The Pueblo City-County Health Department says several Salmonella cases have been reported in Pueblo.

Nine children, all under the age of 12 have been confirmed to have the bacteria. This happens this time of year because children are in contact with baby chicks. If you mess with chicks or ducklings,  you should wash your hands thoroughly.

"It is recommended individuals wash their hands after contact with animals," stated Dr. Christine Nevin-Woods, Public Health Director at the Pueblo City-County Health Department.

Salmonella carried in the intestines of chicks and ducklings contaminates their environment and the entire surface of the animal. Children can be exposed to the bacteria by simply holding, cuddling, or kissing the birds.

Dr. Nevin-Woods added, "Parents should be very cautious about children handling baby chicks and other young birds and ensure they wash hands thoroughly after any contact. Everyone should immediately wash their hands after touching birds, including baby chicks and ducklings, or the bird's environment."

Symptoms usually appear within a day or two and include diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. Bed rest and liquids cure most people, but in severe cases you may need to see a doctor.

 

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The number of emergency visits to hospitals because of energy drinks is climbing fast; doubling over five years to more than 20,783 visits in 2011. That's according to the Drug Abuse Warning Network and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

These days there's no shortage of options for people looking for a jolt. A gas station near News 5 has a full window of the energy drinks, several more options than they would have a few years back, and they're adding more just because they sell so well.

You don't have to look far on a college campus to find people drinking them.

"I usually drink it throughout the day," says UCCS student Daniel Morris. "It's just a drink to me."

"It is kind of a pick me up; I mean, I do work two jobs and I'm a full-time student," adds Stephanie Hester.

The Food and Drug Administration has reported several deaths possibly related with two of the drinks; five for Monster energy, and 13 with 5 Hour Energy.

Both companies disagree that they're products were at fault.

Dr. Gregory Collins at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs doesn't agree with the safety of energy drinks.

"Who's at risk here?" asks News 5.

"Can I say everybody?" responds Dr. Collins.

Dr. Collins just saw a patient complaining of problems from an energy drink.

"Chest pains, palpitations, trouble breathing," lists off Dr. Collins, who's seeing more of these patients. "Not my first patient, he won't be my last patient; unfortunately there will be more and more episodes like this."

Dr. Collins says some of the problem is variety; there are so many options. Also, Dr. Collins says a major problem is mixing these drinks with other energy drinks, coffee, or medicines.

"Sometimes one-plus-one does not equal two; it can equal ten," says Dr. Collins. "I doubt very few people know exactly what's in them."

Also a part of the SAHMSA report; market analysts expect sales of these drinks to go up.

To see the SAHMSA report, click here.

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(AP) U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more - that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.

Women also have caught up with men in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women.

"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said. About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.

The research is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. It is one of the most comprehensive looks ever at long-term trends in the effects of smoking and includes the first generation of U.S. women who started early in life and continued for decades, long enough for health effects to show up.

The U.S. has more than 35 million smokers - about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women. The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women.

Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.

They also wanted to know more about smoking and women. The famous surgeon general's report in 1964 said smoking could cause lung cancer in men, but evidence was lacking in women at the time since relatively few of them had smoked long enough.

One study, led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, looked at about 217,000 Americans in federal health surveys between 1997 and 2004.

A second study, led by Thun, tracked smoking-related deaths through three periods - 1959-65, 1982-88 and 2000-10 - using seven large population health surveys covering more than 2.2 million people.

Among the findings:

- The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason: After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.

-A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.

-Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.

-Women are far less likely to quit smoking than men are. Among people 65 to 69, the ratio of former to current smokers is 4-to-1 for men and 2-to-1 for women.

-Smoking shaves more than 10 years off the average life span, but quitting at any age buys time. Quitting by age 40 avoids nearly all the excess risk of death from smoking. Men and women who quit when they were 25 to 34 years old gained 10 years; stopping at ages 35 to 44 gained 9 years; at ages 45 to 54, six years; at ages 55 to 64, four years.

-The risk of dying from other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis is rising in men and women, and the rise in men is a surprise because their lung cancer risk leveled off in 1980s.

Changes in cigarettes since the 1960s are a "plausible explanation" for the rise in non-cancer lung deaths, researchers write. Most smokers switched to cigarettes that were lower in tar and nicotine as measured by tests with machines, "but smokers inhaled more deeply to get the nicotine they were used to," Thun said. Deeper inhalation is consistent with the kind of lung damage seen in the illnesses that are rising, he said.

Scientists have made scant progress against lung cancer compared with other forms of the disease, and it remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. More than 160,000 people die of it in the U.S. each year.

