Weird News Thread ....

[Jolie Rouge]

Common Household Item Is Carcinogenic


A new study by researchers at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. shows there may be a link between the heavy metal cadmium, which is widely used in batteries, and breast cancer. In rats, cadmium mimics the female hormone estrogen, reports The Associated Press. In relatively low doses--the levels that might be encountered in real life by human beings--cadmium affected the mammary glands and sexual development of the animals.

"We never expected to see this strong a relationship, given how different the cadmium and estrogen compounds are," lead study author Mary Beth Martin told AP. "Cadmium's ability to functionally mimic estrogen and its effect on cell growth is quite remarkable. What we saw suggests a direct link between low-dose cadmium exposure and increased risk of breast cancer." Chronic exposure to cadmium has long been linked to kidney damage and bone disease. Previous research has shown that in male rats cadmium can affect the prostate. In addition to being found in batteries, cadmium is also common in pigments, alloys, cigarettes, and soldering processes. It is an air contaminant produced by burning fossil fuels and is found in some foods, including shellfish, liver, and kidney.

Martin did admit that it's still too early to predict if cadmium will affect humans in the same way it does rats, but the initial findings definitely suggest it is a hazard. "The more we learn about how this works in rats, and eventually people, the better lifestyle choices women can make," she told AP. The study findings are scheduled for publication in the August issue of the journal Nature Medicine.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Linda McDougal was told she had breast cancer, so she underwent a double mastectomy, and then the news got worse. Doctors admitted it was all a mistake. She never had cancer, and the surgery was completely unnecessary.




http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/01/20...ake/index.html


CNN anchor Carol Costello talked with McDougal and her attorney Chris Messerly about the mistake and the consequences, and spoke with Laurel Krause, a doctor at United Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the surgery was done.

COSTELLO: It's just an unbelievable story. So you decide to have a double mastectomy, which is a huge decision in the first place. When did you find out you did not have cancer?

MCDOUGAL: Forty-eight hours after the surgery.

COSTELLO: And how did doctors tell you?

MCDOUGAL: The surgeon walked into my room and told my husband and I that she had some bad news, and there was no way of telling me other than to tell me, and that is that I didn't have cancer.

COSTELLO: So you're lying in your hospital bed, after just going through this horrible surgery, ... what you were feeling?

MCDOUGAL: Well, initially I thought, "Good, because I hope you got it all." And then she said, "You don't seem to understand -- you never had cancer. There was a mix-up."

COSTELLO: And you and your husband then said ...

MCDOUGAL: I think -- I was rendered speechless. I was in shock. And within moments, we were both crying. It was very difficult.

COSTELLO: And did you ask the hospital how this happened? Why it happened? How long did it take you to get over the initial shock to ask those questions?

MCDOUGAL: It took a couple of minutes before the surgeon continued and told me, initially, that slides got mixed up. And then, the next day she called and said that she had done some more checking and that it was more than that.

COSTELLO: What did the hospital tell you when you contacted the hospital about this mistake, and how it could have happened?

MESSERLY: Well, three separate people, including two physicians, failed to check the names and the numbers of the patients -- Linda McDougal and one other person -- and they switched the names on the slides with the pathology sheets. They told some poor woman that she had no cancer at all and told Linda that she did.

COSTELLO: About the other woman, did she eventually undergo a double mastectomy herself?

MESSERLY: We don't know. We have not been told that by the hospital.

COSTELLO: It's been seven months since this procedure. Why did you wait so long before going public about this?

MCDOUGAL: I have had a lot of issues just dealing with it. It's taken me seven months to get to a point where I can really talk about it. I'm still infected. I can't continue with reconstruction ...

COSTELLO: Because of the surgery, you have infections?

MCDOUGAL: I have had secondary surgery.

COSTELLO: Did doctors come up and say we're sorry? What did they do for you?

MCDOUGAL: The only person who ever apologized was my surgeon. I never heard another word from United [Hospital] or the pathologists other than their reaction to the news stories, as I'm coming out with this.

COSTELLO: But Chris, the hospital did agree to pay for her medical bills and back pay and things like that?

MESSERLY: That's news to us. Linda's contact with the insurance company has not made us aware of that. So, they have not stepped up and taken the complete responsibility for the multiple surgeries and everything she's going to have to go through for the rest of her life.

