Koop, who transformed surgeon general post, dies


With his striking beard and starched uniform, former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop became one of the most recognizable figures of the Reagan era — and one of the most unexpectedly enduring.


His nomination in 1981 met a wall of opposition from women's groups and liberal politicians, who complained President Ronald Reagan selected Koop, a pediatric surgeon and evangelical Christian from Philadelphia, only because of his conservative views, especially his staunch opposition to abortion.


Soon, though, he was a hero to AIDS activists, who chanted "Koop, Koop" at his appearances but booed other officials. And when he left his post in 1989, he left behind a landscape where AIDS was a top research and educational priority, smoking was considered a public health hazard, and access to abortion remained largely intact.


Koop, who turned his once-obscure post into a bully pulpit for seven years during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and who surprised both ends of the political spectrum by setting aside his conservative personal views on issues such as homosexuality and abortion to keep his focus sharply medical, died Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 96.


An assistant at Koop's Dartmouth College institute, Susan Wills, confirmed his death but didn't disclose its cause.


Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general a decade ago under President George W. Bush, said Koop was a mentor to him and preached the importance of staying true to the science even if it made politicians uncomfortable.


"He set the bar high for all who followed in his footsteps," Carmona said.


Although the surgeon general has no real authority to set government policy, Koop described himself as "the health conscience of the country" and said modestly just before leaving his post that "my only influence was through moral suasion."


A former pipe smoker, Koop carried out a crusade to end smoking in the United States; his goal had been to do so by 2000. He said cigarettes were as addictive as heroin and cocaine. And he shocked his conservative supporters when he endorsed condoms and sex education to stop the spread of AIDS.


Chris Collins, a vice president of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, said many people don't realize what an important role Koop played in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.


"At the time, he really changed the national conversation, and he showed real courage in pursuing the duties of his job," Collins said.


Even after leaving office, Koop continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.


"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.


In 1996, he rapped Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole for suggesting that tobacco was not invariably addictive, saying Dole's comments "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his blind support of the tobacco industry."


Although Koop eventually won wide respect with his blend of old-fashioned values, pragmatism and empathy, his nomination met staunch opposition.


Foes noted that Koop traveled the country in 1979 and 1980 giving speeches that predicted a progression "from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen."


But Koop, a devout Presbyterian, was confirmed after he told a Senate panel he would not use the surgeon general's post to promote his religious ideology. He kept his word.


In 1986, he issued a frank report on AIDS, urging the use of condoms for "safe sex" and advocating sex education as early as third grade.


He also maneuvered around uncooperative Reagan administration officials in 1988 to send an educational AIDS pamphlet to more than 100 million U.S. households, the largest public health mailing ever.


Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how HIV was transmitted.


Koop further angered conservatives by refusing to issue a report requested by the Reagan White House, saying he could not find enough scientific evidence to determine whether abortion has harmful psychological effects on women.


Koop maintained his personal opposition to abortion, however. After he left office, he told medical students it violated their Hippocratic oath. In 2009, he wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging that health care legislation include a provision to ensure doctors and medical students would not be forced to perform abortions. The letter briefly set off a security scare because it was hand delivered.


Koop served as chairman of the National Safe Kids Campaign and as an adviser to President Bill Clinton's health care reform plan.


At a congressional hearing in 2007, Koop spoke about political pressure on the surgeon general post. He said Reagan was pressed to fire him every day, but Reagan would not interfere.


Koop, worried that medicine had lost old-fashioned caring and personal relationships between doctors and patients, opened his institute at Dartmouth to teach medical students basic values and ethics. He also was a part-owner of a short-lived venture, drkoop.com, to provide consumer health care information via the Internet.


Koop was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the only son of a Manhattan banker and the nephew of a doctor. He said by age 5 he knew he wanted to be a surgeon and at age 13 he practiced his skills on neighborhood cats.


He attended Dartmouth, where he received the nickname Chick, short for "chicken Koop." It stuck for life.


Koop received his medical degree at Cornell Medical College, choosing pediatric surgery because so few surgeons practiced it.


In 1938, he married Elizabeth Flanagan, the daughter of a Connecticut doctor. They had four children, one of whom died in a mountain climbing accident when he was 20.


Koop was appointed surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.


He pioneered surgery on newborns and successfully separated three sets of conjoined twins. He won national acclaim by reconstructing the chest of a baby born with the heart outside the body.


Although raised as a Baptist, he was drawn to a Presbyterian church near the hospital, where he developed an abiding faith. He began praying at the bedside of his young patients — ignoring the snickers of some of his colleagues.


