The News – 02 Feb 2015

Overview

• A woman was taken to hospital in a serious condition on Friday after undergoing a cosmetic procedure at a clinic in Sydney’s west.

• About 150 people have rallied in Melbourne to protest against new requirements to add a bittering agent to raw milk.

• The United States has proposed analysing the genetic information of more than 1 million American volunteers as part of a new initiative to understand human disease and develop medicines targeted to an individual’s genetic make-up.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 2nd February 2015. Read by Rebecca Foster.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/woman-in-serious-condition-after-falling-unconscious-at-sydney-cosmetic-surgery-20150130-131w8a.html

A woman has been taken to hospital in a serious condition after falling unconscious at a cosmetic surgery clinic in Sydney’s west.

Paramedics were called to The Cosmetic Institute in Parramatta about 10.15am on Friday to reports that a woman, thought to be aged about 20, had suffered a cardiac arrest, was unconscious and not breathing.

A NSW Ambulance spokeswoman confirmed a patient was taken to Westmead Hospital in a serious condition, but she said no further details were available about the case.

She could not confirm a report that the woman was undergoing a procedure at the time.
It is understood paramedics used a defibrillator and performed CPR on the woman.
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The institute advertises a number of procedures on its website, including liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid rejuvenation and labioplasty.
A NSW Police spokeswoman said police were not involved in the incident.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-31/melbourne-protesters-angry-about-new-laws-on-raw-milk/6059490

About 150 people have rallied in Melbourne to protest against new requirements to add a bittering agent to raw milk.

The Victorian Government introduced the requirement to add a gag-inducing agent to unpasteurised milk amid health concerns.

Raw milk can be sold in Victoria as a cosmetic product, not for human consumption.

The law was introduced after a three-year-old child died last year after drinking Mountain View Farm unpasteurised milk meant for cosmetic purposes.
Four other children became ill after drinking the product.

The protesters gathered outside the office of Consumer Affairs Minister Jane Garrett and called for the requirement to be overturned.

About 20 children were drinking raw milk at the protest, with some saying it tasted creamier than pasteurised milk.

Members of the Australian Raw Milk Movement maintain unpasteurised milk is safe to drink and spokeswoman Rebecca Freer said it should be regulated, not banned.

“Australia’s only one of two countries where raw milk is actually banned for human consumption,” she said.
“The rest of the world, bar Australia and Canada, have already made a case and made it perfectly safe and regulated and people aren’t dropping like flies.

“But there has to be certain things happening for it to be safe. So if you look at other parts of the world they’re very clear on stipulating that the cows need to be really healthy, the cows are grass-fed, these are not factory-farmed cows.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-30/us-to-sequence-one-million-genomes-for-personalised-medicines/6059136

The United States has proposed analysing the genetic information of more than 1 million American volunteers as part of a new initiative to understand human disease and develop medicines targeted to an individual’s genetic make-up.

At the heart of the initiative, to be announced on Friday by president Barack Obama, is the creation of a pool of people – healthy and ill, men and women, old and young – who would be studied to learn how genetic variants affect health and disease.

Officials hope genetic data from several hundred thousand participants in ongoing genetic studies would be used, and other volunteers recruited to reach the 1 million total.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said the near-term goal of the initiative was to create more and better treatments for cancer.

He said in the longer term, the project would provide information on how to individualise treatment for a range of diseases.

Dr Collins said the initial focus on cancer was partly due to the lethality of the disease and partly because targeted medicine, known also as precision medicine, had made significant advances in cancer, although much more work was needed.

The president proposed $US215 million in his 2016 budget for the initiative.

Of that, $US130 million would go to the NIH to fund the research cohort and $US70 million to NIH’s National Cancer Institute to intensify efforts to identify molecular drivers of cancer and apply that knowledge to drug development.

The remaining $US15 million would go towards developing databases and privacy standards which would ensure the secure exchange of data.
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