COSTELLO: So, they haven't paid for the surgery that she didn't need?

MESSERLY: Well, she has had insurance pay for all of that. I mean, she does have some ongoing issues, but she is going to have many more surgeries before she's done, and we don't know what the results of those will be.

COSTELLO: Before I talk to hospital officials -- do you plan to sue?

MESSERLY: Absolutely. However, President Bush intends to add additional harm to Linda and other victims. I mean, 98,000 people per year die of medical malpractice, not to mention the hundreds of thousands that are injured, and the president wants to tell them, I don't care what you've been through, we're going to put a cap on your damages of $250,000.

COSTELLO: And of course, the reason he's doing that is because there are many frivolous lawsuits filed, and doctor's bills are getting ever more expensive.

MESSERLY: But putting a cap on that will do nothing at all to reduce that, and California has proved that. They put a cap on years ago, and malpractice premiums have gone up and up and up until insurance reform came through.

COSTELLO: OK. We want to get a word from hospital officials. ... Thank you for coming in.

---------------

We want to turn now to reaction from United Hospital. Dr. Laurel Krauss, a senior pathologist at United Hospital, ... joins us from Minneapolis. Good morning.

KRAUSE: Good morning.

COSTELLO: How could this have happened?

KRAUSE: First, let me say how very sorry I am for this tragic mistake. This happened, as Messerly describes -- his account is essentially accurate. Two patients' sets of slides were on one tray, and two patients' sets of paperwork, and inadvertently, the pathologist involved picked up the wrong paperwork with the slides and failed to validate the name and identification number on the papers with the name and identification number on the slides.

COSTELLO: Are there not safeguards in place to prevent this from happening?

KRAUSE: There are safeguards in place, and we have put additional safeguards in place since the incident. Our practice at that time was national standard. We have now put additional safeguards of color coding the slides and paperwork. We also have only one patient case per tray of slides, and we have a second pathologist completely review all aspects of the case, validating the color code, the name, the identification number, and having to agree with the first pathologist's diagnosis.

COSTELLO: The pathologist that made the mistake, what happened to him or her?

KRAUSE: This pathologist is still on staff. This individual has been practicing 10 years, has had an exemplary record, and has never made a mistake like this before.

COSTELLO: So no punishment, no suspension?

KRAUSE: An independent investigation both by the hospital and again by our own practice disclosed no prior history of any incidents of this kind. Had there been a practiced pattern, disciplinary action would have been undertaken, but in this case, we were appreciative that the physician who was involved was actually the person who identified the error and disclosed it fully.

COSTELLO: Will the hospital pick up Linda's medical bills, pay for her future surgeries?

KRAUSE: We are collaborating with the insurance company, with the hospital, and with the patient and her family in every way possible to ensure that her lost wages and all medical bills will be compensated.






---> that is why you should ALWAYS get a second (or third) opinion !

Unbelievable !

[Jolie Rouge]

Finns Scratch Heads Over N.Korea Porn Claim

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finnish officials were at a loss to explain an allegation made on Thursday by a U.S. official that North Korea has been caught trying to sell pornography in the small Nordic country.

"It sounds strange. It sounds wild," an official at the Foreign Ministry told Reuters.

U.S. Ambassador to Australia Tom Schieffer made the comments earlier on Thursday to the National Press Club in Canberra, saying North Korea was using a "mafia-like" business model to make up a revenue shortfall when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s.

"(North Korea has) been caught trying to sell pornography in Finland and prohibited animal products, like rhinoceros horn, in Africa, counterfeiting in Kuwait and trafficking heroin in Australia," Schieffer said.


National news agency STT quoted the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation and Security Police as saying the allegation sounded strange. It quoted police as saying there were no big pornography cases being investigated linked to North Korea, but they could not rule out the possibility of an isolated case in the country involving a North Korean citizen.


The foreign ministry official did note an incident in the mid 1970s, when the country expelled five diplomats as part of a Nordic-wide case involving the illegal sale of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs.


Officials at the U.S. embassy in Helsinki were not immediately available for comment. North Korea does not have any diplomatic presence in Finland.


North Korea is in a stand-off with the United States over the communist state's nuclear weapons program. Schieffer said it was a rogue state which had been involved in shipping missiles and could conceivably sell nuclear weapons.


