FINDINGS

Study Praises Care In Nonprofit Hospitals

Nonprofit hospitals with the most nurses per patient and the most advanced equipment provide better care than comparable investor-owned facilities in treating several common, serious ailments, according to a study.

Nonprofit and government hospitals consistently outperformed the quality of for-profit hospitals in treating patients for congestive heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia, researchers said. The conclusions were based on data reported to government and private accreditation agencies analyzed by Bruce Landon of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The research, published in Archives of Internal Medicine, rekindles a debate over whether the nation's more than 700 for-profit hospitals offer inferior medical care. They provide 15 percent of U.S. hospital beds.

The trade group for the for-profit hospital industry did not dispute Landon's research but contended that his 2004 figures have been overtaken by newer figures.

A Regional Nuclear War And the Environment

Some of the scientists who advanced the "nuclear winter" theory more than two decades ago have come up with another bleak forecast: Even a regional nuclear war would devastate the environment.

Using modern climate and population models, researchers estimated that a small-scale nuclear conflict between two warring nations would cause 3 million to 17 million immediate deaths and lead to a marked cool-down of the planet that could lead to crop failures and further misery.

The new scenario offers no estimate of the number of deaths from the environmental effects of a regional nuclear war. Still, scientists said the scenario points to the danger of small nuclear states obtaining atomic warheads.

Some scientists behind the original nuclear-winter theory -- including Brian Toon of the University of Colorado at Boulder and Richard Turco of the University of California at Los Angeles -- decided to revisit the topic in light of more recent world tensions.

They presented the results yesterday at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Mutated Gene Linked To Pancreatic Cancer

A gene that helps cells keep their shape causes pancreatic cancer when mutated, and it might provide clues to what causes the lethal disease and how it spreads so fast, researchers said.

They found the gene, called "palladin," in a family plagued by the cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. It will kill 95 percent of the 32,000 people who get it this year, according to the American Cancer Society. At least 10 percent of cases are thought to be inherited.

Teresa Brentnall of the University of Washington identified the mutated gene by studying a family in which 18 members, over four generations, had died of pancreatic cancer. Her team tested the family and found the mutated palladin gene in the cancer patients; healthy relatives lacked the mutation.

-- From News Services