Beta carotene and vitamins A and E, antioxidant supplements taken by millions to fight disease, may actually raise the risk of death, a review of 68 studies on nearly a quarter-million people said on Tuesday.

The finding drew fire from critics who said it was flawed and based largely on studies of people who were already chronically ill before they were treated with the supplements.

Tuesday’s report related only to synthetic supplements and not to fruits and vegetables in everyday diets which are natural and contain less concentrated levels of antioxidants, said the study from the Center for Clinical Intervention Research at Denmark’s Copenhagen University Hospital.

While the review did not pinpoint any biochemical mechanism that may be behind the increased death risk, it may be that “by eliminating free radicals from our organism, we interfere with some essential defensive mechanisms,” the study concluded.

Antioxidants are believed to fight free radicals, atoms or groups of atoms formed in such a way that they can cause cell damage.

“Beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E given singly or combined with other antioxidant supplements significantly increase mortality,” the study found. It said the increased death risk is about 5 percent higher than those not given supplements and that figure is probably conservative.

It also found no evidence that vitamin C increases longevity and though selenium tended to reduce mortality, more research is needed on that topic.

Balz Frei, director of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, said the study and the data studied are both flawed because more than two-thirds of the previous research that was examined involved people with heart disease, cancer or other risks who were being treated to see if the supplements worked.

“This kind of approach does not work,” he said. “Over the years it has become clear from these clinical trials that antioxidants don’t work in disease treatment.”
The Natural Products Association, a supplement trade group, said the study “stands in stark contrast to large actual clinical studies that have not demonstrated any increased risks.”

Daniel Fabricant, a vice president of the association, said reviews of existing studies, called meta-analysis, often work but in this case the process was biased because “there are many other factors that could contribute to mortality that were simply not assessed.”

The study, published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, said that 10 percent to 20 percent of adults in North America and Europe — up to 160 million people — may consume the supplements involved.

“The public health consequences may be substantial,” it said. “We are exposed to intense marketing” which holds the opposite view of what the researchers found, it added.

“We did not find convincing evidence that antioxidant supplements have beneficial effects on mortality,” concluded the study. “Even more, beta carotene, vitamin A and vitamin E seem to increase the risk of death.”

Exterminators began sweeping a Kansas City neighborhood infested with rats after one of the rodents crawled into a baby’s crib and severely disfigured the girl’s face.Authorities said the girl’s parents put her in a crib next to their bed early Sunday and awoke a few hours later, when a heart and breathing monitor alarm went off. The 4-week-old baby, which had been born prematurely, was lying in a pool of blood with her nose and part of her upper lip chewed off.

The parents found rat feces in the crib. Police believe milk or formula that had leaked onto the baby attracted the rodent.

No one else in the home was bitten, police said.

Michael Swoyer, who supervises Kansas City’s rat-control program, said exterminators spent Monday at the family’s house, several occupied homes nearby, vacant houses and in the surrounding sewer system.

“We don’t want this to ever happen again,” Swoyer said. “We’re all over the neighborhood now.”

Swoyer said it was the first time in several years of working in rodent control that he had heard of a rat attacking a human, but he said less severe cases may have happened and were not reported.

The city funded a rat-control unit in the late 1990s, but budget cuts closed it for about three years, Swoyer said. It reopened last May.

Swoyer said rats can be difficult to exterminate because they are cautious of new things in their environment. He said the rodents have even been known to force weaker members of their colonies to eat new food “to see if they die.”

Swoyer said rats are attracted to food, water and shelter. He encouraged residents to pick up trash, keep a tight lid on food and cut down tall weeds that can serve as habitat.

An 83-year-old woman who had to have her leg amputated because of infections she acquired at a nursing home has filed a lawsuit against the home’s operators.

The Lawsuit

The suit claims that the home failed to feed Barbara Brison on 88 different occasions. She suffered from malnutrition and dehydration as a result. Brison was also diabetic. All of these factors combined to make Brison extremely vulnerable to infections.

Because she was so vulnerable, when she acquired an infection on her leg, she had to have it amputated.

The lawsuit filed on Brison’s behalf by her daughter, Libby Johnson, accuses the South Shore Nursing and Rehabilitation Center LLC, and its parent company Care Centers Inc. of various types of resident abuse and neglect.

“Certainly the failure to provide feedings as documented by the Illinois department of public health is outrageous,” said Robert Rooth, Brison’s attorney.

Rooth said that Brison was dependant on the home for her survival, but the staff there failed to properly care for her.

