Hep C infection may increase risk of lymphoma - Infectious Diseases

Hep C infection may increase risk of lymphoma

Virus can hike chances of immune-system cancer by 30 percent, experts say

WASHINGTON - Infection with the hepatitis C virus, already linked to liver cancer and cirrhosis, also increases the risk of developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, researchers said on Tuesday.

Researchers tracked 146,394 U.S. military veterans infected with the virus and 572,293 veterans who were not, and found that hepatitis C infection boosted the risk for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma by 20 percent to 30 percent.

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is cancer that originates in the lymphoid tissue that makes up the lymph nodes, spleen and other organs of the immune system, with tumors developing from white blood cells. It is more common in men than women.

Hepatitis C infection also raised by 300 percent the risk for a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma called Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia. Risk for cryoglobulinemia, involving abnormal levels of certain antibodies in the blood, also rose.

The findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The hepatitis C virus causes hepatitis, a disease marked by liver inflammation, as well as liver cancer and cirrhosis.

It is carried through the blood and spread from one person to another through the exchange of bodily fluids �" for example, by sharing needles during injection drug use or by sexual contact. It also was spread via blood transfusions before 1990, when screening for the virus began.

“The thought is that hepatitis C is a chronic infection, and as a chronic infection it results in chronic stimulation of the immune system. And these cancers are cancers of the immune system, essentially,” Dr. Thomas Giordano of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, lead author of the study, said in a telephone interview.

Infection with the hepatitis C virus, also called HCV, came before the development of these cancers and the increased risk was long-lasting, the study found.

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“Although the risk of developing lymphomas is small, our research suggests that screening of HCV-infected individuals could identify conditions which may lead to cancer,” co-author Dr. Eric Engels of the National Cancer Institute, part of the U.S. National Institutes of health, said in a statement.

“It might then be possible to prevent progression to lymphoma,” Engels added.

The study looked at patients in U.S. Veterans Affairs health care facilities from 1997 to 2004. All but 3 percent were men, most were white, and their average age was 52.

There are more than 4 million people infected with the hepatitis C virus in the United States, representing 1.6 percent of the population.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

'Raw' almonds may no longer be raw - Before You Bite

'Raw' almonds may no longer be raw

TODAY's Phil Lempert reports on effort to pasteurize the popular nuts
By Phil LempertTODAY Food Editor

Phil LempertTODAY Food Editor•Profile•document.write('')E-maildocument.write('');

The USDA is attempting to require that all almonds grown in California to be sterilized with various pasteurization techniques in response to Salmonella outbreaks in 2001 and 2004 that were traced to raw almonds. All almonds, with two exceptions, would undergo a sterilization process that includes chemicals and/or high-temperature treatments. Organic raw almonds will not be fumigated and undergo only the steam-heat treatment thus they are no longer "raw," and small-scale growers can sell "raw" almonds only direct from farm stands.

The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group, is requesting that the Food and Drug Administration reopen the proceeding for public comment as the proposed change was not effectively communicated to the public. In fact, only 18 comments were received on the proposal �" all from the almond industry which, unlike consumers, retailers and other organizations concerned with food safety, received a personal letter or fax from the USDA on the proposal and an invitation to comment.

In light of the recent foodborne illnesses involving peanut butter, spinach, lettuce and pet foods there is little doubt that consumers are more concerned about food safety than ever, which certainly offers the USDA a window of opportunity to institute stricter regulations and different technologies to reduce food safety problems. Most food safety issues occur when contaminated water, soil or transportation and handling equipment come into contact with the product. But, according to The Cornucopia Institute, this USDA regulation might well be  ignoring the root causes of food contamination  "dangerous and unsustainable farming practices."

Concerns raised about the proposal include the costs of the chemical and heat treatments (a propylene oxide chamber runs up from $500,000 to $1,250,000 and a roasting line from $1,500,000 to $2,500,000) as well as transportation costs to and from treatment facilities, which would place a heavier burden on small farmers as opposed to big business.

Even more important is that the most common method of sterilizing almonds is by propylene oxide fumigation, which is listed by the International Agency on Cancer Research as a possible carcinogen. It is banned in the European Union, Canada and Mexico, among many others, from being used in the treatment of food for human consumption.

We agree with The Institute's main contention �" these almonds which would be labeled "raw" is deceptive to those who wish to buy truly raw, unprocessed almonds. It's time to separate out the technology benefits (or drawbacks) from labeling issues and allow shoppers to be able to trust what’s listed on the package as being “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

For more food safety information and tips visit Phil’s website www.supermarketguru.com

Phil Lempert is food editor of the TODAY show. He welcomes questions and comments, which can be sent to phil.lempert@nbc.com or by using the mail box below. For more about the laagsdhfgdf trends on the supermarket shelves, visit Phil’s Web site at SuperMarketGuru.com.

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Can We Slow Aging? - Health For Life

Can We Slow Aging?

A compound found in red wine may extend the human life span. A report from the front lines.
Photo Illustration by Nitin Vadukul for Newsweek
Resveratrol: Does it protect from aging?

By By David Sinclair, Ph.D. and Anthony L. Komaroff, M.D.Newsweek

Dec. 11, 2006 issue - Nothing seems more inevitable than aging and death�"not even taxes. Every plant, animal and person you have ever seen will eventually die, including the person in the mirror. But some recent research suggests that aging as we know it may not be inevitable. Indeed, as our understanding of it grows, aging can be seen not as an immutable reality from which there is no escape, but as the product of biological processes that we may be able to control someday.

We already know that some animals do not seem to age. Many cold-water ocean fish, some amphibians and the American lobster never reach a fixed size; they continue to grow bigger, to be able to reproduce and to live until something kills them. What these creatures seem to be telling us is that something in their genes�"and possibly in ours�"controls the pace of aging, and that aging is not the fate of every living thing.

Throughout the history of life on earth, one of the most common difficulties that animals (and their cells) have faced has been a lack of food. About 70 years ago, scientists discovered that when animals are forced to live on 30 to 40 percent fewer calories than they would normally eat, something unusual happens: they become resistant to most age-related diseases�"cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's�"and live 30 to 50 percent longer. Restricting calories slows aging.

But how? What are the underlying genes that preserve vitality and stave off disease? No one knows for sure why aging occurs, but one important reason is probably the accumulation of DNA damage�"from radiation, mutation-causing chemicals or, particularly, oxidants. Inside every animal cell are many mitochondria�"little "power packs" that use oxygen to generate energy. In doing their jobs, however, mitochondria produce chemical byproducts�"oxidants �"that damage DNA and other components inside cells. It may not seem fair, but it's a fact of life. Fortunately, our cells are not defenseless against such assaults. They have genes that spring into action to defend against DNA damage, including genes that repair damaged mitochondria.

