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Texas doctors to operate on girl burned in U.S. drone strike
By Moni Basu, CNN
updated 11:42 PM EST, Wed December 21, 2011
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PHOTO: Shakira, 4, is believed to have been burned in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan in 2009.
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(CNN) -- She has eyelashes but no eyebrows. She has all her fingers but is missing four nails. Her skin is so taut now that she can no longer frown.
But she can still smile.
Her face tells a story of suffering. Her name, Shakira, tells a story of a new journey.
Shakira means thankful.
Last week, 4-year-old Shakira arrived in the United States for what her caretaker, Hashmat Effendi, hopes will be the start of the rest of her life.
Shakira, believed burned in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, will undergo reconstructive surgery in January.
She will never look fully normal, but Effendi hopes the surgery will make it easier for Shakira to grow older and help others see what Effendi has seen all along: an effervescent bundle of love.
In 2009, Effendi was on a medical mission with Texas-based House of Charity in Pakistan's Swat Valley. The region's natural beauty was once compared to Switzerland's, but by then it was a Taliban-infested area rife with violence.
One of the doctors found three little girls left in a trash bin. They'd suffered horrific injuries.
"Who are they?" the doctor asked.
Nobody knew.
Where were their parents? Where were they from?
All anyone could say is that there had been a U.S. drone attack. The girls were likely hurt in the strike.
Drone strike victim treated in Texas
The doctor, who was traveling with House of Charity, took them back with him. They were in grave condition. Two of the girls died, but the littlest one had a chance of making it if she were treated right away.
She was only a year old, Effendi guessed, but small for her age. She was skinny. Dirty. Very bloody. She had fresh burns all over her face, her scalp and on her arms.
Effendi began searching for the little girl's family. She needed their consent before doctors operated on her. But when no one stepped forward, doctors proceeded anyway to treat the burns. Otherwise, they would have to amputate her arm. Otherwise, she might not survive.
Effendi named her Shakira.
"Life," she said, "was a gift for her."
Effendi continued to look for relatives, even scattered posters of Shakira everywhere and solicited the help of the Pakistani army and a government official. But still, no one claimed her.
Shakira was finally taken to Shalimar Hospital in Lahore, where she spent the next three years in a charity ward. Until last week.
Effendi was finally able to bring Shakira back to Houston, where Effendi lives.
When the Qatar Airways flight landed, Shakira turned to Effendi, whom she calls Mummy.
"Are we in America?" she asked.
"Yes," Effendi replied.
Shakira put her hands together and clapped.
On the plane, Shakira had learned to count from 1 to 27 in English. It was a good start, Effendi thought.
House of Charity has helped thousands of children with congenital birth defects or those who have been disfigured in war, but Shakira was special.
Effendi raised three sons, who are grown. Her house once again filled with the mirth of a youngster.
"She's like my tail," Effendi said. "She follows me around all day."
She took Shakira to McDonald's. Shakira gobbled up chicken nuggets. She learned that in America, chips were called French fries and tomato sauce was ketchup.
Effendi was ironing her clothes Tuesday when Shakira ran up to her.
"Mummy, do you love me?" she asked. "How much?"
"This much," Effendi said, gesturing.
Shakira ran into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror and started screaming.
It was then that Effendi realized Shakira was overwhelmed.
She had gone that day to meet her doctor, Robert McCauley, at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Galveston. He volunteered to do the reconstructive surgery.
Shakira arrived in a turquoise striped dress, black leggings and white lacy socks. She wore beads around her neck and a big pink ring that House of Charity volunteer Larry Maxwell gave her. She called him "Nana," the Urdu word for grandfather.
At the hospital, Shakira touched McCauley's coat buttons; the nurse's stethoscope. She referred to McCauley as her doctor and understood as best a child could that he was trying to make her well.
"It's not easy and it's not a single-day procedure," McCauley said about the surgery. He will start January 16 with her right hand.
He will never be able to give her eyebrows or restore the missing nails on four of her fingers. Sometimes, when Shakira eats spicy food, her flesh feels raw and irritated. She will have to always be careful about that.
He will never be able to fix the severe discoloration on her forehead. But he hopes to reconstruct her nose, fix her eyes.
Shakira took it all in stride at the hospital. But it was that sense of belonging and being loved that was alien for her, Effendi realized. It was overwhelming.
"She needs security," Effendi said. "Yesterday was a very emotional day for her."
Effendi had been working with children for 25 years. But Shakira was teaching her new things.
Effendi hopes Shakira will be adopted by a family in the United States. It would be unfair, she said, to send Shakira back to Pakistan. She has no one there.
