Governors call for health care funds
Governors from both parties appealed Sunday for the Bush administration and Congress to provide more money – now and over the long term – for a health care program that insures millions of children.
At stake is coverage for 6 million people, overwhelmingly children, as well as the hopes of many governors in tackling the larger challenge of the uninsured. All governors rely on the program, intended to aid uninsured working families.
State leaders met privately to discuss the State Children’s Health Insurance Program at their annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association.
The governors want two things:
•Enough money to keep the program afloat through October, at an estimated cost of $745 million.
•Changes to President Bush’s budget. Analysts say his spending plan would shortchange the health program, even if the number of people served did not grow. This figure is put at $10 to $15 billion over the next five years.
RALEIGH, N.C.
Industry-funded trials favor drugs
Industry-funded clinical trials of breast cancer medicines report more favorable results than research conducted independently, a new study reports.
Some 84 percent of company-supported drug studies published in 10 major medical journals in 2003 reported positive results about the breast cancer drugs they investigated, according to an analysis by Dr. Jeffrey Peppercorn, a cancer physician and researcher at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine, and colleagues at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Non-industry supported studies were far less likely to be upbeat, publishing favorable results just 54 percent of the time.
The analysis is to be published online today in CANCER, the journal of the American Cancer Society. What’s not yet clear is whether industry support skews the research, said Peppercorn, the paper’s lead author.
DENVER
Officials examine zookeeper’s death
Officials on Sunday were trying to determine why a zookeeper killed by a jaguar had opened the door to the animal’s enclosure when zoo policies ban staff members from entering exhibits when big cats are inside.
The Denver Zoo’s feline exhibits were closed Sunday for the investigation.
The zookeeper, 27-year-old Ashlee Pfaff, had opened a door leading from a service area into the jaguar’s enclosure Saturday. A visitor saw the attack from outside the glass enclosure, and his shouts alerted other keepers, zoo spokeswoman Ana Bowie said.
The zookeeper died at a hospital about 90 minutes after the attack, zoo officials said. She was bitten in the neck, which was broken, and also suffered severe internal injuries, said pathologist Amy Martin, who performed the autopsy.