About 15 years ago, armed with powerful new molecular-research techniques, a few scientists began to investigate these genetic phenomena. At MIT, Dr. Leonard Guarente (along with one of the authors of this piece, David Sinclair) discovered that adding an extra copy of a gene called Sir2 caused yeast cells to live 30 percent longer. Today many researchers suspect that Sir2 or other sirtuin genes�"which are present in all animals, including humans�"are responsible for the health benefits of calorie restriction, perhaps by repairing our DNA. But if, in order to kick the sirtuins into action, we had to restrict our calorie intake by 30 to 40 percent, would it be of any practical use? Few of us would be capable of restricting our diets so severely that we were constantly hungry: whether or not it made life longer, it would surely make life feel longer.

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CONTINUED1 | 2 | 3 | Next >

Cell phones don’t cause cancer, huge study says -

Cell phones don’t cause cancer, huge study says

Findings on 420,000 people in Denmark give gadget a clean bill of health
Mario Tama / Getty Images file
Cell phones beam radiofrequency energy that can penetrate the brain’s outer edge, which has raised questions about cancers of the head and neck, brain tumors or leukemia. Most research has found no risk.

WASHINGTON - A huge study from Denmark offers the laagsdhfgdf reassurance that cell phones don’t trigger cancer.

Scientists tracked 420,000 Danish cell phone users, including 52,000 who had gabbed on the gadgets for 10 years or more, and some who started using them 21 years ago.

They matched phone records to the famed Danish Cancer Registry that records every citizen who gets the disease �" and reported Tuesday that cell-phone callers are no more likely than anyone else to suffer a range of cancer types.

The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is the largest yet to find no bad news about the safety of cell phones and the radiofrequency energy they emit.

No end to the debate
But even the lead researcher doubts it will end the debate.

“There’s really no biological basis for you to be concerned about radio waves,” said John Boice, a Vanderbilt University professor and scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Md. “Nonetheless, people are.”

So Boice and colleagues at Copenhagen’s Danish Cancer Society plan to continue tracking the Danish callers until at least some have used the phones for 30 years.

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This so-called Danish cohort “is probably the strongest study out there because of the outstanding registries they keep,” said Joshua Muscat of Pennsylvania State University, who also has studied cell phones and cancer.

Reassurance ... for now
“As the body of evidence accumulates, people can become more reassured that these devices are safe, but the final word is not there yet,” Muscat added.

Cell phones beam radiofrequency energy that can penetrate the brain’s outer edge, raising questions about cancers of the head and neck, brain tumors or leukemia. Most research has found no risk, but a few studies have raised questions. And while U.S. health officials insist the evidence shows no real reason for concern, they don’t give the phones a definitive clean bill of health, either, pending long-term data on slow-growing cancers.

For the laagsdhfgdf study, personal identification numbers assigned to each Dane at birth allowed researchers to match people who began using cell phones between 1982 and 1995 with cancer records.

Among 420,000 callers tracked through 2002, there were 14,249 cancers diagnosed �" fewer than the 15,001 predicted from national cancer rates. Nor did the study find increased risks for any specific tumor type.

� 2007 . .

Retailers roll out low-cost health services - Personal Finance

Attention shoppers: Flu shots in aisle five

More retailers roll out low-cost health care services
Vanessa RichardsonContributor

Vanessa RichardsonContributor•document.write('')E-maildocument.write('');Lorie Vick of Orlando, Fla., had originally stopped at her local CVS drugstore to buy contact-lens solution, but then she saw signs for flu shots. She walked to the back of the store and saw the offer came from MinuteClinic, a mini-healthcare center next to the medicament counter that offered cures for minor ailments ranging from allergies to warts. Fifteen minutes later, Vick got her shot, and the next day she brought her teenage son Tim back for his.

"It would have taken twice or three times as long waiting at my doctor’s office, so this is great," Vick said.

Tim agreed and added, "You can look at more stuff here."

More people are heading to their local drug store instead of their family doctor for medical checkups. Establishments like MinuteClinic, Take Care and RediCare are taking up more space in major retail stores to diagnose, treat and write prescriptions for patients with common illnesses.

MinuteClinic, the nation’s largest operator of retail clinics, has 116 stores in 17 states and boasts of seeing more than 600,000 patients since it started in 2000. It was purchased by CVS last July. Other major retailers, eager to boost profits and customer share, are following suit. Target, Kroger, Wal-Mart and Walgreen are partnering with more than a dozen clinic operators to open thousands of in-store health care centers in the next two years.

Because many clinics just lease space in their stores, retailers don’t expect to make money from the health clinics themselves but rather from increased customer traffic before and after appointments.

They also increase retailers’ emphasis on health care, said Michael Polzin, spokesman for Walgreens, which will have TakeCare clinics in 60 stores by year’s end. "The medicament makes up two-thirds of our revenue so we consider ourselves a healthcare retailer anyway. These clinics add to our reputation of being more convenient and accessible to customers."

Cheap, convenient health care
The clinics are typically small, with one or two exam rooms, and are staffed by board-certified nurse practitioners or physician assistants, but usually have a physician's oversight. At Take Care clinics, for example, doctors review 10 percent of patient charts and visit clinics once a month. Clinics can treat anyone over the age of 18 months, but if an ailment is too serious, such as asthma or diabetes, clinics refer patients to a local doctor or emergency room.

No appointments are required, they are open evenings and weekends and visits often take no more than 15 minutes. If the wait is still too long, some clinics give out pagers so people can shop while waiting.

Patients know ahead of time what they’ll pay for their cure because prices are posted outside each center. For those with health insurance, MinuteClinic charges the office co-pay indicated on the insurance card; those paying out of their own pocket are charged between $49 and $59 per cure. That compares favorably that to a standard doctor’s visit, which could cost over $100.

Live Vote

Would you visit a medical clinic in a retail store?

Even though most Americans have yet to see these mini-clinics in their corner drugstores, those who have are pleased with the speedy, inexpensive care. A Harris Poll of 2,200 people found that while only 7 percent of respondents had visited a clinic, 89 percent of them were happy with the care they got.

Vicki Partridge paid $39 for a pregnancy agsdhfgdfing at an Early Solutions clinic in Taylor, Mich.,  during her lunch hour. She had gone there for pinkeye cure a month prior, so the nurse practitioner pulled up her files, saw that she had insurance and was allergic to penicillin. Partridge was in and out within 30 minutes, less time than it would have taken round-trip to her doctor’s office. "It was so worth not having to go through the hassle of making an appointment, and it was probably cheaper," she said.