The federal government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the cancer society and several universities paid for the new studies. Thun testified against tobacco companies in class-action lawsuits challenging the supposed benefits of cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine, but he donated his payment to the cancer society.

Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.

"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no 'race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.

Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, finally quit smoking after 40 years - to qualify for lung cancer surgery last year.

"I tried everything that came along, I just never could do it," even while having chemotherapy, she said.

It's a powerful addiction, she said: "I still every day have to resist wanting to go buy a pack."

Online:

American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org

National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/smoking and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/lung

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

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Due to the demand for influenza vaccinations, Penrose-St. Francis Health Services has partnered with Walgreens and other community partners to provide additional clinics to offer free influenza vaccinations for the uninsured/underinsured in our community. The vaccinations are for adults and children over the age of four-years-old, and the number of vaccines is limited to the supply available.

Catholic Charities/Marian House at the Hanifen Center
14 West Bijou St., Colorado Springs, CO 80903
January 23, 11 a.m. -1 p.m.

Colorado Springs Fire Department Headquarters
375 Printers Parkway Colorado Springs, CO 80916
January 26, 1-3pm

Mercy's Gate @ (Rocky Mountain Calvary Church)
4285 N. Academy Blvd Colorado Springs, CO 80918
January 28, 4-6 pm

Deerfield Hills Community Center
4280 Deerfield Hills Rd Colorado Springs, CO 80916
January 29, 4-6 pm

Sponsors: Penrose-St. Francis Mission Outreach, Interfaith Health Program Colorado Springs, Latino American Health Network, Walgreens and the Colorado Springs Fire Department.

Flu Symptoms include: fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, headaches, body aches, chills, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and/or diarrhea.

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Colorado ranks high when it comes to abuse of prescription pain killers; in fact, only one state ranks higher in a recent study.

Prescribing pain killers has been a concern for Doctor Mark Carroll from the beginning. When his practice - Alliance Family Practice and Urgent Care in Colorado Springs - opened in 2007, an older physician warned him.

"Watch out," Dr. Carroll remembers him saying. "Right after you open, since you're the new young doctor on the block, that this will happen,"

He was talking about people coming in just to see if they would be able to get a prescription.

"Was his warning true?" News 5 asked.

"It rang shockingly true," responds Dr. Carroll.

So he was watching for it and taking extra precautions; like keeping narcotics prescriptions under lock and key, and also checking prescription databases for any red flags.

"It stopped," Dr. Carroll says.

Colorado recently ranked high on a list of states with issues of non-medical use of prescription pain killers, put together by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration through their National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Colorado was second in the country; only Oregon was higher.

Agent Matthew Barden, with the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Colorado Springs, says the problem is access; he points out that the pills are in a lot of homes across the country. He says that makes the fight to bring numbers down a difficult one.

Also, a scary trend Agent Barden has seen is people moving from pain killers to heroin; teens too. He says heroin has similar effects as some prescription pain killers, and it can be cheaper.

"It's a very fine balance," says Dr. Carroll, talking about trying to make sure patients have enough medication versus giving them access to too much.

Dr. Carroll says he believes Colorado doctors have some tools to keep prescription drugs out of the wrong hands - and help move Colorado down the list - as long as those tools are used.

According to the SAMHSA numbers, 18 - 25 year olds lead the way in Colorado when it comes to prescription pain killer abuse.

For more on the SAMHSA numbers, click here.

 

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WASHINGTON (AP) - It has the makings of a science fiction movie: Zap someone's brain with mild jolts of electricity to try to stave off the creeping memory loss of Alzheimer's disease.

And it's not easy. Holes are drilled into the patient's skull so tiny wires can be implanted into just the right spot.

A dramatic shift is beginning in the disappointing struggle to find something to slow the damage of this epidemic: The first U.S. experiments with "brain pacemakers" for Alzheimer's are getting under way. Scientists are looking beyond drugs to implants in the hunt for much-needed new treatments.

The research is in its infancy. Only a few dozen people with early-stage Alzheimer's will be implanted in a handful of hospitals. No one knows if it might work, and if it does, how long the effects might last.

Kathy Sanford was among the first to sign up. The Ohio woman's early-stage Alzheimer's was gradually getting worse. She still lived independently, posting reminders to herself, but no longer could work. The usual medicines weren't helping.

Then doctors at Ohio State University explained the hope - that constant electrical stimulation of brain circuits involved in memory and thinking might keep those neural networks active for longer, essentially bypassing some of dementia's damage.

Sanford decided it was worth a shot.

