Alkermes, a biotechnology company, has announced that patients with schizophrenia now have a new administration option for Risperdal Consta. The FDA has approved a new injection site, the deltoid muscle in the arm, for Risperdal Consta for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. It was previously approved as a gluteal injection only.

The application was based on a study showing that the deltoid and gluteal injections of Risperdal Consta were bioequivalent routes of administration and thus interchangeable. An additional study was conducted that showed the safety and tolerability of Risperdal Consta injected into the deltoid muscle were similar to the gluteal injections.

The new Risperdal Consta dose packs will now include two separate (non-interchangeable) needles for injection and will be available to US physicians by the end of 2008. The needle for deltoid injection is a smaller gauge and is shorter in length than the gluteal needle. Both are administered every two weeks. Not all patients will be appropriate for the deltoid injection site.

Risperdal Consta is marketed in the US by Janssen, a division of Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and manufactured by Alkermes.

John Kane, chairman of psychiatry at The Zucker Hillside Hospital, said: “Risperdal Consta serves an important role in the treatment of schizophrenia by providing consistent levels of medication over a two-week period. The ability to inject Risperdal Consta in the upper arm may be easier for some patients and physicians and also gives patients a choice of where to receive their long-acting therapy.”

Text of report by Indian news agency PTI

New Delhi, 10 October: Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama Friday underwent a gall bladder surgery at Sir Gangaram Hospital here.

The 73-year-old Nobel laureate was admitted to the hospital Thursday after he complained of severe abdominal pain.

The temporal head of Tibetans underwent a laproscopic surgery to remove stones in the gallbladder, Tenzin Takhla, spokesperson of the Tibetan Government in exile told PTI, adding that he is likely to be discharged in a day or two.

The Buddhist leader had arrived in Delhi earlier this week for a routine medical check-up.

He had undergone treatment earlier at Mumbai’s Lilawati hospital for abdominal discomfort.

Originally published by PTI news agency, New Delhi, in English 0854 10 Oct 08.

(c) 2008 BBC Monitoring South Asia. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

By Nicholas D. Kristof

The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa.

Thus the paradox of a “pro-life” administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year – along with more women dying in childbirth.

The saga also spotlights a clear difference between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

Obama supports UN-led efforts to promote family planning; McCain stands with President Bush in opposing certain crucial efforts to help women reduce unwanted pregnancies in Africa and Asia.

There is something about reproductive health – maybe the sex part – that makes some Americans froth and go crazy. We see it in the opposition to condoms to curb AIDS in Africa and in the insistence on abstinence-only sex education in American classrooms (one reason American teenage pregnancy rates are more than double those in Canada).

And we see it in the decision of some towns – like Wasilla, Alaska, when Sarah Palin was mayor there – to bill rape victims for the kits used to gather evidence of sex crimes. In most places, police departments pay for rape kits, which cost hundreds of dollars, but while Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the town decided to save money by billing rape victims.

The latest bout of reproductive-health madness came in the last couple of weeks when the U.S. Agency for International Development ordered six African countries to ensure that no U.S.-funded condoms, birth control pills, IUDs or other contraceptives are furnished to Marie Stopes International, a British-based aid group that operates clinics in poor countries.

The Bush administration says it took this action because Marie Stopes International works with the UN Population Fund in China. President Bush has cut all financing for the population fund on the – false – basis that it supports China’s family-planning program.

It’s true that China’s one-child policy sometimes includes forced abortion, and when traveling in rural China, I still come across peasants whose homes have been knocked down as punishment for an unauthorized child. But the UN fund has been the most powerful force in moderating China’s policy, and a State Department team itself found no evidence of any UN involvement in the coercion.

Bush’s defunding of the UN Population Fund – backed by Senator McCain – has persisted since 2002. What is new is the extension of that policy to a leading private family-planning organization like Marie Stopes International.

“The irony and hypocrisy of it is that this is a bone to the self- described ‘pro-life’ movement, but it will result in deaths to women who just want to space their births,” said Dana Hovig, the chief executive of Marie Stopes International. The organization estimates that the result will be at least 157,000 additional unwanted pregnancies per year, leading to 62,000 additional abortions and 660 women dying in childbirth.

That may overstate the impact. Kent Hill, an official of the U.S. aid agency, insists that there will be no increase in pregnancies because the American contraceptives will simply be routed to other aid groups in Africa.

That will work to some degree in big cities. But it’s a fantasy in rural Africa. Over the years, I’ve dropped in on a half-dozen Marie Stopes clinics, and in rural areas there’s typically nothing else for many miles around. Women in the villages simply have no other source of family planning.

“This nearsighted maneuver will have direct and dire consequences,” a group of prominent public health experts in America declared in an open letter, adding that the action “will translate almost immediately into increased maternal death and disability.”

Proponents of the cut-off are not misogynists. They are honestly outraged by forced abortions in China. But why take it out on the most impoverished and voiceless people on earth? McCain seems to have supported Bush, mostly out of instinct, and when a reporter asked him this spring whether American aid should finance contraceptives to fight AIDS in Africa, he initially said, “I haven’t thought about it,” and later added, “You’ve stumped me.”

Retrograde decisions on reproductive health are reached in conference rooms in Washington, but I’ve seen how they play out in African villages. A young woman lies in a hut, bleeding to death or swollen by infection, as untrained midwives offer her water or herbs. Her husband and children wait anxiously outside the hut, their faces frozen and perspiring as her groans weaken.

When she dies, her body is bundled in an old blanket and buried in a shallow hole, with brush piled on top to keep wild animals away. Her children sob and shriek and in the ensuing months they often endure neglect and are far more likely to die of hunger or disease.

In some parts of Africa, a woman now has a 1-in-10 risk of dying in childbirth. The idea that U.S. policy may increase that toll is infuriating.

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

(c) 2008 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

By Edward Wong

Huang Yuanxi contributed research.

*

The Chinese government announced that it has banned the sale of an herbal medicine after three people died and three others fell seriously ill.

The warning about the medicine, called ciwujia, was posted on the Web site of the State Food and Drug Administration late Wednesday. It said six people had been severely affected after being injected with the herbal formula made by Wandashan Pharmaceutical, based in northeastern China.

The announcement is certain to erode further consumer confidence in Chinese products, already shaken by revelations last month that dairy products illegally tainted with the industrial chemical melamine led to the deaths of at least three babies and caused 53,000 other children to fall ill. Many countries have begun banning suspect Chinese food products.

Toxic drugs have long been a problem in China, and official corruption is sometimes involved. Last year, the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, was executed after being found guilty of accepting more than $850,000 in bribes from eight drug companies. His execution was intended to be a sign that anyone involved in manufacturing or enabling the sale of tainted food or medicine would be severely punished.

But the problems persist. In the latest incident, the SFDA said it had discovered two batches of harmful ciwujia medicine and urged people across China to report any problems with the product.

The Web site of Wandashan advertises ciwujia as a traditional medicine that can be used for the treatment of cerebral thrombosis, cerebral arteriosclerosis, and cerebral embolism caused by kidney and liver problems, as well as alleviating coronary heart disease. It is sold in various forms, including capsules and herbal teas.

All six victims were being treated in a hospital in Yunnan Province, in southwestern China. According to reports on Thursday from three local news media organizations, they fell ill after being injected with ciwujia at No. 4 People’s Hospital in Honghe Prefecture. The illnesses of the three men and three women were first reported within the hospital last Sunday, and by Wednesday, three of the patients had died.

A woman answering the telephone at the Wandashan headquarters in the capital of Heilongjiang Province said the company had recalled all ciwujia products within 24 hours of receiving word from the government. She said she knew of no adverse reactions before this report. The woman declined to give her name and said she could not provide more details because of the investigation.

Pharmacies in China often sell traditional Chinese as well as Western medicines. Some products are well-known, but many are obscure and contain little-known ingredients.

The Chinese government is still grappling with the fallout from the milk scandal involving melamine, the biggest food safety crisis to hit the country in years. Government officials have said that milk suppliers added melamine to milk to fraudulently bolster the protein count on quality tests. Babies and children drinking the products can develop kidney stones and other ailments. On Wednesday alone, 539 children were admitted to hospitals.

On Thursday, the Finance Ministry announced on its Web site that it would give the equivalent of $44 million in subsidies to dairy farmers hit hard by the downturn in milk sales. Many farmers have had to dispose of vast quantities of suspect milk.

Most of the money will go to farmers in the main dairy-producing regions and provinces of Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Liaoning, Shanxi and Shandong.

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

(c) 2008 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

Santarus, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNTS), a specialty pharmaceutical company, today announced that it has commenced promotion of GLUMETZA(R) (metformin hydrochloride extended release tablets), a once-daily, extended-release formulation of metformin that incorporates patented drug delivery technology and is indicated as an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Santarus signed a promotion agreement with Depomed, Inc. in July 2008 granting Santarus exclusive rights to promote GLUMETZA in the U.S.

Metformin is widely used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, but many patients do not achieve optimal dosing levels due to gastrointestinal (GI) side effects, and therefore do not achieve adequate glycemic control. GLUMETZA’s patented delivery system may allow physicians to titrate dosing for patients up to 2000 mg a day, which is recommended by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and has been shown to result in a more optimal level of glycemic control. GLUMETZA is available in a 500 mg tablet and a new 1000 mg tablet that adds convenience to once daily dosing by minimizing pill burden.

“We have completed the training of our sales force, and we are pleased to begin promoting GLUMETZA,” said Gerald T. Proehl, president and chief executive officer. “Historically, GLUMETZA has been promotion sensitive, and our new marketing campaign focuses on educating physicians about GLUMETZA’s important product attributes. A key message is the favorable tolerability profile of GLUMETZA and the importance of achieving improved glycemic control in type 2 diabetes by titrating dosing to the ADA recommended 2000 mg per day dose.”

In a pivotal clinical trial comparing GLUMETZA to immediate-release metformin:

— Significantly more patients treated with GLUMETZA reached the ADA recommended goal for glycemic control of HbA1c (glycosylated hemoglobin) of less than 7%. In this study, 60.4% of patients (n=172) taking a daily dose of 2000 mg of GLUMETZA reached the ADA goal compared with 47.6% of patients (n=174) taking a daily dose of 1500 mg of immediate-release metformin (p=0.02) without significantly increasing GI side effects.

— GLUMETZA was well tolerated in the study, with an overall incidence of GI adverse events for GLUMETZA dosed up to 2000 mg per day comparable to immediate-release metformin dosed at 1500 mg per day.

— Less than 1% of patients in the study discontinued GLUMETZA therapy due to GI adverse events in the first week of the trial.

— 80% of patients taking GLUMETZA 2000 mg per day in the study were able to complete the 24-week study period.

About Diabetes

Diabetes affects an estimated 24 million Americans and its incidence is increasing by approximately 1.5 million new cases each year in the U.S. alone. Approximately 90 percent to 95 percent of people with diabetes suffer from type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is the most common metabolic disease in the world and the sixth deadliest disease in the U.S. It is the leading cause of blindness, end-stage renal disease and non-traumatic loss of limb. Diabetes can also lead to heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and other serious conditions. In the U.S., the public health cost of diabetes is more than $170 billion per year. In August 2006, the ADA and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes issued a consensus statement recommending that treatment with metformin be initiated at diagnosis along with diet and lifestyle changes in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Important GLUMETZA Safety Information

As with all metformin products, GLUMETZA has a black box warning for lactic acidosis.

GLUMETZA is contraindicated in patients with renal dysfunction, known hypersensitivity to metformin HCl or metabolic acidosis, including diabetic ketoacidosis. Use of concomitant medications that affect renal function or hemodynamic change may interfere with the disposition of metformin and should be used with caution.

Hypoglycemia does not occur in patients receiving GLUMETZA alone but could occur in deficient caloric intake or during concomitant use with other glucose-lowering agents or ethanol. Loss of glycemic control may occur when a stabilized patient is exposed to stress.

In clinical trials, the most common side effects with GLUMETZA monotherapy were diarrhea, nausea, dyspepsia, and upper abdominal pain. In a clinical trial of GLUMETZA combined with a sulfonylurea, the most common side effects included hypoglycemia, diarrhea, and nausea.

Please see full prescribing information available at www.glumetzaxr.com.

About Santarus

Santarus, Inc. is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on acquiring, developing and commercializing proprietary products that address the needs of patients treated by gastroenterologists or primary care physicians. The company’s current marketing efforts are primarily focused on ZEGERID(R) (omeprazole/sodium bicarbonate) Capsules and Powder for Oral Suspension, which are indicated for the treatment of certain upper GI diseases and disorders, and on GLUMETZA(R) (metformin hydrochloride extended release tablets), which is indicated as an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes. More information about Santarus is available on the company’s Web site at www.santarus.com.

Statements included in this press release that are not a description of historical facts are forward-looking statements. The inclusion of forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by Santarus that any of its plans will be achieved. Actual results may differ materially from those set forth in this release due to the risks and uncertainties inherent in Santarus’ business, including, without limitation: risks related to the promotion arrangement between Depomed and Santarus (including Santarus’ ability to increase market demand and sales of GLUMETZA products; competition from other products, unexpected adverse side effects or inadequate therapeutic efficacy of GLUMETZA products; the ability of Depomed to ensure continued supply of GLUMETZA products in the U.S. market; the scope and validity of patent protection for GLUMETZA products; and the potential for termination of the promotion arrangement); and other risks detailed in Santarus’ prior press releases and public periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement and Santarus undertakes no obligation to revise or update this news release to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. This caution is made under the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

GLUMETZA(R) is a trademark of Biovail Laboratories International S.r.l. licensed exclusively in the United States to Depomed, Inc. Santarus(R) and ZEGERID(R) are registered trademarks of Santarus, Inc.

WHITTIER – Health screenings and flu vaccines for Whittier and surrounding communities will be available through a series of free health fairs sponsored by Bright Health Physicians of Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital.

The mini-health fairs are open to the public and will be held this month and in November at seven locations throughout Whittier, Santa Fe Springs and La Mirada. For a list of upcoming dates, times and locations, contact Rebecca Leopold at (562) 464-4717, Ext. 212.

(c) 2008 Whittier Daily News. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

Healthy Coffee USA, the marketing subsidiary of Healthy Coffee International, has introduced its first four instant beverage products.

The four new products include: Energi Black Healthy Coffee, Energi Blend Healthy Coffee, Energi Chai Healthy Milk Tea, and Energi Blast Health Energy Drink.

According to the company, Healthy Coffee products are available exclusively through Healthy Coffee independent distributors.

By Short-Thompson, Cady

My professorial life and personal life form an odyssey so intertwined and public it’s impossible to separate them from each other. Both of my worlds have been rewarding, exhausting, and frustrating; combined, they’re even more so. I began my academic career as a tenure track professor of Communication at age twenty- eight and within my first academic year, announced my first pregnancy. I recall being blissful that we were able to conceive, but less excited to tell my male coordinator and male chair that I was expecting. My chair responded as one would hope-he was elated for us and promised that he’d do what he could to be flexible for me in the months ahead. However, my coordinator was less positive, seeming surprised that I’d already pursue having a child but said “with women on faculty, these things happen” and that the department would have to be “progressive.” These things happen? We wanted to have a baby! Needless to say, I preferred the first reaction of elation and support from the chair. My other colleagues were pleased for my husband and me and offered help, support, and friendly advice. Nevertheless, I avoided talking excessively about my pregnant state except to answer questions with a standard, upbeat, and always general, “I feel great.” I learned the department’s norms upon hearing one faculty member describe his wife’s hysterectomy as surgery “down there,” and on numerous occasions I heard a story about the infamous female lecturer who actually breastfed her newborn baby in faculty meetings. I read my male colleagues’ cues to sense that pregnancy was surely more personal than professional; and, as a result, conversations about anything specific, like doctor’s exams, pain, breastfeeding, vaginal birth, or episiotomies, were as rhetorically out of bounds in my workplace as the topic of the sex that led to my pregnancy. Pregnancy may be a natural, normal thing but a pregnant professor was hardly a common sight, much less one who discloses details.

A lecturer in my department, who wasn’t on the tenure track, asked periodically if T was going to return after the baby was born- each time she spoke to me, I imagined a vulture circling above my head. My most senior male colleague offered an amusing (and sometimes annoying) reaction to my pregnancy, as he was convinced that I’d go into labor in the hallway from month six of my pregnancy onward. He grew increasingly nervous as my due date approached, offering to carry my books to class (four doors down the hall), and, while surely well-intentioned, he treated me like I was disabled, not pregnant. As the first pregnant tenure track woman in my department in decades, I was determined to work until the day before my baby was born as if I had something to prove about my work ethic and personal strength. In a much broader sense, I felt that I needed to prove what strong women are capable of handling “well.” Oddly, I felt strong, proud, and resilient as I worked until the day before our first child was born via caesarian section. That was. perhaps, the last moment I felt at the helm of my own life.

On, September 11, 1997, our first child, Elizabeth Kay (whom we called Libby), was born. We later deemed her breech position prophetic as she proceeded to turn our lives completely upside down. The expected joy of her arrival was immediately altered by the crushing sadness that accompanied her in the form of a fatal genetic disease. Within seconds of her birth, we knew that something was wrong. For two days, her doctors ran tests and discovered that she had a fatal, autosomal recessive genetic disease called Smith Lemli Opitz syndrome. We were stunned and overwhelmed that two healthy people could create such a terribly unhealthy baby, learning later that our odds of both of us carrying this rare gene were one in 30,000. Before we could grow accustomed to being the parents of a daughter, we learned that we would lose her. Imagine the highest and lowest moment of your life separated by mere seconds-that was Libby. We were told that she could live anywhere from two days to two years; and so we began the strangest of parenting odysseys with her.

After three weeks in the local Children’s Hospital, we were able to bring her home with the assistance of a pediatrie hospice group. We were proud of the loving care and non-stop attention we gave our daughter. She lived for seven weeks-exactly fifty days-and my husband and I clung to each other and to Libby as we both stayed away from our offices for her entire life. To this day, my proudest accomplishments arc coping with the life and death of our daughter, surviving with our marriage intact, and then finding the strength to deliver the homily at her memorial service. The stories and lessons learned about the juggling act of professorial life and parenting pale in comparison to the mammoth challenges of those fifty days with Little Libby. Always the student, this professor learned-about genetic diseases, love, strength, good care, compassion, friendship, our marriage, loyalty, and the importance of communication.

During that period my intimate connections, sense of cohesiveness with my workplace, and loyalty to my colleagues were formed. During Libby’s short life and the months that followed her death, I knew that my departmental colleagues cared about me. Not only did they provide for us physically with flowers, plants, meals, cards, and visits, but they extended themselves to me emotionally. I was told that when the news of my daughter’s fatal illness hit the department, there was a palpable sadness in the hallways. Another colleague said that it didn’t feel good again until I felt like myself again (which was well over a year later). I was new to the department by all accounts but through their willingness to shoulder our grief and sadness, I felt loved and supported. Unlike when I announced my pregnancy, I suddenly felt like one of them, not an odd. female “other.” Pregnancy felt so obviously feminine and most of my colleagues related it to their wives’ experience (only four out of twenty-seven colleagues were female); however, while pregnancy was feminine, the grief I felt was universal and androgynous. My colleagues traveled this emotional journey with me and I appreciated their company.

Two examples of the bonds I built with my colleagues illustrate this part of my odyssey. One male colleague came to our daughter’s hospital room, where he gently held her, sang to her, and prayed with us. Another colleague called me nearly daily for more than fifty days to leave upbeat, encouraging messages on my answering machine, knowing that we’d check our messages after returning from sixteen hour days in the hospital. These examples, two of many, demonstrate how due to the love and good care of my colleagues and the patience they all exercised, I found my way back to normalcy and developed a strong sense of loyalty to the department and university. I had found my place in the departmental family. I wasn’t always entirely comfortable with such a publicly felt grief as my colleagues and students quickly learned the harsh truth about Libby. Watching kind, inquiring people transformed from expectant joy to crushing sadness within one sentence over and over again was painful for me. But as I look back, I am convinced that by handling the mourning up front, I was able to face it, cope healthily, and press on.

The next year dragged by as I cried daily, processing what had happened to my dream of a family. My husband and I debated daily whether we’d ever have other children. With an autosomal recessive genetic disease, the chances of another fatally ill child would be one in four in each successive pregnancy. Talk about rotten odds. We didn’t think we could stand the risk of having yet another child who would die. My rawest memories are of crying alone while drying my hair every morning before work as I craved biological motherhood. I wanted a “do-over”-to know what a happy birth felt like, since my experience was utterly painful. I spent much of 1998 crying, praying, talking, hoping, and wondering if I’d be a parent again. For a woman who seldom cries, this emotional turmoil and turbulence made for an extraordinarily long year. As the months passed, I was truly grateful to have a workplace where I could spend long hours, as I threw myself into my career to cope with my grief. In contrast to my first experience with motherhood, work felt productive and normal. I felt far more at home at the university than in our house with its empty nursery and uncertain future.