CONTINUED: The future of medicine?1 | 2 | Next >

Steer clear of road rage on your commute - Mental Health

Road rage can churn in the calmest of hearts

Here’s how to keep your blood pressure in check on your next commute
Ben Grefsrud / msnbc.com
By By Patrick Enright contributor

David Stallings isn't the kind of person you'd expect to succumb to road rage. He is calm and mild mannered, a longtime Zen Buddhist. Plus, he's professionally dedicated to safe transportation �" he works for Seattle's Metro Transit.

But years ago, while trapped in traffic in his truck, he happened across his daughter's white plastic toy ray gun, complete with flashing lights. On a whim, he surreptitiously used it to zap a car that had just cut him off.

"I thought, 'Well, that's kind of satisfying,'" he says. The satisfaction lasted a year. Then, "it dawned on me that I was sort of giving vent to some of the same [aggression] that I was condemning."

Road rage and roadway congestion are familiar scenarios for millions of American drivers, and they're not getting any better. A 2006 Transportation Research Board report noted that congestion is increasing in intensity, extent and duration. Average one-way travel time for commuters in 2000 was 25.5 minutes, three minutes more than in 1990.

Certainly anecdotal reports of aggression behind the wheel are increasing. Consider the case of the Raleigh, N.C., driver who allegedly circled the block and ran down a pedestrian who had dared to yell at him to slow down. Or the driver who ran a fellow motorist off the road in Peoria, Ariz., for talking on his cell phone. Or the off-duty Detroit police officer facing charges for allegedly firing shots at an SUV driver who had accidentally hit his Dodge Magnum. And those are just incidents from the past few months.

Fight or flight
Exact figures for incidents of road rage are hard to come by, partly because the behaviors are difficult to define precisely. A 2002 survey done by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that 40 percent of drivers felt other drivers had become more aggressive in the past year, compared with 30 percent who felt that way in 1997.

Normally, when stress becomes overwhelming, experts suggest taking a break from the situation or setting aside time to exercise. But in a car, your options are limited. Seething? Don't forget to breathe-Get comfortable by loosening tight clothing or rolling down the window.-Distract yourself �" listen to calming music or an audiobook.-Take a series of slow, deep breaths to reduce anger and stress.-Don't assume the worst, and realize that every driver makes mistakes.-Think of the big picture; an extra five minutes won't kill you. Driving aggressively might.-Treat other drivers with the same common courtesy you'd expect in the grocery aisle.

"Stress is a fight-or-flight reaction," says New York psychologist Carol Goldberg. "If [people] can't flee, like they're stuck in a traffic jam, they fight and get road rage."

So how can you keep from succumbing to blood-pressure-raising fury when you're crammed behind the wheel? These tips from experts can help you change your body and your mind:

Get comfortable. Gerry Matthews, a psychology professor at the University of Cincinnati who has studied driver behavior, says driver comfort "plays into driver fatigue and there's a close relationship between fatigue and stress. Stress makes you fatigued and fatigue makes you stressed." Adjust the temperature so you're not too warm, loosen your tie or other tight-fitting clothing and make sure your seat is positioned so you're relaxed to avoid the physical tension that comes with stress.

Distract yourself �" but only a little. "Instead of honking your horn and trying to find shortcuts and giving everybody the finger, you could say, 'Look, I'm going to use this time productively,'" suggests Dr. Paul Rosch, president of the American Institute of Stress. Listening to soothing music, audiobooks or foreign-language tapes is a way for drivers to block out the annoyance of traffic. But be careful. As Matthews points out, talking on a cell phone, hands-free or not, "is distracting and dangerous when driving."

Breathe deeply. You don't need to be an expert in meditation to benefit from deep breathing. Rick Waranch, a part-time psychology faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, recommends simply taking seven or eight slow breaths per minute from the diaphragm, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Don't make assumptions. It's easy to think that the guy in the BMW cut you off maliciously, but that doesn't mean it's true. Social psychologists have a name for this kind of assumption: the fundamental attribution error. It's our tendency to ascribe behavior too much to underlying personality traits and too little to the particular situation. Maybe the Beemer driver is a doctor rushing to surgery to save a life. Assuming the worst will only add to your stress. Also, remember you're equally prone to mistakes. One study Matthews cites asked people to rate their own driving safety and the skills of other drivers. The result? "People overestimate … their driving ability," says Matthews.

Think of the big picture. Does it really matter if your 15-minute drive takes you 20 minutes, or if you let in that merging SUV? Rational thinking is difficult when you're seeing red, but with practice, it's doable. Waranch has helped several patients suffering from driving-related stress. "It's largely convincing yourself that it's pretty stupid to [drive aggressively], that it's unhealthy, and that it's not going to serve any purpose," he says.

Be self-aware. Knowing what triggers stress in you is key to reducing it, Matthews says. Accepting that other drivers are beyond your control can improve your attitude. It's also good to recognize that driving a car conveys a false sense of invulnerability and adds a degree of anonymity that can make the best of us behave less than graciously. Applying the common courtesy you'd exhibit in the grocery-store checkout line while on the road can make driving in traffic less confrontational and even collaborative.

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For Stallings, the toy gun wasn't the answer. His Buddhist leanings made breathing exercises a natural solution.

"It's a way not only to let [the irritation] go but to feel engaged … in a positive way," he says. "All you have to do is just kind of turn a corner."

Patrick Enright is a Seattle-based freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in , Mr. Showbiz, Wall of Sound, Movies.com and Seattle Weekly.

� 2007

Microsoft role complicates ‘$100 laptop’ - Tech News & Reviews

Microsoft role complicates ‘$100 laptop’

Company says it's uncertain whether it can fit Windows on the machines
Anja Niedringhaus / AP
Co-Founder and Chairman of the MIT Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nicholas Negroponte shows off the '$100 laptop' at a news conference.

By By Brian Bergstein

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - One of the most ambitious aspects of the "$100 laptop" project for schoolchildren in developing countries is the machines' open-source software platform, designed to be intuitive for kids.

That's why many people were taken aback last week when the founder of the nonprofit laptop project, Nicholas Negroponte, announced that buyers of the machine will be able to add Windows, the ultimate in proprietary software.

( is a joint Microsoft - NBC Universal venture.)

However, Microsoft Corp. says it's uncertain whether it can fit Windows on the laptops. Will Poole, who heads Microsoft's emerging-markets group, says the limited storage space (recently upped to 1 gigabyte of flash memory) and other original elements on the One Laptop Per Child program's "XO" computer aren't welcoming for Windows.

"I don't know how to get the thing to run on less than 2 gigs," he said. Plus, at least 10 custom drivers �" which tell an operating system how to interact with hardware �" need to be designed, Poole said.

