Australia and New Zealand have agreed to work together to try to link the two countries emissions trading schemes.Prime Minister John Key met with his Australian counterpart Julia Gillard on Monday afternoon, ahead of his speech to the Australian Parliament.Ms Gillard is under domestic political pressure over her plan to introduce a price on carbon.But she says both Governments recognise that linking global markets provides the most cost effective approach to reducing greenhouse gases.John Key says it is up to Australia to decide its own emissions policy, but he believes New Zealand's ETS is working.New, joint medicines agencyMr Key also announced a new trans-Tasman agency to regulate medicines, medical devices and new medical interventions.He says New Zealand's regulatory arrangements need to be updated, and this is a cost effective and comprehensive way of achieving that.Mr Key says officials from both countries will begin work on a joint agency immediately.Read Morehttp://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/78179/australia-and-nz-to-work-together-on-ets,-medicines
Some states with the biggest epidemics of HIV also have large numbers of infected people who aren't diagnosed until they're on the brink of AIDS, a USA TODAY analysis has found.Experts at the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC) have long estimated that 20% of people infected with HIV don't know it. One-third are diagnosed so late in the course of their infection that they develop AIDS within one year. The new analysis found that the states with the biggest epidemics and the greatest number of late diagnoses are Florida, New York, Texas, Georgia and New Jersey."There are tens of thousands of people in the U.S. who are diagnosed late, sometimes too late to save their lives, and certainly too late to help them avoid transmission to others," says Jim Curran, dean of Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta.The issue has taken on new urgency in light of a study released last month by the National Institutes of Health showing that HIV therapy cuts by 96% the risk that an infected person will pass HIV to a sexual partner.Read Morehttp://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/2011-06-07-AIDS-HIV-testing-therapy-diagnosis_n.htm
A Pennsylvania woman has given birth to sextuplets in what she described Monday as a "miracle."Stacey Carey and her husband, Brendan, welcomed three girls and three boys -- Emma, Samantha, Olivia, John, Patrick and Connor -- at Abington Memorial Hospital in Abington, Pennsylvania, last week. The infants remain in critical condition."We also have a 16-month-old daughter, so our family of nine is now complete," the mom told a roomful of reporters, eliciting laughs. "We weren't expecting a family this big, but we're happy now."Read More
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-06-06/us/pennsylvania.sextuplets_1_sextuplets-pennsylvania-woman-cesarean-section?_s=PM:US
The babies were born by caesarean on Thursday at the Suining City Central Hospital in Sichuan. The twins weighed 9 pounds (4 kilograms) and measured 20 inches (51 centimetres), according to local press reports.The parents, who are migrant farmers living outside of the southwestern city, did not learn of the abnormality until two days before the mother was due to give birth.Two ultra sound scans in September and February failed to reveal the two heads because the technicians were viewing the single embryo in profile.Doctors consider separating the babies, who have separate spines and esophaguses but share major organs, almost impossible."It is hard to say how they will survive in the future but we will try the best to keep them alive at the moment," said Pu Youhua, a doctor with Suining Hospital.The pair have now been moved to a hospital in nearby Chongqing for further examination.Read More
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20110510/sichuan-china-conjoined-twins-110510/
A baby boy with one eye in the center of his forehead and no nose was born in India last week. He survived only one day.Doctors were shocked when they delivered the infant by cesarean section from the 34-year-old mother, Veena Chavan.Dr. Ashok Anand, professor of gynecology at the hospital, told reporters, "The child must have possibly suffered from cyclopia."A sonogram during Chavan's 32nd week of pregnancy revealed the baby was hydrocephalic, meaning water was accumulating on his brain. According to the doctor's report, medical staff wanted to perform an intrauterine shunting procedure but could not because of the advanced stage of her term.Chavan not only grieved the loss of her son, but was upset that she did not even have an opportunity to see him."This was my third pregnancy. I lost my previous child while I was carrying. I was told that the baby had water in the brain but never had I expected the baby to be born with one eye and no nose," she told reporters.Chavan's one surviving child is an 8-year-old daughter.Surprisingly, this form of cyclopia occurs in roughly one in 250 embryos and is a rare form of holoprosencephaly, which affects how the front of the brain is formed during fetal development. With cyclopia, the eyes and nose don't form properly.Such fetuses are often lost early in the pregnancy. Thus, despite the higher-than-expected odds, it's rarely seen. The cause is often the result of a genetic mutation, though alcoholic and diabetic mothers are at greater risk of carrying a cyclopic child.In 2006, India saw another cyclopic baby born in the city of Chennai. The baby girl survived and was taken home by her parents. No recent reports offer any further information about her survival.A year earlier, a one-eyed baby girl was born prematurely in Russia but died almost immediately after being delivered. Reports claimed her head, shoulders and back were covered with thick hair and a "small trunk" was growing above her eye.Cases like these have been documented for hundreds of years but have surely occurred for thousands. The mythological Cyclops dates back to ancient Greece and may have been inspired by a cyclopic infant.Read Morehttp://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/24/baby-with-1-eye-and-no-nose-born-in-india-survives-1-day/
