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Dietitians Urge Health Ministers To Adopt A National Framework For Home Enteral Nutrition, Australia
Governments could be saving up to $7.88 million a year if they adopt a national home enteral
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Obama Administration Faces Increasing Challenges To Health Reform
The Obama administration is facing increasing opposition to various aspects of health reform proposals - especially the idea of a "public plan."
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Obama Says He Supports 'Robust' Protections For Health Workers With Moral, Religious Objections
President Obama on Friday said that although he intends to reverse the Bush administration"s provider "conscience" rule, he still favors a "robust" federal policy that would enhance the rights of health care workers to refuse to perform certain procedures because of moral or religious objections, the Washington Post reports. In a session with reporters one week before his first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, Obama said that he is a "believer in conscience clauses." He added that a new policy from his administration "may not meet the criteria of every possible critic of our approach, but it certainly will not be weaker than what existed before the changes were made." According to the Post, Obama"s comments aimed to reassure Roman Catholic health care workers that they would still be able to refuse to perform abortions and other procedures that go against the Church"s teachings. Several federal laws in place since the 1970s protect the rights of health care workers with moral or religious objections (Salmon, Washington Post, 7/3). Nancy Berlinger, deputy director of the Hastings Center, said that conscience laws also "are on the books in almost every state." She added, "The idea was that when abortion moved from being an illegal procedure, therefore something that you did not offer in a hospital, to being a legal procedure, therefore something that you might offer in a hospital, there was a move to protect providers ... from having to participate in abortions." However, not all conscience laws are specific to abortion, NPR"s "Morning Edition" reports. For example, some allow providers to refuse to provide birth control, in vitro fertilization or end-of-life care (Rovner, "Morning Edition," NPR, 7/6).The Bush administration said its 2008 policy was designed to ensure that the federal laws are enforced. The policy would cut off federal funding to health care facilities and other entities that did not accommodate workers who refused to participate in certain procedures (Washington Post, 7/3). Joxel Garcia, the assistant secretary for health in the Bush administration who helped write the policy, said that it is necessary because few health care workers are aware of the protections. He added that the policy gives health workers "a mechanism to seek help" through HHS.However, critics of the Bush administration"s policy contend that it would widely expand the scope of health care covered by the policy and the type of health care workers who could object to procedures. Berlinger said, "Words like belief, when you talk about them in the context of health care, aren"t just anything you might think of." She noted that a "false belief about science or the promotion of ambiguity where things can be disambiguated," such as the claim that birth control is equivalent to abortion, "is not ethical" ("Morning Edition," NPR, 7/6).Obama"s plan to replace the policy has stoked concern from Catholic health care providers that they would be forced to perform abortions, sterilizations and other procedures that go against Catholic teachings (Washington Post, 7/3). A recent survey conducted for the Christian Medical Association found that 90% of doctors surveyed said that "they will quit their practices before violating their conscience," according to David Stevens, executive director of CMA. Stevens said that repealing the Bush administration"s rule "sends a clear message: It"s open season on health care professionals of conscience -- discriminate at will" ("Morning Edition," NPR, 7/6).Obama on Friday also said that although he and the pope have areas of "deep agreement ... there are going to be some areas where we"ve got some disagreements," such as abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research. The president will meet with the pope on July 10, while he is in Europe for a summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. Obama Addresses Catholic Concerns on Pregnancy PreventionObama also discussed opposition to the inclusion of comprehensive sex education and contraception in any legislative pac
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Dietary Fat, Especially From Red Meat, Dairy, Linked To Pancreatic Cancer

New research from the US that studied the diet and health outcomes of over half a million people suggests that high consumption of dietary fat, especially from red meat and dairy food, is linked to an increased risk of pancreatic cancer. However, some experts suggest that while this is a good study that contributes to our understanding of the disease, it does not prove a link with animal fats per se (it could be some other dietary or lifestyle factor that is common to people who eat lots of animal fat) and that more work is needed before we can be sure. The study was the work of Dr Rachael Z Stolzenberg-Solomon, from the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues and was published in the advanced access online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on 26 June 2009. In their background information, Stolzenberg-Solomon and colleagues wrote that they decided to carry out the investigation because up to now research on the link between pancreatic cancer and dietary fat, a risk factor that people can do something about, has been inconclusive. For this prospective study (ie one that follows a certain group over a period of time) the researchers used data from the National Institutes of Health AARP Diet and Health Study, a large US-based group of 308,736 men and 216,737 women aged 50-71 years who filled in a 124-item food frequency questionnaire during 1995 and 1996. The group was then followed for an average of 6.3 years to see what happened to their health, including whether any were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. After that, the researchers used statistical tools to search for any links between fat consumption, including different types of fat and where it came from, and pancreatic cancer, while taking into account potential confounders like smoking/not smoking, body mass index (BMI), and diabetes. The key results showed that: *865 men and 472 women developed pancreatic cancer (an incident rate 45.0 and 34.5 cases per 100 000 person-years, respectively). *Men and women with the highest total fat consumption were 53 per cent and 23 per cent more likely to receive a pancreatic cancer diagnosis than with men and women with the lowest fat consumption. *There were positive links between pancreatic cancer and intakes of total, saturated and monounsaturated fat overall. *The links were strongest for those whose fat came primarily from red meat and dairy foods. *Those who consumed high levels of saturated fats were 36 per cent more likely to develop pancreatic cancer than those who consumed low levels. The authors wrote that: "We did not observe any consistent association with polyunsaturated or fat from plant food s." They concluded: "In this large prospective cohort with a wide range of intakes, dietary fat of animal origin was associated with increased pancreatic cancer risk." "Altogether, these results suggest a role for animal fat in pancreatic carcinogenesis," they wrote. In an editorial in the same issue of the journal, Drs Brian M. Wolpin from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, and Meir J Stampfer from the Harvard School of Public Health, also in Boston, said this was a well-performed study that contributed to our understanding of pancreatic cancer, but there wasn"t enough information to be sure that it was animal fats or fat from red meat that was linked to pancreatic cancer and not something else that is common to people who eat lots of red meat and animal fats. More work would have to be done to show that, but in the meantime "this work has the potential to provide interesting clues to the mechanisms underlying pancreatic tumorigenesis," they wrote. "Dietary Fatty Acids and Pancreatic Cancer in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study." Anne C. M. Thiçİbaut , Li Jiao , Debra T. Silverman , Amanda J. Cross , Frances E. Thompson , Amy F. Subar , Albert R. Hollenbeck , Arthur Schatzkin and Rachael Z. Stolzenberg-Solomon. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Advance Access published on June 26, 2009. DOI 10.1093/jnci/djp168. "Defining Determinants of Pancreatic Cancer Risk: Are We Making Progress?" Brian M. Wolpin and Meir J. Stampfer. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Advance Access published on June 26, 2009. DOI 10.1093/jnci/djp182. NCI. Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD Copyright: Medical News Today Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today


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