Why does this matter? Because One Laptop Per Child is still negotiating with several governments to finalize orders for at least 3 million of the machines, the level at which the project's mass-distribution plans kick in.

And with the computers' price now up to $175 ($100 is the long-term goal), some officials might want Windows as a potential backup if the machines' alternative interface doesn't capture children's fancy as envisioned.

"We have had requests from government officials who are looking at that device, to ask us if it can run Windows," Poole said.

Negroponte seemed to deliver a definitive yes to that question: "We will run Windows," he said last week. Asked for elaboration, a spokesman for Negroponte wrote in an e-mail: "He was stating a fact �" not a hope or a desire."

But Poole said the answer should have been maybe: "I cannot make any promises," he said. "There's work still to be done. People should not bank on having Windows."

For his part, Negroponte wasn't touting Windows itself as much as user choice. He stressed the educational theories behind his project's original interface, which is open-source so as to let children tinker with it. He also said government ministers had not really been asking him about Windows on the machines, citing Egpyt as a rare exception. But he acknowledged that the potential to run Windows could reduce the risk for some buyers.

"He's playing to some purchasing minister somewhere," said Wayan Vota, who directs the Geekcorps international tech-development organization and follows the laptop project closely at his OLPCNews blog. Vota added that he hopes no XO buyers switch to Windows, because he believes Microsoft's software would be unable to utilize many of XO's innovations, including its radical power-saving capabilities and wireless networking functions.

Complicating the mix is an emerging little computer for the developing world from Intel Corp. _ the Classmate PC, which can run Windows or Linux. Intel expects its price to fall below $250 by the middle of the year and just signed a deal to sell 700,000 Classmates in Pakistan _ one of the countries that One Laptop Per Child hopes to reach.

Meanwhile, Microsoft recently announced a $3 Windows "starter edition" package for international governments that subsidize student computers.

After Negroponte's comments last week, representatives from his group objected to ' description that the nonprofit was "working with" Microsoft so Windows could run on the computers. Spokesmen for the project insisted that Microsoft was acting on its own accord, and that Microsoft got "beta" versions of the XO computers just like a lot of other companies have.

"OLPC has no working relationship with Microsoft nor does Microsoft get any special treatment," said a statement from One Laptop's president for software and development, Walter Bender. "They are just another software company interested in the project. OLPC is aware that Microsoft wants to create a Windows platform for the laptop, but OLPC is not involved in that project in any way."

Certainly, Negroponte's and Poole's differing reports about Windows on XO indicate the camps are not exactly on the same page. But it's unclear whether they are as distant as the public-relations statement would hold.

Negroponte told a Linux convention in April 2006 that he had been discussing with Microsoft how Windows could run on the computers �" which is why he was displeased when Bill Gates pooh-poohed the laptop effort.

Click for related content'$100 laptop' to cost $175Microsoft extends XP supportReview: Vista, Microsoft's new Windows

More recently, Negroponte has been quoted as saying the laptops got an SD port �" where Secure Digital cards can be inserted, expanding the memory available �" so Windows could work. (Bender contradicted that, saying the SD port was added to provide extra space for photos taken with the computer's camera.)

"It is true that we have been working together," Microsoft's Poole said. "We have been having active, high-level conversations going on two years now."

Copyright 2007 . .

Doctors, insurers ask, ‘Who are you?’ - Nightly News with Brian Williams

More doctors, insurers asking, ‘Who are you?’

Medical identity theft, on the rise, can threaten lives as well as wallets
NBC VIDEO•Medical ID theft creates concerns
April 3: Medical ID theft is on the rise in the United States, and there’s more to be worried about than just the financial ramifications. NBC’s Anne Thompson reports.

Nightly News

By By Anne Thompson and Alex JohnsonNBC News

Anne ThompsonChief environmental correspondent•ProfileAndrew Brooke’s family knew something was screwy when they got a collection notice for unpaid bills for treatment of his work-related back injury, which included large prescriptions of the controlled painkiller Oxycontin.

“I’m looking at this bill, and I’m looking at my 3-week-old baby that can’t even hold his head up, and it’s just a sense of outrage,” said Andrew’s father, John Brooke, of Bothell, Wash., a suburb of Seattle.

Likewise, Jo-Ann Davis knew there was a mistake when a cop greeted her at the medicament where she had gone to pick up a prescription in early 2005.

“I’ve never even had a speeding ticket,” said Davis, a veterinary technician from Moon, Pa., near Pittsburgh.

Medical providers, it turned out, thought Andrew and Davis were other people. Their medical identities had been stolen.

These are not isolated incidents: In a report last year, the World Privacy Forum found that the number of Americans identifying themselves in government documents as victims of medical identity theft had nearly tripled in just four years, to more than a quarter-million in 2005.

Motives for medical identity theft can vary. Some thieves, as in these cases, are seeking controlled medications. Others are seeking federal money. A case that wrapped up in January in Southern California illustrates just how sophisticated such operations can be.

Five health care providers pleaded guilty to stealing more than $900,000 in 2003 by luring hundreds of elderly Vietnamese patients to a fake medical clinic in Milpitas, where they would offer free checkups. According to prosecutors, they would copy the patients’ Medicare records and then use the information to bill the government for phantom services.

Click for related coverageRead the full World Privacy Forum report (PDF)Check your records: State-by-state guide

Steep costs on money and lives
Of all the forms of identity theft, misappropriation of your medical records is among the most damaging. It’s not just the financial toll �" if your medical identity is stolen, erroneous entries can turn up in your records, which could end up killing you.

Get your medical records

All hospitals and most doctors have a release form you can use to request your records. Because state laws differ on how long such records must be archived, call the office to make sure your records still exist.

You can have your records sent to yourself or directly to a health care professional. If you do have the records sent to a health professional, let him or her know to expect the files.

In many cases, a letter may be all you need. It should include:

-Your birthdate-Your full name (including any information about name changes)-When you were seen -The specific information you want

Source: GeneticHealth.com

“If someone shows up in an emergency room and this has happened to them, they could receive improper treatment, and that is a real problem,” said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit research group.

For example, if an identity thief presents himself at the hospital in your name and is identified as having a different blood type, that blood type ends up registered in your medical history, with potentially disastrous consequences if you end up in a serious accident.

Or suppose you apply for a new job. Even if you’re fit as a fiddle, you could still fail a pre-employment medical screening or be rejected for company-provided health insurance because of the inaccurate presence of an ailment in your medical history that you don’t have.