For now, Shakira will adjust to life in America in Effendi's home.
Effendi may never know where Shakira came from or who claimed her as a daughter.
But she knows she was able to give Shakira new life -- and a name that could not have been more fitting.
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Texas doctors to operate on girl burned in U.S. drone strike
By Moni... more
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From omnivore to vegan: The dietary education of Bill Clinton
By David S. Martin, CNN
August 18, 2011 7:15 a.m. EDT
CNN...
Editor's note: Tune in as Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the signs, tests and lifestyle changes that could make cardiac problems a thing of the past on "The Last Heart Attack," Sunday 8 p.m. ET.
[Click on photo to watch video.]
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(CNN) -- By the time he reached the White House, Bill Clinton's appetite was legend. He loved hamburgers, steaks, chicken enchiladas, barbecue and french fries but wasn't too picky. At one campaign stop in New Hampshire, he reportedly bought a dozen doughnuts and was working his way through the box until an aide stopped him.
Former President Clinton now considers himself a vegan. He's dropped more than 20 pounds, and he says he's healthier than ever. His dramatic dietary transformation took almost two decades and came about only after a pair of heart procedures and some advice from a trusted doctor.
His dietary saga began in 1993, when first lady Hillary Clinton decided to inaugurate a new, healthier diet for her husband. In a meeting, she asked Dr. Dean Ornish to work with the White House chefs, who were accustomed to high fat, French cuisine.
"The president did like unhealthy foods, and we were able to put soy burgers in White House, for example, and get foods that were delicious and nutritious," said Ornish, director and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California. Other new menu items included such healthy fare as stir fry vegetables with tofu, and salmon with vegetables.
Even with the revamped White House menu, Clinton battled his weight throughout his two terms as president. At his annual physical in 1999, the White House physician noted the president had put on 18 pounds since a checkup two years earlier. The prescription: refocus on exercise and a low-calorie diet.
Clinton didn't know it, but weight was not his biggest health concern. The 42nd president has a family history of heart disease, and plaque was building up in the coronary arteries leading to his heart, undetected by White House doctors.
In 2004, less than four years after leaving office, the 58-year-old Clinton felt what he described as a tightness in his chest as he returned home from New Orleans, where he was promoting his memoir, "My Life." Days later, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery to restore blood flow to his heart.
"I was lucky I did not die of a heart attack," Clinton told CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta. After the surgery, the former president cut down on his calories and lowered the cholesterol in his diet, but his heart troubles were not over.
Last year, the former president went to Haiti to support the relief efforts but he felt weak. When he returned home, he learned he needed another heart procedure: two stents to open one of the veins from his bypass surgery, which had become, in Clinton's words, "pretty bent and ugly."
Ornish recalls meeting with Clinton a few days after his angioplasty. "I shared with him that because of his genetics, moderate changes in diet and lifestyle weren't enough to keep his disease from progressing. However, our research showed that more intensive changes change actually reverse progression of heart disease in most people."
"I told him, 'The friends that mean the most to me are the ones that tell me what I need to hear, not necessarily what I want to hear. And you need to know your genes are not your fate. And I say this not to blame you but to empower you. And I'm happy to work with you to whatever extent you want,'" Ornish recalled. They met a few days later, he said.
"I essentially concluded that I had played Russian roulette," Clinton said, "because even though I had changed my diet some and cut down on the caloric total of my ingestion and cut back on much of the cholesterol in the food I was eating, I still -- without any scientific basis to support what I did -- was taking in a lot of extra cholesterol without knowing if my body would produce enough of the enzyme to support it, and clearly it didn't or I wouldn't have had that blockage. So that's when I made a decision to really change."
The former president now says he consumes no meat, no dairy, no eggs, almost no oil.
"I like the vegetables, the fruits, the beans, the stuff I eat now," Clinton told Gupta.
The former president's goal is to avoid any food that could damage his blood vessels. His dietary guides are Ornish and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr., who directs the cardiovascular prevention and reversal program at The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. Both doctors have concluded that a plant-based diet can prevent and, in some cases, actually reverse heart disease.
"All my blood tests are good, and my vital signs are good, and I feel good, and I also have, believe it or not, more energy," Clinton said. His latest goal: getting his weight down to 185, what he weighed when he was 13 years old.
Clinton is trying to spread his newfound zeal for healthy eating to children. The Clinton Foundation has teamed up with the American Heart Association and is helping 12,000 schools promote exercise and offer better lunches so decades from now, today's children will not face the same heart troubles he has.