Koop's wife died in 2007, and he married Cora Hogue in 2010.


He was by far the best-known surgeon general and for decades afterward was still a recognized personality.


"I was walking down the street with him one time" about five years ago, recalled Dr. George Wohlreich, director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, a medical society with which Koop had longstanding ties. "People were yelling out, 'There goes Dr. Koop!' You'd have thought he was a rock star."


___


Ring reported from Montpelier, Vt. Cass reported from Washington. AP Medical Writers Lauran Neergaard in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.


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The Lede: Comedian’s Blog Morphs Into Major Political Force in Italy

Last Updated, Tuesday, 9:57 a.m. Although an aide to the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi demanded a recount late Monday, after his center-right coalition appeared to lose the battle for the Italian Parliament’s lower house to the main center-left coalition by less than 0.4 percent, a look at the raw vote totals reveals a sharp decline in support for him. According to the provisional count, Mr. Berlusconi’s party got about six million fewer votes than in 2008, slipping from first place all the way to third.

As my colleague Rachel Donadio explains, though, that did not spell a triumph for Mr. Berlusconi’s traditional rivals, the center-left Democratic Party, which lost nearly four million votes, because more than eight million Italians voted for the Five Star Movement, a party that emerged, fully formed, from the comedian Beppe Grillo’s popular blog. At the end of counting late Monday, Mr. Grillo’s party had more votes than any other in the lower house election and the second-most votes for Italy’s Senate.

While Mr. Grillo’s mass movement, which drew support from disenchanted voters on the left and the right, did not run as part of either main coalition and so will not lead Italy’s next government, the scale of the new party’s turnout, organized largely through the Internet and vast rallies, stunned observers.

In an update to nearly 1 million followers on Twitter, Mr. Grillo hailed the result, telling supporters, “We have become the leading force in absolute terms after just three and a bit years, without money, without ever having accepted the reimbursement of expenses.”

According to a translation on the English-language version of his blog, Mr. Grillo told supporters in a telephone interview streamed live on YouTube late Monday:

This adventure that we’re having is fantastic. First of all I just want to thank those extraordinary young people that made it possible to find the stages, the lights, the security services, the people that put us up in their homes, that have helped us with the camper. This is the difference between this grassroots movement and “the others”. “The others” are paid and are carried around in buses with flags. We are all volunteers. This is why so many thanks are needed.

Given that neither of the main coalitions will be able to command a majority, Mr. Grillo said, they will most likely have to combine to form an interim government until there can be fresh election. In the meantime, he added:

We are the obstacle. They can no longer succeed against us. Let them resign themselves to that. They’ll be able to keep going for 7 or 8 months and they’ll produce a disaster but we’ll try and keep them under control. We’ll start to do what we’ve always said – our stars: water in public hands, schools in public hands, public health service. If they follow us they follow us. If they don’t, the battle will be very harsh for them, very harsh.

Since the term of Italy’s president is also at an end, one of the first challenges facing Italy’s fractured new Parliament will be to elect a successor. In an update posted on Twitter on Tuesday, Mr. Grillo declared that his movement would decide who to support in an online ballot. Signalling change, he added, “Spring is coming.”

While the surge in support for Mr. Grillo’s party was described as a shock in many parts of the Italian and international media, there were clear signs of the Five Star Movement’s growing popularity in the series of late rallies Mr. Grillo called his #TsunamiTour on Twitter, culminating in a final campaign appearance attended by an estimated 800,000 in Rome’s Piazza San Giovanni.

Images of recent mass rallies for Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement.

One byproduct of Mr. Grillo’s success could be fresh elections, because the center-left coalition led by the Democratic Party, which spurned him as a potential candidate four years ago, is now unable to command a majority in the upper house and so may not be able to form a government.

As my colleagues Ian Fisher and Rob Harris explained in an article and a video report on Mr. Grillo in 2007, he first rallied popular support that year with his “V-Day,” based on the deep-seated desire of many Italians to dismiss their entire political class with an obscene phrase that starts with that letter in Italian.

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Jennifer Lawrence: Her Most Memorable 2013 Awards Season Moments









02/25/2013 at 10:00 AM EST







Jennifer Lawrence at the Golden Globes (left), the SAG Awards and the Academy Awards


Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP; Kevin Winter/Getty


It wasn't just Jennifer Lawrence's wins making news during 2013's awards season.

The Silver Linings Playbook star, 22, was the subject of headlines for everything from her speeches to Sunday's tumble at the 85th Annual Academy Awards.

