More than one is 5 US teenagers has an abnormally high cholesterol level, according to federal health officials who say the new data provides striking evidence that the nation’s epidemic of obesity is threatening an entire generation with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke, among other things.

To reach these astonishing conclusions, Ashleigh May of the CDC and colleagues analyzed data collected between 1999 and 2006 from a nationally representative sample of 3,125 youths who were between 12 and 19 years old. The data came from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The scientists found that 20.3% of the subjects had at least one abnormal blood lipid test—either low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL, or good cholesterol), high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or bad cholesterol), or high levels of triglycerides.

What is more, the kids’ risk of having an abnormal lipid test increased with increasing weight. Thus 14.2% of those whose weight was normal had an abnormal value, but the incidence rose to 22.3% and 42.9% among those who were overweight and obese, respectively.

“This is the future of America,” said Linda Van Horn, a Northwestern University professor told the Washington Post. “These data confirm the seriousness of our obesity epidemic. This is an urgent call for health-care providers and families to take this issue seriously.”

Although previous studies have raised these concerns, this is the first to confirm and quantify the potentially devastating effects of America’s teen obesity epidemic. Other studies had linked the epidemic to high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis, which had been presumed rare in adolescents.

“This problem is poised to negate all of the advances we’ve made in cardiovascular health,” said Denise Simons-Morton of the NHLBI.

The write-up appears in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Shortly after taking the oath of office, President Obama made food safety a domestic priority. He called recent national outbreaks of food-borne illnesses a “troubling trend” and a “risk to public health.”

But more than a year later, the Obama administration has yet to fill the chief food safety official post at the Department of Agriculture. He just nominated someone though, Elizabeth Hagen, 40, a person few in the field  had heard of before the announcement.

Hagen, a physician, has never published a word on the subject of food safety. She spent much of her career as a clinician and educator in the field of infectious diseases. She left practice 4 years ago for the USDA, where rose quickly through the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.

“Consumer advocates who work closely with [the Department of Agriculture] on policy issues have had limited direct experience with Dr. Hagen,” said the Consumer Federation of America in a release cited by the Washington Post.

Hagen was tapped for the post after the Administration approached at least two other people. Last February for example, it vetted and offered the job to Mike Doyle, a nationally recognized microbiologist. That nomination collapsed after Doyle refused to divest his financial interest in an effort to commercialize a microbial wash for meat.

Whoever fills the position will oversee the safety of meat, poultry and eggs, which comprise 20% of the nation’s food supply.

Last year, there were 13 recalls of beef products contaminated with E. coli. Already this year, there have been six recalls of tainted meats, including an ongoing situation with salami that has sickened hundreds in 40 states.

Since Michael Sokolove’s “Warrior Girls” brought the matter public attention, many people know that young women athletes are in the midst of an epidemic of knee injuries, including the most dreaded of them all: a tear of the  anterior cruciate ligaments (ACL). In fact girls are three to eight times more likely than boys to sustain that injury.

This stunningly high ratio says the issue goes beyond the fact that girls participate in competitive sports as much as boys do. Given only that, the ratio should be even. The real problem, it turns out, has to do with anatomical and physiological differences between girls and boys.

Girls have thinner ACLs for example. And their pelvises are wider, which has the effect of putting more stress on the knee ligaments during both normal and recreational activities. The anatomy of their femurs (the large, upper leg bone) favors fraying of the ACL. And as well, some female reproductive hormones make their ACLs more lax. 

The epidemic has spawned a host of workouts and training programs designed to help prevent knee injuries in young female athletes. These programs focus on strengthening muscles like the quadriceps that help support the knee, and the core muscles which help stabilize the body during stops and starts, which are so often the times when ACL injuries occur.

The programs have different time requirements, but a 45 minute session, twice a week is  typical.  Also included in most sessions are tips about landing softly and using multiple joints (ankle, knee, hip) for bracing against falls and the like.

“You can’t make an ACL bigger,” Trent Nessler, executive director of Baptist Sports Medicine in Nashville told the Washington Post. “So what we tend to look at is what factors can you affect through training.”

Nessler asserts that girls who participate in these programs can reduce their risk of knee injuries by up to 88%…and even if he’s half right, that seems like something worth doing.

China, not the US, holds the dubious distinction of having the highest number of private computers that have been commandeered by hackers with malicious intent, according to a report by McAfee, an Internet security firm.

