Texas delays action on stem cell therapy rules

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas State Medical Board voted Friday to delay until next year final approval of new stem cell therapy rules that could restrict — or even block — procedures such as the one Gov. Rick Perry recently underwent on his aching back.

Its 19 members, including a dozen physicians, voiced support for greater oversight but opted to tweak the proposed rules and take them up again at their next meeting in February. If the reworked rules are satisfactory, formal approval could come as early as April.

The Food and Drug Administration hasn't approved using adult stem cells to help people heal from surgery, but experimentation is common. Some scientists tout the possible benefits, including treatment for heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers. Others argue adult stem cell experimentation actually increases the risk of cancer and can cause blood clots.

Perry, 61, a Republican presidential candidate, had stem cells taken from fat in his own body that were then grown in a lab. They were injected into his back and his bloodstream during an operation in July to fuse part of his spine.

The proposed rules would require an independent panel to conduct a comprehensive safety review of any procedure involving stem cells before it is carried out. Without that review, procedures such as the one Perry underwent would not be allowed.

Some noted that new stem cell regulations could have unintended consequences, however, such as limiting the ability of tissue banks to collect genetic material for transplants. As a result, the board asked its staff to modify the rules.

"My sense is, this 80, 85 percent ready for primetime and they're just adding some material," said Leigh Hopper, a board spokeswoman.

Perry, who appoints the board, sent it a letter in July saying he appreciated the responsibility to protect patients. But he also urged members to "recognize the sound science and good work that is already being done, and will continue to be done in the future, in this field."

"We need to ensure that physicians in this state can continue to pursue new technologies and treatments that will benefit all Texans," Perry wrote. "Texas is a leader in innovation in many fields. It is critical that we continue to foster an environment that encourages technological advancement in the health care arena."

Following his surgery, Perry has worn a back brace but maintained his hectic campaign schedule — though he has begun wearing orthopedic shoes, foregoing his trademark cowboy boots. Adult stem cell therapy is different from using embryonic cells, a controversial technology that the governor opposes.

Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Friday that he "expects the Texas Medical Board to review all the facts and make the appropriate decision regarding the use of this promising technology in Texas."

At least 10 states — including California, Illinois and New York — have enacted rules governing stem cell research, according to the Interstate Alliance on Stem Cell Research.

The impetus for Texas' proposed rules did not grow out of Perry's procedure but did involve the physician who performed it, Dr. Stanley Jones. The Houston-based orthopedist, who is Perry's doctor and friend, touted the benefits of stem cell therapies at the medical board's June meeting. He said many Americans pay thousands of dollars to undergo treatment abroad and that it is a shame that Texans can't access the treatment in their home state.

Perry also helped push an amendment to a larger health care bill through the Texas Legislature in June creating a state bank to store and cultivate adult stem cells for treatment purposes.

NBC reported in September that the first bank approved by the state — Celltex Therapeutics Corp. of Houston — is co-owned by Jones and David G. Eller, the former chairman of the board of Texas A&M University, and a top Perry donor.

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Scientists Say Texas Agency Edits Out Climate Change

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Scientists and conservationists accuse the state environmental agency of editing references to climate change and sea level rise out of a public report — because the agency, like Gov. Rick Perry, is skeptical of global warming.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, host: The Texas coast has also battled its share of dangerous floodwaters. Now a controversy over alleged scientific censorship is roiling Galveston Bay. It involves the administration of Texas Governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry.

ARI SHAPIRO, host: Scientists and conservationists accuse the state environmental agency of editing references to climate change and sea level rise out of a public report because the agency and the governor remain staunch global warming skeptics. NPR's John Burnett reports.

JOHN BURNETT: Galveston Bay is a large estuary on the upper Texas coast whose deteriorating health is of great concern to stakeholders, from fishermen to boaters to birders. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the TCEQ, commissioned a scientific report called State of the Bay, but it wasn't happy with some of the results. The report's authors are in agreement that sea-level rise caused by global warming is threatening wetlands surrounding Galveston Bay, but the TCEQ did not want any mention of human-caused environmental calamities and pulled out its red pencil.

L'OREAL STEPNEY: Let's call the meeting to order. I'll guess I'll do my official gavel thing.

BURNETT: And that's what brought issue before 50 people Wednesday morning inside a meeting room in a mosquito-infested marsh a few miles from the troubled bay. L'Oreal Stepney is deputy director of the Office of Water at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

STEPNEY: Let me say this clearly. We are not an agency that is about censorship. It is not what we do, it is wrong, it is not who we are.

BURNETT: Stepney played down the firestorm as merely professional differences between her agency and the report's authors. But the scientist who wrote the offending chapter claims what happened is nothing less than the muzzling of an inconvenient truth.