The Asian country has dismissed U.S. criticism of its missile exports as interference in its internal affairs.


The country has also rejected allegations of drugs trafficking.

07/11/03 09:59

[Jolie Rouge]

Creating 'Extraordinary Gentlemen'

Mutants, freaks and angry hulks were on the loose more than a century before today's comic-book craze. Back then, they just wore classy Victorian garb instead of gaudy Spandex.

"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," Hollywood's latest dabble in comics, unites a passel of rogues, swashbucklers and scientific wonders borrowed from literature to battle global evil at the close of the 19th century.

The idea of a gang of do-gooding misfits could be torn from "X-Men," the Marvel Comics series about mutants with amazing powers that spawned this year's biggest comic-book movie, "X2: X-Men United."


The difference is that the protagonists of "League" were ripped from the pages of Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Bram Stoker and other writers enshrined in the classics sections of bookstores.


Comic-book writer Alan Moore and illustrator Kevin O'Neill launched the "League" in 1999 with a series of comic books that teams such Victorian-era literary figures as Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Capt. Nemo and "Dracula" vampire Mina Harker.


"I think they're the original superheroes," said Peta Wilson, who plays Mina.


Sean Connery stars as adventurer Quatermain, a progenitor of Indiana Jones who was the hero of "King Solomon's Mines" and other tales by H. Rider Haggard.


Like comic-book heroes who fight temptations to exploit their powers for nefarious purposes, most members of the "Extraordinary Gentlemen" gang are at odds with their dark sides. The film's Mina -- bitten by Dracula in Stoker's novel -- is a prim, corseted creature struggling to use her bloodsucking tendencies for good.


The team also includes Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), the renegade mariner of Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," who in the film tries to atone for his violent past by putting his submarine, the Nautilus, in the service of a British-led effort to stop a gang of underground warmongers; a thief (Tony Curran) who stumbles on the invisibility formula of Wells' "The Invisible Man"; Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), the eternally youthful anti-hero of Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray"; and a forerunner of "The Incredible Hulk," Stevenson's Dr. Henry Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) and his beastly alter-ego, Edward Hyde.


"What I love about them is that because of the fact they all come from literature, they have a depth. They all have a dark side," Flemyng said. "Even if you're not aware of the books, I think you can still feel that."


The film version Americanizes the tale by adding U.S. Secret Service agent Sawyer (Shane West), a character loosely based on Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.


The luster of seeing those literary figures together on-screen is much the same as the overlap in comic books, when heroes and villains from different comics are intermixed.


"If you're a comic-book geek like I am, half the reason you loved comic books is that Spider-Man would be in a fight with Dr. Doom, then Daredevil shows up and saves his butt," said "League" producer Don Murphy. "Or remember the time Superman and Batman got together? That's obviously the genesis of the 'League."'


Also on hand in "League" is a British spy-master named M (Richard Roxburgh), a wink at the boss in the James Bond tales in which Connery starred. M also has connections to the Sherlock Holmes adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle.



"League" slips in a wealth of other sly references to classic literature, including the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Jonathan Swift. "The origin of our superheroes is in a way those characters from literature," said "League" producer Trevor Albert. "They embody a lot of those things that have now become popularized in contemporary movies. We think of it as something modern from the last 20 or 30 years, but a lot of these characters with super-extraordinary powers have existed for a long time in literature."


Par for Hollywood, the movie adaptation of "League" tones down the comic book's rough edges. On the page, the comic-book Quatermain is an opium-addled has-been, while Connery's Quatermain is a valiant hero. The film's invisible man comes off as a goodhearted rascal; in the comic book, he uses his invisibility to rape young women at a girls' school.


"The way the comic book reads, it would have been a brilliant sort of BBC drama written by Dennis Potter ("The Singing Detective") if he was still alive," said "League" screenwriter James Dale Robinson, a comic-book author himself. "A summer movie requires something different. You couldn't have an opium-addicted, conflicted-with-self-doubt Quatermain. You couldn't have an invisible rapist. "You can make the characters part of a large summer film but still be true to the spirit of the comic book."


While whimsically toying with the source material, Moore and O'Neill's "League" comics are fairly true to the spirit of the original authors' characters. Like today's comic-book misfits, the people imagined by Wilde, Stoker, West and Stevenson often were outcasts defying social expectations.


