow their users to check on a partner’s STD status.

But could these services offer a false sense of security to teens who believe that, with a simple phone bump, they have the green light to have unprotected sex?

“It can take months for HIV to show up on a test,” said Renee Williams, executive director of SAFE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to abstinence education.  “So you can test negative today, go out on Friday night and have sex, and then get retested later and find out that you had HIV all along.”

The app does nothing to prevent unplanned pregnancy, and may even encourage high-risk behaviors that young people might otherwise not have been tempted to try, said Williams.

Nor is the app likely to be completely reliable, said Dr. J. Joseph Speidel, director of communication at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

“Does it come with a condom?” asked Dr. Richard Besser, ABC’s chief health and medical editor, who’s also a pediatrician and former acting director at the CDC.

But the app’s creator said it does promote regular STD testing and encourages potential partners to openly discuss safe sex practices.

“We’re recognizing that this behavior is going to take place no matter what we do or what we say,” said Nusbaum.  “I have friends that are nuns and I’ve run this by them, and they also agree that it’s promoting safer behaviors.”

Although each program promises to keep health information strictly confidential, none are immune from cyber attacks.

But such attacks would not expose any users who have an STD, according to Nusbaum.  MedXSafe does not allow doctors to upload information about any tests that come back positive, including HIV.  A user with an infection is simply treated for the STD and then retested.  And that user is only confirmed STD-free via the app once subsequent test results come back negative.

Still, it is too early to tell whether these services will become popular with teens.  Lingering social stigma surrounding STDs might make potential partners reluctant to mention such an app when out at a party.

“It’s a big personal step to bring up using such an app,” said Noah Bloom, creator of a smartphone app called Jiber, which uses the same “bump” technology to electronically connect new friends.  “Who really wants anything in the way of getting lucky?”

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‘Bumping’ Your Way to Safer Sex With a Smartphone App

Reported by Dr. Lauren Browne:

Let’s face it.  Teens have sex.  Parents may choose to ignore it, and teens may choose to deny it, but almost 50 percent of American high school students are having sex, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. And each year, millions of those sexually active teens contract sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes and HIV.

Now one doctor hopes to curb the spread of STDs in this tech savvy group with a smartphone app that lets users “bump” their STD status.

It’s called ‘safe bumping,’” said Dr. Michael Nusbaum, the New Jersey developer of MedXSafe, a feature of the new app called MedXCom.  “If you happen to be out at a bar or a fraternity house or wherever, and you meet someone, you can then bump phones and exchange contact information and STD status.”

The app’s special feature, according to Nussbaum, encourages dating singles to go to the doctor for regular STD checks.  Those who screen negative can ask their doctors to document their STD-free status on the app, allowing users to share the information with whomever they choose.

An alarming 19 million new sexually transmitted infections occur each year, and rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea are on the rise, according to a new report released this month by the CDC.  More than 1.4 million chlamydia infections were reported in 2011, up 8 percent from the previous year.  Cases of gonorrhea were up by 4 percent, marking the second consecutive year of increases.

Nearly half of all infections occur in young people, between the ages of 15 to 24, a group that can be particularly devastated by the associated health effects.

“[Some] undetected and untreated STDs can increase a person’s risk for HIV and cause other serious health consequences, such as infertility,” said Mary McFarlane, an acting chief in the Division of STD Prevention at the CDC.  Harnessing modern social networking technology to prevent these infections may appeal to a younger tech-savvy generation.

MedXSafe is just one of several Internet-based programs devoted to easing confidential STD-status sharing between sexual partners.  Services like Qpid.me, whose slogan is Spread the Love, Nothing Else and U Should Know, designed by a former college student and his girlfriend, also allow their users to check on a partner’s STD status.

But could these services offer a false sense of security to teens who believe that, with a simple phone bump, they have the green light to have unprotected sex?

“It can take months for HIV to show up on a test,” said Renee Williams, executive director of SAFE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to abstinence education.  “So you can test negative today, go out on Friday night and have sex, and then get retested later and find out that you had HIV all along.”

The app does nothing to prevent unplanned pregnancy, and may even encourage high-risk behaviors that young people might otherwise not have been tempted to try, said Williams.

Nor is the app likely to be completely reliable, said Dr. J. Joseph Speidel, director of communication at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

“Does it come with a condom?” asked Dr. Richard Besser, ABC’s chief health and medical editor, who’s also a pediatrician and former acting director at the CDC.