JOHN ANDERSON: One of the most striking edits that was made was the deletion of a figure that was taken from Science magazine that showed the measured rate of sea level rise over the long term in historical time, and the predicted rate of rise, and again, that was taken from Science magazine, one of the most credible journals on Earth.

BURNETT: The author is John Anderson, a ruddy-faced 67-year-old oceanographer from Rice University, who among other things has spent 26 seasons studying ice sheet changes in Antarctica, and its effect on global sea level rise. He says the agency deleted passages that Galveston Bay is currently rising three millimeters a year, a six-fold increase, and that human-induced global warming is the cause.

ANDERSON: And I think the travesty here is that this chapter was actually written for teachers. They're my target audience, and this to me is just an outward attempt to keep scientific information, scientific fact, from getting into classrooms.

BURNETT: The agency also deleted a reference that manmade dams on rivers have disrupted important sediment deposition into the bay. L'Oreal Stepney said in an interview that the report should focus on the overall health of the bay and avoid controversial theories. She said the TCEQ is not ignoring the reality of sea-level rise - it's mentioned elsewhere in the report - it's only Anderson's chapter linking it to global warming that they object to.

STEPNEY: It's unsettled science, in our opinion, and that's our position, and we've been clear about that.

BURNETT: At the meeting, the TCEQ offered a compromise - the agency would publish "State of the Bay" without Anderson's chapter and dissident scientists could publish the unedited chapter on their own. But that didn't placate the Galveston Bay Council that held the meeting. One after another members spoke up. The chair of the council said they wanted the state to publish the complete report unexpurgated. A representative from the EPA, which helped fund the study, echoed her comment. Then concerned citizen Albert Gonzalez spoke his mind.

ALBERT GONZALEZ. TEXAS: The political climate in our nation right now seems to be anti-regulation, anti-science. That just is very, very upsetting, and I just wanted to make that comment.

BURNETT: The world's leading science academies state that most of the global warming in recent decades is likely the result of human activities. Rick Perry, his commissioners on the TCEQ, and some members of Congress, mostly Republicans, say that human-caused climate change is junk science. The governor's office said he would have no comment on the Galveston Bay censorship controversy, which has yet to be resolved. John Burnett, NPR News, Houston.

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Records of 4.9 mln stolen from car in Texas data breach

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By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO | Thu Sep 29, 2011 5:58pm EDT

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - A massive data breach, in which the personal and medical records of millions of military patients and their families were compromised, happened when the records were stolen out of a data contractor's car in San Antonio, officials told Reuters on Thursday.

The information for some 4.6 million active and retired military personnel, as well as their families, was on back up-tapes from an electronic health care record used to capture and preserve patient data from 1992 through September 7 of this year, according to Science Applications International Corp (SAIC).

The families used the federal government's TRICARE health provider. SAIC is the suburban Washington firm that handles military health provider TRICARE's data.

The tapes went missing on September 14 when they were "among items stolen from an employee's car in San Antonio," SAIC spokesman Vernon Guidry told Reuters.

They were in the car, he said, because they were "being transferred from one federal facility to another in compliance with the terms of their contract."

He said there's no indication the car thief was after the tapes or even knew what they were.

SAIC is working with San Antonio police and a private investigator to recover the tapes, Guidry said.

After announcing the breach on Thursday, SAIC officials scrambled to reassure patients the "risk of harm to patients is judged to be low, despite the data elements involved."

"Retrieving the data on the tapes would require knowledge of and access to specific hardware and software and knowledge of the system and data structure," SAIC said in a statement released Thursday.

NO FINANCIAL DATA

TRICARE officials say the data on the tapes include Social Security numbers, addresses and phone numbers, and some personal data such as clinical notes, laboratory tests, and prescriptions. No financial data, such as credit card or bank account information, are on the tapes, officials said.

The SAIC statement said the company withheld information about the breach until Thursday so it could "determine the degree of risk this data loss represented before making notifications" so as "to not raise undue alarm in our beneficiaries."

Guidry said the data cover 4.9 million patients who received treatment at military hospitals and military treatment facilities in San Antonio. The breach also includes information for patients who may have been receiving treatment at other military medical facilities, but whose laboratory work or other diagnostic work was done at San Antonio hospitals.

Despite the assurance that the risk is low, computer security expert Dwayne Williams, associate director of the Technology Research Group at the University of Texas San Antonio, said patients should take preemptive steps.

"If somebody intentionally went after this data, they are going to have the right hardware and software to read these files," he said. "This equipment is available and can be purchased on the Internet.

SAIC and TRICARE have set up emergency response centers for patients to call to get help in dealing with the security breach, and help them to place a fraud alert on their credit reports.

TRICARE has a total of 9.6 million enrollees worldwide. It is the HMO and medical service provider for America's active duty and retired military personnel, their families, military reservists, and some civilian Department of Defense workers.