"It's turning a ship around before it hits the iceberg, but I think we're beginning to turn it around," Clinton said.
.From omnivore to vegan: The dietary education of Bill Clinton
By David S. Martin,... more
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http://www.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_full_width/hash/radiation-poisoning.jpg
Human Rights Examiner...
Exclusive: Gulf Plague survivors being radiated
April 29th, 2011 3:20 pm ET
Deborah Dupre
PART ONE...
Corexit is not the only killer loose from the Gulf Operation, commonly called "BP's Oil Spill 2010." A new report by environmental attorney Stuart Smith emphasizes that radiation amounts from the Gulf oil gusher are larger than discussed. In an exclusive interview, head of Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctors, Delia Labarre reported that radiation poisoning signs are what suffering Gulf people typically exhibit.
Small traces of radioactivity can prove deadly.
Smith's report title reflects the Gulf state of affairs, "Chernobyl in the Gulf", an accurate term according to head of Gulf Barefoot Doctor, Delia LaBarre. For almost a year, LaBarre has been witnessing people with "Gulf Plague," also called "BP Flu," "BP Crud," or "Blue Plague." Most of them have radiation poisoning signs she said.
LaBarre has almost single-handedly provided approximately 300 Survival Kits to Gulf Plague victims over the past year.
Ongoing atrocities in the Gulf that Smith lists since on-start of the Gulf Operation, that former top oil executive Ian Crane evidences as planned for depopulation include:
Residents up and down the Gulf Coast report tar balls and mats continue to litter beaches
Re-oilings are common
The multi-billion-dollar Gulf seafood industry is reeling from contamination
Dead dolphins and sea turtles wash ashore at record-breaking rates
Oyster beds are devastated
Increasingly large numbers of Gulf coast people and clean-up workers 'are getting sick.'
Oil production produces radiation
Oil production releases radiation. Oil waste is ladened with radiation. These radioactive elements include but are not limited to radium, thorium and uranium, all now in the Gulf Region in unprecedented dangerous amounts according to Smith.
Radioactive elements are typically extracted from the ground with oil and gas and then separated from the fossil fuels, all part of the daily production process to make the array of oil-based goods westerners use daily, from plastic to car fuel.
"Once the NORM [naturally occurring radioactive materials] is extracted, it is flushed directly back into the ocean in the waste-stream byproduct known as produced water. Their discharge into the Gulf of Mexico has been a daily reality since the 1950s – but the amount that was released into the water from the runaway Macondo Well is unprecedented."
Even a small amount of radioactive material can have a devastating impact on humans unfortunate enough to come into direct contact with it according to Smith.
Ground Zero workers familiar with radiation poisoning signs
"Reports of unexplained health problems are soaring... [f]rom flu-like symptoms to blindness to intense chest pain to severe sinus inflammation, people across the Gulf region are reporting debilitating illnesses in the wake of the spill."
Radiation poisoning symptoms include: neurological problems such as memory loss; headaches and balance problems; seizures; stomach and digestive problems such as diarrhea; sweating; dizziness; nosebleeds and bleeding from ears, rectum and urinary tract; trouble sleeping; and rashes or skin irritations.
"We've had reports on all these symptoms," LaBarre reported Friday. "They've been well documented."
Most people have assumed that Corexit has been the cause of the illnesses, but, LaBarre said that these "very well may be caused by radiation exposure, as Smith says," adding, "This information has definitely been covered up."
Smith's report was partially based on Dr. Chris Busby's research project.
As Dupré reported after the untimely death of oil guru Matt Simmons, "Heeding his call for evacuation soon after the explosion would have helped prevent ongoing chemical and radiation poisoning of thousands of children and adults now being poorly treated. It would have helped prevent the 'heavy resident death toll' that Simmons predicted. ("Gulf oil whistleblower, renewable energy guru Matt Simmons RIP (videos)", Examiner.com)
CONTINUED...http://www.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_full_width/hash/radiation-pois... more
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Banking stem cells could save Japan nuclear workers
By Julie Steenhuysen, Reuters
Fri Apr 15, 9:55 AM EDT
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CHICAGO — Health officials should collect blood from workers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in case they are accidentally exposed to high levels of radiation and need a stem cell transplant, Japanese researchers said on Thursday.
They said gathering blood from the workers would give them a ready source of their own stem cells that could help rebuild their bone marrow should they become exposed to high levels of radiation.
"The danger of a future accidental radiation exposure is not passed, since there has been a series of serious aftershocks even this April," Dr Shuichi Taniguchi of Toranomon Hospital in Tokyo and Dr Tetsuya Tanimoto of the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research wrote in the Lancet medical journal.