Eighteen anguishing months later, we felt infinitely luckier as we welcomed a healthy baby son named Alex into our lives. When 1 announced that we were expecting, and that the prenatal tests confirmed a healthy pregnancy, my departmental colleagues were uniformly happy, supportive, and optimistic. My colleagues’ reactions reminded me of how my own relatives responded; a far cry from the “these things happen” response my first pregnancy announcement elicited. Our son was a huge, healthy boy, and my families (relatives and departmental) welcomed him enthusiastically. This time, my colleagues even visited my home to meet Alex and continually inquired about him at work. In essence, as they had shared my sadness, they were equally good about sharing my joy, stories, and photographs of my wonderfully typical, healthy baby. Alex’s healthy normalcy changed everything and the three of us fell into a beautiful routine that worked relatively easily for nearly four years. A great sleeper with an easy-going temperament, Alex was fairly simple to juggle and I managed to earn tenure and promotion when he was three years old. Soon after I exited the tenure track, I entered the family track full force with the adoption of our third child, Skye. Real challenges and now a new juggling act started, not at work but at home. People often remark, “You’re not really a parent until you have more than one child.” While I find the comment obnoxious, I understood its meaning in terms of the exhaustion and dynamics that accompany a family of four. A five-month-old baby from South Korea, Skye Yoon was the perfect addition to our family. Beautiful, active, happy, and healthy, she completed our “American family dream” of a boy and a girl child. Her brother welcomed her without jealousy as he had waited four years to experience a sibling. But after Skye arrived, we never quite caught up, noting that our house was never clean, the laundry was never done, and at work we lived much closer to our deadlines than ever before. The demands of two children, two careers, and the accompanying divided attention depleted us.

Just as we began to adjust our expectations (accept a messier house and consume carry-out food a few times each week) and master parenting two children, I took a sabbatical to conduct campaign communication research on the presidential campaign trail. During that sabbatical, I was shocked to learn that I was pregnant. Our fourth child, Seth, born during my year-long sabbatical, didn’t count as a product of my sabbatical: I still had research to conduct, write, and submit to journals. However, we were incredibly lucky to welcome another healthy baby into our family and knew from that moment on in our ongoing odyssey, we’d be in a dead run. Moreover, now we were outnumbered with three children under the age of six! Unlike the older two, the younger two epitomize sibling rivalry and have been wrestling, pulling hair, hitting, yelling, and generally fighting over absolutely everything (toys, my attention, food, fairness, and the like) since 2005. While I continue to step back and reflect on how completely fortunate we are to have three healthy children, especially given our experience with Libby, and jobs we love, we have discovered some of the special problems and challenges that exist in this marathon we’re running together. What follows are descriptions of some of the institutional and personal challenges that I have since faced as a communication professor raising three children.

Early on, I grew to understand why mothers around the country weren’t satisfied with their maternity leave policies. Our university’s leave policy actually fell under disability leave which, given how my senior colleague treated me as disabled during my first pregnancy, explained a lot. Not only was the disability leave poorly labeled, but it wasn’t adequate in length. In the first pregnancy, I knew that I’d want more than the three weeks provided in the disability leave, so I simply asked my supportive chair for a minimum of eight weeks paid leave. In that first leave, I informed him that I would find suitable substitutes for my classes, prepare them with my materials (literally all they’d need to just walk in and teach), and then asked him to offer the substitutes some remuneration for their time. Thankfully and amazingly since I had only been on faculty for one year, my chair accepted my proposal. In the second and fourth leaves, I was fortunate in the timing of April births, which fell at the end of spring semester and allowed me to be on unofficial but adequate “leave” all summer long. My shortest leave was in the adoption of our daughter, Skye, which occurred over a three-week winter break. At the beginning of the spring semester, I eased back in to teaching my classes and offering office hours without fulfilling any other professional functions for about a month.

The university’s maternity leave policy is still inappropriately brief and policies differ substantially as mine did from leave to leave, from department to department. What I’ve found is that those outside of permanent, tenure track positions, have the worst maternity leaves, as one of our lecturers only took three weeks away for the birth of her baby last year. When I complained that this short leave wasn’t reasonable, that she’d be exhausted, and I’d be willing to cover for her, the chair explained that this is what she wanted, what she insisted upon. The words sounded ridiculous to me as he said them, and every woman in our department knew that she was only taking three weeks to remain in good favor and look like the trouper that we’d grown accustomed to over the years. From another perspective, I couldn’t help thinking that three weeks off wasn’t healthy for the mother or the baby, but it might be healthy for her career-if it helped her keep her temporary position. As women professors in different departments heard that I negotiated a version of a maternity leave better than the university’s disability leave, they approached me in hushed voices, often off campus, asking me to help them to get better leaves from their supervisors and so I did.

Since returning from my first maternity leave over ten years ago, I’ve received a number of comments from my colleagues that have made me feel uncomfortable or cast me as an “other.” Some have remarked that they’re amazed at all I do. Although this comment sounds complimentary, it also sounds like I’m superhuman or a machine and I tire of being analyzed and given unsolicited reviews by people who are not my supervisors. Comments such as, “How do you do it” and “You’re a super woman” often irritate me. My cranky inner dialogue, which I have had the good sense never to vocalize, says, “You have literally no clue all I’m juggling. You have the luxury of a partner who stays at home to care for your children, your home, and you. I would love to not have so many chores to juggle and people to please- You cannot imagine how completely exhausted I am.” Instead, I smile, take what may be intended as a compliment, press on, and say something like, “It’s easy when you love what you do.” I believe that such performances have been Emmy worthy. Most offensive and irritating, however, is the question frequently asked behind my back, “Will she quit?” That question illustrates two unsafe assumptions about me: I am in this profession as a hobby and I am wrong to work full-time and have three children. Colleagues who know me scoff at these questions, as I’m driven, ambitious, and very committed to my professorial life.

The biggest challenge I faced, and still face, was sheer exhaustion and mind-numbing fatigue, especially during the months following the birth and breastfeeding of my biological babies. I typically slept four hours a night before teaching four classes, advising over a hundred students, publishing, and serving on over a dozen committees and task forces. I was so sleep-deprived, that my stumbling, stuttering speech patterns began to resemble Daffy Duck’s. Some days, I could barely complete a coherent sentence during class and rarely called my children by their correct names at home. Some mornings, I washed my hair over and over, having forgotten I’d already used shampoo. Other days, I’d place the milk in the pantry and the cereal in the refrigerator, much to my children’s amusement. With a venti-sized coffee in hand, and every so often a blue sock and a black sock donned by accident, I ran from home to work and back again, mostly out of the utter fear of failure as a professor and as a mother. I didn’t want to whine to my male colleagues too much about this race, as I might elicit unsolicited advice like, “Why don’t you slow down, take a break, or quit?” I often remarked that I loved my work and I loved my kids. But, I didn’t love the running back and forth, always feeling behind, overwhelmed, and fearful that all of the fragile glass balls I juggled would (or will) come cascading down if I ever stopped moving. I rarely admitted my fatigue, concerns about inadequacy, or fear of failure. Instead. I pressed forward, even if without much grace, natural energy, or matching socks.

Even so, I’m compelled to recognize the good treatment I’ve received from supervisors and chairs since becoming a mother. The flexible hours I have-my chair and coordinator have been incredibly flexible in scheduling my classes around my sitter needs-allow me to maximize my time with my babies. I have worked from home at least one full day a week, and I always try to pick up my oldest child from grade school at 3:15. Although I’m not certain that all of my colleagues, male or female, have supported my use of flextime and I’ve sometimes felt a tinge defensive about my hours, I go out of my way to work harder, faster, and respond more rapidly via e-mail than I probably would have otherwise.

Many unexpected positive outcomes have resulted from my juggling act, such as the recruitment of numerous talented female faculty members in recent years. I have been told that my example of balancing my roles as mother and professor helped. For example, when we interviewed a female candidate the week after my husband and I adopted Skye, I brought her to the candidate lunch in the department. I worried a tad about how it might look to this female interviewee, assuming that she was childless. After the interview, we learned that my comfort in bringing my daughter was seen as positive to the interviewee who, unbeknownst to us, had a 5-year- old daughter! I was proof to her of a family-friendly environment. We have since hired five women professors, four of whom have children, more than doubling the number of women on our departmental faculty. In fact, when in recruiting sessions and preliminary interviews at convention job fairs, we now pitch our department and university as a place where one can achieve balance and have a life outside of work. I have also enjoyed promotions and many marvelous opportunities. Although comments and responses to my juggling act have sometimes irked me, one supervisory colleague once remarked about me that “when she serves, she leads” and I have always been treated fairly in the ways that mattered most to me. For example, I was promoted to spearhead and then coordinate a new undergraduate major in my department (when I adopted our daughter) and then to design and direct our new graduate program (when we gave birth to our fourth child). In other words, as my family grew and flourished at home, so did my career at the university. This year, I was fortunate enough to be selected as the University’s Outstanding Professor of the Year, which is awarded to a faculty member who best exemplifies excellence in teaching, research, service, and leadership. Most recently, I was promoted to full professor and named the next department chair. Additionally, numerous administrators, both male and female, have encouraged me to pursue higher levels of administration in the upcoming few years.

What lessons can this citation-free personal narrative offer? First, academic workplaces are as complicated as the people who work in them. Some colleagues will be receptive to the demands of parenthood and offer terrifie support, others will not (irrespective of gender). second, I have found that it’s important to learn the culture of the organization and respect its norms even while changing some of those norms gently and gradually along the way. The sheer presence of women in the workplace changes the norms, rules, and precedents for future employees. My workplace is notably different now than eleven years ago, as women professors actively seek out each other for mentoring and guidance as we balance the demands of our complicated lives. Third, as conventional wisdom and experiences have dictated over the last half century, expectations are higher for women in the workplace, which means that proving oneself early and maintaining excellence is important. I believe that I have been afforded opportunities, promotions, and flexibility because my supervisors could count on me to be timely and excellent. Fourth, while I would have liked to learn in a different way, adversity is an outstanding teacher for those willing to learn and find the lessons in pain. Though I’ve always considered myself strong and capable, growth through loss and pain has increased my sense of who I am and what I can handle. And lastly, for me, the adage “you can’t have it all at once” is false. For those willing to deny themselves an active social life, an impressive exercise regimen, a clean house, the image or expectation of perfection, and anything resembling abundant free time, you can. I may define “it all” differently than others, but I have found the last eleven years to be the most satisfying, enjoyable, rewarding, and joyful of my entire life.

While the academy could certainly be more responsive and receptive to the norms, issues, and demands of parenthood, this workaholic trouper has pressed on, proven herself to her colleagues professionally and established strong relationships with them personally, reaping the rewards of doing so. I have found a powerful synergy in the support and opportunities my university has offered me while giving it as much of myself as humanly or, I should say, motherly possible. More importantly, I am not an “other” in their minds. Being an active mother and a capable woman is mainstream, not marginalized, at my university. What an odyssey it has been-tenure, five promotions, four children, and a funeral-all in just eleven years.

Cady Short-Thompson

Northern Kentucky University

Cady Short-Thompson, PhD, is a Professor of Communication and Chair at Northern Kentucky University. Special thanks to my professional and personal families for supporting, encouraging, and offering special care to me over the years. In particular, I thank my colleagues Russ Proctor, Steve Boyd, and Steve Weiss. I especially thank my egalitarian spouse Steve Thompson and our fabulous children, Libby, Alex, Skye, and Seth for making all of the juggling and running exceedingly worthwhile.

Copyright Organization for Research on Women and Communication Summer 2008

(c) 2008 Women’s Studies in Communication. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

By LAUREN MAURIELLO

SPEAK OUT

The Sept. 27 letter, “Pilgrim re-licensing should consider town’s cancer occurrence,” is an example of fear mongering at its worst.

Radiation emissions from Pilgrim are closely monitored and controlled by both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

A December 2006 NRC report noted that “Results from the 5-year period from 2001 through 2005 indicate that the radiation and radioactivity in the environmental media monitored around the plant are well within applicable regulatory limits.”

Further, several studies show there to be no increased amounts of cancer or risk of death for people living close to a nuclear power plant.

The National Cancer Institute conducted a study of cancer mortality rates around 52 nuclear power plants in the U.S., which concluded there was no evidence that nuclear facilities are linked with deaths from leukemia or from other forms of cancers in populations living nearby.

The American Cancer Society also concluded that although reports about cancer clusters in some communities near nuclear power plants have raised public concern, studies show that clusters do not occur more often near nuclear plants than elsewhere in the population.

Closer to home, in 1990 the Massachusetts Department of Public Health released its Southeastern Massachusetts Health Study, after which a panel of experts was called in to review the material.

In 1993, David Mulligan, then commissioner of the Massachusetts DPH, pointed out that the experts wrote, “The results presented here (the 1990 study) should be interpreted cautiously, because they fall far short of proving that Pilgrim’s operation has caused. . . leukemia incidence.”

In a nutshell, there is zero evidence to support any link between increased cancer in Plymouth and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power plant.

So long as Pilgrim’s license renewal is based upon a review of facts, it can – and should – receive an operating license renewal.

Lauren Mauriello is program coordinator for Boston-based Massachusetts Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (Mass AREA).

Originally published by By LAUREN MAURIELLO.

(c) 2008 Patriot Ledger, The; Quincy, Mass.. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., Oct. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Longs Drug Stores Corporation today reported preliminary total retail drug store sales for the 5-week, 9-week and 35-week periods ended October 2, 2008.

                                           Periods ended October 2, 2008                                                       Quarter     Year                                             Month     to Date    to Date   (Dollars in millions)                   (5 weeks)  (9 weeks)  (35 weeks)    Total retail drug store sales              $447      $811       $3,232   Increase from comparable    prior year period                         0.0%      0.4%         1.4%    Same-store sales increase (decrease):        Pharmacy                              0.4%     (0.4)%       (0.1)%        Front-End                            (3.9)%    (2.8)%       (0.8)%        Total                                (1.7)%    (1.6)%       (0.4)%     

Longs estimated that preliminary September pharmacy same-store sales were unfavorably impacted by approximately 300 to 325 basis points as a result of recent generic introductions being substituted for higher-priced brand name drugs. In addition, a reduction in cold, flu, and allergy prescriptions, primarily due to the impact of the switch of the prescription allergy medicine Zyrtec to over-the-counter status, had an unfavorable impact of approximately 125 to 150 basis points on pharmacy same-store sales.

The Company also estimated that preliminary September pharmacy same-store sales were favorably impacted by approximately 75 to 100 basis points as a result of a shift in the fiscal calendar. The first two days of October were included in the fiscal month of September. Since there is typically an increase in the number of prescriptions filled in the first several days of a month, this calendar shift favorably impacted September pharmacy sales and will unfavorably impact October pharmacy sales.

About the Company

Headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, Longs Drug Stores Corporation is one of the most recognized retail drug store chains on the West Coast and in Hawaii. The Company operates 526 retail pharmacies and offers a wide assortment of merchandise focusing on health, wellness, beauty and convenience. Longs also provides pharmacy benefit management services and Medicare beneficiary prescription drug plans through its wholly-owned subsidiary, RxAmerica, LLC. Additional information about Longs and its services is available at http://www.longs.com/ and more information about RxAmerica is available at http://www.rxamerica.com/.

Contact: 925-979-3979

Longs Drug Stores Corporation

CONTACT: Longs Drug Stores Corporation, +1-925-979-3979

Web site: http://www.longs.com/http://www.rxamerica.com/

WILTON, Conn., Oct. 9 /PRNewswire/ — The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), the federal agency that administers the Medicare program, announced today that Connolly Healthcare was awarded a contract to provide recovery audit services. The Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program is a cost containment effort aimed to reduce improper payments within Medicare programs as well as identify process improvements to reduce or eliminate future improper payments. Connolly was awarded Region C, which consists of the states of CO, NM, TX, OK, AR, LA, MS, TN, AL, GA, NC, SC, WV, VA, FL. These states account for roughly 38 percent of Medicare disbursements annually.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081009/NY38161LOGO )

“We are pleased to continue our role as a Recovery Audit Contractor as Medicare expands the RAC program nationally and hope to contribute to positive changes that will help the Medicare program stay strong,” stated Connolly Healthcare’s CEO Libby Alexander. “Today’s contract award builds upon our efforts to ensure accurate payments for services to Medicare beneficiaries as well as identify opportunities to prevent future improper payments.”

Mandated by the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, the RAC National Expansion Program is an extension of the highly successful RAC Demonstration Project implemented in New York, California, and Florida in 2005 and extended to Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Arizona in 2007. “As a participant in the three year RAC Demonstration for the states of New York and Massachusetts, Connolly is acutely familiar with the process of examining claims and working alongside fiscal intermediaries and other government contractors,” said Mike Sick, Connolly Healthcare’s President. “Connolly has effective mechanisms in place to detect and respond to improper payments, and is also experienced with the rules, regulations, and requirements that must be applied when evaluating suspected improper payments.”

During the RAC Demonstration Program, Connolly contributed to the $693.6 million in improper Medicare payments returned to the Medicare Trust Funds between 2005 and March 2008. Section 306 of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 authorized the use of RAC’s to identify and recover improper payments for return to the Medicare Trust Fund and was required to be a permanent part of Medicare in the Tax Relief and Healthcare Act of 2006.

About Connolly Healthcare

Connolly Healthcare, a division of Connolly Consulting, is the recovery audit expert that uses advanced data mining techniques to identify and recover a broad range of erroneous medical claim payments, all with a high sensitivity to important provider relationships. In 2007, Connolly reviewed more than $150 billion dollars in paid medical claims working with some of the largest health plans in the United States. Recovery auditing is recognized as a best practice and Connolly’s expertise places it in a position to propose vital process improvement recommendations to reduce or eliminate future improper payments.

Information on Connolly Healthcare and its services can be obtained at: http://www.connollyhealthcare.com/ or by contacting Connolly’s Press Release Contact: [email protected]

Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081009/NY38161LOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, [email protected]

Connolly Healthcare

CONTACT: William Pisani, +1-203-529-2000, of Connolly Healthcare

Web Site: http://www.connollyhealthcare.com/

NURSE Stuart Beddard was told about a “good” job his partner’s mother saw in the Birmingham Mail.

Just over a year later, the 26-year-old, from Tipton, is now in the job she saw and working as a sexual health nurse with Brook Advisory Centre, in the city centre.

It was an area of health Stuart had an interest in while he was training to become a nurse.

Stuart had worked in trauma and orthopaedics and when he joined Brook, as a sexual health nurse in training, he studied for another year with Birmingham City University. The charity of 40 years provides free and confidential sexual health advice and services for people aged under 25.

Stuart said: “I enjoy putting the young person first and making sure they’re empowered to make decisions about their own sexual health.

“They’re given all the best information so they can make choices.”

Advice given includes information about contraception and sexuallytransmitted infections.

A typical day for Stuart is working in clinic with young people who book appointments to see him or drop into the centre, which is in John Bright Street.

“This was an area I always had an interest in while training as a nurse,” he said.

“I always wanted to work with young people and where I work provides services for them.”

(c) 2008 Evening Mail; Birmingham (UK). Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

LEWISTON – “Understanding Cardiac Medications for Those with ICDs” will be the topic of a presentation set for the Thursday, Oct. 16, meeting of the Central and Western Maine ICD Support Group.

CMMC clinical pharmacist Sarah Green will discuss common cardiac medications, how they work, what their potential side effects are and what those with ICDs should consider when taking them.

Prior to joining the Central Maine Medical Center staff last year, Green was a pharmacy practice resident at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. Her pharmacy-related experience includes work at CMMC, the University of Massachusetts in Worcester, Mass., and at Stop and Shop Supermarkets in Worcester, Mass.

Green completed pre-pharmacy studies at the University of Maine in Orono and earned her doctor of pharmacy degree at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Worcester, Mass.

While attending the University of Maine, Green was elected to the Chi Delta Chapter of the Beta Beta Beta Biological Honor Society. She was also named to the Rho Chi Honor Society, Gamma Pi Chapter, and served as chapter president of the American Pharmacists Association at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Green has been recognized with numerous academic awards and is a member of the Maine Society of Health-System Pharmacists and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. She is an associate member of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy. She is licensed by the State of Maine Board of Pharmacy.

The support group is for individuals who have an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD). Family members and other support persons are also welcome to attend. The meeting provides a forum for discussion regarding experiences with ICD and will present learning opportunities not only about living with the devices, but about cardiac health issues.

The meeting will be held from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the Central Maine Heart and Vascular Institute first-floor conference room. The program is offered free.

For more information, call or e-mail physician assistant Joe Sala at 753-3900 or [email protected].

(c) 2008 Sun-Journal Lewiston, Me.. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

By Barbara Polichetti

CRANSTON

Gina Russo has had to rely on other people’s words — doctor’s notes, family members’ recollections — if she wants to piece together what she lived through the three months after the Station nightclub fire.

For 11 weeks after the 2003 tragedy, Russo lay in a medically induced coma at the Shriners Hospital in Boston while teams of doctors worked to keep her alive with more than 40 percent of her body burned, her head scorched with fourth-degree burns and her lungs so damaged by toxic smoke that they were barely functioning.