MaCafee monitors Internet-based threats targeting computers in 120 countries. It found that in the fourth quarter of last year, about 1,095,000 computers in China and 1,057,000 in the US had been infected.

Those numbers don’t count the roughly 10 million computers in each country that had previously been infected.

Infected, or “zombie” computers are typically linked together as botnets and then used to send spam e-mail or launch Denial of Service attacks on Web sites.

McAfee suggested that Chinese computers are particularly vulnerable to hackers since software piracy is common there, and computer users frequently do not download patches for their machines.

In a recent speech about Internet freedom, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested that the Internet is a “global networked commons” for which “norms of behavior” ought to be developed by nations.

“An attack on one nation’s networks can be an attack on all,” she said. “Countries or individuals that engage in cyberattacks should face consequences and international condemnation.”

The US will have trouble heeding Clinton’s call for accountability and norms because it has so many infected computers. “The government could crack down on botnets, but doing so would raise the cost of software or Internet access and would be controversial,” Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith  wrote in the Washington Post.

“So it has not acted, and the number of dangerous botnet attacks from America grows.”

Fully 8 years after the anthrax attacks of 2001 showed that bioterrorism can happen in the US, the nation remains woefully unprepared for a large-scale attack, according to a Congressional Commission.

The WMD Commission evaluated the government’s performance in 17 key areas. It nailed the White House and Congress with an “F” for not creating a rapid-response capability to handle disease outbreaks from bioterrorism, or providing adequate oversight of security and intelligence agencies.

As evidence, the Commission cited the government’s stuttering response to the swine flu epidemic. It pointed fingers at several administrations and branches of government.

In other news, the panel handed out “As” to government programs that secured dangerous viruses and bacteria, and to the Obama administration’s reorganization of the National Security Council so that it could handle other threats from weapons of mass destruction.

The Commission’s report cited in particular the White House’s efforts to strengthen international controls on nuclear technology and components.

“Each of the last three administrations has been slow to recognize and respond to the biothreat,” former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.) told the Washington Post. Graham co-chaired the panel with former senator James M. Talent (R-Mo.). “We no longer have the luxury of a slow learning curve when we know al-Qaeda is interested in bioweapons.”

In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama revealed plans to fill many of the gaps that were identified by the Commission. In particular, he wants to improve the performance, scalability and flexibility of drug distribution systems.

According to White House spokesman Nick Shapiro, “the goal is a national capability for the rapid, reliable and affordable production of an array of medical countermeasures against public health threats.”

Voxiva, a Washington DC-based mobile technology firm, has launched a government-sponsored program that uses standard text messaging to educate and encourage healthy habits in pregnant women.

The “Text4baby” program sends tips to expectant mothers who sign up using their cell phones. To participate, women text the word, “baby” (or “bebe” for Spanish speakers) to the number 511411. 

Enrollees receive 3 text messages per week, timed to correspond with the woman’s delivery date. The messages cover nutrition, health maintenance and pregnancy management.

The service is entirely free to end-users thanks to government subsidies and the largesse of the wireless carriers. Launched last month, the service had 6,500 sign-ups in the first day. Before this program, Voxiva offered similar text-based services in the US, but they were not free.

Voxiva has launched more than 150 mobile health campaigns in Africa, India and Latin America, areas characterized by developing economies and/or a scarce supply of physicians. These projects are usually underwritten by governments or pharmaceutical firms. They provide news and treatment tips for people with AIDS, obesity, diabetes and smoking.

One of main goals of Text4baby is to discourage alcohol and tobacco use, habits that increase the risk of premature birth. In the US, one out of 8 babies, or about 500,000 births per year, is born prematurely each year. 

Despite the buzz about health-related apps for the iPhone and other smart phones, text messages are ideal for reaching Text4baby’s most important target group, which includes women that can’t afford smart phones. About 90% of US adults carry a cell phone, and nearly all of them support text messaging.

“Senior moments” like forgetting someone’s name or where you parked your care are common in elderly and even middle-aged folks, so how does one know whether they represent something more serious such as dementia?

“It’s the degree of the problem,” James Lah, an Emory University neurologist recently explained to the Washington Post. “If you forget where you place your keys, that’s common. But if you put them in the refrigerator repeatedly, that’s a problem.”

Other Examples
NORMAL: Forgetting where you parked.
PROBLEMATIC: Forgetting where you parked once a week.

NORMAL: Forgetting a person’s name.
PROBLEMATIC: Forgetting a person’s name and then repeatedly asking him or her, “What’s your name again?”