After the amputation, “the family was looking for other homes, but before they could place her somewhere else she passed away,” said Rooth.

Previous Suits Against Care Centers, Inc.

Care Centers, Inc. is also a defendant in a lawsuit filed against it last month over allegedly negligent care at Prairie Manor Nursing Home.

That lawsuit claims that the resident suffered numerous bedsores and fell on her head as a result of the negligent treatment she received there

A private security company sued by the families of four employees slain in Iraq suffered a setback Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene in the case.Blackwater Security Consulting LLC has been trying unsuccessfully to have the wrongful death lawsuit against it transferred from the North Carolina state court system to the federal courts.

Now that the Supreme Court has declined to consider it, the families are entitled to a trial by jury in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the case remains, said attorney Daniel Callahan, an attorney for the estates of the four.

In March 2004, Iraqis beat and set fire to the bodies of the four Blackwater guards and hung some of their remains from a bridge in Fallujah, Iraq.

The gruesome scene, caught on camera and broadcast worldwide, prompted the U.S. military to launch a three-week attack on Fallujah.

An ambush killed Scott S. Helvenston, Jerko Geraldo Zovko, Wesley J.K. Batalona and Mike R. Teague as they provided a security escort to a supply convoy that got lost. The convoy had been carrying food to a U.S. Army base.

In the lawsuit, the company is accused of failing to provide armored vehicles, equipment, personnel, weapons and maps and other information that it had promised.

In papers filed with the Supreme Court, Blackwater’s lawyers pointed to the potential implications of the case with “myriad federal contractors serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

In a largely invisible cost of the war in Iraq, nearly 800 civilians working under contract to the Pentagon have been killed and more than 3,300 hurt doing jobs normally handled by the U.S. military, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.

A number of other lawsuits have been filed against companies whose employees have been killed or injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, those cases have been removed to federal court and have not been sent back. In those cases, the companies invoked a law that allows removal to the federal court system for lawsuits against officers of federal agencies. In the Blackwater case, the company did not invoke that law.

Blackwater filed a counterclaim for $10 million (€7.6 million) against the attorney representing the estates of the four men, arguing breach of the security guards’ contracts with the company. The matter is in confidential arbitration.

Callahan said the company failed to live up to its obligations under the contract to provide proper protection for the men.

Lawyers for the victims’ families want to question Blackwater employees who they say pleaded with Blackwater management to provide armored vehicles, heavy machine guns manned by an extra man in each vehicle and the opportunity to inspect the routes with another company whose work was being taken over by Blackwater.

Each vehicle had only a driver and a navigator and “they did not have a view out the back with a gunner handling a heavy machine gun shooting 850 rounds a minute,” said Callahan.

In a statement, the company said it was disappointed by the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case, but that due to the large number of petitions before the justices, such a path is “always a long shot.”

A federal judge has approved the $13.55 million settlement of a product liability lawsuit against Boeing Co. and three companies involved in the manufacturing of a helicopter that crashed in 2003 hurting two soldiers in Iraq.

The suit claimed that the crash was caused by a defective gearbox on an AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopter.

As a result of the crash, Former Chief Warrant Officer Juan Beltran, 34, suffered severe head injuries and lost a finger. Chief Warrant Officer Ron Carnes, also 34, suffered a shattered spine. He can walk, and he continues to serve in the Army, but his movement is restricted, said the attorney for both men.

The Accident and Lawsuit

According to the lawsuit, the gearbox and gearbox bearings were not adequately lubricated and a badly designed accelerometer had failed prematurely, allowing the problem to persist without the pilots receiving warning.

The gearbox failed. As a result, the Longbow plummeted 800 feet and crashed while on a maintenance flight in Tikrit, Iraq.

The lawsuit names as defendants Boeing, who built the helicopter, as well as the three companies that built the bearings, gearbox and accelerometer: MPB Corp., Aircraft Gear Corp., and Honeywell and Chadwick Helmuth respectively.

Boeing declined to comment.

The Settlement

The settlement awards over $11.2 million to Beltran, and about $2.3 million to Carnes as compensation for their injuries, likely including past and future medical expenses and decreased earning potential.

The surviving relatives of a man who died after being cared for in a nursing home have been awarded $4.2 million in compensatory damages, and the amount could be more if a judge’s ruling vacating punitive damages is overturned.

Jurors made their ruling Thursday against the National Healthcare Corp. facility in McMinnville after hearing three weeks of testimony about Cheatum Myers’ final days.