Relive Lawrence's most memorable moments here ...

Golden Globes

Lawrence kicked off awards season with an eyebrow-raising comment in her acceptance speech. After saying, "What does it say? I beat Meryl," some people – including Lindsay Lohan, who Tweeted about it – initially thought it was a jab at Meryl Streep. Lawrence later explained the comment to David Letterman, telling him it was a quote from The First Wives Club.

"First of all, it's Meryl Streep. You can't offend Meryl Streep," she said. "And then all of the sudden I hate Meryl Streep. Is that what this turned into? I don't like Meryl Streep? As if I had my eyes on getting that girl forever and I was like, 'Finally! I knew it would happen one day!' "

SAG Awards

Lawrence's Dior Haute Couture gown stole the show, but not just because of its beautiful style. While getting up to accept an award, the actress's "pants fell off," she later joked of what appeared to be a tear in the material. Lawrence, who showed off a lot of leg, made light of the incident on Piers Morgan.

Academy Awards

Hollywood's biggest night was memorable for Lawrence not only for walking away with the Best Actress statuette, but also for the way she received it. While getting up to accept the prestigious honor, she took a little tumble on the stairs in her Christian Dior Couture gown. After fellow nominee Hugh Jackman helped her up, she joked to the audience, "You guys are just standing up 'cause you feel bad that I fell and that's really embarrassing, but thank you."

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FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.


The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.


Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.


"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."


Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.


The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.


The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.


Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.


FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.


Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.


FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer


Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.


Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.


Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.


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Wall Street edges up after Italy exit polls


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks opened slightly higher on Monday after initial polls showed pro-reform center-leftists could win the Italian general election, though caution remained as defensive sectors led gains on the S&P 500.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 41.47 points or 0.3 percent, to 14,042.04, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 6.81 points or 0.45 percent, to 1,522.41 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 18.79 points or 0.59 percent, to 3,180.61.


(Editing by Kenneth Barry)



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IHT Rendezvous: Horsemeat Scandal Grows More Serious and More Bizarre

LONDON — As European governments struggle in vain to draw a line under the scandal over horsemeat being sold as beef, the affair seems only to be widening, in sometimes bizarre ways.

Two German politicians, for instance, suggested over the weekend that one practical use for tainted products, such as tens of thousands of packs of lasagna pulled from supermarket shelves because they contained horsemeat, would be to distribute them to the poor.

Page Two

Posts written by the IHT’s Page Two columnists.

The idea began with Hartwig Fischer, a lawmaker from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, who told the mass-circulation Bild Zeitung newspaper on Saturday that products shouldn’t just be thrown away. To prove his point, he was photographed and filmed eating one of the offending lasagna meals and declaring that he could not tell the difference from any other lasagna.

The development minister, Dirk Niebel, supported him, saying that, with hundreds of millions of starving people around the world, and people at home struggling to put food on the table, “I think we cannot throw away good food here in Germany.”

The idea did not meet with universal approval. The social affairs minister, Ursula von der Leyen, called it “absurd.” Some said transferring food without knowing the origin or nature of its ingredients could be illegal. And Andrea Nahles, general secretary of the opposition Social Democrats, called the very notion “an insult to people with low incomes.”

As I explore in my latest Letter From Europe column, the sensitivities about eating food packaged as beef but containing horsemeat are particularly acute in Britain.

But other nations are lining up to demand greater regulation of what goes into their processed food. On Monday, inspectors in the Czech Republic said they found horsemeat in the signature meatballs made in Sweden for the IKEA furniture group – not just food, but also a national emblem. The meatballs were distributed in the Czech Republic, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium, IKEA said, reflecting the gravity of the crisis and the likelihood that it will spread much further.

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Playstation 4 Games Warn of PS-Style Surveillance






The debut of the PlayStation 4 in New York City Wednesday (Feb. 20) was as remarkable for what it showed as for what it didn’t show: Sony unveiled a raft of beautiful, incredibly realistic new games, but not the console itself. The device, perhaps in a straight-from-the-lab rough appearance, was somewhere offstage, driving the giant projectors that broadcast previews of upcoming games around the Hammerstein Ballroom.


Out-of-site-yet-everywhere seems to be the overall metaphor of the PlayStation 4 (PS4), as Sony described it. The PS4 (which Sony plans to sell by year’s end) is not so much a machine as a network — with games delivered from the cloud, games that can follow you as you move from the PS4 to a mobile device, and the ability to post video clips of your adventures or even broadcast entire games online.