NORMAL: Inability to program the cable box.
PROBLEMATIC: Forgetting how to turn on the television.

Fast Facts
People begin having memory lapses in their 20s, though few worry about it until they’re into their 50s. Peak performance for human memory occurs at about age 22. By age 50, most people are aware their memory ain’t what it used to be. But they can take heart in this: people’s general knowledge-base increases until at least age 60.

Just 10 minutes of brisk walking per day reduces memory losss and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Amazing but true.

There is growing evidence that Gingko biloba does not work, and there is some positive, but very early buzz surrounding omega-3 fatty acids and pomegranate juice, of all things.

Democratic lawmakers and watchdog groups resumed demands last week that the Department of Justice should explain how emails from Bush administration lawyers that supported harsh interrogation tactics were lost. The same groups raised concerns that their absence might taint the findings of a recent ethics report which cleared the lawyers of charges that they engaged in professional misconduct.

The emails in question cover a critical period in 2002 when attorneys from Justice prepared a memo that cleared the way for CIA operatives to use waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other techniques against al-Qaeda suspects, according to the Washington Post.

“Why were these critical records deleted? Why were they kept from investigators?” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy asked at last week’s hearing.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler responded that the ethics report “does not suggest there is anything nefarious” about the lost emails, but that he had asked a department administrator “to determine what was going on with respect to the archiving of these emails.” “If they are retrievable, I will retrieve them,” Grindler said.

Also last week, the National Archives asked why Justice had not notified it about the missing emails before the ethics report was released. And Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked Justice to launch a criminal inquiry into the lost emails.

Months ago in an internal review, Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that former department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee had committed misconduct in preparing those emails and memos. That decision was later overruled by Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis who found instead that the lawyers had exercised poor judgment.

At the last week’s Senate hearing Grindler said that Margolis’ ruling was made “without interference” by senior Justice Department officials.

In response to mounting evidence that bisphenol-A (BPA) is associated with multiple health problems, the FDA will undertake studies of the chemical and implement some regulatory tweaks that help it act quickly if the research uncovers problems.

BPA is a ubiquitous chemical that renders plastic bottles shatterproof. It is also used to coat cans and other containers for food, and is a component of a thousand other consumer goods as well.

The substance leaches from containers into food and can be detected in the urine of 90% of Americans, regardless of age.

Recent studies have linked BPA to cancer, sexual dysfunction, diabetes, heart disease and  abnormal development in fetuses, infants and children.

“We have some concern, which leads us to recommend reasonable steps the public can take to reduce exposure to BPA,” said Joshua Sharfstein, FDA’s deputy commissioner, in a call with reporters.

But the FDA stopped short of an outright ban, saying the data doesn’t justify one. 

Instead, the agency will study BPA and change its classification from a “food additive” to a “food contact material.” The former means manufacturers don’t have to tell the Feds which products contain BPA or in what amounts. The latter requires more disclosure and facilitates a rapid response from the FDA if the stuff is found to pose a risk.

In 2008, Babies R Us and other retailers announced they would no longer stock baby bottles made with BPA. Canada and several US cities and states have already banned BPA from baby bottles.

Until Sharfstein’s announcement, the FDA had maintained that BPA was safe. Its policy was based largely on 2 studies that were funded by the chemical industry. An internal advisory panel criticized this position while calling attention to more than 100 studies that raised doubts about BPA.

More women than ever are better-educated than their husbands and in nearly 20% of marriages, they earn more than their husbands, according to a report released last week by the Pew Research Center. 

To reach these conclusions, Richard Fry and colleagues examined Census Bureau data for US-born married couples between the ages of 30 and 44, an age group that was the first ever to feature more women with college degrees than men.

The Pew study revealed that men nowadays tend to get an economic boost when they marry someone with as much or more education than they have. 

“Marriage now is a better deal for men,” Fry told the Washington Post. “Now when men marry, often their spouse works quite a bit. Often she is better-educated than the guy.”

According to the report, more than half of all married couples nowadays feature spouses with nearly equal levels of education. In 28% of all marriages, the wife had more education, whereas in 19% the man had more.

Even so, 78% of married men make more money than their wives, although the gap is narrowing.  In 1970 for example, 96% of married men earned more than their spouses.

This income gap is narrowing across all economic strata. For example, in 1970, 4% of male high-school grads had wives that earned more money than they did. That number is now 24%. The numbers are nearly identical for those with “some college” education. For male college graduates, 3% had wives that earned more than they did in 1970. That number is now up to 18%.