Now, more than five years after the fire, Russo has a pretty good idea of what those first weeks of her long recovery were like. She has copiously reviewed her medical records and listened to family members tell how they ached when they leaned against the protective glass window of her room and stared at her bandage-swathed form, no more identifiable than a mummy.

Her doctors have told her that she was given the last rites on the Sunday after the Thursday night fire, and that they hooked her up to an experimental respiratory machine in a last-ditch effort to cleanse her lungs and stop her organs from failing. Her sister has talked about becoming so panicked over the chance that the person beneath the bandages might not be Russo that she made the nurses unwrap layers and layers of gauze until she could see the tattoo of a small heart entwined with vines that had long decorated Russo’s right ankle.

Last night, however, Russo, 40, did not need anyone else’s words but her own as she stood before more than 150 Shriners at their local headquarters in Pawtuxet Village to thank the members of the fraternal organization for supporting the hospital that saved her life.

“It was just my blessing that I was brought to Shriners,” Russo told the audience seated in clusters around dinner tables. “It was at Shriners that my new journey, my new life really began.”

On Tuesday, seated in the cozy pine-floored kitchen of her home in Cranston’s historic Oaklawn Village, Russo admitted to being very nervous about speaking before a large crowd, but said, “If it’s for the Shriners, I’ll say yes to anything.”

“They have become my mission,” she said. “I will never be able to adequately express my thanks to them for saving my life. If I can do anything in any small way that helps the Shriners grow and continue to be able to support the hospital, then I’ll do it, because without them I just would not be here.”

She said that she not only received cutting-edge care at Shriners but also that the staff took care of her family, including her two sons, who were 6 and 9 at the time. The hospital gave her family a place to stay in Boston so they could be near her, she said, and her sons were slowly introduced to the grueling healing process for burn victims through their participation in play groups with children at the hospital.

The Shriners Boston hospital is dedicated to the treatment of pediatric burn victims, but after the Station fire it accepted four of the most severely injured people who were pulled from the blaze that claimed 100 lives.

Frank DiMascio, potentate of the Rhode Island Shriners, said that that is only the second time that the Shriners have opened any of their hospitals to adults. The first time, he said, was Sept. 11.

Both DiMascio and Shriners public relations chairman Wayne Sutton said that having Russo speak to them makes their charitable fundraising real and reminds them of the lives saved every day at the Shriners Hospital.

“To have Gina come talk to us overwhelms me with joy and gives me great pride to be a Shriner,” Sutton said before her speech. “It is moving just to see this person who has survived one of the greatest tragedies this state has ever seen.”

Russo, who has endured 49 surgeries and his facing more, said that her life is full of joys. Although her fiance, Alfred Crisostomi, died in the fire, she did find love again and last year married Steven Sherman. Her boys, Alex and Nicholas, are growing and every day she does tasks — whether it be driving or tying her shoes — that the doctors said she would never do.

“Life is good,” she said last night, “and it’s because of the start I got at Shriners. I am truly grateful.”

There was one thing Russo did not share with the crowd. She did not show them the tattoo that reaches up her left calf.

It is done entirely in fiery reds and yellows. And it shows a Phoenix, wings unfurling, as it rises out of the flames.

Station fire survivor Gina Russo, 40, of Cranston, receives a hug from Shriners public relations director Wayne Sutton before taking the microphone to thank the organization for supporting the hospital that helped save her life. The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl [email protected] / (401) 277-8065

Originally published by Barbara Polichetti, Journal Staff Writer.

(c) 2008 Providence Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

ROYAL PALM BEACH, Fla., Oct. 9 /PRNewswire/ — This may sound like science fiction, but it is truly cutting-edge reality. Internationally acclaimed anti-aging Doctor, Al Sears MD, has become the first U.S. doctor licensed to provide TA-65 to the public through his private practice based in Royal Palm Beach, Florida.

This is a revolutionary technology that is based on telomere biology. Telomeres are part of your DNA. They are located at the ends of all the chromosomes and in every cell in your body. Each time your cells divide, your telomeres get shorter. You can think of them as a kind of countdown clock. And when your telomeres run down to a critical shortness, cell division stops and eventually your life ends.

For the first time in history, we have the potential to make your telomeres longer. Dr. Sears is now making TA-65 available to the public, allowing the affected cells of recipients to become “younger” as they grow older. TA-65 doesn’t just stop cell aging, but it reverses it.

“It has been scientifically proven that telomeres, which are repeats of certain base pairs of DNA, are the actual “biological clock of aging cells,” said Eva Hodgens, Wellness Research Chief Marketing Officer. “The shorter telomeres get the more a person ages. Never before has it been possible to address cellular aging at its source, until now.

With this cutting-edge science Dr. Sears offers an opportunity to slow or potentially reverse telomere shortening-hence technically making cells younger.”

There’s no proven anti-aging product like TA-65 in the world today. It is not the actual fountain of youth for an entire person, but it is the best pathway available in the quest to recapture youth. Anyone interested in taking this opportunity can visit Dr. Al Sears at The Sears Center for Health and Wellness.

“The most compelling result I have seen is the profound and positive impact of TA-65 on the immune system, which declines in age, leading to many negative conditions commonly associated with aging,” said Dr. Sears. “In a double-blinded placebo controlled trial in 2005 statistically significant results were found in those taking TA-65 across several conditions of aging ranging from improvement in vision, male sexual function, condition of skin and overall well being. And I am excited to be able to provide this to the public.”

“In only 3 months my cardio age went from 62 to 54. My pulmonary age went from 52 to 39. My eye doctor says he has never seen accommodation reserve increase in someone my age, it always goes down with time. He wanted to change my prescription of my contact lenses, but I told him to wait for it is only going to get better,” said Bill Turon, 64, recipient of TA-65.

The emerging science of telomere biology is changing the way science and society looks at aging. In 2001, California bio-tech company Geron, discovered TA-65 and in 2002 T.A. Sciences licensed TA-65 from Geron. In 2008, Dr. Sears and TA Science formulated their relationship and are now bringing TA-65 to the public.

Dr. Sears will be holding a one-day seminar on TA-65 on Sunday, October 26, 2008 at his offices in Royal Palm Beach, Florida. To reserve your spot call 866-792-1035.

About Dr. Sears:

Dr. Al Sears has written over 500 articles and seven books in the fields of alternative medicine, anti-aging, and nutritional supplementation. He offers specialized nutritional formulas, fitness guides, and cutting-edge techniques as head of Wellness Research & Consulting, Inc., located in Royal Palm Beach, FL. He is also a practicing physician, nutritional expert and board certified by the American Board of Anti-Aging Medicine. To learn more about Dr. Sears and his books you can go to http://www.alsearsmd.com/ .

   For information: http://www.telomeraseactivation.org/index.html or   Contact: [email protected]   Phone: 561-784-7852  

Wellness Research and Consulting, Inc.

CONTACT: Eva Hodgens, Chief Marketing Officer, Wellness Research andConsulting, Inc., +1-561-784-7854, Fax, +1-561-784-7851,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.alsearsmd.com/http://www.telomeraseactivation.org/index.html

GREEN BAY, Wis., Oct. 9 /PRNewswire/ — Nature’s Way Holding Company, a subsidiary of German-based Dr. Willmar Schwabe Pharmaceuticals, a leading worldwide producer of clinically proven phytomedicines, has reached agreement to acquire all outstanding shares of Enzymatic Therapy with North Castle Partners, LLC, the controlling shareholder of Enzymatic Therapy. The agreement is subject to other shareholders delivering their signatures and provides for customary conditions to closing.

The transaction was advised by Lincoln International, a leading mid-market investment bank, who acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Schwabe and Nature’s Way, working directly with the Board of Directors and senior management teams of both companies.

The combination of these organizations brings together leading industry professionals across every business discipline and creates an unsurpassed portfolio of clinically validated natural products and ingredients.

Both Nature’s Way and Enzymatic Therapy, Inc. have developed a very loyal and consistently growing base of customers, consumers, and patients, who enjoy the health benefits of the products every day.

Initial focus will be to further advance product development in bringing highly effective natural health solutions to market to elevate wellness for those critical health concerns of consumers.

The group will build upon the rich heritage and advanced research and development capabilities of each of the entities to create a new standard in natural health enhancement.

Dr. Willmar Schwabe Pharmaceuticals, headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany, was founded in 1866. Today, the group is a world-class leader in the manufacturing of herbal medicines and comprises six companies in Germany and more than 20 subsidiaries and joint ventures around the world. For more than 140 years, Schwabe Pharmaceuticals has been dedicated to providing patients and health care professionals with clinically proven herbal medicines and natural health care solutions.

As a vertically integrated pharmaceutical company, Schwabe carefully controls the manufacturing process from growing and harvesting the plants to the production of the finished goods. Schwabe products are sold in over 60 countries world-wide.

Nature’s Way was founded in 1968, and has improved the life of millions of consumers by bringing the healing power of nature through herbal formulations. Nature’s Way is headquartered in Springville, Utah, and its products are sold throughout leading natural products retailers throughout the United States and in 40 other countries.

Enzymatic Therapy, Inc.’s heritage is rooted in four formerly separate natural medicine companies, each of which was founded over a period from 1975 to 1986, and each of which was merged to create the company as it exists today, by North Castle Partners, LLC in 2000. Enzymatic Therapy products are sold throughout leading natural products retailers, medical clinics, and in 15 countries outside the United States.

North Castle Partners, LLC is a Private Equity Firm that invests in healthy living and healthy aging related companies, and has had a very successful track record of assisting natural products companies in creating sustainable growth platforms.

Dr. Dirk Reischig, Chairman and CEO of Schwabe: “We are very delighted that Enzymatic Therapy, Inc. joins the Schwabe group of companies. We do believe that the complementary product portfolios and marketing know-how of Enzymatic Therapy and Nature’s Way will significantly strengthen our presence in the US market, which is one of Schwabe’s strategic key markets for future growth. Natural health care solutions will become increasingly important over the next few decades. The joined forces of Enzymatic Therapy, Nature’s Way and Schwabe will therefore contribute significantly to consumers in the USA and abroad in achieving the best possible health and quality of life.”

Rory Mahony, CEO of Nature’s Way: “We look forward to leveraging the knowledge and expertise resident in our companies and to further enhance the significant business growth that both Nature’s Way and Enzymatic Therapy have enjoyed over the past several years. We believe the dedication of the companies to the development of quality products will benefit our customers in many ways.”

Randy Rose, CEO of ETI: “We are very pleased to align with Nature’s Way and Dr. Willmar Schwabe Pharmaceuticals in elevating the health and well being of consumers and patients by combining the very best know how of each of the companies. The highly ethical approach to delivering true natural medicines that improve lives is a consistent core value for all three entities and we look forward to advancing the natural health care solutions for the benefit of all.”

    Nature's Way Products, Inc.            Enzymatic Therapy, Inc.    1375 N. Mountain Springs Parkway       825 Challenger Drive    Springville, UT  84663                 Green Bay, WI  54311  

Enzymatic Therapy, Inc.

CONTACT: Terri Slater, +1-561-487-7037, [email protected], or KathyMcNamara, +1-641-472-9830, [email protected], both of Dean DrazninCommunications, Inc., for Enzymatic Therapy, Inc.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The following was released by the U.S. Postal Service:

What: First-day-of-issue stamp dedication ceremony for the Alzheimer’s Awareness 42-cent social awareness first-class stamp during the dedication of the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute’s http://www.brni.org/ new research facility.

Who: West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller IV

U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors Vice Chairman Carolyn Lewis Gallagher

Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute Board Chairman Ralph J. Bean, Jr.

   West Virginia University Interim President Dr. C. Peter Magrath    When: 10 a.m. (ET)   Friday, Oct. 17, 2008    Where: Front Lawn   Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute   1 Medical Center Drive   Morgantown, WV 26505   

Background: Every 71 seconds, someone in American develops Alzheimer’s disease. For these individuals and their families, the significance of this moment cannot be underestimated as it marks the beginning of a devastating descent into memory loss. The Postal Service is issuing the Alzheimer’s Awareness stamp to raise awareness of issues surrounding this dreadful disease and to draw attention to the importance of the caregiver. For the person with Alzheimer’s, interaction with the caregiver means everything.

Since the mid 1950s, the Postal Service has released a variety of social awareness stamp on important issues such as Sickle Cell disease, Mentoring, Organ and Tissue Donation, Adoption, Amber Alert and Jury Duty.

The stamp ceremony takes place during the dedication of the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute’s (http://www.brni.org/) new $30 million research facility. In 1999, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV and his family established the Institute on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV. It is the only non-profit, independent Institute in the world exclusively dedicated to the study of human memory and memory disorders. Its mission is to expand and advance the scientific research of memory and memory disorders for purposes of prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The Institute strives to move basic research out of the laboratory and into the hands of physicians and patients through innovative partnerships and new business models.

Admission is free and open to the public.

An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits every address in the nation, 146 million homes and businesses. It has 37,000 retail locations and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses, not tax dollars. The Postal Service has annual revenues of $75 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail.

U.S. Postal Service

CONTACT: David Walton, (O) +1-502-454-1695, (C) +1-502-468-9859,[email protected] , or Mark Saunders, (O) +1-202-268-6524, (C)+1-202-320-0782, [email protected], both of USPS; or Amy Goodwin ofBRNI, (O) +1-304-549-2814, [email protected]

Web Site: http://www.brni.org/

IBC Life Sciences announces the 19th Annual International Antibody Engineering Conference will return to San Diego, California on December 7-11, 2008. This meeting serves as the annual forum of the antibody and protein engineering communities, providing insights to drive the future of antibody engineering and the development of immunotherapeutics.

This year’s Keynote speakers have been leading pioneers in this field since its beginning, having contributed many of the advancements that engendered the current revolution in recombinant antibodies and their successful clinical application, making antibody therapy a major new area of modern medicine. Dr. Michael L. Neuberger, Ph.D., from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, will discuss the evolving technologies of antibody engineering, and Professor Sherie Morrison, Ph.D., from UCLA, will discuss the versatility of antibodies for multiple applications.

In addition, an international speaker faculty will discuss their latest, far-reaching investigations on microarrays and nanotechnology for antibody discovery and analysis; the theory, practice and use of libraries based on restricted amino acid sets; non-antibody scaffolds; intrabodies; novel antibody targets and applications; target selection in relation to efficacy; and a revisiting of the mechanism of antibody action.

The meeting expects more than 700 attendees and is co-located with IBC’s 6th Annual International Antibody Therapeutics Conference being held on December 9-11, 2008.

The Scientific Sponsor of the meeting is The Antibody Society, which is dedicated to furthering the interests of antibody engineering, therapeutic development and the safe and thorough testing of future therapeutic agents.

Complete details on this meeting can be found at http://www.ibclifesciences.com/antibodyeng, and to receive a press pass or arrange an interview with a speaker, email Dawn O’Connor at [email protected].

About IBC Life Sciences

IBC Life Sciences is the worldwide leader in scientific, technological and business conferences and courses for the life science industry. To develop its programs, IBC actively researches the advancements, technologies and trends impacting and driving the race for new drugs and therapies. No other organization can make claim to the breadth and quality that IBC Life Sciences delivers in each event giving the company recognition around the globe for quality, service and value. For more information, visit: http://www.IBCLifeSciences.com.

 Contact: Dawn O'Connor IBC Life Sciences 508 - 614 - 1679 Email Contact

SOURCE: IBC Life Sciences

By Arline A Fleming

Artifacts related to the facility are sought in advance of the organization’s November celebration.

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — Had Mrs. John Newbold Hazard, a century ago, come upon a bevy of barefoot yoga students practicing enlightened walking on the graceful lawn of Peace Dale’s Village Green, she might have gasped in wonder.

Toes bare and extended, gripping the cool earth, these yoga students might have made the benevolent Mrs. Hazard hold her lacy hankie to her lips while she took in the image of bare feet in public. But then, given her inquisitiveness and foresight, she might have stopped to find out more about this class based in the same Peace Dale Office Building where village women took domestic science classes during her turn-of-the-century era.

Augusta Hazard so supported the women of Peace Dale that she recognized the need for a second location where they could gather to focus on classes in furniture-making, dressmaking, textile work and other helpful skills. So she funded the construction of the Neighborhood Guild, beginning in 1908.

At its dedication in September 1909, the building was described as “beautiful and commodious,” and it was dedicated not only to Mrs. Hazard’s husband, but also to the people of the village.

One hundred years later, the Guild’s heritage will be celebrated on Nov. 16 from 2 to 5 p.m. with a special open house, which is being planned by the South Kingstown Parks and Recreation Department, said Director Andrew Nota.

He envisions the event as also serving as a reunion.

“It will be a time to reconnect,” he said, “for people to come back and reunite.”

In anticipation of that, Nota said, the department is seeking Guild-related artifacts and memorabilia, photographs and recreational items, for a one-day display that weekend. He hopes local residents will come forth with their personal collections.

They are in special need of items from the 1950s and 1960s.

In researching Guild history, Nota noted that though the facility has “evolved with society, there are still services being offered that were originally offered a century ago. This was one of the only buildings in town with running water,” at the time, and so women would arrive to bathe in the morning, and the men in the afternoon.

“People still come here to shower,” Nota said.

HAD THE LOCAL women mentioned an interest in yoga those many years ago, Mrs. Hazard perhaps would have supported that interest, too.

With almost 2,000 classes held at the Guild each year, interests indeed reflect both the past — with sewing, cooking, knitting — and the present, with yoga finding a major niche on the listing schedule.

The department has partnered with the Yoga School of South County to offer the classes under the direction of Richard Toohey and Rose Russo. Coincidentally, they are held in the location of the Guild’s first classes, the basement of the 1858 Peace Dale Office Building.

The yoga classes, much like the domestic science classes of a century ago, come in a variety of topics. Recently, Russo and Toohey launched a new semester of “Yoga and Walking,” which started in the basement headquarters of the office building and extended onto the village green, which was also a dream of Mrs. Hazard’s.

“How you carry yourself is pretty much a lifestyle choice,” said Toohey, who recommends walking barefoot more often than not. “We’ve destroyed our feet by wearing shoes.”

Toohey takes the class outside, in bare feet, to the cool autumn grass and a location snug between the two stone buildings.

“Be in the present moment,” he tells his students. “Get lost in the act of walking.”

THE YOGA and walking class will continue into next month, and is listed in the fall catalogue alongside tennis, watercolor, drawing, cartooning, karate, and dozens of other offerings.

All this, Nota says, makes this building exactly what it was intended to be: A place for the people, as it was a century ago, when mill workers went there to find a visiting nurse, or do their laundry, or take a bath or shower, or find an apartment. It also had a gymnasium for emerging athletes, and a stage, for potential actors. Both are still in place.

In 1940, the Hazard family transferred the deed to the building to the town and established a recreation commission.

Said Nota: “They had a vision far beyond their years.”

To contact the Neighborhood Guild, 325 Columbia St., Peace Dale, call (401) 789-9301 or check www.southkingstownri.com/parksrec

Richard Toohey of Narragansett teaches a yoga class. To his left are Karen Hodges of Wakefield and Judith Samson of West Kingston. The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

The playground at the Village Green, with the Neighborhood Guild in the background. The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

Originally published by Arline A Fleming, Journal Staff Writer.

(c) 2008 Providence Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 9 /PRNewswire/ — Vocollect Healthcare Systems, Inc. and PointClickCare (PCC), a leading electronic health records and business office software provider for the long-term care industry (LTC), announce that AccuNurse voice-assisted care can now interface with PCC’s clinical software.

AccuNurse gives caregivers the option to access resident care needs on-demand, complete paperwork simply by talking, enhance care-team collaboration with the Silent Page(TM) capability, and track improved clinical outcomes.

The interface between PCC and AccuNurse reduces the information overlap between the clinical software and resident point-of-care information. PCC will provide admissions, discharge, and transfer information from its clinical software directly to AccuNurse. Vocollect Healthcare Systems’ interface will automatically populate the MDS application with AccuNurse’s accurate, point-of-care documentation.

“Communities want additional interface options for streamlining admissions, ensuring accuracy of data, and becoming more automated with regard to MDS reporting,” said Mike Wessinger, CEO, PointClickCare. “Our interface with AccuNurse allows us to continually expand the eco-system of partner products that our customers can take advantage of to complement their PointClickCare implementation.”

A variety of long-term care facilities are already anticipating the combined PCC and AccuNurse solution. For The Highlands at Wyomissing, located in Wyomissing, PA, AccuNurse will be integrated with PCC, the clinical software system utilized by The Highlands. “Automated data transfer between

AccuNurse and PointClickCare are of tremendous value to us,” said Danielle Hammer NHA, director of health services of The Highlands at Wyomissing. “This enables us to better handle the complex challenge of managing our clinical electronic health records and business office applications.”

“With the AccuNurse integration, PointClickCare customers can deliver higher levels of care to their residents with voice-assisted care,” said James Quasey, President of Vocollect Healthcare Systems. “Together, we are committed to providing LTC communities with streamlined information management resulting in improved staffing efficiency, more accurate documentation, and seamless data transfer.”

