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Senate Judiciary Committee Votes To Confirm Sotomayor; Full Senate Expected To Vote Next Week
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday voted 13-6 in favor of Judge Sonia Sotomayor"s confirmation to the Supreme Court, the AP/Yahoo! News reports. All Democrats and one Republican -- Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) -- supported the nomination (AP/Yahoo! News, 7/28). The full Senate is expected to vote on the nomination before the August recess, The Hill reports (Rushing, The Hill, 7/27). Sotomayor likely will be confirmed by the full Senate, as almost all Senate Democrats have said they will vote to confirm and Republicans have pledged not to filibuster. In addition to Graham, four other Republicans have said they will support Sotomayor"s confirmation -- Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Richard Lugar (Ind.), Mel Martinez (Fla.) and Olympia Snowe (Maine) (The Hill, 7/27).On Monday, Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) became the latest Republican to say he would vote against Sotomayor. He said, "At her confirmation hearing, ... I was not convinced that Judge Sotomayor understands the rights given to Americans under the Constitution, or that she will refrain from expanding or restricting those rights based on her personal preferences." Grassley added, "There"s no doubt that Judge Sotomayor has the credentials on paper to be a justice on the Supreme Court," but "her nomination hearing left me with more questions than answers about her judicial philosophy, and I cannot support her nomination" (Phillips, "The Caucus," New York Times, 7/27). Graham said, "I don"t know how you could say she"s not qualified for the job; her record is long and deep -- it"s left of center but within the mainstream." He added that "her speeches disturbed me, but I"m not going to make the judgment based on a speech; I"m going to look at her actual record" (Raju, Politico, 7/28).Americans United for Life urged senators to vote against Sotomayor and noted that the group will include the vote in its annual scorecard. The group said that it is concerned she would "undermine any efforts by our elected representatives to pass even the most widely accepted regulations on abortion and circumvent the will of the people" (Hirschfeld Davis, AP/Google, 7/28).

Long Beach PET Imaging Center To Relocate To New Facility; Enhances Imaging Offering With Addition Of State-of-the-Art PET/CT Scanner
Long Beach PET Imaging Center, a leading diagnostic imaging center in the Long Beach, Calif.-area, announced it has relocated to a new, expanded facility at 2708 East Willow, Signal Hill, CA 90755, 562-427-0714, adjacent to Liberty Pacific Medical Imaging. The relocation is expected to be completed in August 2009. During the relocation process, all services including PET/CT and CT will remain in full operation without any interruption.
News of the day
Michigan Report Shows Decline In Teen Pregnancy, Improvement In Prenatal Care
Michigan from 1992 to 2007 experienced improvements in rates of teenage pregnancies, smoking among pregnant women, and six other indicators of maternal and infant health, though there was an increase in out-of-wedlock births and low-birthweight infants, according to a Michigan League for Human Services report issued Tuesday, the Detroit News reports. The report, titled "Right Start in Michigan," examined statistics in eight categories that affect the health of newborns. The findings track trends for the state as a whole and for its 83 counties and 69 communities with populations greater than 25,000 (Jun, Detroit News, 6/30). According to the report, teen births and repeat births decreased by more than 25% statewide (AP/9and10news.com, 6/30). The decline in teen births was more pronounced in urban areas (Lavey, Lansing State Journal, 6/30). The report also found that the rate of women who received no or late prenatal care dropped by 15%, while the rate of premature births declined by 9%. In addition, smoking by pregnant women decreased by more than one-third. However, out-of-wedlock births increased by 10%, and the percentage of low-birthweight infants rose by 10% (AP/9and10news.com, 6/30).State budget cuts are expected to affect assistance programs for teen and low-income women with children, according to the Lansing State Journal. Marcus Cheatham, assistant deputy health officer for Ingham County, Mich., said, "I"m really worried that we"re going to lose the gains we"ve made in this state" (Lansing State Journal, 6/30).
Oncology

Stem Cell Transplant Study Shows Promise For Multiple Sclerosis

U.S. researchers have reversed multiple sclerosis symptoms in early stage patients by using bone marrow stem cell transplants to reset the immune system. Commenting on the study, Helen Yates, MSRC Chief Executive said, "This further piece of research into the use of stem cells with Multiple Sclerosis patients provides another piece of evidence that stem cells could one day provide clear therapies and treatments for MS. MSRC hopes that further work in this area proves as positive as this piece of research" Some 81 percent of patients in the early phase study showed signs of improvement with the treatment, which used chemotherapy to destroy the immune system, and injections of the patient"s bone marrow cells taken beforehand to rebuild it. "We just start over with new cells from the stem cells," said Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern University in Chicago, whose study appears in the journal Lancet Neurology. Multiple sclerosis occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks the myelin sheath protecting nerve cells. It affects 2.5 million people globally and can cause mild illness in some people and permanent disability in others. Symptoms may include numbness or weakness in the limbs, loss of vision and an unsteady gait. "MS usually occurs in adults," Burt said in a telephone interview. Before they get the disease, their immune systems work well, he said, but something happens to make the immune system attack itself. His approach is aimed at turning back the clock to a time before the immune system began attacking itself. Burt said the approach -- called autologous non-myeloablative hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation -- is a bit gentler than the therapy used in cancer patients because rather than destroying the entire bone marrow, it attacks just the immune system component of the marrow, making it less toxic. Burt and colleagues tried the treatment on 21 patients aged 20 to 53 with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, an earlier stage in the disease in which symptoms come and go. Patients in the study were not helped by at least six months of standard treatment with interferon beta. After an average follow-up of about three years, 17 patients improved by at least one measure on a disability scale, and the disease stabilized in all patients. Patients continued to improve for up to 24 months after the transplant procedure, and then stabilized. Many had improvements in walking, vision, incontinence and limb strength. "To date, all therapies for MS have been designed and approved because they slowed the rate of neurological decline. None of them has ever reversed neurological dysfunction, which is what this has done," Burt said. Other teams have seen improvements in patients using a more aggressive approach. In one study led by Dr. Mark Freedman of the University of Ottawa last year, 17 MS patients treated with the more aggressive approach were showing signs of remission two years after treatment. Burt stressed that the treatment approach needed to be tested in a more scientifically rigorous randomized clinical trial, in which half of the patients get the transplant treatment and the other half get standard treatment. That trial is under way. Multiple Scleroris Re Centre


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