Currently, the median income for men is about $46,000, about 30% higher than the median income of women. Back in 1970, men’s incomes were twice that of women’s.

Last month, Google announced that its systems were subjected to coordinated cyberattacks beginning in December. The intrusions probably originated in China. They targeted Google source code and more than 30 other defense, tech and financial companies as well. The Gmail accounts of human rights activists on 3 continents were compromised.

Google threatened to retaliate against the Chinese government, but has yet to take action.

Now, according to Washington Post sources, Google has approached the National Security Agency for help defending itself and its users from similar attacks in the future.

Terms of any possible deal between Google and the NSA have not been finalized, but they would likely cover a review of possible vulnerabilities in Google’s hardware and software and the hacking techniques used during last month’s attack.

If the deal were consummated, Google says it will not disclose information regarding what was stolen and will not violate company policies or laws designed to protect the privacy of US citizens’ online communications. In any deal, the NSA will not become privy to users’ searches or e-mail accounts.

Cyberspace cannot be protected, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the Post, without a “collaborative effort that incorporates both the U.S. private sector and our international partners.”

The Google-NSA deal worries privacy advocates, who remember all too well the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Scientists have made some progress in their effort to develop a vaccine for cocaine addiction. The vaccine is actually a series of injections that trigger an immune response to cocaine. The newly-created antibodies prevent the drug from entering the brain and thus blunt its euphoric effects.

To assess the safety and efficacy of their coke vaccine, Thomas Kosten and colleagues at Baylor randomized 115 cocaine addicts to receive either 5 shots of the vaccine over a 12 week period or a series of similarly timed placebo injections.

They monitored cocaine intake using urinalyses.

Most subjects smoked crack cocaine. Many also used marijuana (18%), alcohol (10%), and narcotics (44%).
 
Among subjects who received all 5 shots, 38% achieved sufficient antibody levels to blunt the effects of the drug. Antibodies remained in the bloodstream for 8-10 weeks after the final stick.

In this subset, 53% of the subjects stopped using cocaine—significantly more than the 23% of subjects who did not produce enough antibodies.

The vaccine was well tolerated, with no treatment-related serious adverse events or deaths.

But the partial success was associated with some risk. Some subjects began snorting massive amounts of the drug in an effort to overcome the vaccine’s effects. Some amassed 10 times the amount in their systems than had been encountered before the trial began.

“After the vaccine, doing cocaine was a very disappointing experience for them,” Kosten told the Washington Post.  “Previous research has shown that a reduction in use is associated with a significant improvement in cocaine abusers’ social functioning and thus is therapeutically meaningful.”

Kosten plans to begin a larger vaccine trial this spring.

About 2.1 million Americans have used cocaine in the last month, studies show. 

The write-up appears in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

When a US embassy employee in East Asia clicked on an e-mail attachment in May, 2006, she inadvertently unleashed the largest cyberattack ever launched against the State Department. The breach permitted China-based attackers to insert malicious computer code into the department’s networks throughout the region.

A cyber-threat response team leapt into action and toiled 24/7 for 2 weeks to isolate the code and develop a patch that officials claim prevented a gargantuan breach.

Unfortunately, State is better equipped to handle cyberattacks than other parts of the federal government. And 2 months later, the Bureau of Industry and Security, a part of the Commerce Department that oversees exports of technology that has both commercial and military uses, was attacked in similar fashion.

The attack was not recognized for days and Commerce was never able to determine when the initial intrusion took place (Commerce claims there is no evidence data was compromised as a result).

Commerce and other parts of government are trying to improve their performance in this regard, but their efforts are often stymied by a marked shortage of skilled computer-security workers, from front-line technicians to so called Security Generals. 

Meanwhile, according to the Government Accountability Office, the number of probes, scans and attacks reported to the Homeland Security Department’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team more than tripled between 2006 and 2008, from 5,500 to 16,840.

The manpower shortage is impacting Pentagon efforts to staff-up a new Cyber Command and Homeland Security’s plans to increase it’s cyber-staff by 1,000 people over in the next 3 years.

The intense demand has sparked bidding wars among agencies and contractors for a small pool of special talent: skilled technicians with security clearances. Some young people with 3 years’ experience and a clearance are commanding salaries over $100,000. 