"The reason I'm doing it is, it's really hard to not be able, sometimes, to remember," Sanford, 57, said from her Lancaster, Ohio, home.

Her father is blunter.

"What's our choice? To participate in a program or sit here and watch her slowly deteriorate?" asked Joe Jester, 78. He drives his daughter to follow-up testing, hoping to spot improvement.

A few months after the five-hour operation, the hair shaved for her brain surgery was growing back and Sanford said she felt good, with an occasional tingling that she attributes to the electrodes. A battery-powered generator near her collarbone powers them, sending the tiny shocks up her neck and into her brain.

It's too soon to know how she'll fare; scientists will track her for two years.

"This is an ongoing evaluation right now that we are optimistic about," is how Ohio State neurosurgeon Dr. Ali Rezai cautiously puts it.

More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's or similar dementias, and that number is expected to rise rapidly as the baby boomers age. Today's drugs only temporarily help some symptoms. Attempts to attack Alzheimer's presumed cause, a brain-clogging gunk, so far haven't panned out.

"We're getting tired of not having other things work," said Ohio State neurologist Dr. Douglas Scharre.

The new approach is called deep brain stimulation, or DBS. While it won't attack Alzheimer's root cause either, "maybe we can make the brain work better," he said.

Implanting electrodes into the brain isn't new.

Between 85,000 and 100,000 people around the world have had DBS to block the tremors of Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. The continuous jolts quiet overactive nerve cells, with few side effects. Scientists also are testing whether stimulating other parts of the brain might help lift depression or curb appetite among the obese.

It was in one of those experiments that Canadian researchers back in 2003 stumbled onto the Alzheimer's possibility. They switched on the electrical jolts in the brain of an obese man and unlocked a flood of old memories. Continuing his DBS also improved his ability to learn. He didn't have dementia, but the researchers wondered if they could spur memory-making networks in someone who did.

But wait a minute.

Alzheimer's doesn't just steal memories. It eventually robs sufferers of the ability to do the simplest of tasks. How could stimulating a brain so damaged do any good?

A healthy brain is a connected brain. One circuit signals another to switch on and retrieve the memories needed to, say, drive a car or cook a meal.

At least early in the disease, Alzheimer's kills only certain spots. But the disease's hallmark gunky plaques act as a roadblock, stopping the "on" switch so that healthy circuits farther away are deactivated, explained Dr. Andres Lozano, a neurosurgeon at Toronto Western Hospital whose research sparked the interest.

So the plan was to put the electrodes into hubs where brain pathways for memory, behavior, concentration and other cognitive functions converge, to see if the jolts reactivate those silenced circuits, added Ohio State's Rezai.

"It's like going through Grand Central Station and trying to affect all the trains going in and coming out," he said.

Lozano's team found the first clue that it's possible by implanting six Alzheimer's patients in Canada. After at least 12 months of continuous stimulation, brain scans showed a sign of more activity in areas targeted by Alzheimer's. Suddenly, the neurons there began using more glucose, the fuel for brain cells.

"It looked like a blackout before. We were able to turn the lights back on in those areas," Lozano said.

While most Alzheimer's patients show clear declines in function every year, one Canadian man who has had the implants for four years hasn't deteriorated, Lozano said, although he cautioned that there's no way to know whether that's due to the DBS.

The evidence is preliminary and will take years of study to prove, but "this is an exciting novel approach," said Dr. Laurie Ryan of the National Institutes of Health's aging division, which is funding a follow-up study.

Under way now:

-The Toronto researchers have teamed with four U.S. medical centers - Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, University of Florida and Arizona's Banner Health System - to try DBS in a part of the brain called the fornix, one of those memory hubs, in 40 patients. Half will have their electrodes turned on two weeks after the operation and the rest in a year, an attempt to spot any placebo effect from surgery.

-At Ohio State, Rezai is implanting the electrodes into a different spot, the frontal lobes, that his own DBS work suggests could tap into cognition and behavior pathways. That study will enroll 10 participants including Sanford.

Surgery back in October was Sanford's first step. Then it was time to fine-tune how the electrodes fire. She took problem-solving tests while neurologist Scharre adjusted the voltage and frequency and watched her reactions.

Sanford was cheered to see her test scores climb a bit during those adjustments. She said she knows there are no guarantees, but "if we can beat some of this stuff, or at least get a leading edge on it, I'm in for the whole deal."

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NEW YORK (AP) - By today's politically polarized standards, the Supreme Court's momentous Roe v. Wade ruling was a landslide. By a 7-2 vote on Jan. 22, 1973, the justices established a nationwide right to abortion.

