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Kim Sjostrom wanted a real-life version of the film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," which played in the background as friends fixed her hair and makeup before her own marriage ceremony.

But less than an hour after she and Teddy Efkarpides were wed, Sjostrom crumpled in her husband's arms during a Greek song that means "Love Me."

At 36, Sjostrom was dead from heart disease.

Sjostrom carried blue and white flowers during the ceremony — the colors of the Greek flag — as she exchanged vows with Efkarpides, a 43-year-old carpenter and Navy veteran. They had met three years to the day before the Jan. 19 wedding.

During the couple's first dance, Sjostrom complained of being lightheaded. Efkarpides thought his wife, a diabetic, needed sugar, but she collapsed.

Wedding guests, paramedics and doctors at a nearby hospital were unable to revive her.

She had a previous cardiac episode in her 20s and was a poster child — literally — for juvenile diabetes, relatives and friends said. Efkarpides recalled seeing the poster featuring her on New York subways.

He consoles himself by reading a list of "101 Reasons Why I Love You" that Sjostrom gave him their first Christmas together. "Number 1. You make me smile."

No. 98 is especially difficult: "You're the one I want to grow old with."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/02/09/national/a125009S89.DTL

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. researchers say they have coaxed hearts from dead rats to beat again in the laboratory and said the discovery may one day lead to customized organ transplants for people.

"The hope would be we could generate an organ that matched your body," said Doris Taylor of the University of Minnesota Center for Cardiovascular Repair.

Her study, which appeared on Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine, offers a way to fulfill the promise of using stem cells -- the body's master cells -- to grow tailor-made organs for transplant.

Taylor and colleagues used a process called decellularization to wash away existing cells from the hearts of dead rats while leaving the basic collagen structure intact.

They injected this gelatin-like scaffold with heart cells from newborn rats, fed them a nutrient-rich solution and left them in the lab to grow.

Four days later, the hearts started to contract.

The researchers used a pacemaker to coordinate the contractions. They hooked up the hearts to a pump so they were being filled with fluids and added a bit of pressure to simulate blood pressure.

Eight days later, the hearts started to pump.

Taylor said the process could be used on other organs, offering a potential new source of donor organs. It also could lead to organs that, in theory, would be less likely to be rejected by the body.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080113/sc_nm/heart_artificial_dc

Woman born with lobster hands and feet. That's gotta suck!

A former handyman has won more than $400,000 in a lawsuit over a penile implant that gave him a 10-year erection.

Charles "Chick" Lennon, 68, received the steel and plastic implant in 1996, about two years before Viagra went on the market. The Dura-II is designed to allow impotent men to position the penis upward for sex, then lower it.

But Lennon could not position his penis downward. He said he could no longer hug people, ride a bike, swim or wear bathing trunks because of the pain and embarrassment. He has become a recluse and is uncomfortable being around his grandchildren, his lawyer said.

In 2004, a jury awarded him $750,000. A judge called that excessive and reduced it to $400,000. On Friday, the Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed that award in a ruling that turned on a procedural matter.

"I don't know any man who for any amount of money would want to trade and take my client's life," said Jules D'Alessandro, Lennon's attorney. "He's not a whole person."

A lawyer representing both Dura-II manufacturer Dacomed Corp. and the company's insurer declined to comment. Dacomed maintained that nothing was wrong with the implant.

The implant consists of a series of plastic plates strung together with steel surgical wire, almost like a roll of wrapped coins. Springs press against the plates, creating enough surface tension to simulate an erection, D'Alessandro said.

Lennon cannot get the implant removed because of health problems, including open-heart surgery, his lawyer said. Impotence drugs could not help Lennon even if he were able to have the device taken out, because tissue had be to removed for it to be implanted.

Dacomed was later acquired by a California company whose sales dropped when Viagra was introduced on the market. The company filed for bankruptcy the following year.

In my opinion, he got what he paid for. He couldn't get it up before and now he is pissed because he can't ride a bike. Why would you try and ride a bike like that anyways?

Belle Weaver is flying into the nation's capital Monday to receive an award for saving a family member's life. Before she leaves town, she'll meet with her congressman, accept a certificate and bow her head to receive a medal.

Stories such as hers, of heroism and quick thinking, are always inspiring. But this one has a twist, and not just because Belle is 3 years old.

You see, Belle Weaver is a beagle. She used her owner's cellphone to call 911.

Her owner, Kevin Weaver, 34, was in the throes of a diabetic seizure, lying unconscious on his kitchen floor in Ocoee, Fla., when Belle located his phone and chomped down on the keypad, triggering a call.

read the rest

Moderate drinking reduces the risk of heart disease but the beneficial effects of alcohol seem to work differently in men and women, Danish researchers said on Friday.

They found that for men drinking daily seems to have the biggest positive effect on health while in women the amount of alcohol consumed may have more of an impact.

"The risk of heart disease was lowest among men who drank every day," said Janne Tolstrup of the National Institute for Public Health in Copenhagen.

But a daily tipple did not cut the odds of heart disease in women, according to the findings reported in the British Medical Journal.

Tolstrup and her colleagues said the beneficial effects of moderate drinking in cutting heart disease risk are well documented but they warned that heavy alcohol consumption is linked to liver diseases, cancer and road accidents.