But the app’s creator said it does promote regular STD testing and encourages potential partners to openly discuss safe sex practices.

“We’re recognizing that this behavior is going to take place no matter what we do or what we say,” said Nusbaum.  “I have friends that are nuns and I’ve run this by them, and they also agree that it’s promoting safer behaviors.”

Although each program promises to keep health information strictly confidential, none are immune from cyber attacks.

But such attacks would not expose any users who have an STD, according to Nusbaum.  MedXSafe does not allow doctors to upload information about any tests that come back positive, including HIV.  A user with an infection is simply treated for the STD and then retested.  And that user is only confirmed STD-free via the app once subsequent test results come back negative.

Still, it is too early to tell whether these services will become popular with teens.  Lingering social stigma surrounding STDs might make potential partners reluctant to mention such an app when out at a party.

“It’s a big personal step to bring up using such an app,” said Noah Bloom, creator of a smartphone app called Jiber, which uses the same “bump” technology to electronically connect new friends.  “Who really wants anything in the way of getting lucky?”

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12 Weeks is a Long Time to Wait for Breast Cancer Chemotherapy

FIRST PERSON | How long a wait is too long when it comes to treatment of breast cancer? A report published in the Dec. 19 issue of JNCI, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, states that after examining records from 6,622 women, the average time for a woman to wait for adjuvant chemotherapy (chemo given after surgery) for breast cancer is 12 weeks. After my surgery, I waited four weeks before chemotherapy began.

Reconstruction delays

A main cause for delays in starting chemotherapy after surgery was immediate reconstruction. Flap surgeries allow for immediate breast reconstruction. This type of surgery requires a long recuperation period. Chemotherapy impedes healing. All incisions must be healed and all drains removed before chemotherapy can start.

I chose breast implants for reconstruction. This process was partially started during my mastectomy — consider it partially immediate reconstruction. A tissue expander was put in after they removed my breast. Recovery time is significantly less than with flap surgery. I still had some stitches in when chemo started.

Testing and imaging delays

Testing such as 21-gene reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction assay testing and MRIs increased the time frame from lumpectomy or mastectomy to the start of chemotherapy. Some doctors use post-surgical MRIs to determine if clear margins were reached. If they are unhappy with the results of the MRI, a second surgery may be required, thus increasing the time before chemo can start.

My oncologist did not feel that any further testing other than a MUGA scan was necessary following my mastectomy. The MUGA scan was performed in order to check heart function before starting on treatment with a monoclonal antibody. Even though I had to go through this imaging, it did not delay the start of chemotherapy.

Other delays

One of the biggest causes of delays in starting chemotherapy treatment in minority women was access to health insurance. Black women who received Medicaid had the longest wait between surgery and the start of chemotherapy when compared to white women with private insurance. This is something that needs to change. When dealing with breast cancer, the faster and more aggressively it is treated, the better the prognosis for survival. There is no reason a woman should have to wait for treatment just because the government is paying for the chemotherapy.

Twelve weeks is too long to wait to start chemotherapy after surgery. Imaging should not have an impact on how long a person waits for chemo. Waiting too long, especially with aggressive forms of breast cancer could be the difference between life and death. I had imaging and started chemo just four weeks after my mastectomy. My outcome might have been very different had I been forced to wait an additional eight weeks before I started chemotherapy.

Lynda Altman was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2011. She writes a series for Yahoo! Shine called “My battle with breast cancer.”

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New Genetic Tests Determines Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer Risks

COMMENTARY | New research has uncovered that mutations in the PPM1D gene is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Unlike BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, the PPM1D mutation is not inherited. Instead, the mutation only shows up in the blood when breast cancer or ovarian cancer is present. Medical News Today quotes professor Nazneen Raham as saying, “This is one of our most interesting and exciting discoveries.”

Important discovery

PPM1D mutations are very important. Because of the way they show up in the blood, if you have this mutation you have a 1 in 5 chance of developing breast cancer or ovarian cancer. That is almost twice the average risk for breast cancer and it is 10 times the risk for ovarian cancer. Knowing if you carry this mutation will help women decide on imaging and other preventative treatments. Right now, the only genetic test we have is the BRCA test. As PPM1D shows, BRCA is not the only gene mutation that indicates and increased risk for breast or ovarian cancers.

The study

Unlike many recent studies that have so few participants it makes the data questionable, this study looked at 7,781 women with either breast cancer or ovarian cancer and compared the PPM1D gene to 5,861 women from the general population. This allows the results to be statistically significant because they looked at so many different results. What the study showed is that in the group of women who had cancer, the researchers found 25 faults in the PPM1D gene. In the group of women without cancer only one fault was found. From a statistical standpoint, those results are quite amazing.

