(MCT) RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – A wave of illegal content and government efforts to… (MCT) RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – A wave of illegal content and government efforts to control the Internet are threatening the explosive growth of the Internet, top technology experts told a landmark U.N. Internet Governance Forum on Tuesday.

With China leading the way, more governments are censoring free speech in the name of protecting social mores, while private companies such as Google play a growing role in determining what Internet users can access.

At the same time, child pornography, fraud and other ills are pushing more users to filter online information more aggressively, security experts said.

Combating harmful content while protecting the free flow of information was one of the main topics at the four-day conference.

Many of the 1,700 government officials, technology experts and other participants said the future of the free Internet was at risk, as tighter regulations on content become the norm. Others countered that stronger measures are needed to stop the wave of online trash.

Malcolm Hutty, a spokesman for the London Internet Exchange, which connects British Internet service providers, said censorship of socially sensitive but legal websites was being imposed in the name of protecting children. “We have to take account the real harm that online activity does to children, but we also have to be aware that this attempt to protect children is establishing norms that otherwise wouldn’t be accepted,” Hutty said.

Others, including child-protection advocates, said content-filtering software and other tools were legitimate ways for parents to monitor what their children were seeing and doing online.

Many were worried that more countries are defining any criticism of their governments as harmful. More than 20 countries have shut down dissident blogs and news websites and have employed user information to identify and arrest online activists, Rob Faris, the research director of the Open Net Initiative, an academic group, said.

China, with more than 160 million Internet users, has deployed an army of censors to block online content ranging from American news websites to domestic pro-democracy blogs. Vietnam and Myanmar have followed suit and cracked down on online political dissent.

“We’re at a real crossroads as to whether the Internet can continue to be a forum for free speech or a kind of tool in the hands of repressive government to identify users,” said Nick Dearden of the human rights group Amnesty International. “It’s absolutely crucial to how the Internet develops what happens to China.”

Jack Chang, McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT) SEATTLE – The resounding failure of an AIDS vaccine that was tested with great fanfare around the world has left researchers with plenty of theories – but as far as ever from the long-sought holy grail in the fight against the pandemic.

Researchers gathered in Seattle [last week] for a three-day conference admitted they were both startled and disheartened by the revelation that the much-hailed “STEP Study” vaccine may actually have put volunteers at an even greater risk of developing HIV than reported last month. HIV-negative men who received the test vaccine actually ended up with more cases of infections than men who got placebo injections.

The vaccine had been only the second ever to reach wide testing in humans, and early phases had shown so much promise that scientists spoke excitedly as recently as last winter of finally finding an elusive vaccine.

This latest blow has prompted some even to question whether any vaccine will ever be successful against HIV, a virus that has killed 25 million people worldwide.

What went wrong?

The STEP study, launched in early 2005, was halted in September, more than a year early, because the vaccine simply did not work. It neither prevented HIV infection nor reduced the virus levels of those who got infected. Now researchers are trying to determine whether the vaccine itself actually made men more susceptible to acquiring HIV.

The study included 3,000 men and women between ages 18 and 45 who were considered at high risk of HIV infection. The rest were from 15 other U.S. cities and from Canada, Peru, Brazil, Australia, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

The pharmaceutical company Merck, which was developing the vaccine, co-sponsored the trial with the Vaccine Trials Network, an international research collaboration based at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. It was funded by the federal National Institutes of Health.

Kyung M. Song and Carol M. Ostrom, The Seattle Times

(MCT) CHICAGO – Cosmetic surgery may look easy and danger-free on television programs. It may be readily available through the nearest doctor’s office.

But it is still surgery, and surgery carries risk.

“On television people are always having extreme makeovers,” said Dr. David Song, chief of plastic surgery at University of Chicago Hospitals. “People don’t understand it’s real surgery with real risks.”

On top of that, cosmetic procedures are a lucrative fee-for-service business. Insurance carriers typically do not cover them, except for reconstructive surgery, so people pay cash if they want their face lifted or tummy tucked. As a result, tens of thousands of doctors who may be insufficiently trained are doing plastic surgery – often in their offices.

“Surgery has moved more and more out of the traditional hospital setting,” said Arthur Levin, director of the Center for Medical Consumers, a not-for-profit consumer advocacy group based in New York City. “Much of it is done in private physicians’ offices, because it’s less expensive.”

In the case of cosmetic surgery, Angelos said, doctors should redouble efforts to make sure the patient knows everything that might go wrong.

In some cases, he said, the surgeon might have to decline to do the procedure.

The surgeon has a responsibility to know the patient’s underlying medical problems, Angelos said, which means either doing a medical workup or making sure the patient’s primary care provider does it.

Nearly any invasive procedure can be risky for someone with heart disease, blood clots or a lung problem, Song said. Likewise, doing several procedures simultaneously – such as a tummy tuck, liposuction and breast augmentation – significantly increases the risk.

He recommended that anyone interested in a cosmetic operation should look for a surgeon certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, which requires many years of specialized training.

“Anyone with an MD degree can hang a shingle and call himself a plastic surgeon,” said Song. And seeing that someone is “board-certified” isn’t enough, he said: “It’s really important which board.”

Judy Peres, Chicago Tribune

(MCT) NEW YORK – Cases of chlamydia soared past 1 million last year in the United States, marking the first time the country has seen such a large incidence, with the highest rates of increase among young adolescent girls, federal health experts reported Tuesday.

Not only did chlamydia cases reach a sobering milestone – 1,030,911 cases nationwide – researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said the infection accounted for the most cases ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease of any kind. By comparison, 976,000 cases were reported in 2005.

Public health experts partially blamed faltering public health campaigns and a general failure among physicians to test patients for chlamydia as well as other bacterial infections that are transmitted sexually. About 19 million sexually transmitted diseases, commonly called STDs, of all kinds were recorded last year, half occurring among people between the ages of 15 and 24.

The spread of chlamydia is of intense concern, public health officials say, because it is a silent infection with few obvious symptoms in its initial stages. Chlamydia can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility. Scores of cases, experts say, are likely going undiagnosed.

“We have reason to believe that chlamydia is dramatically underreported,” said Dr. John Douglas, director of STD prevention at the CDC.

Though Douglas and his colleagues estimate about 348 cases of chlamydia per 100,000 people in the population, he says government figures are probably off the mark and the actual number of new chlamydia cases last year was probably in the neighborhood of 2.8 million.

Delthia Ricks, Newsday