Most of the research into alcohol and heart disease has been done on men. Little is known about the impact on women.

The researchers studied the effects of alcohol on more than 50,000 men and women over more than five years. Men in the study who drank one day a week had a 7 percent reduced risk of heart disease compared to non-drinkers, but daily moderate drinkers were 41 percent less likely to suffer from heart disease.

Women consumed an average of 5.5 alcoholic drinks a week, about half of what the men drank. But in women the percentages of reduced risk were similar, regardless of whether they drank one day or seven days a week.

"This study does not change the fact that alcohol should be enjoyed in moderation only, both by men and women," said Judy O'Sullivan, of the British Heart Foundation in a statement.

And if you don't believe me, here you go.

In the past, LASIK surgery was an expensive procedure that could only be performed by skilled professionals in a doctor's office or eye clinic. Often costing upwards of $1000 per eye and almost never covered by insurance, Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis (LASIK) was beyond the reach of most Americans.

Now the revolutionary LASIK@Home system makes clear vision affordable for everyone. Learn more here...

Top British transplant surgeons have accused China of harvesting the organs of thousands of executed prisoners every year to sell for transplants.

In a statement, the British Transplantation Society condemned the practice as unacceptable and a breach of human rights.

The move comes less than a week after Chinese officials publicly denied the practice took place.

In March, China said it would ban the sale of human organs from July.

Read the rest of the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4921116.stm

I found this bit pretty funny!!! - "They may appear to be wallowing in filth, but single men’s abodes actually tend to have lower bacteria counts since they rarely clean and don’t spread the germs around. "

Read mre: Yeech! The Word from Dr. Germ

DuPont Co. has agreed to pay $10.25 million in fines and $6.25 million for environmental projects to settle allegations by the Environmental Protection Agency that the company hid information about the dangers of a toxic chemical used to make the non-stick coating Teflon, officials said Wednesday.
The supplemental environmental projects involved in the settlement include funding for a research program to evaluate the potential for biodegradation of chemicals such as PFOA and funding for microchemistry and green chemistry programs in West Virginia schools.

How about a couple of bucks for people like me that have been frying eggs on this shit for 30 years??

"To date there is no human health effects that we know about that are caused by PFOA ... We've seen nothing," a DuPont spokesperson said. Under federal law, DuPont faced a potential fine of more than $300 million for not reporting that the chemical posed a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.

They got off easy.

Fatter rear ends are causing many drug injections to miss their mark, requiring longer needles to reach buttock muscle, researchers said on Monday. Standard-sized needles failed to reach the buttock muscle in 23 out of 25 women whose rears were examined after what was supposed to be an intramuscular injection of a drug.

A 15-year-old girl with a peanut allergy died after kissing her boyfriend, who had just eaten a peanut butter snack.
15 year olds shouldn't be kissing.

South Korea's spicy fermented cabbage dish, kimchi, could help to cure bird flu, according to researchers.

Scientists at Seoul National University say they fed an extract of kimchi to 13 infected chickens - and a week later 11 of them had started recovering. The researchers said the results were far from scientifically proven and if kimchi did have the effects they observed, it was unclear why. South Koreans are reported to be eating more kimchi as a result of the study.

"I'm eating kimchi these days because I've heard in the media that it helps prevent bird flu infections," one man said.

Love it or loathe it, once you have eaten it, you will never forget it. Kimchi is made by fermenting cabbage with red peppers, radishes and a lot of garlic and ginger. The idea that it could help poultry to fight off bird flu sounds like a dubious folk remedy. But the theory is being floated by some of Korea's most eminent scientists.

"We found that the chickens recovered from bird flu, Newcastle disease and bronchitis. The birds' death rate fell, they were livelier and their stools became normal," said Professor Kang Sa-ouk.

Now after reading this last night I found this breaking news:

The Korea Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it had discovered parasite eggs in 16 brands of kimchi from China. The products accounted for almost five per cent of the kimchi market in South Korea. The tainted kimchi contained the eggs of roundworm, normally found in dogs and cats. Read more...

A cure for cancer may be as close as the nearest Indian restaurant.

Researchers say that turmeric - a key spice in virtually all curries - contains a potent cancer-fighting agent that may eventually provide treatments for several hard-to-treat types of tumors.

"It is very effective, that is for sure," said Bharat Aggarwal, a top researcher at the prestigious M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "There is enough data to say it is very potent."

A study published in the upcoming issue of Cancer magazine shows curcumin, a chemical pigment in turmeric, has promise fighting breast, colon, prostate and pancreatic cancers. Now doctors have launched clinical tests to see if it works on real patients.

"We are trying cancer after cancer," said Aggarwal, noting that many cancers are 10 times rarer on the Indian subcontinent than in the West. "It's not too early to hope."

Read more ...

In June 2004, Passalaqua’s husband, Steven Passalaqua, was asked by Kaiser staff to hold and steady his wife while an employee inserted an epidural needle into her back, court papers said.
The sight of the needle caused Steven Passalaqua, 33, to faint and he fell backward, striking his head on an aluminum cap molding at the base of the wall.
Jeanette Passalaqua delivered the couple’s second child, a boy, later that day. Steven Passalaqua, however, suffered a brain hemorrhage as a result of his fall and died two days later.