About PointClickCare

PointClickCare is the leading electronic medical records and business office software provider for the long-term care industry. PointClickCare has been serving providers of all sizes since 2000 and is used by over 3,300 long-term care centers across North America serving over 300,000 residents.

About Vocollect Healthcare Systems

AccuNurse voice-assisted care from Vocollect Healthcare Systems, Inc. makes it easy for healthcare professionals to retrieve care needs on-demand, chart activities as they are completed, and Silent Page each other for help. Organizations using AccuNurse benefit from lower operating costs, maximized reimbursements, and improved quality of care. Vocollect Healthcare Systems is a subsidiary of Vocollect, Inc., the global leader in voice technology and delivering performance improvements in productivity, accuracy, cost reduction and worker satisfaction for mobile employees on six continents.

Vocollect(R) is a registered trademark of Vocollect, Inc.; AccuNurse(R) is a registered trademark of Vocollect Healthcare Systems.

Vocollect Healthcare Systems, Inc.

CONTACT: Jennifer Clement of Vocollect Healthcare Systems, Inc.,+1-412-825-5336, [email protected]; or Rowena Calpito of Brown& Cohen Communications and Public Affairs for Vocollect Healthcare Systems,Inc., +1-416-484-1132, ext. 4, [email protected]

Osmotica Pharmaceutical Corp. is announcing that Venlafaxine Extended-Release Tablets, 37.5 mg, 75 mg, 150 mg, and 225 mg, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May, is now commercially available through its marketing partner, Upstate Pharma, LLC, a subsidiary of UCB, Inc. Shipments of the product to wholesalers and other commercial outlets began September 30, 2008 and promotion of the product will commence later in the month. Forrest Waldon, CEO of Osmotica Pharmaceutical stated, “We are excited about the launch of this innovative product and look forward to a successful commercial relationship.”

Important Safety Information

There is an increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents and young adults taking antidepressants for major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Venlafaxine HCl Extended Release Tablets are not approved for use in pediatric patients.

People taking Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) should not take Venlafaxine HCl Extended-release Tablets. Venlafaxine HCl Extended-release Tablets may raise blood pressure in some patients. Your blood pressure should be controlled before starting treatment and should be monitored regularly. Other side effects reported in at least 10% of patients in clinical studies and at a rate at least twice that of the placebo group include: abnormal ejaculation (men), anorexia, dizziness, dry mouth, impotence, insomnia, nausea, nervousness, somnolence, sweating, and weakness. Ask your doctor if Venlafaxine HCl Extended-release Tablets are right for you.

About Osmotica Pharmaceutical

Osmotica Pharmaceutical is part of a multi-national group of pharmaceutical companies (the “Osmotica Group”) specializing in neurology based drug therapies and delivery technologies. The Osmotica Group has a portfolio of products in various stages of development focused in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. In addition, the Osmotica Group utilizes its well established drug delivery technologies (including its Osmodex(R) technologies) and its expertise to develop drug candidates for partner companies. The Osmotica Group has a track record of successfully developing and commercializing products in the US, Europe and other countries around the world.

The Osmotica Group’s principal operations are located in the United States and Argentina and its products are manufactured in the U.S., Argentina and Spain.

For more information on the Company, please visit Osmotica’s website at www.osmotica.com. This press release is directed to residents of the United States.

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — onFocus Healthcare, Inc., today announced the successful completion of a private equity financing led by local investment firm Solidus Company and other investors. The financing will accelerate adoption of the onFocus|epm(TM) “Enterprise Performance Management” (EPM) software suite by executive teams at hospitals and other healthcare settings across North America.

onFocus Healthcare was formerly known as m21partners, a highly respected healthcare consulting firm founded by former HCA executive Ron Galbraith. The new company has developed a first-of-its-kind EPM system that allows hospital executives to achieve better strategic and operating results. Galbraith will continue as Chairman and Chief Consulting Officer of the new company.

Company president and CEO Steven Mason, Jr., is a veteran healthcare entrepreneur who previously co-founded Qualifacts Systems, Inc. In addition to Mason, co-founders Galbraith, Jim Stokes and Jerry Reardon are industry leaders with more than 80 years of experience in healthcare. Michael Pote, another veteran healthcare executive who has served in executive roles at HCA and HealthStream, leads the onFocus|epm sales and marketing team.

“We believe that in today’s competitive healthcare market, the difference between being a peak versus a marginal performer depends on one thing: execution — quick, predictable and easily monitored,” said Mason. “onFocus|epm is the first fully integrated healthcare solution that executives can use to ensure strategic execution, improve operational performance and monitor key trends and indicators at all levels of their enterprise.”

Maggie Gill, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, Ga., is an early user of the solution.

“This application brings immediate clarity and accountability to everyone responsible for reaching our hospital goals,” she said. “We use the onFocus|epm system to establish strategic priorities, align management action plans with these priorities and measure tactical performance against key financial, clinical and quality indicators. On a day-to-day basis, we monitor performance and make adjustments as needed to achieve our goals.”

Without replacing or adding new systems, onFocus|epm links data from key performance indicators from across the hospital with strategic and operational objectives, action planning, progress tracking, alerting and reporting through a single “closed loop” Web application that is easily accessed by decision makers throughout the organization — enabling hospital leaders and managers to more efficiently and effectively direct, coordinate, measure and improve the performance of their organization on critical business objectives.

For more information about onFocus, visit http://www.onfocushealthcare.com/ .

onFocus Healthcare, Inc.

CONTACT: Michael Pote, onFocus Healthcare, Inc., +1-615-871-4321,[email protected]; Susan Morgenstern, +1-615-297-7766,[email protected], for onFocus Healthcare, Inc.

Web site: http://www.onfocushealthcare.com/

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Oct. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — HealthSouth Corporation today announced it has broken ground on HealthSouth East Valley Rehabilitation Hospital. The new, 40-bed freestanding inpatient rehabilitation hospital will be located at 5652 E. Baseline Road next to A.T. Still University in Mesa, Ariz.

“We have been privileged to serve patients in Arizona since 1995 and look forward to offering HealthSouth’s high-quality services closer to home for Mesa residents,” said Jerry Gray, president of HealthSouth’s West Region. “We are on track with the groundbreaking and expect to be fully operational by late summer of 2009.”

Once complete, HealthSouth East Valley Rehabilitation Hospital will provide more patients in the greater Phoenix area with the latest in rehabilitative medicine. The state-of-the-art rehabilitation hospital will offer comprehensive inpatient and outpatient programs. Plans for the 47,500-square-foot, single-story hospital include all private rooms, a spacious, on-site therapy gym and cutting-edge rehabilitation technologies.

Currently, HealthSouth operates five rehabilitation hospitals throughout Arizona located in Glendale, Scottsdale, Tucson and Yuma. Accredited by The Joint Commission, HealthSouth’s inpatient rehabilitation hospitals provide a higher level of rehabilitative care to patients who are recovering from stroke and other neurological disorders, brain and spinal cord injury, amputations, and orthopedic, cardiac and pulmonary conditions. HealthSouth East Valley Rehabilitation Hospital can be found on the Web at http://www.healthsoutheastvalley.com/ .

About HealthSouth

HealthSouth is the nation’s largest provider of inpatient rehabilitation services. Operating in 26 states across the country and in Puerto Rico, HealthSouth serves more than 250,000 patients annually through its network of inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, long-term acute care hospitals, outpatient rehabilitation satellites, and home health agencies. HealthSouth strives to be the health care company of choice for its patients, employees, physicians and shareholders and can be found on the Web at http://www.healthsouth.com/ .

Statements contained in this press release which are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. In addition, HealthSouth, through its senior management, may from time to time make forward-looking public statements concerning the matters described herein. All such estimates, projections, and forward-looking information speak only as of the date hereof, and HealthSouth undertakes no duty to publicly update or revise such forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Such forward-looking statements are necessarily estimates based upon current information and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. HealthSouth’s actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors. While it is impossible to identify all such factors, factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those estimated by HealthSouth include, but are not limited to, any adverse outcome of various lawsuits, claims, and legal or regulatory proceedings that may be brought against us or any adverse outcome relating to the settlement of the federal securities class action previously disclosed by us; significant changes in HealthSouth’s management team; HealthSouth’s ability to continue to operate in the ordinary course and manage its relationships with its creditors, including its lenders, bondholders, vendors and suppliers, employees, and customers; changes, delays in, or suspension of reimbursement for HealthSouth’s services by governmental or private payors; changes in the regulation of the healthcare industry at either or both of the federal and state levels; competitive pressures in the healthcare industry and HealthSouth’s response thereto; HealthSouth’s ability to obtain and retain favorable arrangements with third-party payors; HealthSouth’s ability to attract and retain nurses, therapists, and other healthcare professionals in a highly competitive environment with often severe staffing shortages; general conditions in the economy and capital markets; and other factors which may be identified from time to time in the Company’s SEC filings and other public announcements, including HealthSouth’s Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007.

Media Contact

Richard Schulz, (480) 551-5415

HealthSouth Corporation

CONTACT: Richard Schulz, HealthSouth Corporation, +1-480-551-5415

Web site: http://www.healthsouth.com/http://www.healthsoutheastvalley.com/

SAVE THE DATE

 WHO:   The American Society Of Tropical Medicine And Hygiene (ASTMH)  WHAT:  The Latest Findings Regarding the Prevention, Treatment and Containment of Emerging and Global Infectious Diseases  WHEN:  December 7 - 11, 2008  WHERE: ASTMH's 57th Annual Meeting at the Sheraton New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 

BACKGROUND:

Nearly 2,700 leading researchers and scientists in the area of infectious and emerging disease are expected to attend the 57th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene to discuss the prevention and treatment of global health threats. Topics and speakers scheduled for the New Orleans meeting include:

Meeting Topics:

— The financial burden of global world health – can prevention and early treatment of disease in other countries ultimately save the U.S. money?

— Advances in creating new repellents for mosquito-transmitted diseases, such as West Nile and Dengue Fever

— Progress made in the pursuit to eradicate malaria

— Updates on infectious disease vaccine developments

— Immigrant and refugee health, including immunizations and women’s health issues

— What to know about infectious diseases when traveling outside the U.S.

This year’s meeting will include speakers from around the world with organizations at the forefront of infectious disease health and prevention including PATH, The Carter Foundation, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WHO, NIH and CDC.

Two key lectures to be delivered during the opening days of the meeting include:

— December 7th: “The Genius of Boldness: Thinking Big in Global Health” presented by Sir Richard Feachem, former executive director for the United Nations Global Fund.

— December 8th: “The Hunt for the Reservoir Hosts of Marburg and Ebola Viruses” presented by Robert Swanepoel, National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

ALL PRESS MUST BE PRE-REGISTERED AND PROVIDE PRESS CREDENTIALS TO ATTEND THIS MEETING. For more information on meeting registration, contact Jennifer Bender at [email protected] or (203) 325-8772 x18.

NewBridge on the Charles , a continuing care retirement community being developed in Dedham, Mass. by Hebrew SeniorLife, today announced the opening of its first model cottage. The Cottage Community at NewBridge is a cluster of 50 attached, single family homes designed to provide residents with a sense of living in a traditional New England neighborhood. Featuring a mix of traditional and contemporary furnishings, the model highlights the unit’s ample living space.

The cottages range from 1,400 to 2,014 square feet, with preconstruction options to add a finished basement, loft, or both – increasing living space to up to 3,200 square feet. As seen in the model, each cottage has granite countertops, spacious master suites, high-end appliances and a gas fireplace. Many of the cottages also have hardwood flooring and patios, and each home has a one- or two-car garage with ample storage space.

“The NewBridge Cottage Community is the perfect option for older adults who seek the privacy of a free-standing home coupled with the amenities and security of a first-class continuing care retirement community,” said Ruth Stark, NewBridge on the Charles director of marketing. “Cottage Community members will have their own clubhouse, tennis court and putting green as well as access to the Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Community Center located at the heart of the NewBridge campus.”

Situated on a scenic 162-acre campus, NewBridge on the Charles offers independent and active older adults 256 homes in cottages, villas, and apartments that are supported with senior services. NewBridge will offer its residents extensive amenities to address everyday wants and needs, such as a shuttle with scheduled transportation, concierge services, and weekly housekeeping, as well as restaurants, recreation facilities, walking trails, library and a fitness center.

“My husband and I weren’t really searching for a retirement community, but when we saw the NewBridge Cottage Community, we knew it was exactly what we were looking for,” said Carol Clingan, former senior vice president of Fleet and cottage member. “Until we discovered NewBridge on the Charles, we didn’t know that options like this existed. We look forward to living in this beautiful community, and not having to worry about the upkeep that we deal with on our current home. This is the perfect next step for us at this time in our lives.”

NewBridge on the Charles is a membership community committed to keeping all its residents actively engaged and in their homes for as long as possible. To live at NewBridge, seniors must purchase memberships by paying an initial fee, which is based on the housing style they select. Ninety percent of the membership fee is refundable when a resident leaves the community. NewBridge on the Charles is scheduled to open its campus in the summer of 2009.

For more information on NewBridge on the Charles or to schedule a time to view the Cottage Community model unit, please visit our Web site at http://www.thecottagesatnewbridge.org or contact us at 877-440-4144.

About NewBridge on the Charles

NewBridge on the Charles, located on the 162-acre Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Campus off West Street in Dedham, Mass., is being developed by Hebrew SeniorLife, an organization that has worked for the advancement and care of older adults for more than 100 years. When completed in the fall of 2009, NewBridge on the Charles will provide a continuum of state-of-the-art residences and health care services for seniors starting at age 62. For independent and active older adults, the campus includes 256 homes in cottages, villas, and apartments that are supported with senior services. NewBridge will also have 51 units in the Jack Satter Assisted Living Center Residence and 40 beds in the Alfred and Gilda Slifka Memory Supported Assisted Living Residence; 268 short-term rehabilitation and long-term care beds in the Gloria Adelson Field Health Care Center. The campus features the Rashi Jewish Day School, the amenity-rich Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Residential and Community Centers, recreation facilities, 17 miles of walking trails, and 100 acres of preserved open space, for a vibrant and fulfilling living experience, regardless of age or ability.

About Hebrew SeniorLife

Hebrew SeniorLife, founded in 1903, provides a continuum of care to more than 5,000 seniors in the Boston area including supportive senior housing, a continuing care retirement community, adult day health, long-term care, post-acute short-term care, and out-patient clinics. The organization’s Institute for Aging Research has earned worldwide recognition for its work in geriatric medicine and applied geriatric research. The largest provider-based, geriatric research facility in the country, the institute is committed to finding ways to improve the quality of life for adults as they age. The Institute’s faculty, many of whom hold Harvard Medical School appointments, includes leading experts on a broad range of conditions that affect seniors, including, delirium and dementia, osteoporosis, falls and fainting, cardiovascular disease and quality health care standards.. Hebrew SeniorLife trains more than 1,000 caregivers in geriatric care annually and is a major site of the Harvard Medical School’s Geriatric Fellowship Program.

IRVINE, Calif., Oct. 9 /PRNewswire/ — Irvine Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., announced today the addition of Muhammad Asif, Ph.D., and Paul Maffuid, Ph.D., to its staff. Dr. Asif was named Director of Analytical Development, and Dr. Maffuid, Senior Vice President of Operations. These highly qualified professionals bring a combined 37 years of pharmaceutical industry experience to the company and to the clients it serves.

With more than 17 years of experience, Dr. Asif has extensive experience supporting the development of pharmaceutical products through his various director and managerial roles at MannKind Corporation, DEY, L.P. (an associate of Merck KGaA), and Wyeth and Fujisawa, USA. His expertise is wide ranging, from analytical method development and validation to extractables/leachables, product characterization studies and preparation of analytical portions of the CMC sections of INDs, NDAs and ANDAs. Dr. Asif holds a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry with an emphasis on HPLC retention mechanism and received his post-doctoral training at the College of Pharmacy, Ohio State University.

Dr. Maffuid’s 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry were spent at various notable companies, including Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Magellan Laboratories, Inc., Cabrillo Laboratories, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Glaxo research, California Biotechnology and Syntex, Inc. He retains membership in the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and the American Chemical Society, and he has authored several publications. Dr. Maffuid received his Ph.D. and M.S. degree in organic chemistry from the University of California, San Diego, and his B.S. degree in chemistry at St. Michael’s College in Winooski, Vermont.

Irvine Pharmaceutical Services welcomes Dr. Maffuid and Dr. Asif as part of the company’s ongoing efforts to continually improve its client services through employment of unparalleled professionals. “I am proud to have Dr. Maffuid and Dr. Asif join our staff,” said Assad J. Kazeminy, CEO and Founder of Irvine Pharmaceutical Services. “Each brings an impressive depth of knowledge and experience, which I am confident will prove invaluable to our current and future clients.”

Since early 2007, Irvine Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., has experienced extensive growth, investing more than a million dollars in upgrading its lab equipment and hiring various respected, often well-known scientists and managers. You can meet the Irvine staff and learn more about the company at the AAPS Annual Meeting, November 16-20, 2008, in Atlanta, GA, booth 1707.

About Irvine

Irvine Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. is a fully integrated services provider that works with pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies through all phases of research and development. Founded in 1988 and committed to expansion and services that benefit its clients’ priorities directly, Irvine is a fully cGMP compliant contract testing laboratory located in Irvine, CA. Visit http://www.irvinepharma.com/ or call (877) 445-6554.

Irvine Pharmaceutical Services, Inc.

CONTACT: Irvine Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., 1-877-445-6554, fax,+1-949-951-4909

Web site: http://www.irvinepharma.com/

VANCOUVER, Oct. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — QLT Inc. (NASDAQ: QLTI; TSX: QLT) announced today that it has initiated a Phase I safety study in healthy adults of QLT091001, an orally administered synthetic retinoid replacement therapy for 11-cis-retinal, which is a key biochemical component of the visual retinoid cycle. The drug is being developed for the potential treatment of Leber’s Congenital Amourosis (LCA), an inherited progressive retinal degenerative disease that leads to retinal dysfunction and visual impairment beginning at birth.

The Phase I study is an open-label, single center, ascending dose trial that will determine the safety and tolerance of multiple administrations of the synthetic retinoid drug in approximately 18 healthy adult volunteers. Participants will be enrolled in up to 6 cohorts of increasing doses.

“We believe our retinoid synthetic drug program is a very interesting opportunity as there are no currently available treatments for patients with LCA, which affects one in one-hundred thousand newborns world-wide,” said Bob Butchofsky, President and Chief Executive Officer of QLT. “This program also supports the Company’s new ocular focus and we look forward to reporting the Phase I data in the first half of 2009. We hope that our findings will support further clinical studies in this orphan indication.”

About Synthetic Retinoid Drugs

Genetic diseases in the eye such as Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis (LCA) and Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) arise from gene mutations of enzymes or proteins required in the biochemistry of vision. QLT091001 is a replacement for 11-cis-retinal which is an essential component of the retinoid-rhodopsin cycle and visual function. Two different gene mutations (Retinal pigment epithelium protein 65 (RPE65) and lecithin-retinol acyltransferase (LRAT)) result in an inadequate production of 11-cis-retinal and occur in approximately 10% of patients with LCA and to a lesser extent in RP.

The basis for using synthetic retinoids as replacement therapy for conditions where genetic defects result in deficiency of 11-cis-retinal is founded on experiments in mouse genetic models. These experiments used mice that have mutations in either the RPE65 or LRAT genes, the same as those associated with LCA in humans. Both mouse models have clinical features of the human disease. The biological activity of the synthetic retinoid was monitored by measuring the level of pigment-related compounds in the eye. Retinal function was also assessed by detecting electroretinograms (ERGs), electrical nerve signals from the retina. Oral administration of QLT091001 showed evidence of having corrected the biochemical defect in the retinoid cycle in light-sensing cells (rods) and appeared to restore ERG responses to light in both models of LCA.

About Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis

Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA) is an inherited degenerative retinal disease characterized by abnormalities such as roving eye movements and sensitivity to light, and manifesting in severe vision loss from birth. Eye examinations of infants with LCA reveal normal appearing retinas. However, low level of retinal activity, measured by electroretinography (ERG), indicates very little visual function.

About QLT

QLT Inc. is a global biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative therapies. Our research and development efforts are focused on pharmaceutical products in the fields of ophthalmology and dermatology. In addition, we utilize three unique technology platforms, photodynamic therapy, Atrigel(R) and punctal plugs with drugs, to create products such as Visudyne(R) and Eligard(R) and future product opportunities. For more information, visit our web site at http://www.qltinc.com/.

In April of 2006, QLT entered into an exclusive worldwide co-development and licensing agreement with Retinagenix, LLC, to develop active synthetic retinoid products for the treatment of degenerative retinal diseases. Pre-clinical studies have demonstrated that orally administered synthetic retinoid drugs cause long-lasting restoration of retinal function. Under the terms of the agreement, QLT is responsible to develop and commercialize the products for use in ocular and all other human diseases. Retinagenix has participated in research in support of the co-development collaboration and is eligible to receive payments upon achievement of certain development, approval and sales milestones as well as a single digit royalty on net sales.