Forty years and roughly 55 million abortions later, however, the ruling's legacy is the opposite of consensus. Abortion ranks as one of the most intractably divisive issues in America, and is likely to remain so as rival camps of true believers see little space for common ground.

Unfolding events in two states illustrate the depth of the divide. In New York, already a bastion of liberal abortion laws, Gov. Andrew Cuomo pledged in his Jan. 9 State of the State speech to entrench those rights even more firmly. In Mississippi, where many anti-abortion laws have been enacted in recent years, the lone remaining abortion clinic is on the verge of closure because nearby hospitals won't grant obligatory admitting privileges to its doctors.

"Unlike a lot of other issues in the culture wars, this is the one in which both sides really regard themselves as civil rights activists, trying to expand the frontiers of human freedom," said Jon Shields, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. "That's a recipe for permanent conflict."

On another hot-button social issue - same-sex marriage - there's been a strong trend of increasing support in recent years, encompassing nearly all major demographic categories.

There's been no such dramatic shift, in either direction, on abortion.

For example, a new Pew Research Center poll finds 63 percent of U.S. adults opposed to overturning Roe, compared to 60 percent in 1992. The latest Gallup poll on the topic shows 52 percent of Americans saying abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, 25 percent wanting it legal in all cases and 20 percent wanting it outlawed in all cases - roughly the same breakdown as in the 1970s.

"There's a large share of Americans for whom this is not a black-and-white issue," said Michael Dimock, the Pew center's director. "The circumstances matter to them."

Indeed, many conflicted respondents tell pollsters they support the right to legal abortion while considering it morally wrong. And a 2011 survey of 3,000 adults by the Public Religion Research Institute found many who classified themselves as both "pro-life" and "pro-choice."

Shields, like many scholars of the abortion debate, doubts a victor will emerge anytime soon.

"There are reasonable arguments on both sides, making rationally defensible moral claims," he said.

Nonetheless, the rival legions of activists and advocacy groups on the front lines of the conflict each claim momentum is on their side as they convene symposiums and organize rallies to commemorate the Roe anniversary.

Supporters of legal access to abortion were relieved by the victory of their ally, President Barack Obama, over anti-abortion Republican Mitt Romney in November.

A key reason for the relief related to the Supreme Court, whose nine justices are believed to divide 5-4 in favor of a broad right to abortion. Romney, if elected, might have been able to appoint conservative justices who could help overturn Roe v. Wade, but Obama's victory makes that unlikely at least for the next four years.

Abortion-rights groups also were heartened by a backlash to certain anti-abortion initiatives and rhetoric that they viewed as extreme.

"Until politicians feel there's a price to pay for voting against women, they will continue to do it," said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a lightning rod for conservative attacks because it's the leading abortion provider in the U.S.

In Missouri and Indiana, Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate lost races that their party initially expected to win after making widely criticized comments regarding abortion rights for impregnated rape victims. In Virginia, protests combined with mockery on late-night TV shows prompted GOP politicians to scale back a bill that would have required women seeking abortions to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound.

"All these things got Americans angry and got them to realize just how extreme the other side is," said Jennifer Dalven, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project.

"This issue will remain very divisive," she said. "But I do see this as a sea-change moment... The American public wants abortion to remain safe, legal and accessible."

However, anti-abortion leaders insist they have reason for optimism, particularly at the state level.

In the past two years, following Republican election gains in 2010, GOP-dominated state legislatures have passed more than 130 bills intended to reduce access to abortion. The measures include mandatory counseling and ultrasound for women seeking abortions, bans on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, curbs on how insurers cover the procedure, and new regulations for abortion clinics.

The ACLU and other abortion-rights groups are challenging several of the laws in court, notably the 20-week ban. Yet already this year, Republican leaders in Texas, Mississippi and elsewhere are talking about new legislative efforts to restrict abortion.

Mississippi's Gov. Phil Bryant says he wants to end abortion in the state and is eager for the remaining clinic, the Jackson Women's Health Organization, to close.

"My goal, of course, is to shut it down," Bryant told reporters on Jan. 10. "If I had the power to do so legally, I'd do so tomorrow."

The clinic is a steady target of anti-abortion protesters who take turns praying, singing hymns and confronting patients. Its administrator, Diane Derzis, says the three principal physicians on her staff have been unable to get admitting privileges at area hospitals due to pressure from the anti-abortion movement.

Such developments hearten Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, one of the groups most active in proposing anti-abortion bills for state legislatures to consider.

"Within the context of Roe, we have been remarkably successful in terms of expanding the legal protection of human life," Yoest said. "We're working to make Roe irrelevant."