“We’re making it so your friends can look over your shoulder virtually and interact with you as you play,” said David Perry, co-founder of Gaikai, a company that Sony bought to build its cloud-gaming network.


But not only friends will be watching. Sony will. “The PlayStation network will get to know you by understanding your personal preferences and the preferences of your community and turn this knowledge into useful information that will enhance your gameplay,” Perry said.


Every important technology has good and bad uses. Some of the upcoming games that Sony showcased for the PS4 explore, perhaps unwittingly, the darker side of omnipresent, omniscient networks similar to what Sony is building.


Suckerpunch’s new game “inFAMOUS: Second Son” explores the surveillance state. “Right now, there are 4.2 million security cameras distributed all around Great Britain. That’s one camera for every 14 citizens,” said game director Nate Fox, in a dramatic introduction to the game. “It is hard to put your finger on what that sense of security is worth, but it is easy to say what it costs — our freedom.”


Like Great Britain, the PS4 will also have a vast network of cameras — not one for every 14 citizens, but one for every console owner. At the presentation, Marc Cerny, head of the PlayStation hardware platform, showed a photo of a depth-sensing stereo camera for the PS4, designed to track the new Dualshock controller as it moves.


The danger in “Second Son” is that some individuals have developed super-human powers (a la “Heroes”) that make them living weapons. They carry no traditional weapons and show no physical signs of danger — rendering all the modern surveillance tech impotent.


But what if new security technology could go beyond the physical? What if it could read people’s intentions and predict their next moves?


What if it were like the PS4?


Sony believes that PlayStation owners simply give off so much data as they interact intensively with the console, other devices and the network that it can know what its users intend to do.


“People haven’t’ changed, but now everybody’s broadcasting. And once you’ve seen it, all of it, how do you look away?”


That’s not a quote from a Sony or game-company executive. It’s from the lead character in the upcoming Ubisoft game “Watch Dogs.” It follows a vigilante character with access to all that information. As he walks through Chicago, message windows pop up, showing details about the people he passes. Marcus Rhodes, a 43-year-old Iraq War veteran, is unemployed. Sandy Higgins, a grade-school teacher, recently won a child-custody battle and has a 30 percent chance of being a crime victim. [See also: Is Your Cellphone Under Surveillance?]


In the clip, the vigilante uses the knowledge to find a woman in danger and to track her attacker in a chase through the city. But as the police then pursue him, the game shows how much data the protagonist himself is giving off.


It’s rather unlikely that the PlayStation 4 was designed to be a mass surveillance device, a Trojan Horse of a game console designed to slip spooks into the living room. Far likelier, Sony just wants the games to be more involving and better targeted for the customers, so they will buy and play more games.


“If we know enough about you to predict the next game you’ll purchase, then that game can be loaded and ready to go before you even click the button,” Marc Cerny said.


But still, the PS4 will collect a lot of information. That itself, in the right imagination, could be fodder for a good dystopian video game.


This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow TechNewsDaily on Twitter @TechNewsDaily, or on Facebook. Follow Sean Captain @seancaptain


Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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You're Invited to PEOPLE.com's Oscars Party!









02/24/2013 at 08:40 AM EST







From left: Bradley Cooper, Oscar, Jessica Chastain


AFP/Getty; Wireimage; Splash News Online


Oscars host Seth MacFarlane isn't the only one gearing up for Hollywood's biggest night – we are too!

Be a part of the glamour and excitement Sunday starting at 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT when we roll out the red carpet for our PEOPLE.com VIPs.

Here's what you can expect:
• Tune in to our live red carpet preshow for exclusive A-list interviews
• Be the first to see the gorgeous gowns – and make your own best-dressed list
• Download your own play-along ballot – and vote on your Academy Awards picks
• Tweet with our editors at #PeopleOscars, and watch the conversation on our homepage. We'll be joined by DKNY PR Girl (@dkny), model Coco Rocha (@cocorocha), the hilarious Go Fug Yourself (@fuggirls), @WhoWhatWear and blogger @Possessionista!
• Take our up-to-the-minute Oscars polls

And come back the next day for so much more ...
• See the night's best dresses from all angles with our 360º slideshow
• Come inside the most exclusive Oscars after-parties
• Relive the most memorable quotes of the show
• Get the scoop on the night's biggest shockers and funniest moments everyone is talking about

We're looking forward to a fun, fashion-filled night – see you then!

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FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.


The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.


Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.


"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."


Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.


The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.


The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.


Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.


FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.


Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.


FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer


Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.


Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.


Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.


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