(MCT) Milwaukee – A record 130 million Americans are expected to get a flu shot this… (MCT) Milwaukee – A record 130 million Americans are expected to get a flu shot this season in hopes of ducking the nasty virus, but as the needle pierces the skin, more than 80 percent will also get what some say is a hefty and dangerous dose of mercury.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that almost everyone get the injection, despite written warnings from the vaccine manufacturers.

A growing number of doctors, scientists and citizen organizations, such as Safe Minds, the Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs and Moms Against Mercury, say the mercury in flu shots has not been proved to be safe and can be linked to neurological disorders and other serious problems. They push for mercury-free shots that are available in limited quantities but that few know about.

“Mercury causes tremendous damage to the brain,” Paul King, scientific adviser for the Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs, said.

Mercury is among the most toxic heavy metals and is known to poison the central nervous system, liver, gastrointestinal tract and other systems in the body.

About 80 percent of all flu shots distributed in the United States contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal. Thimerosal consists of 49.6 percent ethyl mercury, an anti-bacterial, anti-fungal that allows manufacturers to sell the vaccine in large, multi-dose containers without fear of contamination.

The Environmental Protection Agency and federal Food and Drug Administration have not set an exposure limit for ethyl mercury.

A typical 0.5 milliliter flu shot contains 25 micrograms – or 50,000 parts per billion – of mercury. – Raquel Rutledge, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

(MCT) New Delhi – Far fewer people than previously thought are living with the virus that causes AIDS, United Nations experts acknowledged last week, saying the prevalence rate for the deadly disease had been falling for nearly a decade even as the agency continued to issue warnings about possible pandemics in such countries as China and India.

The new numbers, based on updated and more accurate methodology, have led experts to suggest a revamping of donor spending to combat AIDS, perhaps by cutting programs of limited use, such as promoting abstinence in youths. Some experts urged increased spending and concentrating more on high-risk groups, including sex workers, and promoting things like partner fidelity, particularly in hard-hit Africa.

Today about 33 million people are infected with the AIDS virus worldwide, down from an overstated 2006 estimate of 39.5 million, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization said in the report issued Tuesday. About 2.5 million people a year are now contracting the virus, the report said, a more than 40 percent drop from last year’s estimate.

The virus remains a major killer in southern Africa, the epicenter of the worldwide epidemic, but even there the number of people infected has stabilized or started to decline, the UN said, following a peak of infections in the 1990s. And in China and India, two countries often portrayed as being at risk of an AIDS epidemic, the virus has not jumped from high-risk groups – sex workers and their partners, intravenous drug users and men who have sex with other men – to the general population.

“There’s been an exaggeration of the potential scope of the pandemic,” said Jim Chin, an AIDS prevalence expert at the University of California at Berkeley and a longtime critic of the UNAIDS estimates. -Laurie Goering, Chicago Tribune

(MCT) Philadelphia – Most anti-smoking pharmaceuticals substitute a cigarette’s nicotine – the component that makes it physically addictive as well as pleasurable – with their own. Smokers can then quit the habit while getting their nicotine-induced pleasure elsewhere.

On the other hand, Chantix – an anti-smoking medicine that was approved for sale in the United States 18 months ago – was designed to give pleasure without nicotine.

The Pfizer drug, whose scientific name is varenicline, appears to work in two ways: It blocks nicotine from binding to receptors in the brain that trigger the release of dopamine, a chemical neurotransmitter that generates feelings of pleasure. At the same time, Chantix stimulates the brain to release some dopamine, which reduces symptoms of withdrawal.

But Chantix is still far from a sure thing. Less than half of smokers manage to stay off cigarettes during the typical 12-week prescription. Even fewer, just one in four, remain smoke-free after a year.

Head-to-head comparisons have found it gets significantly better results than other anti-smoking aids. Researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association last year that 23 percent of Chantix users still weren’t smoking 12 months later versus 15 percent of those who relied on a commonly used antidepressant, burpropion, and fewer who quit cold turkey.

“Chantix is the most effective FDA-approved treatment for smoking,” Freda Patterson, a project director at the University of Pennsylvania’s Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center, said. “Still, only a fraction of smokers looking to quit do so effectively.”

The reason, as she and other scientists have known for years, is that “smoking is a behavioral as well as a biological addiction.” – Josh Goldstein, The Philadelphia Inquirer