It is also the most difficult type of identity theft to fix after the fact, because victims have limited recourse. Dixon found that medical identity theft typically leaves a trail of false information in medical records that can plague victims for years, because even if you manage to correct your records in one place, it’s almost impossible to track down everywhere they have been disseminated across the networks of medical providers, insurers and government agencies.

if (window.Medical_ID_Theft_070327) { displayApp(Medical_ID_Theft_070327); }

Too many roadblocks
Five states �" California, Florida, Nevada, Arkansas and Delaware �" have recently passed or are considering laws to address breaches of medical information, but the privacy forum still recommends that everyone check his or her medical records for accuracy.

Live survey

Are you confident your records are safe?

Georgetown University’s Center on Medical Rights and Privacy maintains a state-by-state guide to checking your records. But if you find an error, trying to correct it can be a complex and sometimes fruitless task.

Alex JohnsonReporter•Profile

The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, requires health care providers and insurers to give you access to your medical records and to give you a copy of their privacy practices. If your records are wrong, the act gives providers and insurers as long as 90 days to respond, but if they disagree with you, they don’t have to do anything.

Moreover, HIPAA doesn’t require medical providers and insurers to remove incorrect information; in fact, it says that if incorrect information leads to inappropriate treatment, the bad information should not be removed from your records, in order to preserve a paper trail.

CONTINUED: Authorities slow to prosecute1 | 2 | Next >

More weekend stroke patients die - Heart Health

Weekend stroke patients have higher death risk

14 percent increase may be tied to lack of expertise, resources, experts say

DALLAS - If you have a stroke, try to have it between Monday and Friday.

A Canadian study released on Thursday found that patients hospitalized for the most common kind of stroke on weekends had a higher death rate than those admitted on weekdays.

The weekend effect has been identified before in other conditions such as cancer and pulmonary embolism.

But this is the first major study to look at it in relation to ischemic stroke, which is caused by a clot that blocks blood flow in an artery in or leading to the brain.

If the weekend effect??� occurs in a socialized health care system (like Canada??�s), it is likely that the effect may be larger in other settings, said Dr. Gustavo Saposnik, director of the Stroke Research Unit Division of Neurology at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study.

The study, published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, looked at all ischemic stroke hospital admissions in Canada from April 2003 to March 2004.

It found that about a quarter of the 26,676 patients admitted to 606 hospitals over that time period were brought in on Saturdays and Sundays.

After adjusting for age, gender and other medical complications, researchers found that patients admitted on the weekend had a 14 percent higher risk of dying within seven days of admission compared to patients admitted during the week, the American Heart Association said in a statement.

The weekend effect was even greater when patients went to a rural hospital instead of an urban one, and when the doctor in charge was a general practitioner instead of a specialist, it said.

Researchers said the higher death risk might be linked to a relative lack of resources or expertise in hospitals during weekends. But they did not elaborate and said more study was needed.

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No one with stroke-like symptoms should hesitate to seek medical treatment on weekends, they added.

Although the differences in weekend admission found in this study may be real, the potential benefits of obtaining early treatment would well outweigh the risk of waiting, said Dr. Larry Goldstein, chair of the Stroke Council of the American Heart Association.

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Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

Siegfried & Roy to tell all - Gossip: The Scoop

Siegfried & Roy ready
to let cat out of the bag

Plus: Ashlee Simpson a new
acid-reflux spokesperson?
NBC / AP file
Is America ready for "Siegfried & Roy: The Book"?

By By Jeannette Walls

Siegfried and Roy are ready to tell all.

Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, the hugely popular big cat tamers who were sidelined when Horn was mauled by a tiger last year, are secretly shopping around their joint memoir.

“They’re meeting with top publishers in the coming weeks,” says one insider. “It’s all very hush-hush, but apparently, they’re going to tell everything about their private and professional lives. We’re very excited about it.”

The source says the bidding will probably be in the seven-figure range.

Spokesmen for Siegfried and Roy didn’t return calls.

An ad for Ashlee?
Frank Micelotta / Getty ImagesAt least some people are pretty pleased with Ashlee Simpson’s lip synching debacle: the makers of medication for acid-reflux disease.

The teen crooner, explaining why she didn’t sing live on Saturday Night Live, said on the Today Show that her voice was hoarse because she had been suffering from “severe acid reflux.” And that makes marketers of acid reflux medications such as Nexium and Prevacid quite happy.

“Somebody of her high profile helps raise the profile of the disease,” David Albaugh of AstraZeneca �" makers of Nexium, the widely advertised “purple pill” �" told The Scoop. “Obviously, it’s good to have improved and increased awareness of acid reflux.”

“We believe that celebrities who talk about their experience with certain health conditions, such as acid reflux in this case, can help educate people on important health issues, as well as motivate people to talk to their doctors and get properly diagnosed and treated,” a spokeswoman for TAP, the company that makes Prevacid, e-mailed The Scoop in a statement. “We wish Ashlee Simpson the very best on her road to relief from acid reflux.”

RELATED STORIESAshlee Simpson busted for ‘SNL’ lip-synchingWalls: Simpson paying lip service to realitySimpson goes live at Radio Music Awards

Both companies, however, said that they have no plans at this time to ask Simpson to become their acid-reflux celebrity spokeswoman.

Notes from all over
Kevin Winter / Getty ImagesTom Cruise has a not quite impossible mission: he wants to climb Mount Everest. “That’s been a dream of mine,” the actor said at the American Film Institute, reports Zap2it.com. “I’m not a great climber, but I enjoy it.” Cruise also said he’d love to do a musical, and admits that he still sometimes sings and boogies in his underwear, like he did in “Risky Business,” saying that he calls it his “dance of freedom.”   . . . Hugh Grant joked about Julia Roberts’ “very big mouth” to Oprah Winfrey. “Literally, physically, she has a very big mouth,” Grant said of his “Notting Hill” co-star. “When I was kissing her I was aware of a faint echo.” When Winfrey defended Roberts as “one of the nicest people I ever met,” Grant deadpanned, “I wouldn’t go that far.”  . . .  Madonna used the F-word at her rabbi’s book party. The spiritual girl, speaking at the London launch for Rabbi Michael Berg’s “Becoming Like God,” at one point snapped at the crowd, “Turn those f----- mobile phones off.”

document.write("");Jeannette Walls Delivers the Scoopdocument.write(''); Mondays through Thursdays on

� 2006

Heartburn drugs linked to hip-fracture risk - Aging

Heartburn drugs tied to hip-fracture risk

Nexium, Prilosec may make it harder for body to absorb calcium, study says

CHICAGO - Taking such popular heartburn drugs as Nexium, Prevacid or Prilosec for a year or more can raise the risk of a broken hip markedly in people over 50, a large study in Britain found.

The study raises questions about the safety of some of the most widely used and heavily promoted prescription drugs on the market, taken by millions of people.