Philip Reitinger, deputy undersecretary of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate, conceded he couldn’t match private sector pay scales. “But in government,” he told the Washington Post, “one can have a bigger ability to effect change at an earlier place in your career than anywhere else.” he said.

Besides, Reitinger added, “your country needs you.”

You may or may not know by reading the label.

Nearly 20% of the 84,000 chemicals being used commercially in the US—from rust removers to driveway sealants—are being legally kept secret from the public, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

That gaping problem arose after Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976 to help protect trade secrets but made it rather easy for manufacturers to bypass normal regulatory scrutiny, even when it involves chemicals that could pose harm to humans.

Nearly 95% of the notices for new chemicals received by the Feds in recent years requested the silent treatment. Roughly 700 chemicals are introduced each year to the American market.

Of the nearly 17,000 secret chemicals, most are probably harmless. But chemical producers have disclosed in mandatory reports to the Feds that many pose a “substantial risk” to public health or the environment.

In March, for example, over half of the 65 “substantial risk” reports received by the EPA involved secret chemicals.

151 of the secret chemicals are made in quantities equal to or greater than 1 million tons per year. Ten of them are used in products designed for children, the EPA reports.

Select EPA employees do know the identities of the secret chemicals but they are prohibited from sharing the information with other federal or state officials, emergency responders and the public.

“Even acknowledging what chemical is used or what is made at what facility could convey important information to competitors, and they can start to put the pieces together,” Mike Walls, vice president of the American Chemistry Council told the Washington Post.

The Obama administration wants Congress to make manufacturers prove a chemical should be kept confidential, and wants to allow EPA officials to share that confidential information with state regulators who implement most EPA mandates across the country. Stay tuned.

It’s been a week since Google announced its Gmail systems had been breached by cyber criminals based in China, but the scope of the attack is just now being appreciated.

It looks as though the attack was part of a large corporate and political phishing ploy that leveraged security flaws in e-mail attachments to break into the networks of at least 34 companies including  Yahoo, Symantec, Rackspace, Adobe and Northrop Grumman.

According to Google, the hackers accessed the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates around the world, as well as other human rights groups that shape the national debate on human rights in China.
 
Google has threatened to retaliate by pulling out of China altogether.

The attacks were more sophisticated than their predecessors, according to security experts, in that they simultaneously exploited flaws in many software programs.

“Usually it’s a group using one type of malicious code per target,” Eli Jellenc told the Washington Post. Jellenc, the head of international cyber-intelligence for VeriSign’s iDefense Labs, added that “in this case, they’re using multiple types against multiple targets. That’s a marked leap in coordination.”

The standoff between Google and China creates a headache for federal officials, since it cuts to the heart of many current issues in U.S.-China relations: from human rights and censorship to intellectual property protection and access to military technology.

Since it entered the Chinese market in 2005, Google has clashed with the Chinese government about which search topics should be censored. The company’s service has been blocked when it defied government wishes.

News about Google’s public rebuke was censored in China, other than an op-ed piece in People’s Daily which called the search giant a “spoiled child” and predicted it would eventually back-off its threats.

Employees of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide occasionally operated alongside CIA and Special Forces operatives during missions to kill or capture members of al-Qaeda and other undesirables in Iraq and Afghanistan, former government officials have told the Washington Post.

Such behavior would exceed the protective role assigned to Blackwater in a contract with the CIA, the sources said.

The missions were approved and planned by CIA officials. But when it came time came to carry out those raids, local CIA operatives delegated responsibilities to available personnel regardless of whether they were contractors or federal employees.

A former CIA official with experience in Middle East covert operations confirmed that such decisions would be “practical…there was no bench strength with either the CIA or Special Forces, so sometimes they would turn to contractors, who often had the same skills,” he told the Post.

Former CIA officer Robert Baer said that such arrangements would short-circuit normal chains of command that CIA and military personnel must abide by. “Once you cede your authorities, people are no longer restrained by regulations and federal law,” Baer said. 

Earlier this year, CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated several contracts with Blackwater, but the agency still relies on the firm to provide security for agency employees and assets.

Former Washington-based CIA counterterrorism officials said CIA headquarters was not aware of such actions. They confirmed that Blackwater employees engaged in firefights while protecting CIA officers undertaking lethal raids, but characterized these actions as defensive, not offensive.

Currently, 5 Blackwater guards are standing trial in federal court on manslaughter and other charges stemming from the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September, 2007. In a separate civil case, 70 Iraqi civilians are alleging that Blackwater engaged in “lawless behavior” and covered up killings.