Yoest's optimism derives partly from her belief that young Americans are increasingly skeptical about abortion, though polls give mixed verdicts on this matter.

"It is really easy to explain the pro-life position to a child - it's hard to explain to them why you should kill a baby before it's born," Yoest said.

Supporters of legal access to abortion dispute the notion of swelling anti-abortion sentiment among young people, but some activists do sense a gap in terms of political intensity.

"I have enormous hope in this millennial generation - they're progressive, thoughtful and they identify in their pro-choice values," said Nancy Keenan, who will soon be stepping down after eight years as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

"But there is an intensity gap - they don't act on those values," Keenan said. "The other side votes their anti-choice, pro-life values - it's at the top of their political activity."

She drew a contrast with the push for same-sex marriage.

"With marriage equality, gays and lesbians are fighting for something they didn't have," Keenan said. "In the case of reproductive rights, you're trying to maintain the status quo. The millennial generation doesn't see it as threatened."

Another difference: the campaign for same-sex marriage has benefited greatly from personal testimony by gay couples, speaking out in legislative hearings and campaign videos. By contrast, although millions of American women have had abortions, relatively few speak out publicly to defend their decisions.

"If you know some women, you know a woman who's had abortion," said Dr. Anne Davis, who is medical director for Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health and provides abortions as part of her practice in New York City.

"But you do not see women talking about their abortions," Davis said. "They do what they need to do and move on. I can't blame people for that."

Davis, who learned abortion techniques during her residency at the University of Washington in the mid-'90s, said the procedure has become increasingly safe - notably with the advent of abortions via medication. She expressed dismay at the spate of restrictive laws that she and many of her fellow physicians view as ill-founded.

"Initially, we'd say, 'That's ridiculous' - and now we're stuck with them," she said.

Despite all the furor, abortion has been commonplace in the post-Roe era, with about one-third of adult women estimated to have had at least one in their lifetime.

Of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year, half are 25 or older, about 18 percent are teens, and the rest are 20-24. About 60 percent have given birth to least one child prior to getting an abortion. A disproportionately high number are black or Hispanic; and regardless of race, high abortion rates are linked to economic hard times.

The Roe opinion, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, asserted that the right to privacy extended to a women's decision on whether to end a pregnancy. States have been allowed to restrict abortion access at late stages of pregnancy, but only if they make exceptions for protecting the mother's health - and the net result has been one of the most liberal abortion policies in the world.

At the time of Roe v. Wade, abortion was legal on request in four states, allowed under limited circumstances in about 16 others, and outlawed under nearly all circumstances in the other states, including Texas, where the Roe case originated.

One of the most liberal members of the current Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is among those who have questioned the timing of the Roe ruling and suggested that it contributed to the ongoing bitter debate.

"It's not that the judgment was wrong, but it moved too far too fast," Ginsburg said at Columbia University last year.

She said the court could have put off dealing with abortion while the state-by-state process evolved or it could have struck down just the Texas law, which allowed abortions only to save a mother's life.

Asked about Ginsburg's musings, Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood said the Roe ruling was critically needed to curb unsafe abortions in states where the procedure was outlawed.

"Women were paying the price with their lives," she said.

However, Carter Snead, a Notre Dame law professor who has studied abortion and bioethics, said Blackmun's opinion was wrong to dismantle state anti-abortion laws so sweepingly.

"One key virtue of democracy is that, win or lose, the outcomes are generally seen as legitimate because all of the competing sides have had their say," Snead said in an email. "In Roe, the court short-circuited this process entirely, and handed a near total victory to one side of a bitterly contested question on the gravest of matters."

Snead said abortion opponents have an enduringly compelling argument - "that the smallest, weakest, and most unwanted nevertheless have a claim on us." But he said this argument can't be translated into public policy without a change in the Supreme Court's makeup.

Looking ahead, there's no clear path toward an easing of the debate. Some activists and politicians say common ground could be found in a broad new campaign to curtail unintended pregnancies, but many anti-abortion leaders have shown little interest in this.

Some abortion opponents, such as Serrin Foster of Feminists for Life, urge bipartisan efforts to support pregnant young women as they pursue careers or education, so they don't feel financial pressure to have an abortion. But supporters of legal access to abortion look askance at such proposals if they are coupled with calls to take abortion decision-making out of a woman's hands.

For Carrie Gordon Earll, now senior policy analyst for the conservative ministry Focus on the Family, that Roe-established freedom of choice once seemed logical. She got pregnant in 1981 while attending a Christian college and opted to have an abortion.

She recently made a video expressing her regrets.