The researchers speculated that when the drugs reduce acid in the stomach, they also make it more difficult for the body to absorb bone-building calcium. That can lead to weaker bones and fractures.

Hip fractures in the elderly often lead to life-threatening complications. As a result, doctors should make sure patients have good reason to stay on heartburn drugs long term, said study co-author Dr. Yu-Xiao Yang of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

“The general perception is they are relatively harmless,” Yang said. “They often are used without a clear or justified indication for the treatment.”

Some people find relief from heartburn with over-the-counter antacids such as Tums, Rolaids and Maalox. For others, these medicines do not work well. Moreover, heartburn can be more than a source of discomfort. People with chronic heartburn can develop painful ulcers in the esophagus, and in rare cases, some can end up with damage that can lead to esophageal cancer.

Dr. Sandra Dial of McGill University in Montreal, who was not involved in the study but has done similar research, said patients should discuss the risks and benefits with their doctors and taper off their use of these medicines if they can.

Nexium, Prevacid and Prilosec are members of a class of drugs known as proton pump inhibitors. The study found a similar but smaller risk of hip fractures for another class of acid-fighting drugs called H2 blockers. Those drugs include Tagamet and Pepcid.

The study, published in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at medical records of more than 145,000 patients in England, where a large electronic database of records is available for research. The average age of the patients was 77.

The patients who used proton pump inhibitors for more than a year had a 44 percent higher risk of hip fracture than nonusers. The longer the patients took the drugs, the higher their risk.

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The biggest risk was seen in people who took high doses of the drugs for more than a year. That group had a 2½ times greater risk of hip fractures than nonusers.

Yang said that for every 1,262 elderly patients treated with the drugs for more than a year, there would be one additional hip fracture a year attributable to the drugs. For every 336 elderly patients treated for more than a year with high doses, there would be one extra hip fracture a year attributable to the drugs.

Dr. Doug Levine of AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Nexium and Prilosec, said the study does not prove that proton pump inhibitors cause hip fractures. It merely suggests a potential association, he said, adding that doctors need to monitor their patients for proper dosage and watch how long they take the drugs.

Dr. Alan Buchman of Northwestern University, who was not involved in the research, said the study should not change medical practice, since doctors already should be monitoring the bone density of elderly people taking the drugs and recommending calcium-rich diets to all patients.

“Most people are not taking enough calcium to start with,” he said. He also wondered if a similar result would have been found in a sunny climate, because vitamin D from sunshine helps with calcium absorption.

Also, Buchman said it not known whether the acid-fighting drugs prevent esophageal cancer. He said the risk of esophageal cancer has been exaggerated in the marketing of these drugs.

“I think the risk has been overplayed and scared the community,” Buchman said.

Heartburn medicines are heavily are advertised in “Ask your doctor about ...” commercials in this country, particularly during the evening news.

Nexium is the second-biggest-selling drug in the world, behind the cholesterol medicine Lipitor, with global sales totaling $4.6 billion last year, according to IMS Health, which tracks drug sales.

Yang and his co-authors disclosed in the paper that they have worked as consultants and received speaking fees from companies making acid-fighting drugs. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Gastroenterological Association/GlaxoSmithKline Glaxo Institute for Digestive Health.

Men in the study had a higher drug-associated risk of hip fracture than women, possibly because women may be more aware of osteoporosis and may get more calcium in their diets, Yang said. He plans more research on whether calcium-rich diets or calcium supplements can prevent the problem.

� 2006 . .

Got heartburn? Check your waistline - Nutrition Notes

Got heartburn? Excess weight may be to blame

Sufferers can feel better by altering diet, losing a little in the middle
Karen Collins, R.D.Special to

Karen Collins, R.D.

Are you suffering with serious heartburn? If so, your weight might have something to do with how you've been feeling ??" and how you can feel better.

Gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, is a common digestive disorder that can affect people of all ages. As recent studies continue to confirm the longstanding link between excess weight and GERD, soaring obesity rates are likely to lead to an increasing number of Americans who are affected by this disease.

The severe, frequent heartburn of GERD occurs when the muscle that acts as a valve between the esophagus and stomach doesn??�t work properly, allowing stomach acids to back up into the esophagus, which can damage tissue.

One 2006 analysis of 20 studies, including more than 18,000 patients, showed that in the United States being overweight increased odds of developing GERD by more than 50 percent. Being obese more than doubled the odds.

Among more than 10,000 women analyzed in the Nurses??� Health Study, weight gain of more than about 10 to 20 pounds was linked with almost tripling the development of frequent heartburn symptoms.

The link between being overweight and risk of GERD is not new, but research is beginning to explain why it occurs. One recent study measured pressure within the stomach and found that each increase in body mass index (a measure of weight status) that corresponded to about a 10- to 20-pound weight jump was linked to a 10 percent increase in stomach pressure.

Test yourself ?�Is it heartburn or something else?Researchers suggest that excess body fat, particularly around the abdomen, increases pressure in the abdomen, which in turn increases pressure in the stomach. The pressure to the stomach pushes the sphincter muscle between the stomach and esophagus to open. Overeating might also increase that pressure, and so can pregnancy.

Frequent heartburn can be serious
A report in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association on nutrition??�s involvement in indigestion and heartburn noted that certain spices and acidic food and drink may cause pain in an esophagus already raw from stomach acid reflux. But these foods may take the blame for episodes that really are due to excessive portions.

Studies have also suggested that fatty foods may increase the tendency for reflux, yet research on fatty foods is unclear. In one small Italian study, for example, the total calories of meals increased the tendency for reflux over the next six hours, while raising fat content didn??�t increase reflux if total calories remained the same.

With all the jokes about heartburn, it??�s easy to regard it as just an uncomfortable inconvenience. Scientists say, however, that although occasional heartburn is not a worry, frequent heartburn can lead to serious complications if left untreated.

GERD is an established risk factor for esophageal adenocarcinoma, a type of esophageal cancer that has increased approximately 600 percent since 1971. If both obesity and GERD are present, the risk of this kind of cancer increases even more than seen with GERD alone.

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There are a wide range of medications available to treat heartburn, some of which can be used together. If heartburn occurs several times a week, see your doctor. If the cause of heartburn is unhealthy eating habits or excess weight, it is probably hurting your health in other ways too.

Instead of trying to make unhealthy eating tolerable, it may be time to develop better eating habits and shape up to a healthy weight to reduce GERD and risk of esophageal cancer.

? 2007

Rosie O??�Donnell won??�t return to The View??� - Television

Rosie O??�Donnell won??�t return to The View??�

Announcement comes two days after heated on-air fight with co-host
Yolanda Perez / AP
Elisabeth Hasselbeck, left, and?�Rosie O'Donnell sparred frequently on "The View," though they profess to be good friends off camera.

video?�Rosie quits 'The View' early
May 25: With news that Rosie O'Donnell will not returning to 'The View,' Donald Trump comments on his feud with O'Donnell.