TRICARE said in the statement that it is working with SAIC to "review current data protection security policies and procedures to prevent similar breaches in the future."

Williams said situations like this are "scary," but they're part of modern life.

"If you are a citizen in the modern society, if you have a credit card, if you shop online, if you have information stored, you should anticipate that some day your information will get stolen," he said.

"Data breaches are getting bigger and more common. You should take steps to protect your identity."

(Edited by Karen Brooks and Greg McCune)

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Texas authorities find massive Shark kill

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HEALTH MANAGEMENT. Deer capital of Texas struggles with drought

Melissa block talks to Llano, Texas, Mayor Mike Reagor of the drought in his town. The River through the town is very low. Llano has described the "deer capital of Texas" was - and Reagor says Hirsch, with little to drink, are in the heat of ruin. Reagor is also a rancher, and he says that he sold cattle because of the drought.
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MELISSA BLOCK, host: consider themselves show drought, of Texas and you see a shade over the entire State, only the exceptional drought conditions dark brown,. This is the highest level, worse than extreme level.
Mike Reagor is the Mayor of Llano, Texas. About 3,200 people live there. It is in the Highlands, North and West of Austin.
Mayor Reagor it sees what how? If you take up in the Highlands to Llano, do you see?
Mayor MIKE REAGOR: Brown grass and in search of dead trees.
BLOCK: Everywhere you go.
REAGOR: Go just anywhere.
BLOCK: And what is the Llano River with the River,?
REAGOR: The Llano River is a very remarkable. It fed - their spring fed. And, remarkably, the river flows in the summer.
BLOCK: Flows but even it way down?
REAGOR: Oh, Yes. The average flow rate of the Llano River is more than 100 cubic feet per second. And we are after about two cubic feet per second.
BLOCK: No joke. I have read, that in the 1950s, Llano actually dry - back went river dry was only about three months.
REAGOR: It dry, well is gone, it went dry 66 consecutive days. And that was very hard to take for the city. Actually, we had water in for our water supply to drag.
BLOCK: Say you me, Mr as set are water restrictions in place. Why not people?
REAGOR: Well, we at hand one day a week, usually - can water in Llano, depending on what is your address, Saturday or Sunday. That should more or less to try to keep our trees alive. Other irrigation is not allowed. The most yards in the city are completely dead.
Some people have drilled their own well. Some people have drawn in water from the country and kept some of their grass alive. But more or less, the whole city is brown.
BLOCK: What is with people people's livelihoods by drought, farmers or people in agriculture affected are like that?
REAGOR: Well, it is more difficult. You know, always for drought ranchers have planned. But we are also very optimistic. We may think it comes to an end. But this caused many people to think completely from the industry and his departure from the livestock for a while.
BLOCK: I collect, Mayor Reagor, have some cattle themselves.
REAGOR: Yes, Ma'am. Perhaps I have a few less here in the next few days.
BLOCK: Think about the sale?
REAGOR: I am selling. I will sell some. Try to go flock to my base, and so I can kind of recover without all re-buy.
BLOCK: me I question if it is difficult if the drought is gone, as long as it has, and it was as hot as it has for so long, it is difficult to think things better, think you at an end?
REAGOR: there is a psychological page this drought and hot weather here. I have not seen people, the only kind of depressed about things as I've seen recently here. But it's so hot, I think that the heat has influenced as much as anything. It was unusually hot. I mean, 108, 110 degree days. People not simply out and things as before.
BLOCK: Can you remember the last time, that it was raining in Llano?
REAGOR: Oh, we had a whole 0.05 sometime in July.
(SOUNDBITE LAUGHTER)
REAGOR: This was our only measurable rainfall, we have had this summer. It is also in this drought in 1956, I saw, it rained three inches in May. And would I have loved, this last may have the three inch rain.
(SOUNDBITE LAUGHTER)
REAGOR: But we have it.
BLOCK: You know, I have to say, if we all had, the rain with the tropical storms back, you really just wanted a while in a large pipeline and send you your way.
REAGOR: We needed it. We were really, really hope and pray that somehow it would in the West and directly Texas Hill country and stay a few days here. But it did not come.
BLOCK: Well, we want Mayor Reagor, everything good. Thank you for the conversation.
REAGOR: Oh, thank you.
BLOCK: This is Mike Reagor. He is the Mayor of Llano, Texas.
Copyright © 2011 national public radio ®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein can be used in any media without attribution, radio national public. This transcript is personal, not commercial use, provided in accordance with our terms and conditions. Any other use requires the prior consent of NPR. You our permissions for more Informationen.NPR protocols are creating page visits on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR and accuracy and availability vary. This text can not be updated in its final form or be revised in the future. Please note that the authoritative NPR programming is the audio.

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