This study proves that newer, more detailed gene sequencing is needed to help determine cancer risks. This is especially true for ovarian cancers, sometimes called the silent killer, because most times this type of cancer is not caught until very late stages. Women with a family history of breast cancer or ovarian cancer need more weapons for detection in their arsenal. BRCA testing alone does not cut it. In my case, I have a family history of cancer but no identified genetic issues, like BRCA. I wonder how many lives testing for PPM1D could save.

Lynda Altman was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2011. She writes a series for Yahoo! Shine called “My battle with breast cancer.”

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Former President George H.W. Bush remains hospitalized

(Reuters) – Former President George H.W. Bush, who has been hospitalized for a month undergoing treatment for bronchitis, may not be released from a Houston hospital in time to celebrate Christmas at home as doctors had hoped.

Bush, 88, remained in stable condition and doctors were optimistic he would make a full recovery, George Kovacik, a spokesman at Methodist Hospital, said in an emailed statement on Sunday.

But doctors were being “extra cautious” with his care and no discharge date had been set, the statement said. Earlier this month, Kovacik said doctors expected Bush would be able to spend Christmas at home with his family.

“His doctors feel he should build up his energy before going home,” the statement said.

Bush, the 41st president and a Republican, took office in 1989 and served one term in the White House. The father of former President George W. Bush, he also is a former congressman, U.N. ambassador, CIA director and vice president for two terms under Ronald Reagan.

(Reporting by Kevin Gray; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Vicki Allen)

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Bieber’s Hamster Giveaway Causes Furry Furor

Justin Bieber bonds with his former pet, Pac-the-hamster. Image credit: Twitter @PacBieber.

Here’s a story that will give you paws. Or at least it has paws.

According to TMZ, Justin Bieber gave an unsuspecting fan an early Christmas present by unloading his pet hamster, named PAC, on her during a recent concert.

“That’s all you,” Bieber can be heard shouting to the girl over the screams of the crowd as the incident was captured on grainy video. “You gotta take care of PAC.”

The girl, identified as Victoria Blair, age 18, screamed back, “I will take care of him!”

The California Hamster Association is not amused. They simply cannot belieb the pop star acted so irresponsibly.

First of all, yes. There really is a California Hamster Association (CHA). And second, as David Imber, an adviser and spokesman for the organization pointed out – what Bieber did was not cool.

“No doubt Justin Bieber meant well in delighting his adoring fan with the gift of his hamster, but without realizing it he was practicing a form of animal cruelty,” Imber said.

“We have subsequently read that the recipient is attempting to be responsible about caring for the animal, but absent any other indication, in general it is extremely likely that this hamster would have been harmed,” Imber continued. “No pet, large or small, should ever be ‘gifted’ to an unknowing recipient.”

Beiber could not immediately be reached for comment by ABC News but Blair told ABC News that PAC is doing fine.

If you are considering giving the gift of a hamster this year, the CHA urges using some common sense.

This means never surprising someone with any sort of creature, let alone something as sensitive and fragile as a cute and furry little hamster. Without discussing it with them first, you don’t know if someone has the means or desire to provide proper care for the animal (as with any animal), including suitable housing, plenty of food and water, and one of those squeaky exercise wheels. And definitely, under no circumstances should you hand over a pet to the recipient at a concert.

Imber worried that most people don’t realize hamsters actually don’t make great pets for little kids even though they are inexpensive and reproduce in great numbers.

“They do not typically sit calmly in one’s lap, but roam incessantly — the reason we give them wheels — and they have a very short life span of fewer than 1,000 days,” he said.

If you do decide to go forward with a pet present, remind the new owner that they can leave it in the care of a shelter or animal rescue center should they no longer wish to keep it — again, keeping in mind that any handoff should not occur in the midst of a screaming mob of adolescent girls.

But anyway, three holiday cheers for PAC’s new situation. Our little ham-star doesn’t appear doomed to die a horrible death as the CHA initially feared. In fact, he seems to be thriving like the tiny rodent royalty he is, even tossing out the occasional tweet to his nearly 46,000 followers.

“Yes, it’s true. @victoriablair21 is ‘my’ new owner, she takes care of me so don’t worry,” said one of his tweets that posted a few days after he was handed over to Blair.

It was hashtagged, #happyhamster.

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