For Injured Athletes, Few Proven Treatments

In the new series, “The Athlete’s Pain,” medical reporter Gina Kolata explores how the hope and hype of many promising sports medicine treatments often outpace the evidence that they actually work.

Medical experts say tales of multiple futile treatments are all too familiar and point to growing problems in sports medicine, a medical subspecialty that has been experiencing explosive growth. Part of the field’s popularity, among patients and doctors alike, stems from the fact that celebrity athletes, desperate to get back to playing after an injury, have been trying unproven treatments, giving the procedures a sort of star appeal….

The result is therapies that are unproven, possibly worthless or even harmful. There is surgery, like a popular operation that shaves the hip bone to prevent arthritis, that may not work. There are treatments, like steroid injections for injured tendons or taping a sprained ankle, that can slow the healing process. And there are fads, like one of Ms. Basle’s treatments, P.R.P., that soar in popularity while experts debate whether they help.

All this leads Dr. Andrew Green, a shoulder orthopedist at Brown University, to ask, “Is sports medicine a science, something that really pays attention to evidence? Or is it a boutique industry where you have a product and sell it?”

Read the full story, “As Sports Medicine Surges, Hope and Hype Outpace Proven Treatments,” and then please join the discussion below.

Children of Sperm Donors May Have Many Siblings

As the number of children born through artificial insemination increases, many young people are discovering they have several or even dozens of half siblings in the world, reports today’s Science Times.

Now, there is growing concern among parents, donors and medical experts about potential negative consequences of having so many children fathered by the same donors, including the possibility that genes for rare diseases could be spread more widely through the population. Some experts are even calling attention to the increased odds of accidental incest between half sisters and half brothers, who often live close to one another.

“My daughter knows her donor’s number for this very reason,” said the mother of a teenager conceived via sperm donation in California who asked that her name be withheld to protect her daughter’s privacy. “She’s been in school with numerous kids who were born through donors. She’s had crushes on boys who are donor children. It’s become part of sex education” for her.

Critics say that fertility clinics and sperm banks are earning huge profits by allowing too many children to be conceived with sperm from popular donors, and that families should be given more information on the health of donors and the children conceived with their sperm. They are also calling for legal limits on the number of children conceived using the same donor’s sperm and a re-examination of the anonymity that cloaks many donors.

To learn more, read the full report, “1 Sperm Donor, 150 Brothers and Sisters,” and then please join the discussion below.

Questions about how porn industry handled HIV scare

A filming moratorium in the porn industry was lifted this weekend after an adult-film performer whose HIV-positive test prompted a weeklong shutdown of Los Angeles-area productions was retested, with negative results.

But questions remain about how the case was handled.

Local production companies were notified Aug. 29 of the test outcome and agreed to hold off on filming. Those who had been in scenes with the performer were contacted and urged to get tested.

The performer's subsequent test was administered by Adult Performer Health and Safety Services, which is run by the Free Speech Coalition and recently launched a database that will allow porn industry agents and producers access to results from testing facilities.

"Industry self-regulation and best practices are alive and well in the adult entertainment industry," the group's executive director, Diane Duke, said in a statement.

But Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said that although he is glad to hear about the performer's negative results, he takes issue with a health-screening process that does not include public health officials.

Fast-moving Tehachapi fire burns 4,000 acres

A fast-moving fire has burned more than 4,000 acres in Kern County, officials said Monday.

The Canyon fire, which started when a small plane crashed near Tehachapi on Sunday morning, is 5% contained, according to fire officials.

Kern County Fire Department spokesman Cary Wright said the six-seat Cessna 210 crashed in Blackburn Canyon, northeast of Los Angeles, the Associated Press reported. The Bakersfield Californian reported that one person was killed.

Amid dry, windy conditions, the crash sparked a brush fire that quickly grew. Officials have issued a mandatory evacuation order for 30 homes threatened by the raging blaze.

ALSO:

Five dead in L.A. County traffic accidents over holiday weekend

Sheriff's Explorers seek witnesses in slaying of one of their own

Seven suspected gang members jailed in Santa Ana crime spree

-- Garrett Therolf

Photo: Smoke rises from a fire that has burned more than 4,000 acres in Kern County. Credit: KTLA News

Rain, extreme-heat warnings issued for L.A. County

The National Weather Service has issued an hazardous weather warning, saying showers are possible in parts of Southern California, along with rising temperatures.

According to the weather service, scattered showers, high winds and thunder are possible in parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties Monday afternoon. Officials said the showers could produce periods of heavy rainfall and possibly dry lightning.

A new heat wave is also moving into the region Tuesday, officials said, with temperatures expected to top 100 degrees in valley and desert areas of L.A. County.

Britain has legalised assisted suicide when no one was looking

I read the splash in The Times today: prosecutors in this country are turning a blind eye to cases of assisted suicide. The number of incidents where someone helps a friend or relative take their lives is rising; but no one is being prosecuted.

I didn’t need The Times to tell me that assisted suicide is, for all intents and purposes, legal. When I researched assisted suicide for the Centre for Policy Studies just over a year ago I could see the trend was underway: yes, the police was often questioning those friends and relatives who had returned from the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland where they’d helped their loved ones do away with themselves (and helped turn Dignitas founder, Dr Ludwig Minelli, into a milionaire); but the cases were always shelved. Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, had issued guidelines that spelled out clearly that it was not in the public interest to prosecute (or even investigate) cases of assisted suicide. “We’re losing this battle” a prominent campaigner against assisted suicide confessed, off the record. “Public opinion is against us.”

He was right: people are terrified of dying in the hostile environment of a hospital, of losing dignity because of a debilitating disease such as motor neurone, or even just old age. Our culture has become obsessed with health and youth: nothing else will do. If a little pill can take us out of the misery of brittle bones, immobility and incontinence, then let’s pop it.

But here’s a thought: what if, when you are 70, a bit frail, a bit needy, someone else decides that life would be a lot easier without you around? They can let you know, subtly, quietly, that their happiness and fortune would benefit a great deal from your speedy exit. They can pull at your heart strings and leave you thinking that, really, you owe them this. That’s when legalising assisted suicide turns tricky: because “suicide” in these cases is a euphemism. It’s murder.

Plane crash ignites fire near Tehachapi; evacuations ordered

A small plane crashed near Tehachapi on Sunday morning, killing one person and igniting a fast-moving brush fire that destroyed a home and led to evacuations. 

Kern County Fire Department spokesman Cary Wright said the six-seater Cessna 210 crashed in Blackburn Canyon, northeast of Los Angeles, the Associated Press reported. The Bakersfield Californian reported that one person was killed.

Amid dry, windy conditions, the crash sparked a raging brush fire that quickly grew to 150 acres. About 225 firefighters and four aircraft are working to contain the blaze.

Officials issued a mandatory evacuation order for 30 homes under threat.

ALSO:

Five dead in L.A. County traffic accidents over holiday weekend

Sheriff's Explorers seek witnesses in slaying of one of their own

Seven suspected gang members jailed in Santa Ana crime spree

-- Garrett Therolf