A series of strong aftershocks this week has rattled eastern Japan, slowing the recovery effort at the Fukushima Daiichi plant due to temporary evacuations of workers and power outages.
Tokyo Electric Power Co said this week the situation at the nuclear plant, wrecked by a 15-meter (49.2-foot) tsunami on March 11, had stabilized. The crisis is now rated par with the world's worst nuclear accident, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, although the total release of radiation at Chernobyl was far greater.
The researchers say transplant teams are standing by in Japan and Europe to collect and store the nuclear workers' cells, but so far the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan is balking because it would cause a "physical and psychological burden for nuclear workers," the team wrote.
Collecting cells from the workers has several advantages over donated cells, which require finding a matching donor and carry the risk of rejection.
Stem cell transplants from a person's own cells would allow the workers to avoid taking drugs to suppress the immune system, helping them to better resist infections. The cells could quickly restore normal function to the body's machinery for making blood cells.
And the workers' cells could be banked and stored in case they develop leukemia, which could happen years down the road.
But the solution is not perfect, the team admits. High exposure to radiation would also attack cells in the gut, skin or lung -- problems a stem cell transplant could not fix.
Yet, with containment and clean-up efforts at the damaged plant expected to drag on for months or even years, Tanimoto and Taniguchi say taking steps to protect the workers' from future harm is paramount.
"The most important mission is to save the nuclear workers' lives and to protect the local communities," the team wrote.
"Such an approach would be the industry's best defense: if a fatal accident happened to the nuclear workers, the nuclear power industry of Japan would collapse."
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Paul Simao)Banking stem cells could save Japan nuclear workers
By Julie Steenhuysen, Reuters... more
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U.S. government officials lowered recommended limits for fluoride in water on Friday, saying some children may be getting tooth damage from too much.
Fluoride is added to the water supply in most U.S. communities because it can prevent and repair tooth decay. But health and environment officials said Americans get fluoride in so many sources now, such as toothpaste and mouth rinses, that it makes sense to lower levels.
The Health and Human Services Department lowered its recommended levels to 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water -- the lower limit of the current recommended range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it would review its rules on how high fluoride levels may go. Currently they may go as high as 4 milligrams of fluoride per liter.
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/reuters/Health/78310U.S. government officials lowered recommended limits for fluoride in water on Friday,... more
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Although first approved to treat schizophrenia, new antipsychotic medications are increasingly being prescribed for a host of other uses, even when there is little evidence they work, U.S. researchers said on Friday.
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/reuters/Health/78203Although first approved to treat schizophrenia, new antipsychotic medications are... more
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A lead poisoning outbreak that has killed more than 400 children in the rural farmlands of northern Nigeria remains 'a neglected, underfunded emergency,' the U.N. warned Friday, saying many villages remain coated with the deadly metal...
www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/Health/78198A lead poisoning outbreak that has killed more than 400 children in the rural... more
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This week more shame was heaped upon the discredited British researcher whose work gave rise to the childhood-vaccines-cause-autism movement, as a prominent medical journal published a report that the man had faked his data. But will it make a difference?.
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/Health/78199This week more shame was heaped upon the discredited British researcher whose work... more
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New research found two weeks of treatment with an antibiotic relieves symptoms for some sufferers of irritable bowel syndrome, a poorly understood and painful condition that especially afflicts younger women
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/Health/78201New research found two weeks of treatment with an antibiotic relieves symptoms for... more
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Reversing a potentially controversial decision, the Obama administration will drop references to end-of-life counseling from the ground rules for Medicares new annual checkup, the White House said Wednesday..
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/Health/78202Reversing a potentially controversial decision, the Obama administration will drop... more
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If you saw the 2010 drama 'The Kids Are All Right,' in which two teens raised by a lesbian couple decide to make contact with their biological father, you might be wondering: Might such an experience leave psychological scars?
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/reuters/Health/77479If you saw the 2010 drama 'The Kids Are All Right,' in which two teens... more
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New research found two weeks of treatment with an antibiotic relieves symptoms for some sufferers of irritable bowel syndrome, a poorly understood and painful condition that especially afflicts younger women...
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/Health/76862New research found two weeks of treatment with an antibiotic relieves symptoms for... more
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Cigarette makers will have to provide U.S. regulators with detailed information about the ingredients and design of products they have introduced or changed since early 2007, or face possible penalties.
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/reuters/Health/76763Cigarette makers will have to provide U.S. regulators with detailed information about... more
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