"I can look back at those 40 years and say without a doubt, the world is not a better place because of abortion, women are not in a better place," she says. "What it has created is a world where you're almost expected to abort if you're pregnant at an inopportune time."

In an interview, Earll mused on how the anti-abortion movement has persevered since Roe.

"We've had 40 years of marketing by Hollywood and the cultural elites that abortion is a good thing, and we still have a battle going on," she said. "We're holding our own."

A similar refrain of perseverance is sounded by Dr. Douglas Laube of Madison, Wis., who began performing abortions as part of his practice a year after the Roe decision.

"It was important for women to be able to legally ensure their right to make their own decision," said Laube, who is chairman of Physicians for Reproductive Health Choice. "But it served to polarize society politically."

Laube is worried by the spread of anti-abortion state laws, but encouraged by the surge of women becoming obstetrician-gynecologists - a trend he hopes will ease the shortage of abortion providers.

"I see the movement toward the religious right being countered by a growing movement among practitioners and advocates for maintaining this as legal," he said. "That means the controversy will continue. But it also means we will hold our ground."

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HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Post-traumatic stress was so great for some first responders who arrived at Sandy Hook Elementary School minutes after a gunman killed 20 children and six educators that the Connecticut legislature is considering a measure expanding workers' compensation to help emergency workers cope.

State Sen. Cathy Osten, a U.S. Army veteran, compares the work of first responders arriving on scenes of killing sprees to what soldiers must do.

"We've certainly come a long way in recognizing the value of taking care of armed forces veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder," said Osten, the Senate chairwoman of the Labor Committee. "But right now our state laws limit what is covered by workers' comp, and it's something we need to address."

The Labor Committee plans to introduce the legislation, she said.

The Newtown Board of Police Commissioners has asked for state law to be changed to provide benefits to those who suffered physical and emotional injury after arriving at the school minutes after a gunman killed 20 children and six educators Dec. 14. Scott Ruszczyk, president of the police union, said 13 officers have been directly affected by last month's shooting.

The union has said some officers who responded were so traumatized that they weren't working and had to use sick time and risked going without a paycheck.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is characterized by a persistent re-experiencing of the trauma, avoiding talking about what happened, withdrawal from friends and family and an inability to concentrate or being easily startled, said Dr. David Tolin, a clinical psychologist at the Institute of Living in Hartford.

For a few, treatment is necessary. But for most, "it just gets better as the distance grows," Tolin said.

Authorities say the students and educators were shot with a high-powered, military-style rifle loaded with ammunition designed to inflict as much damage as possible. All the victims had been shot at least twice, the medical examiner said, and as many as 11 times.

Osten said Connecticut's workers' comp law is narrowly defined and does not cover a worker "who sees something horrific."

"Workers' compensation is not only about physical injuries, it's about the psychological and emotional trauma that occurs around events such as Newtown and in the daily street shootings we hear about in Connecticut."

Osten said she expects the legislation will increase costs, which have not yet been determined.

The state Insurance Department recently allowed insurers to increase workers' comp premiums by as much as 7.1 percent. The amount may be different depending on market conditions, said John A. Mastropietro, chairman of the state Workers' Compensation Commission.

Among the factors driving the increase are a rising number of workplace injuries and higher medical costs.

Mastropietro said two high-profile workplace tragedies in Connecticut in 2010 contributed to high payouts. A power plant under construction in Middletown exploded after natural gas ignited, killing six workers and injuring 50 on Feb. 7, 2010. The following August, a worker at a Manchester beer distributor shot 10 people, eight of them fatally, and killed himself.

If the legislature extends workers' compensation coverage, it will restore access to benefits that lawmakers ended in 1993, Mastropietro said. Workers previously could be compensated for "a mental claim" not tied to a physical incident, he said. Some claims could have been due to unfair job ratings by supervisors that caused stress, leading to a workers' compensation claim, he said.

Changes in workers' compensation law sought to end that type of practice, Mastropietro said.

A business advocacy group says the 7.1 percent rise in workers' compensation is worrying. However, allowing first responders to claim workers' compensation would not have an impact on business costs because police, firefighters and others are public employees covered by municipal insurance, said Laura Cummings, a staff attorney at the Connecticut Business & Industry Association.

Legislative changes in the early 1990s that ended many claims for non-physical injuries or trauma "really helped business," she said.

Osten said she will push hard for the measure.

"This is something right to do for people who responded so heroically," she said.

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HAVANA (AP) - Cuba is acknowledging 51 new cases of cholera in the capital, months after declaring the illness eradicated.