"The interesting thing about the 19th century is how much repression there was," Wilson said. "Bram Stoker or Oscar Wilde, imagine these writers and free spirits living in a really repressed time like that. They were the voice of the people and wrote these characters acting out against that repression. That's how angry they all were, that they had to be so conformed."


07/14/2003 11:50

[Jolie Rouge]

The O.J. trial of the 1850s

It was the "Trial of the Century" of its day.

It lasted 12 days, attracting 60,000 spectators and journalists from all over the world. The throngs were so big that the city marshal wrapped a chain around the courthouse for crowd control. People were allowed to watch for 10 minutes, then had to leave so more folks could see.

And now you can see a dramatization on PBS, "Murder at Harvard," airing 9 p.m. EDT Monday as part of the "American Experience" series (check local listings). (It's not the only "trial of the century" "American Experience" is documenting; alongside "Murder at Harvard" is "Murder of the Century," about the early-1900s Evelyn Nesbit-Stanford White-Harry K. Thaw triangle that was also dramatized at the beginning of "Ragtime.")


Historian Simon Schama provides his take on the case of Dr. John White Webster, who was charged with murdering a fellow Harvard Medical School graduate, Dr. George Parkman.


Parkman disappeared November 28, 1849. A janitor, Ephraim Littlefield, tunneled beneath a basement laboratory at Harvard Medical College looking for clues, and found body parts in a vault belonging to Webster.


In a matter of days, Webster was charged with murdering Parkman, a Boston Brahmin.


The possible motive? Webster had borrowed $2,400 from Parkman, and Parkman was trying to collect the debt.


Webster's salary as a chemistry professor at Harvard was insufficient to provide for his wife and daughters. And after squandering a family inheritance, he continued to spend freely.


When Parkman came to get his money, the combination of Webster's embarrassment and his feeling that his place in society might be slipping may have culminated in an act of desperation, said Eric Stange, the show's co-writer, co-producer and director.


Webster was hanged for the crime. Littlefield ended up with a $3,000 reward that was paid by Parkman's brother-in-law for the information he provided.


Co-writer-producer Melissa Banta first became intrigued by the mystery surrounding the trial while working as a curatorial associate in the university library at Harvard, where she heard about the famous case.


"I think this one was a particularly good one because it was this wonderful, gothic murder story," she said.


The trial in March 1850 created a stir, with people flocking to the courtroom to watch the proceedings.


"A lot of people would compare it to the O.J. Simpson case of its day. There were huge mobs around the courthouse and reporters came from all around the country. From as far away as Berlin, Paris and London," Banta said. "Back then it was just truly shocking that someone of Webster's class and social standing would have committed such a crime and that's why it drew so many people."


Stange said the advantage of shooting scenes in a city like Boston is that many of the old buildings still exist.


The original site of Harvard Medical College is now occupied by Massachusetts General Hospital. But Parkman's house still stands, as does Webster's.


"You can go and walk those streets. You can literally walk the same walk that George Parkman took in the last hour of his life. People knew exactly where he was, right down to the medical college, where he breathed his last breath," Stange said.


Although the evidence and motive points to Webster and body parts were found in his vault, there was never any concrete proof the body was Parkman's. But authorities noted the body appeared to have been cut up by someone familiar with dissection.


"Webster knew what he was doing and had taken anatomy classes and all the rest," Stange said.


Some parts of the body were burned in a furnace, while those that were too big to fit were stuffed into the vault, according to an article in the spring 2000 issue of the Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin.


Some believe Littlefield may have committed the crime and pointed the finger at Webster.


As for Schama, he believes that since Webster was known for having a bad temper -- even, as one story goes, once beating a puppy in one of his classes to demonstrate a point -- he was the one responsible for Parkman's death.



http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...0.htm&sc=Shwbz

07/14/2003 14:52

[Gumball1960]

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/2...12000107142003

Police: Drugs Make Man Cook, Eat His Genitals

POSTED: 8:42 a.m. EDT July 14, 2003

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Police in Malaysia say a man cut off his own pen!s and then fried and ate it.

They say he had taken hallucinogenic drugs that caused him to hear voices urging him to mutilate himself.

A police spokesman says the 34-year-old man took the drugs before he went to bed Friday night and heard the voices when he woke up. He didn't realize what he had done until he saw the blood.