   QLT Plug Delivery, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of QLT Inc.   Atrigel is a registered trademark of QLT USA, Inc.   Visudyne is a registered trademark of Novartis AG.   Eligard is a registered trademark of Sanofi-aventis.   

QLT Inc. is listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market under the trading symbol “QLTI” and on The Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbol “QLT.”

Certain statements contained in this press release, which are not historical facts, are “forward-looking statements,” of QLT within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and constitute “forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Such statements include, but are not limited to: our beliefs regarding the potential benefits, targets, market opportunity and commercial success of our synthetic retinoid drug; our expectations regarding our clinical development plans and strategy for the technology and timelines associated with these; and statements which contain language such as “expects,””will”, “plans,””estimates,””intends,””believes” and similar expressions that do not relate to historical matters. Forward-looking statements are predictions only which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results to be materially different from the results expressed or implied by such statements. Many such risks, uncertainties and other factors are taken into account as part of our assumptions underlying these forward-looking statements and include, among others, the following: risks and uncertainties associated with the timing, expense and outcome of research and development programs and commercialization of products (including the difficulty of predicting the timing and outcome of the synthetic retinoid drug development efforts, clinical testing and regulatory approvals or actions); uncertainties regarding the impact of competitive products and pricing; risks and uncertainties associated with the safety and effectiveness of our technology; risks and uncertainties related to the scope, validity, and enforceability of our intellectual property rights and the impact of patents and other intellectual property of third parties; and other factors as described in detail in QLT’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Canadian securities regulatory authorities. Forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations of QLT and QLT does not assume any obligation to update such information to reflect later events or developments except as required by law.

   List of references:    Batten ML, Imanishi Y, Tu DC, et al. Pharmacological and rAAV gene   therapy rescue of visual functions in a blind mouse model of Leber   congenital amaurosis. PLoS Medicine. 2005;2(11):1177-1189.    Van Hooser JP, Liang Y, Maeda T, et al. Recovery of visual functions in a   mouse model of Leber congenital amaurosis. J Biol Chem.   2002;277(21):19173-19182.    Van Hooser JP, Aleman TS, He Y-G, et al. Rapid restoration of visual   pigment and function with oral retinoid in a mouse model of childhood   blindness. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2000;97(15):8623-8628.    Travis GH, Golczak M, Moise AR, and Palczewski K. Diseases caused by   defects in the Visual Cycle: Retinoids as Potential Therapeutic Agents.   Annu. Rev. Pharmocol. Toxicol. 2007;47: 469-512  

QLT Inc.

CONTACT: QLT Inc. Media Contact: Vancouver, Canada, Karen Peterson,Telephone: (604) 707-7000 or 1-800-663-5486, Fax: (604) 707-7001; The TroutGroup Investor Relations Contact: New York, USA, Christine Yang, Telephone:(646) 378-2929 or Marcy Strickler Telephone: (646) 378-2927

By Jeanne Phillips

Dear Abby: I am writing regarding the letter from “Sniffled Out in Indiana” (July 18), who complained about the noises her co- worker made throughout the day. True, her co-worker may suffer from an allergy or chronic post-nasal drip, but it is also possible that he has Tourette syndrome. This is a neurological disorder, the symptoms of which can include excessive throat-clearing, sniffling and other vocalizations (verbal tics), as well as eye-blinking, facial-grimacing and shoulder-shrugging (physical tics).

Most people know only the stereotypical Tourette image they see presented on TV shows and in the movies of someone shouting, cursing and thrashing about. The average person usually does not realize that most people with TS suffer from mild symptoms that are often misinterpreted as “annoying habits.” This lack of understanding and education about Tourette syndrome on the part of the general public is one of the greatest obstacles for people who have this condition. –Jill in Titusville, N.J.

Dear Jill: Thank you for educating me — and, by extension, my readers. You and the other individuals who took the time to write have taught me some things I didn’t know. Among them, that the Tourette Syndrome Association is a reliable resource for learning about this often misunderstood subject. Its Web site is www.tsa- usa.org. Read on:

Dear Abby: My son has Tourette. Any uncontrollable, repetitive sound or movement can be a sign of it. If people ask my son why he does what he is doing or have comments about it, he will explain what it is and that he can’t control it.

If a person with Tourette is asked about it, he or she can “stop” it for a while because he or she is concentrating. But once the person’s attention is diverted elsewhere — such as by work or TV — it can start again.

I hope “Sniffled Out” will help her co-worker. It’s possible he does just need tissues and some medicine, but if it’s Tourette, he will need her help. It’s difficult to be a part of a group when you know you’re annoying them. –Open-Minded in Las Vegas

Dear Abby: The fact that her co-worker could suppress his symptoms for a time could mean the person has a form of Tourette syndrome. Tourette syndrome consists of both vocal and motor tics lasting more than six months.

Treatments are available, including medication and cognitive behavioral therapy (among others) that have been shown to be very helpful for some patients. However, other people’s acceptance and understanding is perhaps the most important factor in their improvement.–Joel P. Sussman, M.D., Columbia, S.C.

Dear Abby: You and your readers should know that Tourette syndrome is a protected disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act, and requesting that he “stop it” would be discriminatory. His co-workers may not know about it because he isn’t required to disclose his disability to them, nor can his supervisor, if he wishes it to remain confidential. No one should assume that it’s a bad habit. Trust me in stating that a Tourette sufferer truly wishes it was, because bad habits can be broken — tics cannot.–T.S. Mom in Texas

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

[copyright] Universal Press Syndicate

(c) 2008 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

A SENIOR care home director has been struck off after admitting shredding vital patient documents.

Elaine Cowling replaced them with forgeries.

Cowling, of Larbert, Stirlingshire, blamed her bosses for pressuring her.

A Care Commission report said the Arnothill House nursing home in Falkirk should be run with a nurse-patient ratio of one to four, instead of the one to seven it then had.

She said: “I was under pressure to come up with a case against the care commission’s one-to-four.

“My boss wasn’t happy with the commission’s report and he wasn’t going to be dictated to in his own home.”

Cowling,49,was working as director of nursing at Arnothill – now renamed Thorntree Mews – in April 2006 when she forged two nurses’ signatures on patients’records.

She was also caught shredding the original assessment records by two managers and replacing them with duplicates.

A conduct committee of the Nursing and Midwifery Council in Edinburgh heard yesterday that the records contained important patient dependency scores.

They dictated the level of care each patient required.

The higher the score, the higher the level of care .

Cowling changed three patients’depency scores.

In evidence, Cowling admitted she had put the patients’health at risk when she made the changes.

She was struck off for five years.

(c) 2008 Daily Record; Glasgow (UK). Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

CHICAGO, Oct. 9 /PRNewswire/ — An astounding 97 percent of hospital administrators from 22 hospitals in 15 states said they are seeing a rise in the uninsured and underinsured populations, resulting in increased bad debt and the further straining of charity programs. The findings were gathered from a survey administered by TransUnion in conjunction with its Healthcare Users Group Conference. Nearly half of the survey respondents experienced a 6-10 percent increase in the uninsured and underinsured population since the beginning of 2007 with another 28 percent observing an 11-20 percent increase.

“The results of the TransUnion healthcare survey underscore the magnitude of the uninsured and underinsured populations on the healthcare industry, and based on discussions at our Healthcare Users Group Conference, it is apparent that hospitals are working to ensure they can balance the fine line between providing quality care while also being fiscally responsible,” said Rod Bazzani, executive vice president of healthcare for TransUnion. “We are finding that more and more hospitals are looking to healthcare revenue cycle workflow and financial analytics products such as TransUnion’s Revenue Manager(SM) to both decrease bad debt and match more uninsured patients with financial assistance.”

When ranking business issues in order of concern, treating and managing the uninsured and underinsured, collection processes at both the front- and back-end of the revenue cycle and dealing with higher co-pays and deductibles were the top three among hospitals surveyed, garnering 69 percent, 18 percent and 14 percent of responses, respectively.

These concerns dovetail with the survey findings where more than 40 percent of respondents indicated they have bad debt percentages between 7 and 10 percent.

“This was particularly unsettling to learn because national healthcare organizations have generally operated with much lower bad debt numbers, but now we see that a majority of hospitals are experiencing exceedingly high bad debt percentages,” added Bazzani. “In fact, at a recent industry function, a hospital executive gave this sobering prognosis, ‘No margin, no mission.'”

In terms of impact on their hospitals, approximately 83 percent of survey respondents said increasing bad debt had the largest bearing on their hospitals because of the uninsured and underinsured patient population. Of the respondents, 62 percent said their charity program would be negatively affected by this increasing group.

Dan Angel, the director of patient financial services at Via Christi Regional Medical Center in Wichita, Kan., attended the Healthcare Users Group Conference and concurred with the survey findings as they related to the uninsured population.

“Ten percent of our patient population is uninsured, which represents $12 million per month in gross revenue,” said Angel. “As one can imagine, this has had a significant impact on the way our hospital operates, and solutions such as TransUnion’s Revenue Manager help us defray some of those costs and continue our mission by assisting our uninsured population in attaining benefits.”

TransUnion introduced the functionally enhanced Revenue Manager platform and healthcare analytic tools during the Healthcare Users Group Conference, which took place in September, 2008 at the Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans. Attendees from across the country exchanged fresh insights on increasing collections, managing bad debt and improving operational efficiencies. Some of the key discussions included: segmentation analytics; upfront patient identity validation and time of service collections; work flow strategies and consumer-directed health plans increasing patient responsibility and patient attitude shifts.

Other key survey findings include:

— Nearly 68 percent of survey respondents are concerned with how their state or local political landscape is changing, particularly as it relates to charity reporting or community benefit.

— Approximately 9 percent of all patients from the hospitals surveyed are self-pay patients.

— Nearly 79 percent of respondents said they are concerned that Consumer Directed Healthcare Plans (CDHPs) will increase their bad debt within the next two years.

— When ranking business objectives in order of importance, 43 percent of respondents said increasing collections at the time of service and post discharges were their No. 1 objective, followed by improving operational efficiencies at 21 percent and decreasing bad debt at 18 percent.

“From a business perspective, this survey further validates TransUnion’s approach in working with hospitals to deploy financial tools and software to automate processes that five to 10 years ago were limited to adoption and use in financial-related industries,” continued Bazzani.

About TransUnion

As a global leader in credit and information management, TransUnion creates advantages for millions of people around the world by gathering, analyzing and delivering information. For businesses, TransUnion helps improve efficiency, manage risk, reduce costs and increase revenue by delivering comprehensive data and advanced analytics and decisioning. For consumers, TransUnion provides the tools, resources and education to help manage their credit health and achieve their financial goals. Through these and other efforts, TransUnion is working to build stronger economies worldwide. Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Chicago, TransUnion employs more than 3,600 employees in more than 25 countries on five continents. http://www.transunion.com/healthcare

Graphics and/or photographs to accompany this release can be obtained by members of the media by contacting Cliff O’Neal at 312-985-2540 or [email protected] or Dave Blumberg at 312-985-3059 or [email protected].

TransUnion

CONTACT: Dave Blumberg of TransUnion, +1-312-985-3059,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.transunion.com/

By Bowditch, Peter

There are still people alive today who were born before Felix Hoffmann invented aspirin, so almost the entire history of modern medicine has happened in their lifetimes. My parents were born before the discovery of penicillin and before anything was known about the biology or reproduction of viruses. I can remember the first successful heart transplant, and in my children’s lifetime we have beaten smallpox and now have polio staggering on the ropes. We now know the location of every gene in the human genome and we routinely talk about the genetic origin of diseases, but it is only just over 50 years since Watson and Crick showed us how DNA replicates itself. While these advances in medical knowledge and science have been happening there has been a parallel stream of medical non-science, nonsense and crackpottery. Every science has its fringe-dwellers, outsiders and enthusiastic amateurs who challenge the orthodoxy, but medicine seems to attract more – and the “science” can be even more bizarre and bewildering. There is no single word to describe someone who thinks, for example, that the laws of thermodynamics are flexible enough to allow a perpetual motion machine to be built, but everyone knows what a “quack” is.

One difference between science and pseudoscience is that science discards ideas when they become outdated or are shown to be false. Pseudoscience never throws away anything, and the usual reason given for outlandish ideas not being immediately accepted and used to change die world is diat they are suppressed by the establishment. Nowhere is this belief stronger than in pseudomedicine. When Samuel Hahnemann invented homeopathy it made a sort of sense and probably did less damage than the actions of doctors at the time. The fundamental principle became meaningless a few years later when Avagadro showed the limit of dilution, but the nonsense of almost infinite dilution is still here more than 200 years later.

Recent research looking at the most prominent alternative treatment for arthritis, glucosamine, has shown that it has little if any effect. The response of the alternative medicine community has been to reject the research on several grounds (prejudiced researchers and testing the wrong form of glucosamine were two of the complaints) and to increase the amount of advertising. Similarly, when real research was conducted on the herb Echinacea it was found to have no effect on the progress of colds and flu. The response was again to accuse the researchers of bias and to claim that the wrong part of the plant was being tested.

I have in my home several devices that, according to the people who sell them, can cure a wide range of diseases, including cancer and AIDS. These machines are available through a variety of mail- order and internet sites, and are advertised in magazines available at almost every newsagent. Practitioners using these machines advertise in mainstream papers and magazines, offering to cure all sorts of ills.

The philosophy underlying these machines is that every pathogen has a unique vibrational frequency, and they can be destroyed by getting them to resonate at this frequency until they shatter like Caruso’s famous wine glass. Some of the machines use sound, but most use electricity. A few use pulsating magnetic fields. Their real power is the ability to extract money from wallets.

Much of the frequency medicine practised today descends from Royal Raymond Rife, who did his research in the early 1930s. Rife claimed to have identified the virus that caused all cancers, which he named “BX”. As this was before the invention of the electron microscope, Rife invented an optical microscope with a claimed magnification of 17,00Ox. A perusal of the web sites of Olympus, Nikon and Zeiss shows that the best theoretical magnification claimed today is about 140Ox, although practically it is about 125Ox. (Zeiss has an appropriate slogan to promote its microscopes: “Limited only by the laws of physics”.) The secrets of Rife’s microscope are lost, presumably suppressed by orthodox optical companies, but his method of curing cancer lives on.

Rife’s 1931 demonstration of the microscope involved creating a non-filterable form of the typhoid bacillus, which appeared as small moving turquoise dots in a static background. Scientists looked through Rife’s microscope and also saw these blue dots. However, some astronomers once looked through Percival Lowell’s telescope and saw canals on Mars; some scientists once saw evidence of the refraction of N-rays in Rene Blondlot’s laboratory; and some scientists were once convinced that deuterium could fuse at room temperature within the crystal matrix of palladium. All of them were mistaken.

The difference between the last three delusions and Rife is that almost nobody believes them any more. The other difference is that a belief in Mars canals or cold fusion cannot kill anyone. A belief in a false cure for cancer can.

Peter Bowditch is Vice-President of the Australian Skeptics (skeptics.com.au), and writes on alternative medicine in Issues 84 (see p.18; www.issues.com.au)

Copyright Control Publications Pty Ltd Sep 2008

(c) 2008 Australasian Science. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

By Liepe-Levinsonn, Katherine

Note: Parts of this essay were presented for the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Conference 2007 at Fordham University Lincoln Center New York City and for the New York State Communications Association annual conference in Kerhonkson New York 2007. A version of this essay was also published online in 2007 Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association 66th Annual Conference. Story made us human-story made us a success as species. Ironically it will also be the very cause of our demise.

-Dr. Evelyn Singleton

As A PROFESSIONAL ACTOR, dancer, educator, photojournalist, and writer, my life has traded purposefully in stories-in performing, reporting, teaching, and making (up) tales.

Recently, one of the characters in a play I was working on (“Dr. Evelyn Singleton”-a fictitious anthropologist) stated the following:

“Story made us human-story made us a success as species. Ironically it will also be the very cause of our demise.”

Surprised by my character’s pronouncement that our capacity for story may lead to our demise as a species, I took time out to research her claims. This paper is the result.

In exploring the technology of story and its bearing on both our success and possible extinction, I will be surveying the following: (1) Some basic operational features and uses of story; (2) human evolution and story; (3) and finally, why story technology may be responsible for our demise in the not so distant future.

Some Basic Operational Features and Uses of Story

Humans beings still appear to be the only animal whose brain is hot-wired to think, interpret, evaluate, communicate, and invent through the technology of story-through ordering and managing lived experience by constructing, circulating, and responding to tales.

A story can be an internal set of guidelines one imposes on oneself, or a narrative disseminated by a community or a nation to enforce group cohesion. It can be a scoop we watch on the evening news, or an anecdote a friend tells us. It can take the shape of plays, novels, poetry, essays, law briefs, movies, docudramas, sit- coms, mysteries, romances, commercials, histories, scientific treatises, political speeches, cartoons, painting, dance, and so on- as well all kinds of white lies, regular lies, rumors, and whoppers.

Through its omnipresent manifestations, story provides us with our premier mechanism for social bonding, problem solving, explication, self-expression, and persuasion. At the same time, the stories we create and disseminate produce evermore-complex experiences, feelings, ideas, and formulations for us to ponder.

While we may be hot-wired for story use, it is simultaneously a learned experience. Consequently, many computer scientists and others working in the field of artificial intelligence have turned to the technology of story to create computers and robots that can “think” more like human beings. (1)

So how does this thing called story work? Linguists, writers, computer scientists, psychologists, primatologists, and anthropologists suggest similar variations to describe the basic operational features of story. First and foremost, a story contains or suggests a sequence of causally or associatively linked events, happenings, experiences, and ideas based on any combination of fact and fiction. Many story structures pose and answer the basic questions of journalism: who, what, when, where, why, and how? But most narratives unfold and gain momentum by posing in addition the all important, developmental questions of what next? and what if?

Stories told as stories usually center on protagonists who are in hot pursuit of specific desires and goals. These characters take various actions or tactics to obtain their desires, initially hoping for or expecting a positive result for their efforts. But instead, they rapidly discover they have provoked the forces of antagonism. They encounter more and more obstacles and conflicts that they must resolve or overcome to get what they want-to thrive and sometimes even to survive. (2) Hollywood screenwriting guru, Robert McKee, describes story as being born in the gap between anticipation and result, between the world as conceived by the characters before taking action, and the truths they discover after the action was taken. (3) In such scenarios, the major dramatic conflict is at least partly resolved by the end of the tale through the actions of the protagonist(s), who usually undergoes a significant transformation or gains a new awareness.

In the last several decades, researchers from the literary arts, big business, national politics, and the soft and hard sciences have stepped up their interest in how the operational features of story technology relate to human nature, evolution, intelligence, psychology, propaganda, creativity, and productivity.

Business and corporate consultants employ story nets, mission rehearsal exercises, virtual teamwork scenes, and even comedy club improvisations as staff development for group cohesion and social bonding. Exploring story formats and theatre games also help employers and employees better understand the motivations and behaviors of their customers. (4)

Politicians and pundits have long been interested in producing and distributing the right kind stories to influence public opinion, increase poll ratings, and move voters. During the 2004 presidential election, the Democrats learned the hard way that a laundry list of good works simply could not stand up to a good swift-boating yarn. (5) Following the loss ofthat election, Democratic leaders staged a flurry of seminars that focused on how to develop and recite their party’s stories more effectively.

For some time now computer scientists and robotics researchers have been analyzing how narrative thinking assists humans in predicting future outcomes based on past evidence and probability. Among other inventions, such research has produced vacuum cleaners that sweep up entire rooms at a touch of a button with very little human attendance; pet robotic dogs that develop distinctive personalities and behaviors according to their interactions with specific owners and environments; and complete story-making software programs for blocked writers.

But even the most useful and intriguing technology can have its share of quirks. As educators and students of general semantics, we know it is unlikely that any story or report can be wholly objective or complete. People may view or participate in the same event and come away telling plausible but differing tales about it. In the instant these varying tales are inscribed or related, they may already include rapidly aging facts. As that famous adage goes, no one can say all about anything.

Milton Dawes also cautions us to remember that the stories we tell about others are not their stories, but our stories about their stories. (6) So how can we be certain the stories we accept and tell about ourselves are not those others have imposed on us? How can any narrative stand as a reflection of reality, when that narrative also functions as a map that shapes or even creates the reality to be seen?

With such caveats and conundrums, how and why did story technology develop in humans?