It says nobody has died from cholera in Havana. But the family of at least one man has told The Associated Press he died of cholera earlier this month. The government has declined repeated requests for comment, and has not made any experts available to talk about the cholera situation.

Cuba's Public Health Ministry said Tuesday that there has been "an increase in water-borne diarrhetic diseases" since January 6, first in the capital's Cerro neighborhood and then elsewhere. The ministry says preventive measures have put transmission "on the way to extinction," while calling on the population to be more vigilant about washing hands, purifying water and properly cleaning vegetables and other foods.

(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

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MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) - The Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, N.H., is encouraging parishioners to stay home from Mass if they have the flu. The Most Rev. Peter Libasci also encouraged people to share the Sign of Peace during Mass without touching hands or kissing. He said that ritual can be accomplished with smiles and a bow of the head in reverence to one another. The bishop also said Communion should only be given in the form of consecrated bread. Parishioners won't be able to get wine via the chalice. He also has asked that greeters and ushers refrain from shaking hands with parishioners and use only verbal greetings. Similar restrictions were imposed last week in the Archdiocese of Boston.

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A Champion for animals in the Pikes Peak region died Saturday after a long illness. Dr. Wes Metzler served as head of the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak region for seventeen years. His service will be February 9th, not this Friday as reported earlier.

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HOUSTON (AP) - Former President George H.W. Bush was released from a Houston hospital and went home Monday after spending nearly two months being treated for a bronchitis-related cough and other health issues, a family spokesman said.

Bush, 88, the nation's oldest living former president, was admitted to Methodist Hospital on Nov. 23. His stay included a week in intensive care last month.

"I am deeply grateful for the wonderful doctors and nurses at Methodist who took such good care of me," Bush said in a statement released by spokesman Jim McGrath. "Let me add just how touched we were by the many get-well messages we received from our friends and fellow Americans. Your prayers and good wishes helped more than you know, and as I head home my only concern is that I will not be able to thank each of you for your kind words."

Bush had been in the hospital for about a month before his office disclosed in late December that he was in intensive care because physicians were having difficulty controlling a fever that developed after the cough improved.

His office said on Dec. 29 that he had been moved back to a regular hospital room. Since then, his condition had continued to improve and he has been undergoing physical therapy to rebuild his strength.

"Mr. Bush has improved to the point that he will not need any special medication when he goes home, but he will continue physical therapy," Amy Mynderse, the doctor in charge of Bush's care, said in Monday's statement.

Bush's office said he was treated for a bacterial infection, along with the bronchitis and cough.

Bush and his wife, Barbara, live in Houston during the winter and spend their summers in Kennebunkport, Maine. On Jan. 6, they celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary. They are the longest-married presidential couple.

"The problem now is he's no longer going to be pampered by all these nurses and health care providers in the hospital; now his caregiver is Barbara Bush," Bush's son, Jeb, the former governor of Florida, joked Monday at an education forum in Nashville, Tenn.

"Now I'm going to have to call my mother and apologize," he quickly added.

White House press secretary Jay Carney posted a message on Twitter stating: "Great news re POTUS 41," a reference to Bush as the nation's 41st president. "From 44 down, we all are relieved he's out of the hospital and wish him & his family well."

Bush had served two terms as Ronald Reagan's vice president when he was elected in 1988 to be the nation's 41st president. Four years later, after a term highlighted by the success of the 1991 Gulf War in Kuwait, he lost to Democrat Bill Clinton amid voter concerns about the economy.

Bush has a long record of service, beginning with his enlistment in the Navy in World War II. At one point, he was the nation's youngest naval aviator. He was shot down in the Pacific and rescued by an American submarine. He's also been a congressman from Texas, U.S. ambassador to China and CIA director.

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NEW YORK (AP) - New York's governor has declared a public health emergency for the state because of the severity of the flu season.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo made the announcement Saturday. His executive order suspends for the next month the state law that limits the authority of pharmacists to administer immunizing agents only to individuals 18 years of age or older.

Pharmacists will also be allowed to administer flu vaccinations to patients between 6 months and 18 years of age.

The order comes as nearly 20,000 cases of influenza have been reported in the state this season. That's more than four times the 4,400 positive laboratory tests reported all of last season.

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The flu is making headlines in Southern Colorado again, but not for the number of cases this time, but because of the number of people trying to prevent it. The high demand for flu vaccines is leaving doctors' offices and clinics in short supply.

Just this week, Kaiser Permanente ran out of flu shots temporarily.

"We don't have a shortage, it was just because we have administered in this season over 210,000 vaccines so far, so it's on its way," said Kaiser RN and Nurse Manager Rose-Marie Mainieri, RN, CCM.