Rosie O??�Donnell has fought her last fight at The View.

ABC said Friday she asked for, and received, an early exit from her contract at the daytime chatfest following her angry confrontation with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Wednesday. She was due to leave in mid-June.

It ended a colorful eight-month tenure for O??�Donnell that lifted the show??�s ratings but no doubt caused heartburn for show creator Barbara Walters. O??�Donnell feuded with Donald Trump and frequently had snippy exchanges with the more conservative Hasselbeck.

O??�Donnell said last month she would be leaving because she could not agree to a new contract with ABC executives.

Rosie contributed to one of our most exciting and successful years at The View, ??� Walters said. I am most appreciative. Our close and affectionate relationship will not change.

In a statement, O??�Donnell said that it??�s been an amazing year and I love all three women.

No one was feeling the love on Wednesday, when the argument with Hasselbeck began over O??�Donnell??�s statement last week about the war: 655,000 Iraqi civilians have died. Who are the terrorists ?

Talk show critics accused O??�Donnell of calling U.S. troops terrorists. She called Hasselbeck cowardly for not saying anything in response to the critics.

Do not call me a coward, because No. 1, I sit here every single day, open my heart and tell people what I believe, Hasselbeck retorted, and their riveting exchange continued despite failed attempts by their co-hosts to cut to a commercial.

According to a New York Post report, O??�Donnell??�s chief writer, Janette Barber, was allegedly led out of the building on Wednesday after she was caught drawing mustaches on photographs of Hasselbeck in The View studios. ABC executives didn??�t return repeated calls for questions on the incident Friday.

On Thursday O??�Donnell had asked for a day off to celebrate her partner??�s birthday. The View aired a taped show on Friday.

Related contentRosie??�s View??� won??�t be the same without her Vote: Will you miss Rosie on The View??�?Political discussion turns personal on View??�Walters denies fight was ratings stunt  What do you think about her departure?

Slide show?�Rosie through the years
From the 80s through The View,??� a look at the feisty TV host??�s careerOn her Web site, O??�Donnell posted a scrapbooklike video on Friday with pictures and news clippings of her tenure at The View. Cyndi Lauper??�s Sisters of Avalon played in the background.

A day earlier, she posted messages on her Web site indicating she might not be back.

When painting there is a point u must step away from the canvas as the work is done, she wrote. Any more would take away.

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? 2007 . .

WP: Bug mutates into medical mystery - washingtonpost.com Highlights

Bug mutates into medical mystery

Antibiotics, heartburn drugs suspected
By By Rob Stein

WASHINGTON - First came stomach cramps, which left Christina Shultz doubled over and weeping in pain. Then came nausea and fatigue -- so overwhelming she couldn't get out of bed for days. Just when she thought things couldn't get worse, the nastiest diarrhea of her life hit -- repeatedly forcing her into the hospital.

Doctors finally discovered that the 35-year-old Hilliard, Ohio, woman had an inagsdhfgdfinal bug that used to be found almost exclusively among older, sicker patients in hospitals and was usually easily cured with a dose of antibiotics. But after months of cure, Shultz is still incapacitated.

"It's been a nightmare," said Shultz, a mother of two young children. "I just want my life back."

Shultz is one of a growing number of young, otherwise healthy Americans who are being stricken by the bacterial infection known as Clostridium difficile -- or C. diff -- which appears to be spreading rapidly around the country and causing unusually severe, sometimes fatal illness.

That is raising alarm among health officials, who are concerned that many cases may be misdiagnosed and are puzzled as to what is causing the microbe to become so much more common and dangerous.

"It's a new phenomenon. It's just emerging," said L. Clifford McDonald of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "We're very concerned. We know it's happening, but we're really not sure why it's happening or where this is going."

Antibiotics to blame?
It may, however, be the laagsdhfgdf example of a common, relatively benign bug that has mutated because of the overuse of antibiotics.

"This may well be another consequence of our use of antibiotics," said John G. Bartlett, an infectious-disease expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "It's another example of an organism that all of a sudden has gotten a lot meaner and nastier."

?�More health newsIn addition, new evidence released last week suggests that the enormous popularity of powerful new heartburn drugs may also be playing a role.

The antibiotics Flagyl (metronidazole) and vancomycin still cure many patients, but others develop stubborn infections like Shultz's that take over their lives. Some resort to having their colon removed to end the debilitating diarrhea. A small but disturbingly high number have died, including an otherwise healthy pregnant woman who succumbed earlier this year in Pennsylvania after miscarrying twins.

The infection usually hits people who are taking antibiotics for other reasons, but a handful of cases have been reported among people who were taking nothing, another unexpected and troubling turn in the germ's behavior.

The infection has long been common in hospital patients taking antibiotics. As the drugs kill off other bacteria in the digestive system, the C. diff microbe can proliferate. It spreads easily through contact with contaminated people, clothing or surfaces.

Infections double
There are no national statistics, but the number of infections in hospitals appears to have doubled from 2000 to 2003 and there may be as many as 500,000 cases each year, McDonald said. Other estimates put the number in the millions.

The emerging problem first gained attention when unusually large and serious outbreaks began turning up in other countries. In Canada, for example, Quebec health officials reported last year that perhaps 200 patients died in an outbreak involving at least 10 hospitals. Similar outbreaks were reported in England and the Netherlands.

After the CDC began receiving reports of severe cases among hospital patients in the United States -- and in people who had never, or just briefly, been hospitalized -- it launched an investigation.

In the Dec. 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the CDC reported that an analysis of 187 C. diff samples found that the unusually dangerous strain that caused the Quebec cases was also involved in outbreaks at eight health care facilities in Georgia, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon and Pennsylvania.

"This strain has somehow been able to get into hospitals widely distributed across the United States," said Dale N. Gerding of Loyola University in Chicago, who helped conduct the analysis. "We're not sure how."

But scientists do have a few clues. The dangerous strain has mutated to become resistant to a class of frequently used antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones. That means anyone taking those antibiotics for other reasons would be particularly prone to contract C. diff .

"Because this strain is resistant, it can take advantage of that situation and establish itself in the gut," Gerding said.

Experts said the resistant germ's proliferation offers the laagsdhfgdf reason why people should use antibiotics only when necessary, to reduce both their risk for C. diff and the chances that other microbes will mutate into more dangerous forms.

"That's one theory for what's happening here," said J. Thomas Lamont of Harvard Medical School. "If we reduce the number and amount of antibiotics given for trivial infections like colds and stuffy noses, we'd all be a lot better off."