“What happened to Mr. Myers shouldn’t have happened to an animal,” said attorney Ken Connor, who represented Myers’ relatives, Christine Smartt and Ruby Kilgore, who filed the suit. “We hope this will prevent something…

…like this from happening to anyone else.”

The case focused on allegations that Myers had not been properly cared for while a patient at NHC.

Plaintiffs maintained the parent NHC company was more focused on making money than caring for its patients, thereby leaving the facility short staffed and the employees “doomed to failure” when it came to caring for its patients.

For instance, plaintiffs said Myers suffered numerous falls during his stay, one of which broke his hip. They said he didn’t get treatment for the injury for a week.

It was also maintained that an infection around where Myers’ catheter was located led to a high fevercomplicated by pneumonia and that he had one bed sore all the way to the bone on his heel.

Defense attorneys, however, said Myers was properly treated for the sores, which they claim he first suffered while at the hospital having hip surgery. The defense also said time spent with patients at NHC McMinnville was above the state requirement.

Myers died in 2005, and the lawsuit claimed it was because of the lack of care he received at NHC. However, jurors opted not to award damages for wrongful death, instead basing their compensatory damages on areas such as pain and suffering and loss of consortium.

Circuit Court Judge Bart Stanley vacated anypunitive damages assessed against NHC and its immediate subordinate company because he said he “could not find reckless conduct based on the evidence that was presented.”

However, Stanley noted an appellate court could overturn his ruling at a later date and award as much as $29.6 million to the plaintiffs.

Murfreesboro-based NHC also owned the nursing home in Nashville where a 2003 fire was blamed for 16 deaths. The company settled 32 lawsuits arising from the fire.

In a verdict that may go down as the largest medical malpractice award in Lee County history, Lee Memorial Hospital on Friday was ordered to pay more than $30 million to a former Cape Coral couple whose son endured a lifelong crippling brain injury because of the hospital’s negligence.

A jury awarded the money to the family of Aaron Edwards at the end of a nearly six-week jury trial in the Twentieth Judicial Circuit Court. The family had filed a lawsuit in 1999 in which it said the hospital ignored its own policies during Edwards’ birth.

Edwards, now 9, can do little on his own, the family’s attorney, Jack Hill said.

“The little boy can’t do anything by himself,” Hill said. “He can’t take care of things we take for granted.”

Lee Memorial President Jim Nathan stood by the service provided by his staff. “We’ve delivered 50,000 babies at Lee Memorial,” he said. “This is a sad and unfortunate situation, but the experts we brought in say the care we provided at the time was appropriate.”

Because the judgment is against a corporation that is a special taxing district, it must be approved by the Legislature during the session that begins in March, according to a release from the plaintiff’s attorneys.

Fort Myers malpractice attorney Jeff Garvin said Lee Memorial’s nonprofit status also could result in a cap on the malpractice award unless the Legislature passes a special act and the governor signs the matter into law.

Counsel for Lee Memorial said an appeal would be filed.

“We believe that the verdict is contrary to the overwhelming evidence presented and that the care provided was appropriate and did not cause this unfortunate injury,” said Lee Memorial attorney Doug Lumpkin in a statement Friday. “We will pursue all post trial remedies available to us, including an appeal.”

Hill said a labor nurse ignored warning signs in Edwards’ mother, Mitzi Roden, who was experiencing strong, long contractions that led to a decrease in the blood flow to Aaron’s brain.

He said the nurse also ignored the hospital’s policies for births regarding protection of the patient while administering Pitocin, a medication that induces and speeds up labor.

Per hospital policy, nurses are supposed to recognize three factors in which a patient should be taken off Pitocin and two were present in Roden, Hill said.

“They should have turned the Pitocin off,” he said.

But Lumpkin said the circumstances leading to the brain injury were unexpected. In his statement, he said a “bradycardic event” required the emergency C-section that resulted in the physical injuries.

“We continue to support our doctors, midwives and nurses, not only in this case but for the valuable service they provide daily to our community.”

A call to Mitzi Roden, who now lives in Colorado, went unanswered Friday evening.

The hospital’s defense, Hill said, was that the hospital’s rules are mainly suggestions and that brain injuries are unforeseeable.

“Brain injuries happen,” he said. “In this case, it was clearly avoidable.”

If the verdict stands and is paid, it would be the largest medical malpractice payout in Lee County history by far, according to Garvin.