The man had recently been released from a drug rehabilitation center.

Malaysia's national news agency reports he's hospitalized in stable condition.

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Originally posted by Gumball1960
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/2...12000107142003

Police: Drugs Make Man Cook, Eat His Genitals

POSTED: 8:42 a.m. EDT July 14, 2003

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Police in Malaysia say a man cut off his own pen!s and then fried and ate it.

They say he had taken hallucinogenic drugs that caused him to hear voices urging him to mutilate himself.

A police spokesman says the 34-year-old man took the drugs before he went to bed Friday night and heard the voices when he woke up. He didn't realize what he had done until he saw the blood.


The man had recently been released from a drug rehabilitation center.

Malaysia's national news agency reports he's hospitalized in stable condition.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - One size fits ALL?
A bright yellow condom covered the facade of a 20-story, phallic-shaped hotel in the southern Chinese city of Guilin to mark U.N. World Population Day in the most populous nation on the globe, the hotel manager said Saturday.

"Our hotel is very round," said the manager of the three-star Fragrant River Hotel, who declined to give her name. "The initial plan was to cover the whole building, but because the wind was so strong they could only cover the front half."

The Guilin Latex Company has applied to the publishers of the Guinness Book of World Records to recognize their giant condom, 260 feet tall and nearly 330 feet around, as the world's biggest, the Xinhua news agency said.

The company joined local birth control officials in Guilin Friday to promote contraception, distributing free condoms and brochures to passers-by, it said.

The semi-official China News Service said the condom had cost more than $24,000 to display and carried the message: "Control population growth, pay attention to sexual health, prevent AIDS."

Despite Beijing's strict one-child policy, an attempt to halt ballooning growth of the country's 1.3 billion population, it is only in recent years that the Chinese have felt able to discuss sexual health in public.

International experts and local activists say that more publicity and government leadership was needed to avert an AIDS catastrophe in China. Beijing says that around one million of its people suffer from HIV, the virus that causes the disease.

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SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian woman has ripped her way into the record books by giving bikini waxes to 130 people in four hours without apparent mishap.
Lareesa Guttery, a beauty therapist in the western city of Perth, claimed her new record Saturday when she almost doubled British woman Deanne Ware's two-year-old mark of 77 waxes.

She said her only problem had been a lack of willing volunteers.

"We had to go out into the mall and persuade people to come in and get waxed," Guttery told Australian Associated Press.

Six of her teary-eyed subjects were men.

"A couple of the women were in a bit of pain after the procedure, but there were no real mishaps, thankfully," she said.

"I think I could do 200...if we can get the volunteers."

Guttery was not at work Monday and unavailable for further comment.

Her record bid was witnessed by two qualified beauty therapists, whose job it was to make sure the waxes were completed properly. The record will be formally lodged with the Guinness Book of Records later Monday.

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Streak of Lightning Floors Russian Nudists


Jul 14, 10:01 am ET

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Two Russian nudists were struck by lightning on Friday at a beach on the Moscow river as they took cover from a thunderstorm under a tree, the emergencies ministry said.
The two people, who were not identified, both suffered minor injuries after the lightning bolt hit the tree at the nudist beach in a popular riverside recreation area, a spokeswoman for the ministry's Moscow office said.

The Russian capital has been buffeted by a series of thunderstorms this week.

A person died after being struck by lightning in eastern Moscow on Friday, Interfax news agency said.

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Police Track Down Gogol's Missing Nose


Jul 14, 9:59 am ET

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - A giant statue of a nose, inspired by Nikolai Gogol's story of a man's pursuit for his runaway nose, was tracked down by Russian police on Friday, 10 months after it vanished.
Life imitated art when the marble sculpture, erected in Russia's second city eight years ago to honor the tale, went walk-about last September from the house where the story's hero is supposed to have lived.

The head of St Petersburg's sculpture museum said the 220-pound proboscis was found in a city apartment block.

"Both the residents and the police, who found the nose, treated it with affection," Vladimir Timofeyev said.

Gogol's odd story, called "The Nose," tells how a Major Kovalyov goes on a frantic search through the Czarist capital in search of his nose, which takes on a life of its own and gets up to all kinds of trouble while running round the city.

Kovalyov finally tracks down his mischievous missing nose, in the nick of time as it is planning a move to Latvia.