United States Health

Gregory Howard found his calling in an infectious disease ward in Newark. He'd gone into detox to withdraw from a decade on drugs. Suddenly, he'd begun losing weight and his lymph nodes had swollen. His skin crawled as though infested with bugs. Lying there, he heard the doctors talking about a new disease. It was killing men who injected drugs and who had sex with other men. Howard had done both. He called his parents and told them he was dying.

As many as 1 million Americans are now living with HIV infections and about half are undiagnosed or untreated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said here Monday. AIDS death rates in the U.S. have declined sharply because of successful therapies. As recently as 1996, the last year before new combinations of drugs began prolonging survival, there were 38,025 AIDS deaths reported. By 2000, 15,245 people died.

Jennifer had been expecting the news from her doctor, but she couldn't help feeling embarrassed. The 26-year-old data manager had been dating John when she learned he was infected with human papilloma virus or HPV, a highly contagious virus that causes venereal warts in both men and women. Soon after meeting him, Jennifer's Pap test was positive and a biopsy confirmed that her cervix was showing precancerous changes, both indications that she too had the virus.

Deborah Willhite, who helped formulate the U.S. Postal Service's response to last fall's anthrax attacks, stopped taking her antibiotics a full two weeks before her 60-day prescription ended. Willhite, an agency senior vice president deemed at risk for anthrax exposure, couldn't stand the vomiting, an occasional side effect of the medication. The last straw was throwing up in a store parking lot while she was loading packages into her car.

Billie Raney was 21 when she stood on the sidewalk with her three grown sisters, watching morticians drag their mother out of the family home, still wrapped in the sheets in which she had succumbed to smallpox. Lillian Barber, then 43, was the only person to die in the last smallpox outbreak in the United States, which infected eight known victims in the Rio Grande Valley in 1949. The survivors are now retired pastors, tractor salesmen, grandmothers and grandfathers.

Americans born in 1984 had an average life expectancy at birth of 74.7 years, a gain of nearly three years in a decade, and women were expected to live seven years longer than men, the government reported Monday. The outlook was best for white females and worst for black males. People who were 65 in 1984 had an additional life expectancy of 16.8 years on the average, an improvement of more than a year over the previous 10 years, says an annual report on the nation's health statistics.

A fall of the type that required former President Ronald Reagan to undergo brain surgery recently is a leading cause of injury and death among children and the elderly. Without proper treatment, health officials say, seemingly minor head injuries and resultant hematomas like Reagan's can lead to puzzling changes in personality, vision problems, dementia and sometimes even death.

For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die. --Charles Lamb (1775-1834) **** The sun is not yet up over Chuck Gero's home on Brewer Lake in Maine. He is in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee pot to fill. When it does, he pours a cup, sits down with the morning paper, lights his first cigarette of the day and takes a deep drag. The effect is wonderful. The nicotine surges into his lungs and rushes to his brain, where it stimulates chemical messengers that release enzymes.

Twenty years after the U.S. surgeon general first warned about the health risks of cigarette smoking, Americans are convinced that the practice is harmful--but are not ready to make this a tobacco-free nation. Congress and the Clinton Administration are pondering sweeping anti-smoking measures. And a landmark class-action lawsuit recently charged tobacco companies with conspiring to addict smokers to their product.

Federal health officials recommended Thursday that the government abandon plans to conduct a nationwide survey to determine the extent of AIDS infection in the United States. Health officials currently estimate that between 1 million and 1.5 million Americans are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus. The goal of the nationwide survey, first proposed by the Ronald Reagan Administration in 1987, would be to obtain a more accurate projection.

Not enough elderly Americans are being screened for colon cancer, even though Medicare often picks up most of the costs, according to critics asking Congress to expand coverage. The American Cancer Society estimates that colon cancer will kill 48,000 people this year in the United States, more than any other cancer except lung cancer.

Billie Raney was 21 when she stood on the sidewalk with her three grown sisters, watching morticians drag their mother out of the family home, still wrapped in the sheets in which she had succumbed to smallpox. Lillian Barber, then 43, was the only person to die in the last smallpox outbreak in the United States, which infected eight known victims in the Rio Grande Valley in 1949. The survivors are now retired pastors, tractor salesmen, grandmothers and grandfathers.

The U.S. Agriculture Department said Friday that a new study found little risk of "mad cow" disease turning up in American cattle, but as a precaution the government plans to test more cattle and ban the use of spinal column material in processed meat. Harvard University researchers said in a 550-page report that the United States was "extremely unlikely" to suffer an outbreak of the deadly disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), because of strict U.S. trade restrictions.

Surfing the Internet or listening to talk radio in recent days, you might get the idea that herbs, homeopathy and other alternative health remedies can prevent and cure anthrax infection. A guest on Howard Stern's talk-radio show last week touted garlic and oil of oregano as natural ways to ward off and cure anthrax.

As the anthrax scare unfolds, America's national doctor has been largely out of sight, unable to reassure a jittery public about the health threat. Even as Surgeon General David Satcher steps up appearances on talk shows and at news conferences, some health experts say it is too little too late. The Bush administration, in its efforts to contain the escalating crisis, has virtually ignored its lame-duck surgeon general. In part, that's because Satcher is a Clinton administration holdover.

Thousands of dead birds infected with the West Nile virus have fallen from the sky across 14 states in the South and Midwest in recent months, evidence that the mosquito-borne disease is quickly marching westward.

One of the obstacles in treating hypertension is getting people to take it seriously, partly because of myths such as these: * Myth: Hypertension only strikes people who eat high-cholesterol, high-sodium foods and who don't get enough exercise. Such traits certainly are associated with high blood pressure, but many people with good lifestyle habits develop high blood pressure. * Myth: High blood pressure starts at a certain "magic number."

Declaring AIDS to be the leading cause of death among Americans between the ages of 25 and 44, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that the disease has moved dramatically into the heterosexual community and that the transmission rate there is growing. "In the history of epidemics, AIDS is among the worst in the world," CDC Director David Satcher told a gathering of Atlanta business and labor leaders.

It's hard to catch anthrax. Even when people are exposed to the bacterium, conditions must be just right for infection to take hold. In part because of that, public health officials say people have little reason to worry that they will catch the infection, despite the current investigation in Florida of two cases of anthrax exposure. "Right now, with two cases, I wouldn't be pushing the panic button," said Raymond Zilinskas, a senior scientist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Americans are healthier than they were 25 years ago, and a government report offers some examples: longer life expectancy, better infant survival rates, fewer smokers, less hypertension and lower cholesterol levels. But in small-town America, the health news is far from good, said an annual report released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.