Human Evolution and Story Technology: One tale about how we came to tell tales…

Many other creatures besides Homo sapiens are endowed with sophisticated systems of communication. Our closest simian cousins, the chimpanzee and the bonobo, communicate through vocal calls, facial expressions, body language, and even the use of signposts such as bent twigs and bushes for their peers to “read.” Chimpanzees share the precursor to our language gene, FOXP2, (7) while bonobos (considered to be predominantly bisexual and matriarchal) reportedly use sex not only for procreation, but also as their primary communication tool for social bonding and for managing conflicts between individuals and groups. (8)

Outside the primate kingdom, many other creatures communicate through complex song and dance rituals. Bees fly in choreographed patterns to share information about food. Dolphins sing and perform ballets of leaps and twists in exact synchrony with other family groups of dolphins in the wild, leading some zoologists and biologists to suggest that these displays resemble ancient tribal dances of alliance. (9)

One of the earliest forms of human storytelling was, of course, dancehunting dances, rain dances, harvest dances, creation dances, alliance dances, mating dances, etc. Western and Eastern drama, poetry, and religion are said to have sprung from the ancient rites of the spring dance, in which our ancestors performed and worshipped the cycle of life, death, and renewal. (10) But our terpsichorean skills and brain capacity for more intricate forms of storytelling took a very different evolutionary path from that of our animal brethren.

Some primatologists and anthropologists, most notably Robin Dunbar, speculate that the brain size of our prehuman forbears literally doubled about two million years ago when they began living in larger and larger communities. (In comparison, chimpanzees and bonobos in the wild still live in groups of a few dozen members maximum.)

Larger communities offered our predecessors the most advantageous way to survive in difficult climes and times-to find mates, shelter, safety, and nourishment as they moved from deep jungle to open savannah and beyond. As a result of living in larger and larger groups, the neocortex of their still prehuman brain also expanded to handle the increasingly complicated social relations. (11) Like other primates, our ancestors originally engaged in physical acts of social grooming to establish and maintain clan bonds. But as the size of their communities increased, these now extra-intelligent, almost human beings were not able to maintain all the bonds necessary for group cohesion and survival through physical grooming rituals alone. According to Dunbar, as a result of natural selection, prehumans eventually developed early language skills to manage their large group social bonding issues better. The use of language, as Dunbar and others insist, in turn increased our ancestors’ brain size once again almost to its modern capacity somewhere between 600,000-200,000 years ago. (12)

In the late 1990s, computer scientist Kerstin Dautenhahn offered a variation on Dunbar’s social intelligence paradigm, which she dubbed the Narrative Intelligence Hypothesis (NIH). Dautenhahn also borrowed ideas from fellow computer scientists interested in narrative intelligence, or how literary theory intersects with artificial and human intelligence. ( 13)

Dautenhahn links the evolution of human social intelligence directly to our ancestors’ storytelling capabilities, which she insists evolved right out of their physical social grooming rituals. (14) The ability to act out, dance, or otherwise tell tales as a new improved or updated form of social grooming, provided our forbears a far more efficient way to maintain their community bonds. Story as social grooming enabled early humans to reach out and touch more than one being at a time through gossip, entertainment, and instruction.

The mental images produced by the technology of story allowed our ancestors to communicate about beings and things that were not materially present. It also provided them with what Nicholas Humphrey calls a theory of the mind. Early humans now had the mental means to imagine and understand how their own fears and desires operated, which then allowed them to imagine and manipulate the desires and fears of others for their own benefit and the benefit of the group. (Individuals diagnosed with autism are said to lack a theory of the mind, hence their problems with social interactions.) (15)

Like Dunbar, Dautenhahn muses that even the most minimal mechanisms of the first storytelling animal were passed down to succeeding generations because that being was better adapted to the dynamic environment of what was quickly becoming human social relations. According to some researchers, we still spend about 60 percent of our conversational time gossiping about relationships and personal experiences in order to bond with others. (16)

Extrapolating from Dautenhahn’s narrative intelligence hypothesis, one could also speculate that human language skills were developed to support our evolutionary imperative to tell tales for efficient social grooming and social bonding, and not the other way round. That is, what we describe as spoken, sign, and written language may have evolved to enhance the storytelling abilities already manifested in our ancestors through dance, pantomime, music, drawing, painting, and even physical grooming.

Likewise, the imperative for early humans to tell more detailed and nuanced tales, to handle their increasingly complex social relations, may have had an evolutionary bearing on the anatomical and physiological changes that resulted in our ability to speak. The grunts, chatter, and cries of our forbears became infinitely more diverse and refined as their unique vocal cord-tongue-lips- teethbrain connection developed through natural selection, which then further enhanced their storytelling abilities. (17)

To date, researchers have not been able to train other primates to talk like us because they lack the anatomical and functional combinations necessary for human-like speech. A few apes have been taught to use rudimentary sign languages or computer buttons to communicate with humans. But these primates have been able to string together only two words at a time on average-far from a clear demonstration, understanding, or application of grammar and syntax. ( 18) Most likely this will remain the case, because non-human primates lack the hot-wiring, via the requirements of large group cohabitation patterns, to want or need to tell tales the way we do.

Most non-human species still appear to communicate their needs almost exclusively in terms of the immediate present. But story technology, with its causal and associative event sequences, offered our ancestors an array of past and future tenses in addition to the present. It gave them the unique ability to pass down intricate systems of knowledge, packaged as causally and associatively linked events, ideas, and experiences. When our ancestors became time binders, they also became human. One could say then that story made humans human.

Our capacity to bind time and mind-travel equipped us with the neural circuitry to think about thinking; to wonder about our place in the larger scheme of things; to reflect on and communicate about people who were not present and events that occurred outside of time and place. Story technology replaced the energytaxing work of physical social grooming with mental images and ideas. This new adaptation for theoretical reasoning eventually encouraged modern humans to think on ever higher levels of abstraction-to contemplate ideas like astrophysics, love, loyalty, democracy, freedom, the narrative intelligence hypothesis, and even the concept of self.

Cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner insists that the concept of the self could not exist without our continuous mental, oral, and written autobiographies. (19) Neil Postman points out that “no group of humans have ever been found without a story for who they were and how they should behave and why. (20)

Story technology-with its advancements of speech/language, time binding, and self-as-autobiography-gave us the idea of history and the actuality of civilization. Civilization-the powerhouse of hundreds of thousands of storytelling creatures, living together cooperatively and exploitatively-in turn, generated the countless hard technologies that eventually led to what some call human dominion over the earth. But thus far, this story of human dominion over the earth includes the extinction of thousands of other species; the pollution of our lands, waterways, and air; global warming and climate change; and the continued misery of more than half the world’s human population due to these and other ills such as disease, war, genocide, discrimination, and the persistence of poverty.

The Minefields of Story Technology and the Possible Demise of Our Species

According to Dr. Evelyn Singleton, the protagonist of my unfinished play, we have arrived at such a sorry state in the history of humankind because we have mismanaged, almost from its inception, the very thing that made us human-our ability to tell tales. Top among our mismanagements include: (1) The age-old existential quandary about what human life means-which has led some of our breed to bolster their own significance with tales calibrated to make others (and other living things) insignificant; (2) The equally ancient problem of stories writ in stone that may offer a sense of identity, meaning, and security, but that can lead to all kinds of personal and social deadlocks; and (3) the exacerbation of the negative effects produced by these antediluvian yarns by means of the hard technologies of our modern rapid-story-delivery-systems- including radio, television, cable, satellite, Internet, cell phones, etc.

The Age Old Existential Quandary and Drive to Make Our Lives Meaningful

Story technology may have hot-wired humans to become time- binders. However, our ancestors’ understanding and interest in the vast storyline of time may also have led them to develop an additional basic drive (and anxiety) not found in the rest of the animal kingdom. For many Homo sapiens, the drive to make one’s relatively short-lived life as significant or meaningful as possible appears to be as critical as any biological instinct for survival.

Long ago we humans divined we could extend our lives and imbue them with more significance through offspring, monuments, invention, creation, sacrifice, exploration, war and conquest, and many other shared stories-including stories about God(s), the Afterlife, and what Wendell Johnson calls clear-thinking and good will. (21)

As in times of yore, many of us continue to attempt to create “meaningful” lives through pursuits as varied as public service from midwifery to the military; any manner of tournaments and contests both physical and mental; innumerable forms of education and apprenticeships; the acquisition of land, larger and larger homes, and more and more stuff; spirituality and religion; arts, crafts, music, drama, and dance; tending to family and community; sex; exploration and adventure; and work in the “guilds” of science, medicine, auto mechanics, farming, hunting, politics, sports, fashion, business, law, sanitation, and on and on. But this potentially rosy scenario about the various quests to make our lives evermore symbolically and materially rich does indeed come with its share of thorns.

A good number of stories told as stories (including novels, plays, fairytales, movies, etc.) suggest that a person’s happiness and self-worth comes as a result of someone else’s misery. Win-win and love thy neighbor may sound like good plots, but as a matter of daily course, beating out the competition or getting a better deal than others to shore up one’s status and self-worth (and thus to mean more than others) has always gotten a lot of play.

According to a recent study by Robert H. Frank, potential home buyers were asked (if finances were not an issue) whether they would prefer purchasing a 4000-square-foot home in a better neighborhood of mostly 6000-square-foot McMansions, or a 3000-square-foot home in a more modest neighborhood of 2000square-foot “bungalows.” Frank states that most responders chose to lord it over their neighbors, opting to buy the biggest house on a block of bungalows, rather than a larger house among even bigger ones-despite losing square footage and ignoring the real estate rule of thumb, Location, Location, Location. (22) While some potential homebuyers may have chosen the house among smaller bungalows as a protest against McMansions, Frank insists that lording it over others was the main story of the day. In all likelihood, most of us at one time or another have resorted to bolstering our sense of self-worth by lording it over others through teasing, braggadocio, snobberies of all kinds, put-downs of all kinds, bossiness, hoarding, greed, lies, and variations of bullying, etc. At the far end of this spectrum, some of our breed focus on making the stories of their own lives mean so much more by making the stories of many others mean so much less. Both fanaticism and fundamentalism turn on the absolute tale: “We are great (and right), and all others are insignificant (and wrong).”

Some neurologists, anthropologists, and primatologists view the conflicts between our rosy stories of desiring meaningful lives and the narcissistic or fanatical disregard of others (as well as everything else in between and overlapping) as a reflection of the continual fight for dominance between our older reptilian and mammalian brains and the higher order thinking of our human neocortex. (23) Other scientists ascribe such disparities in our thinking and behavior to conflicts between the social genes we inherited from our closest simian cousins, the chimpanzee (more aggressive and warlike), and the bonobo (more collaborative and peace-seeking). (24) But, for the nurture trumps nature crowd, including Wendell Johnson, how we manage our innate drives in practice is less a matter of genetics than how we are educated through the stories we are taught and the stories we teach others.

Getting Stuck in Stories “Writ in Stone”

As part of our early education and social grooming systems, most humans are taught powerful tales about how we are expected to behave and how we are to regard ourselves in relation to others. Such narratives become entrenched in our neural pathways through repetition. Rosy stories that encourage clear thinking and good will through curiosity, testing of data, and room for modification or updating, can serve us well. But absolute stories of ill will become even more so through their reiteration, especially for the young. (“You’re so stupid;” Always ‘get’ those guys before they get you;””That group is no good.”)

Absolute stories of ill will can also seep into our neural circuitries as a result of traumatic experiences such as betrayal, physical injury, death of a loved one, injustice, bullying, war, etc. Sometimes negative and even untested stories that are used to explain such trauma become so ingrained that one begins to apply them to all aspects of one’s life, regardless of the actual circumstances. (25)

On a macro level, communities, sects, and nations may repeat ancient and modern tales of ill will against one another, which usually encourages more trauma-inducing actions like war and terrorism, which then produces more tales of the same, and so on. In the United States, the trauma of 9/11 inspired reruns of the stories: “The Axis of Evil,””We Have to Get Them before They Get Us””You’re Either With Us or Against Us.” It also produced the new twin tales: “Wiretapping Americans Without Show of Just Cause” and “Torturing Presumed Enemy Combatants are Necessary Evils.” In response to the release of this anthology of ill will, Americans received in return the much-played rerun of the ancient but to the point story: “Death to the Infidel.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali-winner of the 2005 Tolerance Prize of Madrid, praised as one of the 100 Most Influential Persons of the World by Time magazine, and named European of the Year for 2006 by Reader ‘s Digest-persists in her campaign to rewrite ancient and modern tales of discrimination, intolerance, and hate. Hirsi AIi, a victim of religious genital mutilation herself, wrote the script and provided the voice-over for the documentary, Submission, directed by Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Following the film’s release, Van Gogh was murdered in the streets of Amsterdam. Affixed to his body by knife was a death threat to Hirsi AIi. However, despite the trials and tribulations of her life, Hirsi AIi still insists we can change.(26)

Postman notes that history is littered with punishments inflicted on those who challenged existing narratives. The likes of Socrates, Jesus, Mohammad, Galileo, Charles Darwin, Andre Solzhenitsyn, Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Salman Rushdie all had alternative tales to tell. As Postman puts it, “No one loves a story-buster, at least not until a new story can be found.” (27)

Our ability to amend or rewrite the innumerable stories of our varying lives is not only our birthright-it has been our primary cognitive tool for success and survival as a species. Amending and rewriting the stories we choose to live by, when faced with new information or discoveries, mirrors how we build daily, rebuild, and expand the neural pathways of our brain. The protagonists of most traditional dramas metaphorically rewrite how they see themselves and the world as part of their significant change or transformation at the end of the story.

Rapid Story Delivery System Woes

Perhaps nothing in recent times has seen more change than our global communication systems. Current communication technologies- from radio and television to computers, satellite, the Internet, and cell phones-are a far cry from the bygone days of routinely sitting around the campfire, attending public lectures, listening to scientific or philosophical debates in soirees and coffee shops, and standing in the rain to catch political speeches that ran several hours at a clip. Because our story exchanges have become so rapid, the actual tales and messages we send as part of our daily communications are often shortened to match. Text messaging, email abbreviations, sound bytes, and headline news seem to rely on fewer and fewer words and other symbols to stand for the entire story. As we continue to employ increasingly simpler symbols and phrases, it could be argued that we simultaneously may be going backwards in our communications, to some earlier forms of language.

The less detailed and specific our stories become, the more easily they are transformed into black and white, either/or issues that further limit the time we take to think about them. Our current propensity for short-hand communications may even discourage fact- checking and may turn us into less curious, less independent thinkers. Remember how quickly the majority of Americans were talked into supporting the Iraq war based on what is now regarded as misinformation. What about the relative ease with which some politicians were able to convince many of their constituents that global warming was a myth by using catchy sound bytes rather than scientific data?

Short hand yarns, like stories writ in stone, discourage us from taking the time we need to evaluate the possible short and long- term consequences of their telling. If we abdicate our responsibility as human beings to ask the what next?/what if? questions that made us a species in the first place, we may eventually lose that ability. As the saying goes, use it or lose it. Since our communications systems can deliver stories at lightning speeds, any such downward spiral in human brain function is bound to occur all the more quickly. We may be well on our way to devolving into a less intelligent form of life. But before that happens, perhaps our planet may no longer be able to support life as we know it.

Epilogue: To Be Continued…We Hope…

As Dr. Evelyn Singleton keeps telling me, perhaps the great mystical and practical task we humans face at this time is to relearn how to use our greatest evolutionary inheritance-story technology-to our best advantage as a species. Otherwise we certainly risk misusing, to the point of no return, the hard technologies now at our disposal that have already altered the face of the earth.

General semantics offers us tools to employ story technology to our best advantage-so that we can continue to change and adapt in ways that surpass most other species. Through the help of GS narratives such as “indexing,””dating,””et cetera,” and the “is of identity,” we can consciously use story to refresh our own identities and to reconsider how we view and understand others through a multiordinal approach. We can check and recheck the premises of our narratives and the events and information we represent as facts.

Most stories told as stories-like this essay-usually end with some sort of conclusion or final evaluation. But almost all stories, even those with presumably closed endings such as the death of a hero, still suggest ways for the tale to continue. Witness the plethora of sequels and prequels in film and novels; consider those well-nigh universal stories of life, death, and renewal. My own drama, On the Shoulders of Apes, may not be completed for a very long time, because Dr. Evelyn Singleton is still kvetching-still holding out for more rewrites-still holding out for better results…

Notes

1. For essays on the intersections between literary theory, computer science, and artificial intelligence research see Michael Mateas and Phoebe Sengers, eds., Narrative Intelligence: Advances in Consciousness Research (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003). 2. For discussions about operational features of story and narrative see for example, Jerome Bruner^cfs of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); _____, “The Narrative Construction of Reality” in Mateas and Sengers, eds., Narrative Intelligence 41-62; Steven Cohan and Linda M. Shires, Telling Stories: A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative Fiction (New York: Routledge, 1988) 52-82; Milton Dawes, “Science, Religion, and God: My Story,” ETC, Vol. 57, No. 2 (June/Summer 2000): 149; Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and The Principles of Screenwriting (New York: Harper Collins, 1997); Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, trans. Richard Howard ( 1971 ; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977) 111.

3. McKee 147-9, 179.

4. See for example, Steve Denning, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art & Discipline of Business Narrative (New York: Jossey-Bass, April 2005); _____, The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 2000); John Seely Brown, Steve Denning, Katalina Groh and Larry Prusak eds., Storytelling in Organizations: How Narrative and Storytelling Are Transforming Twenty-first Century Management (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2004); Stephen M. Fiore and Rudy McDaniel, “Building Bridges: Connecting Virtual Teams Using Narrative and Technology,” THEN: Technology, Humanities, Education, & Narrative Journal, 95 (Published Online, 2 January 2006); Ben Hauck-general semanticist, actor, and director-currently teaches comedy improvisation for Infusion software engineers in New York City, www. benhauck.com.

5. Drew Westen, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation (New York: Public Affairs, 2007). Westen, a psychologist and sometime stand-up comic, studied voter preferences in United States. He concluded that the majority of voters chose politicians who appealed to them emotionally (right brain thinking tendencies), rather than politicians who concentrated more on facts and figures (left brain thinking tendencies).

6. Dawes 148.

7. Diane Ackerson, An Alchemy of the Mind (New York: Scribner, 2004) 242-4; Frans de Waal, The Ape and the Sushi Master (New York: Basic Books, 2001); Jane Goodall, Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe (1990; New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000). see also the work of my relatives, Eugen Teuber, as described by Marianne L. Teuber, “The founding of the primate station, Tenerife, Canary Islands,” American Journal of Psychology 107 (1994): 551-581.

8. Ian Parker, “Swingers,” The New Yorker 30 July 2007: 48-61.

9. Ackerman 241-9; M. Bekoff and D. Jamieson eds., Readings in Animal Cognition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996); John R. Krebs and N.B. Davies, eds., Behavioral Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach, 4th ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997); Clive D. L. Wynne, Do Animals Think? (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004).

10. Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1890; 1922; Dover, 2002); Jane E. Harrison, Ancient Art and Ritual (1913; Kessinger Publishing, 1997); Marvin Carlson, Theories of the Theatre (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984) 336- 7.

11. Robin Dunbar, “Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1993): 681-735; _____, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1996). see also “The Social Intelligence Hypothesis” transcript, ABC Radio National, Airdate: 17 February 2007, with guests Robin Dunbar, Nicholas Humphrey, and Kerstin Dautenhahn et al.

12. Dunbar, “Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans,” 681-735.

13. Mateas and Sengers, “Narrative Intelligence” and eds., Narrative Intelligence, 1-26; Marc Davis and Michael Travers, “A Brief Overview of the Narrative Intelligence Reading Group,” in Mateas and Sengers eds., 27-40.

14. Kerstin Dautenhahn, “Stories of Lemurs and Robots: The Social Origin of Storytelling” in Mateas and Sengers eds., Narrative Intelligence, 63-90; _____, “The Narrative Intelligence Hypothesis: In Search of the Transactional Format of Narratives in Humans and other Social Animals,” in M. Beynon, C.L. Nehaniv, and K. Dautenhahn, eds., Cognitive Technology: Instruments of the Mind, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference, CT Warwick 2001 (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2001) 250-1.

15. Nicholas Humphrey, “The Social Function of Intellect,” in R. W. Byrne and A. Whiten eds., Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) 13-26; _____, Consciousness Regained: Chapters in the Development of Mind (Oxford University Press, 1983); ______, “Cave art, autism and the evolution of the human mind,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Vol. 8 (1998): 165- 191. For discussions on autism, see also Lance Strate, “Something from Nothing: seeking a Sense of Self,” ETC, Vol. 60, no. 1 (2003): 4-21; Dautenhahn, “The Narrative Intelligence Hypothesis,” 255-7.

16. Dautenhahn, “Stories of Lemurs and Robots,” 63-90; _____, “The Narrative Intelligence Hypothesis,” 248-265; Dunbar, “Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group size, and Language in Humans,” 681-735.

17. Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) 193.

18. Wynne 106-138.

19. Bruner, “The Narrative Construction of Reality” in Mateas and Sengers, eds., Narrative Intelligence, 41 -62.

20. Neil Postman, Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) 101.

21. Wendell Johnson, Your Most Enchanted Listener (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1956) 31-2; _____, People in Quandaries (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1946) 11-14.

22. Robert H. Frank, Falling Behind: How Rising Inequity Harms the Middle Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) 1- 2.