Attorneys originally asked for $42 million, but the jury, after hearing weeks of testimony and experts who could testify to how much it would cost Aaron to pay lifelong medical bills, they awarded $30,650,554.48. Hill said it will cost about $18 million in medical bills to care for Aaron.

“This is a tremendous victory for all of the folks in Lee County who seek treatment at Lee Memorial Hospital,” he said.

In September 2003, plaintiff Kathy Dearmin, middle-aged (exact age not given), a nurse, was making a left turn in Bradenton while driving her SUV when she was struck on the passenger side door of the driver side by a dump truck driven by Roberto Ramos, working for Curly Joe’s Inc., Bradenton, a garbage hauling service owned by Bradley Latham.Dearmin sued Ramos for negligent operation, and Curly Joe’s and Latham for vicarious liability.Plaintiff’s counsel contended that the defendants were negligent because the dump truck ran a red light. There was several independent eyewitnesses that confirmed this, according to plaintiff’s counsel.

Defense counsel disputed whether the light was red.

Dearmin suffered a traumatic brain injury.. She was in a coma for a week, and was hospitalized for a month. Dearmin did not undergo surgery as doctors were able to control her hematoma.

Plaintiff’s counsel claimed that Dearmin’s life has been greatly affected by her brain injury. Her mental age has been reduced to that of a 10-year-old. She requires 24-hour care. Her speech has been affected and her gait has become unsteady. Her only family lives at distance. She will never return to her former profession, as an emergency room nurse.

Defense counsel claimed that Dearmin’s injuries were exacerbated by her not wearing a seat belt.

The parties reached a settlement totaling $1.65 million. The settlement was paid for by Progressive Insurance. The defendants had a policy limit of $100,000.

The city health department was trying to figure out Sunday why a KFC-Taco Bell restaurant had passed an inspection the day before video footage caught a dozen rats scampering across its floors.”It doesn’t look like the inspection that was done Thursday met our standards,” said Geoffrey Cowley, a health department spokesman. “I don’t want to prejudge that. We’re concerned and we’re going to carefully revaluate that inspection.”

The fast-food operation, located in Greenwich Village, was shut down by the city on Friday after the video of the rodents was widely broadcast and attracted streams of sidewalk gawkers. It remained closed on Sunday.

A failing inspection score issued by the health department is 28 or above.

The restaurant passed an inspection in March 2006 – though it was fined $1,300 for some violations including mice droppings – earning 23 points. On Thursday, the KFC-Taco Bell passed another check – earning nine points – after complaints to the city’s information hotline prompted an inspector to visit.

On Friday, however, a more senior inspector gave the restaurant 92 points in violations, Cowley said.

Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC-Taco Bell, has called the situation unacceptable and a violation of its high standards. The company said construction in the basement of the building apparently stirred up the rats.

Cowley said no action had been taken against the Thursday inspector but that the department is looking carefully at the situation. “We inspect 30,000 food establishments every year,” he said. “We’re doing vigorous enforcement.”

A sailor’s family has filed a $150 million suit against the Navy claiming that a Navy hospital acted negligently during the birth of their child resulting in serious birth injuries including the child’s development of cerebral palsy.

As a result of the injuries, the child is unable see, talk, or walk.

The Claims

According to Sean Cronin, the attorney representing Joseph and Kendra Alcorn, the injuries were a result of a lack of oxygen to the child during delivery in May last year.

According to Cronin, hospital records showed that the baby was not breathing and that his limbs were blue when he was delivered at Naval Hospital Jacksonville.

The baby, Gavin, was transferred to a civilian hospital promptly where doctors performed an MRI. The doctors determined that the baby suffered localized brain damage during delivery.

The doctors claimed that the cerebral palsy was congenital, but according to Cronin, the specific type of cerebral palsy Gavin has is caused by oxygen deprivation during delivery. Congenital cerebral palsy is characterized by damage to large parts of the brain while Gavin’s damage was localized.

“There is no evidence that this is a congenital defect,” said Cronin, lamenting the fact that the doctors are trying to blame the baby’s illness on the mother’s use of tobacco and prescription drugs. “All evidence indicates that this was caused by asphyxiation. I am extremely disappointed that the hospital is attempting to blame the victim. This is an attempt to smear the family and not be accountable for their own actions.”

Previous Malpractice at the Hospital

The hospital has been involved in several medical malpractice lawsuits in the past few years. According to the Navy Times, four people have been disabled, and 12 people have died as a result of medical malpractice in that hospital since 2000.