Kaiser said not to worry, they just received a new shipment of flu vaccines Thursday night, enough to fully supply its 23 clinics from Pueblo to Denver.

"There's enough vaccine to go around for anybody," said Mainierie.

Public health officials are saying the same thing. While supply of the flu vaccine has been spotty, they don't expect a widespread shortage. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said about 135 million doses were produced for this flu season. So far a total of 128 million vaccines have been administered nationwide.

"I encourage everyone to call their physician or come to our medical office to get the flu vaccine this year," Mainierie reminds the public.

 

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PHOENIX (AP) - Arizona health officials say flu activity is widespread in the state this week with influenza reported in 14 of its 15 counties.

State Department of Health Services officials say about 1,000 of the nearly 2,200 flu cases were reported last week. Because many people aren't tested for the flu, officials say that number likely is just a fraction of the true number of cases.

There's also been an increase in hospital admissions for flu cases, especially in central Arizona.

Influenza is a serious viral illness with symptoms similar to the common cold, but it comes on quickly and is more physically draining.

Arizona typically sees most of its flu cases in February or March. Officials say influenza can be unpredictable and can peak either earlier or later in the season.

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WASHINGTON (AP) - For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.

Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.

How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence - gene mutations that show cancer is present.

In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.

"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.

But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.

The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.

"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.

"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.

But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.

More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.

Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.

The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.

So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.

The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.

 

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With all of the flu cases popping up across the country, some people are worried about a rush on the popular treatment -- Tamiflu.

Doctors say any flu drug is most effective in the first 24 to 48 hours of symptoms coming on. They say if you don't take it by then, it won't do much. so, with that in mind, if you get to the clinic late they might not give you a prescription for the flu.

"We want to try to make sure that we save it so that we have enough supplies for the people that are most at risk; so elderly people, people with chronic health conditions, really the people that are most at risk for being hospitalized," says Dr. Melody Mendiola.

Health officials urge those with flu symptoms to stay home until they're well; that's 24 hours after their fever breaks without fever reducing medication.

 

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This is how bad this flu season has gotten; some hospitals -- like Lehigh Valley Hospital near Allentown, Pennsylvania -- are finding ways to separate their flu patients from others.

They've set up triage tents outside.

Some hospitals in Denver have separated patients not necessarily with tents. Denver Health Medical Center opened a separate sick bay for flu sufferers, according to the Associated Press. Swedish Medical Center has posted a sign asking people with flu symptoms to do what they can to keep their hands clean and protect other patients.

No tents have popped up outside of Colorado Springs or Pueblo hospitals yet.

 

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It's a familiar scene for many right now; the waiting room. Many people are waiting for the results of a flu test.

Flu season typically runs from about October to May. Last year the flu put 543 people into Colorado hospitals, according to the Department of Public Health and Environment. This year we're already up to 503 hospitalizations, and there are still nearly five months left in the flu season.

So far, 56 hospitalizations have been in El Paso County; Pueblo has had 15. One woman from Pueblo died after getting developing pneumonia too. Denver County has had the most at 125 hospitalizations.

However, not everyone with the flu ends up in the hospital; most are in and out of clinics, and they've been busy.

"We've seen a spike over the past two weeks," says Dr. Mark Carroll with Alliance Urgent Care and Family Practice in Colorado Springs. Mostly the upper respiratory variety of flu, according to Dr. Carroll: not as much involving the stomach.

Dr. Carroll and Alliance Urgent Care and Family Practice strongly recommends getting the flu vaccine.

"We've only had one case that we've been able to confirm here with a nasal swab that had the vaccine and then developed the flu," says Dr. Carroll.

He cant stress enough prevention is key, and washing your hands is a huge start. Another piece of advice from Dr. Carroll is to get checked out as soon as you start experiencing flu-like symptoms; he says flu medicines lose effect after the first 48 hours.

 

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It's the height of flu season and nationwide this year's outbreak is one of the worst in the past several years. What can you do to protect yourself? During flu season it is important to practice good hygiene and it's not too late to get a flu shot.

Parkview Medical Center is hosting a community flu vaccine clinic Saturday, January 12, 2013 at the Parkview Pueblo West ER. Vaccines will be administered to those 18 years or older between 9 a.m. and 11a.m.

Getting your flu shot is important for prevention of the virus. The flu shot will only cost $20 which can be paid by cash, check or credit card and those applicable can use their Medicare part B to pay for the flu shot.

The clinic will be at the Pueblo West ER which is on 899 E. Industrial Blvd. If you have any questions please call 584-7319.

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