23. Paul MacLean, The Triune Brain in Evolution (New York: Plenum Press, 1990).

24. Parker 48-61.

25. Roger Schank, Tell Me a Story (New York: Scribners, 1990) 73, 170.

26. “Q & A: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Enter the Dutch ‘Infidel,’ Faithful to Herself.” The New York Times, Sunday 4 February 2004: D3.

27. Postman 101-2.

KATHERINE LIEPE-LEVINSONN*

* Katherine liepe-Levinson is the founder and director of Muse Educational Resources Inc. and a member of the Dramatist Guild, Actor’s Equity Association, and the Screen Actor’s Guild. She is also a board member of the New York Society for General Semantics.

Copyright International Society for General Semantics Jul 2008

(c) 2008 et Cetera. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

By Doug Mead

RAMBLINGS FROM THE classroom at Berean Christian High School in Walnut Creek:

Homecoming is in two weeks. Homecoming is one of the most exciting times around campus — not just the football game on Oct. 18 against St. Elizabeth of Oakland, but all the festivities surrounding the game. A king and queen will be named at halftime.

But the real action takes place in the classes and corridors between boys and girls. On Monday, amid class meetings, a large box was wheeled into the classroom. Suddenly, the top flew off and out popped a boy — like a Jack-in-the-box — with flowers in hand, asking a girl out. She said yes. How sweet.

Whatever happened to just calling up a girl and asking her if she wants to go? Almost every day, a boy comes into class with this elaborate scheme to ask a girl out to Homecoming. While I applaud their creativity, I just wish they would put that much effort into their studies.

If I had it my way, I would put a spending limit on flowers — five bucks. Here’s why: the girl feels a tremendous amount of pressure to say yes with $50 in flowers before her and classmates staring at her. Often, the girl goes back and declines the offer under a more reasonable setting. Girls don’t need that kind of pressure, and boys don’t need to spend that kind of money.

Or, he could just text her!

Every day, when the bell rings to end class, students file out and immediately grab their cell phones to text their friends. Cell phones are strictly forbidden during class time; if we see them, we confiscate them and give out 10 demerits (25 equals a one-day suspension).

Today’s kids’ entire social lives evolve around texting. They can’t spell a lick because everything is abbreviated on cell phones. They can’t do homework because they’re too busy texting. All that texting hurts their thumbs. The next cultural malady — carpal tunnel syndrome of the fingers and thumbs.

Kids get into accidents because they are texting their friends. The earpiece thingy for cell phones is meaningless to teenagers, because they text their friends while driving.

Which brings me to my next subject — cars. It is interesting to see the variety of cars in the Berean parking lot. Teachers mostly drive older used cars. It’s a big deal to get your driver’s license in high school, because it means freedom from Mom and Dad driving you to school every day — or worse, taking the bus.

I can always tell when a student gets his or her driver’s license. They suddenly become cool, because they can drive. It bugs me when I see an irresponsible student suddenly pull into the parking lot with a $30,000 car. The responsible students seem to be driving their parents’ old jalopies with 200,000 miles on them.

Note to parents: Stop buying the fancy wheels for your kids. You are teaching them that they don’t have to do anything to get nice toys. My wife and I have already decided that her son is getting her 1998 Honda Accord and not my 1996 Ford Mustang. One is conservative, one is racy.

Conservative is good for a teenager.

Doug Mead is a second-year teacher at Berean Christian High School in Walnut Creek, Calif. You can e-mail him at [email protected]

(c) 2008 Oakland Tribune. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

By Jacquie Oliverius

EACH WEEK, it seems that there is a different club or organization marking a major milestone, all of which emphasizes the long history of the groups, plus the high level of activity and the varied interests of Central County residents.

One particularly crafty group — the Valley Quail chapter of the Embroiderers’ Guild of America (EGA) — marked its 25th anniversary as an EGA chapter with a special celebration Sept. 13 in Walnut Creek.

“President Sara Angle welcomed all attendees, most of whom were local but some came from as far away as Fort Bragg,” said Beverly Spurs, publicity chairwoman.

In addition to Angle, the chapter officers attending included vice president Evelin Mitchell, secretaries Joyce Mason and Jo Ellen Angel, and treasurer Celeste Chalasani.

“A slide-show presentation of chapter members and events through the years was shown, followed by a ‘show and tell’ of members’ earliest and most recent needlework projects,” said Spurs.

“The purpose of Valley Quail EGA is to educate, develop and promote the practice of needlework skills in the Contra Costa area.”

Spurs added that over the years, the chapter has had several community outreach projects and the latest is “the stitching of bookmarks for elementary school and adult literacy students.”

The anniversary celebration culminated with a white elephant gift exchange and an anniversary cake.

Valley Quail is one of 26 EGA chapters in the Greater Pacific Region, which includes Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and British Columbia, Canada.

The chapter meets at the United Methodist Church in Walnut Creek on the second Thursday of the month — in the morning of odd- numbered months and the evenings of even-numbered months. For more information, call membership chairwoman Merle Ritchie at 925-837- 3265 or visit the region’s Web site at www.ega-gpr.org.

Happy silver anniversary to the members of the Valley Quail chapter.

Martinez history

Between the second annual Martinez Historic Home Tour and the fourth Martinez History Lecture Series, residents will be able to immerse themselves in local history this month.

The first of four Friday lectures in the series will take place at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Martinez Senior Community Center, 818 Green St. Each of the lectures is free to the public.

Paul Craig will be speaking on little-known talents and interests of John Muir during the presentation, “John Muir — whittler, clockmaker, rancher and Martisian.”

The remaining lectures will take place Oct. 17, 24 and 31, all at the senior center.

The following day, the Martinez Historic Home Tour will open the doors to six historic Martinez homes for visitors.

The tour will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and begin at the Martinez Museum, 1005 Escobar St. The home tour takes approximately two or three hours, and the cost is $20 per person in advance and $25 when purchased the day of the event.

Bob Loomis will entertain guests with live music at 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. at the museum, and participants will receive a keepsake booklet that highlights the history and architecture of each home on the tour.

The event is presented by the Martinez Historical Society, and proceeds from the home tour will benefit the effort to restore the 1877 train depot in Martinez. It is hoped that, once restored, the building will be opened as a museum.

For more information on the lecture series, contact Andrea Blachman, Martinez Museum director, at 925-372-7146 or the Martinez Senior Center at 925-370-8770. For more on the home tour, visit the Web site at www.martinezhometour.com or call June Rogers at 925-228- 2302.

Fourth of July presentation

The annual Pleasant Hill Fourth of July has something for everyone — a 5K run, a parade, pancake breakfast, crafts and games in the park and fireworks at night.

After the July event is over, there is still one more exciting activity. The 5K run is sponsored by the Fourth of July Commission, and the registration fees are divided among the 12 schools in Pleasant Hill.

At its September regular meeting, the commission announced the total of the fees — $9,842 — and president Jim Bonato presented checks to representatives from several of the schools, said Dee Wood, publicity coordinator.

Those attending the meeting to accept their checks were Elizabeth Kim of Strandwood Elementary; Cindy Matteoni of Sequoia Elementary; Barbara Oaks from College Park High School; Hellena Postrk of Sequoia Middle School; Candace Raitano of Gregory Gardens Elementary; Jory Sydlaske from Horizon Home Studies; and Debbie Wilson of Christ the King Catholic Grammar School.

“Checks will also be given to Fair Oaks Elementary, Pleasant Hill Elementary, Pleasant Hill Middle, Valhalla Elementary and Valley View Middle schools,” said Wood.

“This was the fourth annual 5K run sponsored by the Fourth of July Commission, with a four-year total of $29,668 benefiting these 12 schools.”

For anyone who wants to be in on the planning for the 2009 celebration, new volunteers are always welcome. Call Bonato at 925- 938-5433 or visit www.PHJuly4.com

Tech trek-ers

For many years, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in California has been sending young girls to college, not for four years but for a very special week during the summer at a Tech Trek math/science camp.

“AAUW California sponsors six camps throughout (the state) where young women entering eighth grade are brought together to explore science, mathematics and technology topics in a positive and encouraging environment,” said Terri Almeida, publicity coordinator.

This summer, the Concord branch of the AAUW sent three girls to the Tech Trek camp held at Mills College in Oakland.

Representing the Concord AAUW were Shuk Wai Lau of Concord, the daughter of Kit Fun Lui; Walnut Creek resident Shannon Barbour, the daughter of Jim and Robin Barbour; and Concord resident Nanise Ma’ake, the daughter of Viliami and Lata Ma’ake. All three girls were set to enter the eighth grade at Oak Grove Middle School this fall.

“Concord AAUW, along with a helping hand from Clayton Valley/ Concord Sunrise Rotary Club, provided the Tech Trek camp opportunity for these young women,” said Almeida. “The camperships are rotated among Mt. Diablo school district’s four middle schools located in Concord.”

Items for the column can be e-mailed to [email protected] or mailed to Jacquie Oliverius/ Good Neighbor, 2640 Shadelands Drive, Walnut Creek, CA 94598. Submissions to the “Good Neighbor” column about upcoming events must be received by noon Wednesday, at least one week prior to the event date. Due to space restrictions, non-timely items may not be immediately published.

(c) 2008 Oakland Tribune. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

ST. LOUIS, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Mass casualty incidents — such as terrorist attacks, pandemic flu outbreaks or natural calamities like earthquakes or hurricanes — raise the life-and-death reality that existing medical equipment is not adequate to provide treatment for all who need it. One of the most critical gaps is the lack of ventilators for people requiring respiratory support.

Disaster specialists and health care professionals know that mass casualty events could mean that:

— skilled hospital personnel would be overwhelmed by the number of patients requiring mechanical ventilation;

— mechanical ventilation for people with respiratory failure might have to be provided outside acute care hospitals, including in the field with caregivers, patients and care equipment exposed to the elements;

— electrical power may not be available, possibly for several days or even longer.

A company in Missouri — Allied Healthcare Products, Inc. — has addressed these tough requirements by developing the first ventilator designed from inception to meet the unique demands of mass casualty incidents.

“Hospital ventilators are highly effective in the hands of skilled respiratory therapists. However, they also are very expensive, immobile, fragile and depend on a functioning power grid,” said Earl Refsland, chief executive officer of Allied Healthcare. “In the event of a mass casualty event, we simply can not depend on hospital ventilators alone. That’s why Allied decided to work on this solution.”

With input from the medical community, disaster specialists and first responders, Allied designed the Mass Casualty Ventilator (MCV)100, a life-support device that is small, light weight, rugged, low-cost, easy to maintain and, importantly, easy to operate by non-specialists after simple instruction. The MCV100 recently received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“The MCV100 is a ‘force multiplier’ for disasters,” said Kevin Kroupa, vice president of engineering at Allied. “It will mean that volunteers can deliver life-saving ventilation to large numbers of people, allowing health care professionals to use their skills to greatest advantage.”

The 14-pound MCV100 costs from $2835 to $3532, depending on functionality, versus about $30,000 for the typical hospital ventilator that weighs about 100 pounds and is tethered to fixed connections that make it immobile and, therefore, unavailable for use outside a hospital.

Also unlike a hospital ventilator, Allied’s MCV100 can be powered by its internal rechargeable battery or ordinary electric power. The battery runs the ventilator for 21 hours if compressed oxygen is used. If compressed oxygen is not available, the battery will power the unit for seven hours. Auxiliary battery packs will be made available that will deliver 42 hours of run time when operated with compressed oxygen and 14 hours without compressed oxygen. Batteries recharge in five and 10 hours, respectively, for the internal battery and auxiliary pack.

“Allied will introduce another MCV ventilator in about two months that can run exclusively on compressed oxygen or air if that is the only power source available or be powered by AC current or internal battery,” said Jack Dabrowski, Allied product manager for emergency products.

The MCV100 offers tidal volume (the amount of air breathed in and out) settings of 200 to 1200 milliliters and eight to 20 breaths per minute, oxygen mixing capability, breath-assist function for spontaneous breathing, full array of audible and visual safety alarms and a rechargeable battery with a three-year shelf life, Dabrowski said.

The MCV100 meets all requirements in the American Association for Respiratory Care’s “Guidelines for Acquisition of Ventilators to Meet Demands for Pandemic Flu and Mass Casualty Incidents” report of May 25, 2006.

About Allied Healthcare Products, Inc.

Allied Healthcare Products, Inc. manufactures a variety of respiratory products used in the healthcare industry in a range of hospital and alternate care site settings including sub-acute care facilities, home healthcare and emergency medical care. The Company’s product lines include respiratory care products, medical gas equipment and emergency medical products. Its products are marketed to hospitals, hospital equipment dealers, hospital construction contractors, home healthcare dealers and emergency medical products dealers.

Allied Healthcare Products, Inc.

CONTACT: Arthur Hoffman of Allied Healthcare Products, Inc.,+1-314-531-8888

Web site: http://www.alliedhpi.com/

Today noted pediatrician and star of The Doctors, Dr. Jim Sears stated, “I encourage parents to consider homeopathic products, which are a natural approach to medicine that stimulates the body’s curative responses so the body heals itself. There are so many products on the shelves for parents to choose from and they should know homeopathic medications are safe and effective. In my personal experience, I have seen tremendous success with Hyland’s(R) products for children and that is something I am happy to share with America’s parents.”

With a more than 200-year history of use, all homeopathic products are non-toxic, gentle, safe and effective. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates these products as drugs, ensuring that any member of the family can take them as indicated without worries about interactions with other medications or harmful side effects.

Chairman and CEO of Hyland’s(R), Inc., J.P. Borneman, Ph.D., said, “We appreciate the confidence and support of Dr. Jim and his on-package endorsement of our Earache Drops and Teething Gel. We are proud of the quality of our medicines and know these children’s treatments are among the best in the market – and they are 100% natural. As a respected physician and a source for reliable advice to his many patients, Hyland’s(R) is thrilled to work with Dr. Jim on raising awareness of these medicines.”

Dr. Jim specifically recommends Hyland’s(R) Earache Drops and Hyland’s Teething Gel. His public endorsement of these products will also include a seal that will be displayed on the products’ packaging. Dr. Jim also supports the use of Hyland’s(R) Teething Tablets, Colic Tablets, Cold ‘n Cough 4 Kids, Cough Syrup with 100% Natural Honey 4 Kids, and Complete Flu Care 4 Kids(R).

Dr. Jim is a highly-recognized figure among American parents. On September 8, 2008, he began a syndicated television series, The Doctors, a spin-off of the popular Dr. Phil program. A board-certified physician in private practice in Capistrano Beach, California, Dr. Jim earned his medical degree at St. Louis University School of Medicine and completed his pediatric residency at Northeastern Ohio University College of Medicine, Tod Children’s Hospital in Youngstown, Ohio.

Dr. Jim has been featured on www.Parenting.com and has written for Parenting and BabyTalk magazines. He has dispensed medical advice on the Today show, the Dr. Phil show and the PBS parenting series Help Me Grow. Also an active contributor to the content of www.AskDrSears.com, he is a co-author of five books on parenting.

For over a century, Hyland’s(R) has produced homeopathic medicines using the highest quality natural ingredients and in accordance with FDA Good Manufacturing Practices. Headquartered and manufactured in the Los Angeles area, Hyland’s(R) homeopathic medicines provide a safe and effective solution to health care issues that affect the entire family, from infants to seniors.

For more information on Hyland’s(R) and their products, please visit: www.hylands.com.

Alpha Systems, a premier provider of electronic data and document management solutions, has been named vendor of choice for Winthrop-University Hospital, of Mineola, New York. Alpha will provide enterprise EDM software and day-after-discharge document scanning services.

Winthrop-University Hospital’s partnership with Alpha Systems began in 2001, with medical record document imaging services. Winthrop has since implemented Alpha ImageWorks(TM) ASP solution for access to scanned emergency department records.

“We’ve shared a long-term, positive relationship with Alpha Systems and look forward to continued growth of this relationship,” says Maryellen McGowan, MS, RHIA, CPC, and Director of Health Information Management for Winthrop-University Hospital. “We’re excited to implement Alpha’s enterprise electronic document management solution. Clinicians will now be able to view previous visits and launch right into labs, EKGs, consultations, progress notes, discharge summaries and more. This virtual EMR will help us improve patient care outcomes.”

Maureen Gaffney RPAC RN, Chief Medical Information Officer and Director of PA/NP Services at Winthrop-University Hospital, agrees. “As a clinician, I look forward to easy access to patient medical records via Alpha’s solution, which will expedite development of individualized plans of care. This information will enhance the quality of the care we provide by allowing the practitioners to view the entire continuum of patient care and make timely clinical decisions based on documented historical information and clinical presentation.”

“We are pleased that Winthrop-University Hospital has selected Alpha Systems to help execute their paperless strategy,” commented Brett Griffith, President of Alpha Systems. “We look forward to providing the technology and services to give Winthrop clinicians and administrative staff instant, secure access to critical health information.”

Winthrop-University Hospital

Winthrop is a 591-bed teaching hospital located on Long Island in Mineola, NY. The Hospital, a regional healthcare leader for more than a century offers a full complement of inpatient and outpatient services, with a deep commitment to medical education and research. Please visit www.winthrop.org.

Alpha Systems

Founded in 1975, Alpha Systems supports hospitals’ EMR/EHR strategy with enterprise electronic document management software and scanning services. Headquartered in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, Alpha Systems serves many of the nation’s top healthcare providers with a complete range of quality enterprise EDM and scanning solutions. Please visit www.alphaedm.com.

RIDGEFIELD, Conn., Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/ — American consumers rate independent pharmacists the most highly satisfied and most trusted healthcare advisors and customer-service practitioners in the retail pharmacy industry, according to the first Independent Pharmacy Satisfaction Report presented by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In fact, 69 percent of independent pharmacy customers in the United States are highly satisfied with their pharmacies and thirty percent satisfied. But despite the high marks, Americans still believe independents fall behind their chain competitors when it comes to offering services such as automated prescription refill systems, toll free 24 hour service lines, blood pressure testing and screening and retail medical clinics.

The report for independent pharmacists is based on findings from the nationwide WilsonRx(R) National Pharmacy Satisfaction SurveyTM that is independently fielded and used as the basis for the 2008 Pharmacy Satisfaction Digest. Robert Belknap, executive director, Trade Sales and Operations, Boehringer Ingelheim, said the goal of the report is to provide independent pharmacists with additional tools to help with the success of their business.

“The Independent Pharmacy Satisfaction Report offers ideas and suggestions for pharmacy operators to consider implementing to possibly improve their shopper’s experience and differentiate themselves from larger-scale competition,” he said. “The report is a resource. It’s up to each operator to determine what is best for their particular store and implement the most appropriate ideas to help drive more customers into stores, improve satisfaction levels, and help meet customer needs.”

According to Jim Wilson, president, Wilson Health Information, LLC, which implements and analyzes the annual survey, the data included in the report offers explanations as to why customers are satisfied with their independent pharmacies and focuses on the unique strengths offered to independent pharmacy customers.

“Information from our research indicates that independent pharmacists succeed because they stick to the basics and provide superior one-on-one customer service as they have for most of this nation’s history,” he said. “They take the time to build personal relationships with their patients, counsel them on their medication needs and go the extra mile to make sure those needs are served.”

This is the fifth year Boehringer Ingelheim and WilsonRx(R) have partnered to produce the annual Pharmacy Satisfaction Digest, which serves as a valuable tool to help pharmacy operators gain a more thorough understanding of the nation’s pharmacy customers and the critical factors that drive their shopping behaviors. This is the first year for the Independent report. Other key findings specific to independent pharmacies include:

   --  McKesson's Health Mart store network received the highest in overall       pharmacy customer satisfaction nationally in the 2008 survey. Health       Mart remains the fastest-growing pharmacy franchise, with nearly 2,000       independent-owner franchisees.   --  As of early 2008, independent pharmacy customers generated the highest       number of new prescriptions and refills.  That amounted to 7.8 new       scripts and 27.7 refills in the past year.  Chain drug stores lagged       behind that average with their customers producing an average of 6.8       new scripts and 23.8 refills in the past year.   --  Customers who frequent independents tend to shop around more than       those who gravitate to other trade classes with just 16 percent of       those customers reporting they had used only one pharmacy in the past       12 months to fill prescriptions.  Another 48 percent said they had       filled prescriptions at two pharmacies in the past year, and 36       percent said they used three or more pharmacies to fill prescriptions       in the past year.   --  In contrast, 37 percent of chain drug store customers, 36 percent of       clinic pharmacy users and 31 percent of those who rely on supermarket       pharmacies for their prescriptions used only one pharmacy outlet in       the past 12 months.   

Data from the First Independent Pharmacy Satisfaction Report will be presented with the 2008 Pharmacy Satisfaction Digest at the National Community Pharmacists Association’s (NCPA) 110th Annual Convention and Trade Exposition, Oct. 11-15 in Tampa, Fla.

Visit http://www.pharmacysatisfaction.com/ for additional research, information and helpful tools such as patient information materials, prescription assistance plans, clinical guidelines, drug references and consumer satisfaction data.

About the Survey

The WilsonRx(R) National Pharmacy Satisfaction Survey(TM) is independently conducted by Wilson Health Information, LLC annually to identify and measure drivers of overall customer satisfaction and loyalty. The eight-page survey is distributed to more than 70,000 households in the U.S. The survey sample is balanced by geographic region, market size, age, household type, income, size, and state, with additional surveys being sent to the top U.S. Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) markets.

Respondents to the survey are screened to identify the primary household healthcare shopper or decision maker. This year, a total of 34,454 individuals responded to the survey, making this the largest comprehensive analysis of pharmacy customers in the nation. The statistical reliance is +/- 0.5 percent at the 95 percent confidence level. A minimum of 40 respondents within a market are required in order to draw comparative and quantitative conclusions.

About Wilson Health Information, LLC

Wilson Health Information, LLC, is a leading independent healthcare research and consulting company specializing in research among consumers and healthcare professionals for the pharmacy industry. Wilson Health Information’s data and findings help pharmacy operators identify customer strengths and weaknesses, and provide insight into pharmacy, pharmacy benefit, health insurance and treatment satisfaction.

About Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., based in Ridgefield, CT, is the largest U.S. subsidiary of Boehringer Ingelheim Corporation (Ridgefield, CT) and a member of the Boehringer Ingelheim group of companies.

The Boehringer Ingelheim group is one of the world’s 20 leading pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, it operates globally with 135 affiliates in 47 countries and approximately 39,800 employees. Since it was founded in 1885, the family-owned company has been committed to researching, developing, manufacturing and marketing novel products of high therapeutic value for human and veterinary medicine.

In 2007, Boehringer Ingelheim posted net sales of US $15.0 billion (10.9 billion euro) while spending approximately one-fifth of net sales in its largest business segment, Prescription Medicines, on research and development.

For more information, please visit

http://us.boehringer-ingelheim.com/.

Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

CONTACT: Tammy Curtice, PharmD, Pharmacy Satisfaction Program Director,Pharmacy Development, Trade Sales and Operations of Boehringer IngelheimPharmaceuticals, Inc., +1-203-798-4788, [email protected]; or Kelly Franck of Ogilvy PublicRelations Worldwide, +1-212-880-5208, [email protected]

Web Site: http://www.pharmacysatisfaction.com/http://www.us.boehringer-ingelheim.com/

Information Builders, the independent leader in operational business intelligence (BI) systems, today announced its customer Poudre Valley Health System (PVHS) was awarded the Ventana Research Leadership Award in the Business Intelligence category. PVHS provides a regional network with healthcare services and employs more than 3,000 healthcare professionals. With WebFOCUS, PVHS was able to replace several reporting tools with a standard BI solution and deliver real-time data about hospital costs, patient safety, bed occupancy, infection rates, and other variables to help directors, supervisors, and other users analyze market trends and keep a tight reign on costs.

“With WebFOCUS, we were finally able to turn data into information, transform that information into knowledge, and use that knowledge to instigate positive change,” said Russ Branzell, CIO of Poudre Valley Health Systems. “We are honored to be recognized for our work and are dedicated to continue incorporating new technologies into our system to make services more affordable and effective for patients.”

Implementing WebFOCUS at PVHS resulted in a significant boost in staff productivity and cost cutting throughout the facility. Because PVHS replaced several reporting tools with WebFOCUS, they are now able to selectively deliver real-time data without showering recipients with irrelevant information. BI dashboards and automatically scheduled reports keep managers and directors apprised of critical organizational metrics. For example, authorized users of WebFOCUS can quickly assess Cost per Unit of Service, a complex calculation that compares patient volume, current expenses, and monthly budget projections. When a director notes a variance in the scorecard, he can now drill down into related data to analyze and address where the variance occurred and what caused it. Today, managers can go to one place for clinical, financial, and operational reports.

In addition, PVHS typically knows its market share at a single point in time, but with WebFOCUS, managers can now understand the market as a whole. WebFOCUS ReportCaster helps the team share and distribute market data. PVHS can use it to distribute relevant information by email, freeing people from having to log in to the system and look for it themselves. They can easily send reports to people in HR, accounting, or any other department in the organization; and those people, in turn, can mine the data and generate ad hoc reports within a secure Web-based environment.

“The Ventana Research Leadership Award in BI recognizes the organization that has most successfully deployed BI technology to advance business and IT management and to improve performance through the use of analytics,” said Mark Smith, CEO and EVP, Ventana Research. “The PVHS organization exemplifies this award and the understanding that successful performance management requires both a team effort and effective leadership.”

“Hospitals and medical clinics, like PVHS, depend on precise information to control costs and to ensure that patients get the quality care they need,” said Gerald Cohen, CEO and founder of Information Builders. “PVHS has succeeded in defining the key metrics that will help the organization continue to grow and be profitable and wholly deserve this prestigious recognition.”

About Ventana Research

Ventana Research is the leading benchmark research and advisory services firm. We provide expert guidance to help organizations manage and optimize performance — to become not only more efficient but more effective. Our unparalleled insights and best practices guidance are based on our rigorous, research-based benchmarking of people, processes, information and technology across business and IT functions worldwide. The combination we offer of benchmark research, thorough market coverage and in-depth knowledge of hundreds of technology providers means we can deliver business and technology education and expertise to our clients where and when you need them. Ventana Research provides the most comprehensive analyst coverage in the industry; more than 2.5 million business and IT professionals around the world benefit from Ventana Research’s insights. To learn how our benchmark research and assessment and advisory services can improve your organization’s performance, visit www.ventanaresearch.com.

About Poudre Valley Health System

PVHS is a locally owned, private, not-for-profit organization that provides care to residents of Northern Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. With two hospitals — PVH and MCR — PVHS offers a full spectrum of healthcare services, including emergency/urgent care, intensive care, medical/surgical care, maternal/child care, oncology care, and orthopedic care. PVHS’ unique clinical focus areas include: 1) Colorado’s third largest cardiac center; 2) the only Level IIIa neonatal intensive care unit between Denver and Billings, Montana; 3) Level II and III trauma centers; and 4) a bariatriac surgery Center of Excellence.

About Information Builders

As a leading independent business intelligence (BI) company for the past 30 years, Information Builders has provided innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and numerous U.S. federal government agencies. The company’s flagship WebFOCUS product is the world’s most widely used BI platform. Superior architecture and intuitive nature enables WebFOCUS to address the needs of everyone in the extended global enterprise — executive, analytical, operational, and beyond. It provides the agility to adapt to changing business conditions with the security, scalability, and flexibility to support dozens to millions of users.

Unique to the company is the integration expertise it brings to the BI market. Information Builders iWay Software suite solves complex integration problems with pre-built components that require minimal custom programming. The award-winning combination of WebFOCUS and iWay give Information Builders customers the ability to embrace the company motto: “Everyone Makes Decisions.”

Information Builders is committed to customer service excellence with a Professional Services division that specializes in building custom applications using WebFOCUS and iWay Software. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,450 people and has more than 350 business partners.

 Press Contacts Kathleen Moran Information Builders (917) 339-6313 Email Contact  Jennifer Moebius Emerge PR (617) 729-3183 Email Contact

SOURCE: Information Builders

Summit Medical Group recently implemented InstaMed’s industry leading healthcare payments network and platform as their solution for patient payment collections.

Healthcare providers like Summit Medical Group face the new challenge of increasing patient responsibility resulting in a higher cost to collect, reduced margins and an increase in bad debt. The solution to this challenge is to proactively identify the patient responsibility and act upon that information at the point of service. To achieve a higher level of financial assurance, Summit has chosen to leverage InstaMed’s industry leading solutions.

Utilizing InstaMed’s full suite of payment capabilities in the front and back offices, including the ability to setup flexible payment plans, Summit has seen a 40% increase in back office collections as well as a 40% reduction in their costs to collect, post and reconcile patient payments.

“We are thrilled about the savings to our Medical Group, but are even more excited about the feedback we’ve received from our patients,” stated Mike Dugan, Director of Business Operations at Summit Medical Group. “Allowing patients to pay their bill online 24/7 from the web, has resulted in greater patient satisfaction and rapid adoption of online payments to their healthcare provider.”

In addition to offering its patients the most flexible and convenient payment options, Summit now takes advantage of InstaMed’s Automated Eligibility solution. The Automated Eligibility solution improves Summit’s ability to identify patient responsibility and provides seamless integration with InstaMed’s payment solutions to drive increased financial assurance. InstaMed currently supports over 430 healthcare payers for real-time eligibility and provides the response in one easy to read view.

Bill Marvin, President and CEO of InstaMed stated, “Summit’s implementation of InstaMed demonstrates how our patent pending network and platform increase patient collections and cut costs. We are thrilled to serve Summit and we look forward to continuing to strengthen their financial assurance and patient satisfaction.”

About Summit Medical Group

Summit Medical Group is the largest multispecialty medical group in New Jersey with over 120 highly qualified physicians. SMG treats more than 30,000 patients per month at its Diamond Hill Road campus in Berkeley Heights, and six satellite offices in Berkeley Heights, Shorts Hills, Summit, Warren, and Westfield. SMG plays a major role in the American Group Practice Association (AMGA) along with the Mayo Clinic, the Lahey Clinic and the Geisinger Clinic. As one of the premier multi-specialty groups on the East Coast, Summit Medical Group has provided exceptional primary and specialty care since 1929. Visit Summit on the web at www.summitmedicalgroup.com.

About InstaMed

InstaMed is the industry leading healthcare payments network and platform. InstaMed’s mission is to transform the healthcare payment process for healthcare Providers, Payers, Banks and Patients so their payment experience is simple, convenient, reliable and secure. InstaMed processes all of the healthcare and payment transactions in the healthcare revenue cycle and offers patent pending, integrated healthcare and payment transactions that accelerate the healthcare payment process and reduce the administrative costs to all parties. InstaMed currently supports the healthcare payment processing needs of over 700 hospital and clinic locations; practice management vendors and billing services representing over 50,000 providers; and hundreds of healthcare payers of all sizes. InstaMed is registered with Visa and MasterCard as a PSP of U.S. Bank. InstaMed is Payment Card Industry Level One certified and fully accredited by the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission as a healthcare clearinghouse. InstaMed is an AHIP Solutions Partner (America’s Health Insurance Plans), a member of the C.O.R.E. Initiative (Committee on Operating Rules for Information Exchange), the Medical Banking Project, ASC X12, HBMA (Healthcare Billing & Management Association), Electronic Payments Network ACH Association Services, and WEDI (Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange). Visit InstaMed on the web at www.instamed.com.

Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation (NASDAQ: NYMX) provided today an update on development activities for the Company’s NX-1207 drug for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) or enlarged prostate, a common affliction of older men. The drug has the potential to have major impact on current management of BPH.

Presentations of clinical study data at annual regional meetings of urologists in the U.S. in the last month were well-received and further presentations are scheduled in the coming month. There is significant interest from many major pharmaceutical companies to license and market NX-1207 and the Company is carefully reviewing its options for future marketing arrangements for the drug. NX-1207 has entered its Phase 3 development program, the last stage before filing with the FDA for approval for commercial distribution and sale. The Company has received a large number of communications from patients and doctors throughout the U.S. and internationally, interested in participating in clinical trials and wanting to learn more about the drug. Investigative site recruitment activities are proceeding well.

Brian Doyle, Director of Nymox Business Development, said “It is particularly encouraging to see the response to the NX-1207 studies from urologists and patients. It speaks to the tremendous need for a simple and effective treatment for BPH”.

There is an increased awareness of the need for an effective treatment for BPH. In August 2008, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released its Prostate Research Strategic Plan calling for further research into BPH. The report noted that BPH is one of the most commonly diagnosed diseases in the male U.S. population with a large portion of any primary care physician’s or urologist’s practice consisting of BPH management. The condition affects men of all races and ethnic groups and can progress in severity over time. If left untreated, BPH can lead to significant consequences, such as acute urinary retention, incontinence, and urinary tract infection. The report estimated that 50% of men in their 50s have pathological signs of prostatic hyperplasia and from 26 to 46% of men between the ages of 40 to 79 years suffer from moderate to severe urinary problems and symptoms associated with BPH.

NX-1207 involves a new targeted approach to the treatment of BPH. The drug is injected by a urologist in an office setting directly into the zone of the prostate where the enlargement occurs and the injection takes only a few minutes and involves little or no pain or discomfort. In multicenter U.S. clinical trials to date NX-1207 has been found to produce improvements in BPH symptom score that are approximately double that reported for currently approved BPH drugs without the sexual and blood pressure and other side effects that are associated with those drugs.

More information about Nymox is available at www.nymox.com, email: [email protected], or 800-936-9669.

This press release contains certain “forward-looking statements” as defined in the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and the actual results and future events could differ materially from management’s current expectations. The conduct of clinical trials and the development of drug products involve substantial risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially from expectations. Promising early results do not ensure that later stage or larger scale clinical trials will be successful or will proceed as expected. Such factors are detailed from time to time in Nymox’s filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory authorities.

By SUZY COHEN

Q: You mentioned Padma Basic in a recent article and how it might help autoimmune conditions. I have rheumatoid arthritis and heart disease. Can you provide more information? — E.O., New York

A: Padma Basic is considered a drug overseas, sold as “Padma 28.” It is made by a well-respected company in Switzerland and has been available throughout Europe for years. In the United States, it is classified as an over-the-counter dietary supplement.

Unlike most dietary supplements, this one has clinical research to support its use in the following conditions: Peripheral artery disease, heart disease, arteriosclerosis, angina, high cholesterol, stroke recovery, hepatitis, ulcers, diabetes, AIDS-related complex, multiple sclerosis (MS), chronic fatigue, frequent infections and dental disease. The product is a natural blood thinner, so a dosage reduction may be needed if you take anticoagulants.

It works for rheumatoid arthritis by calming an overactive immune system that is bent on destroying cartilage and bone. The destruction occurs thanks to TNF (tumor necrosis factor), which signals the attack. Padma contains an herb “Pterocarpus santalinus,” which inhibits TNF and T-cell proliferation in a similar way to prescription drugs like Humira, Remicade and Enbrel. It could improve inflammatory conditions among them, Crohn’s disease, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis. Any kind of “itis” disease could benefit, like arthritis, bursitis, pancreatitis, plantar fasciitis and cystitis.

Padma increases circulation, particularly in the legs, so it helps with swollen ankles, cold feet and poor circulation. The multi- tasking formula contains 20 ingredients including lettuce leaf, natural camphor, cloves, cardamom, neem fruit, calendula flower and iceland moss. It also provides valerian root, prized for its ability to calm the nerves, and licorice root for hayfever, emphysema, asthma, gout, psoriasis and chronic fatigue.

Originally published by SUZY COHEN Dear Pharmacist.

(c) 2008 Tulsa World. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

Initiate Systems, Inc., a leader in master data management (MDM) solutions and enterprise master person index (EMPI) software, today announced that the Bronx (NY) Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO), representing 80 percent of the providers serving the borough’s 1.36 million residents, has gone live with the Initiate(R) Health Information Exchange solution.

Providers at 125 care locations in the Bronx now may access patients’ clinical data with appropriate patient consent through the Initiate Health Information Exchange solution. With the Bronx RHIO in place, authorized physicians and nurses now have the ability to view a patient’s medical records from across participating hospitals, ambulatory care centers, physician offices and long-term and homecare services.

Secure access to relevant medical information about individual patients from multiple sites helps clinicians in emergency departments and at other provider locations improve treatment, prevent prescription errors and avoid duplicate testing.

As part of the Bronx RHIO implementation, the Initiate Health Information Exchange solution helps participants accurately identify a patient at the point of service by matching, linking and locating a patient’s records from across the network of healthcare systems. Initiate(R) software also integrates with the dbMotion(TM) solution, which serves as the interoperability and health-information-exchange platform for some of the world’s most advanced health information networks and delivery systems and facilitates secure access to integrated medical records for the Bronx RHIO.

The combined solution helps improve efficiencies, increase patient and provider satisfaction, reduce errors that result from poor data quality and create an interoperable environment that allows organizations to better serve their communities. It can also help save millions of dollars in administrative costs.

“The Bronx RHIO is exemplary in its work in the state of New York and should be commended nationally for providing the secure exchange of medical information to improve patient safety and service,” said Lorraine Fernandes, vice president, healthcare industry ambassador, Initiate Systems. “We are proud that the Initiate Health Information Exchange solution is part of the initiative to improve the quality of care for the residents of the Bronx.”

The Bronx Regional Health Information Organization (Bronx RHIO) is a not-for-profit organization established by the borough’s leading healthcare organizations. Participating members are:

Hospitals

Bronx Lebanon Hospital, Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, Jacobi Medical Center, James J. Peters Bronx Veterans Administration Medical Center, Lincoln Medical & Mental Health Center, Montefiore Medical Center, North Central Bronx Hospital, Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center, St Barnabas Hospital.

Community Health Centers

Bronx Community Health Network, Dr. Martin Luther King Health Center, Institute for Family Health, Mercy Community Care, MIC-Women’s Health Services, Morrisania Neighborhood Family Care Center, Morris Heights Health Center, Segundo Ruiz Belvis Neighborhood Family Care Center, Union Community Health Center, Urban Health Plan.

Long-Term Care Facilities

Beth Abraham Family of Health Services, Bronx Lebanon Special Care Center, Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale, James J. Peters VA Medical Center, Jewish Home and Hospital – Bronx Division, Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Campus, St. Barnabas Nursing Home.

Home Care Services

Beth Abraham Family of Health Services, Montefiore Home Health Care, Visiting Nurse Regional Health Care System, Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

“The Bronx RHIO is transforming healthcare delivery in the borough into a patient-centered, rational and more cost-effective system,” said Barbara Radin, executive director of the Bronx RHIO. “By implementing our health information exchange with Initiate software at the core, patients and clinicians participating in this program now have access to vital information when and where it is needed. This will significantly enhance patient safety and outcomes while greatly improving quality of care.”

“The launch of the Bronx RHIO puts our organization at the forefront of bringing medical care in the borough into the Information Age,” said Don Ashkenase, chairman of the board of the Bronx RHIO. “While many individual healthcare organizations in the Bronx have established their own electronic medical record systems in recent years, the Bronx RHIO makes possible, for the first time, the exchange of patient data between these organizations.”

About Initiate Systems

Initiate Systems, Inc. enables organizations to strategically leverage and share critical data assets. Its master data management (MDM) software and experience as an information exchange leader provide organizations with complete, accurate and real-time views of data spread across multiple systems or databases, even outside the firewall. This allows companies to unlock the value of their data assets for competitive advantages or operational improvements. Initiate Systems operates globally through its subsidiaries, with corporate headquarters in Chicago and offices across the U.S., and Toronto, London and Sydney. For more information, visit www.InitiateSystems.com.

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/ — A recent study comparing eight leading prescription packaging brands revealed that differences exist between prescription packages that could impact patient safety and the integrity of the prescription drugs that are contained in them.

Pharmacy Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (PHSI), a pharmaceutical consulting firm in Pittsburgh, PA, conducted a study to analyze prescription vials in three categories — child-resistance, moisture permeation, and light transmission. These factors are critical to patient safety and the stability of prescription drugs. The partial panel study consisted of a pass or fail comparison to the standards set forth by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) for Child-Resistance as well as the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) for Moisture Vapor Permeation and Light Transmission. Most of the manufacturers’ vials tested did not pass all three test criteria at the highest level. Of the products and manufacturers tested, the only product that passed all three test criteria at the highest levels was the Screw-Loc(R) vial from Rexam.

“Pharmacists concerned about their packaging should request documentation from the prescription packaging manufacturer on the test results for child resistant protocol, moisture permeation, and light transmission,” according to Donald Dietz, R.Ph., Vice President, PHSI. “The tests should show that the package meets or exceeds all testing standards. The selection of a prescription package that meets CSPC and USP standards should be important for the dispensing pharmacist.”

Dietz further noted, “With the average prescription price costing more than $70, a pharmacist should consider if the savings gained by not using the highest quality packaging is worth the risk to their patients.” For a copy of the complete study, please visit: http://www.phsirx.com/ComputerTalk/Medications_Dispensing.pdf .

About PHSI

Pharmacy Healthcare Solutions (PHSI) consults with pharmaceutical manufacturers, PBMs, retail pharmacy chains, and software companies on strategic business and marketing issues and targeted operational projects. Consulting projects across these market segments provide PHSI clients with the latest information on emerging trends as well as new products and services. Our consultants have extensive retail, mail service, and managed care experience to create actionable recommendations for our clients’ pressing business issues. For more information, visit PHSI’s website at http://www.phsirx.com/.

   Contact: Donald Dietz            Pharmacy Healthcare Solutions, Inc.            [email protected]            412/635-4650  

Pharmacy Healthcare Solutions, Inc.

CONTACT: Donald Dietz, +1-412-635-4650, [email protected], of PharmacyHealthcare Solutions, Inc.

Web site: http://www.phsirx.com/http://www.phsirx.com/ComputerTalk/Medications_Dispensing.pdf