Overuse of antibiotics can make germs more dangerous by killing off susceptible strains, leaving behind those that by chance have mutated to become less vulnerable to the drugs. The resistant strains then become dominant.

High toxin levels
In addition to being resistant, the dangerous C. diff strain also produces far higher levels of two toxins than do other strains, as well as a third, previously unknown toxin. That would explain why it makes people so much sicker and is more likely to kill. In Quebec, C. diff killed 6.9 percent of patients -- which is much higher than the disease's usual mortality rate -- and was a factor in more than 400 deaths.

Adding to the alarm is evidence that the infection is occurring outside of hospitals. When the CDC began looking for such cases earlier this year, investigators quickly identified 33 cases in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania, including 23 people who had never been in the hospital and 10 women who had been hospitalized only briefly to deliver a baby, the agency reported this month. Eight of the patients had never taken antibiotics.

"This is the first time we've started to see this not only in people who have never been in the hospital but also in those who are otherwise perfectly healthy and have not even taken antibiotics," McDonald said.

"It's probably going on everywhere," he said.

It remains unclear whether the cases occurring outside the hospital are being caused by the same dangerous strain.

"We don't really know what's going on here," McDonald said. "We know it's changing in some ways; we know it's changing the kinds of patients it's attacking, and we know it's causing more severe disease. But we don't know exactly why."

Canadian researchers, however, have found one possible culprit: popular new heartburn drugs. Patients taking proton pump inhibitors, such as Prilosec and Prevacid, are almost three times as likely to be diagnosed with C-diff , the McGill University researchers reported in the Dec. 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. And those taking another type called H2-receptor antagonists, such as Pepcid and Zantac, are twice as likely. By suppressing stomach acid, the drugs may inadvertently help the bug, the researchers said.

Whatever the cause, the infection often resists standard cure. That is what happened to Shultz, who had been taking antibiotics to help clear up her acne when C. diff hit in June. Because the bacterium can hibernate in protective spores, patients can be prone to recurrences. It can take multiple rounds of antibiotics -- or sometimes infusions of antibodies or ingesting competing organisms such as yeast or the bacteria found in yogurt -- to finally cure them.

"I'm trying to stay positive," Shultz said. "People tell me it does go away and I will get rid of it someday. I'm looking forward to getting my life back, but I'm not convinced I'll ever be normal again."

? 2007 The Washington Post Company

'Scarborough Country' for Feb. 7 - Transcripts

'Scarborough Country' for Feb. 7

Read the transcript to the 10 p.m. ET show

Guest: Harvey Levin, Karen Hanretty, Paul Levinson, Ann Coulter, Peter Brookes, Bob Kerrigan, Gloria Luttig, John Luttig

JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST:?� Tonight s top headline: Christian missionaries murdered by a CIA operation.?� Now comes the cover-up.?�

Welcome to SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY.?� No passport is required, and only common sense allowed.?�

American missionaries shot down over Peru with working with the CIA.?� After a three-year investigation, the DOJ drops the case.?� Was there cover-up??� We are going to be talking to the parents of the murdered missionary.?�

And then, the Colorado professor who compared 9/11 victims to Nazis apologizes for his anti-American rhetoric.?� Oh, wait.?� No, he didn t.?� In fact, he says he is not sorry and he is not going to apologize and he doesn t want anybody else to apologize for him.?� And, oh, yes, he also says that more 9/11s are necessary.?� We re going to be asking author Ann Coulter what she thinks of that.

Later, America loves comedian Bill Cosby.?� But now allegations that he drugged and groped a woman are reportedly backed up by taped phone calls.?�

And John Kerry defends himself on Imus, but Imus doesn t think he defended himself very well.?�?�

ANNOUNCER:?� From the press room, to the courtroom, to the halls of Congress, Joe Scarborough has seen it all.?� Welcome to SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY.

SCARBOROUGH:?� Welcome to the show.

You know what, I haven t seen it all, because I haven t seen what s happened in this case that I am about to tell you about.?�

An American missionary and her 7-month-old baby are shot to death in a CIA operation, and now they are having to deal with a cover-up from the feds.?� It s time for tonight s Real Deal. ?�

Now, in 2001, on clear day in Peru, Veronica Bowers, a Christian missionary and mother of two, was killed while she and her family were flying from one camp to another.?� Somehow, the CIA mistook the missionaries inside their small, slow Cessna plane for drug runners.?� Bullets ripped through the small plane, killing Ms. Bowers and her 7-month-old baby, Charity.?� After the plane crashed-landed in the river, Veronica s 6-year-old son, Cory, and her husband managed to swim to safety.?�

After the incident, CIA agents became the subject of what The New York Times called the most serious investigation involving the CIA since the Iran Contra scandal.?� Agents were accused of lying to Congress about their activities, and the Justice Department launched a criminal inquiry.?� But according to The Times and other sources, outraged CIA leaders pressured the Congress to drop the investigation.?�

Apparently, the intimidation tactic worked.?� This week, the Justice Department announced it had dropped the investigation.?� And a Bush administration official was quoted as saying??"quote??" A criminal investigation such as this breeds a risk-adverse culture in the CIA.

Oh, really??� Well, even if you were to assume that George W. Bush is unaware of the details of this case, ask yourself this question.?� How would the president respond if one of his two daughters decided to become a missionary and then that daughter and her baby girl were shot to death in a CIA operation gone terribly wrong, and then the federal government covered up possible criminal conduct by dismissing top secret investigation because of pressure put on it by the same offending agency??�

Now, I know that, under those circumstances, George Bush and any father would feel angry and betrayed by his government, and for good reason.?� Terrible accidents occur.?� We all know that.?� But, when they do, there has to be accountability from the top down.?� That s why President Bush must immediately investigate this incident, release the Justice Department findings to the family and the public, and make sure those responsible are held accountable for their terrible, terrible mistakes.?�

If these agents are innocent, fine.?� But no one is being served by a federal cover-up that does nothing but bring more pain to a family that s already suffered enough.?� Justice must be done.?� And that s tonight s Real Deal. ?�

Now, with me to talk about this story are Roni Bower s parents.?� We have Gloria and John Luttig.?�

It s so good to see you all tonight.?� I feel so terribly for you.?�

Gloria, I want to start with you.?�

How do you feel about the federal government just sweeping this under the rug and closing down the investigation??�

GLORIA LUTTIG, MOTHER OF KILLED MISSIONARY:?� Thank you, brother Joe, for having us on.?�

I want some answers.?� I want to know why that, at this point, that the Justice Department did a criminal investigation, why has it taken all this time, and why??"we knew absolutely nothing about this, nothing.?� There s just so many questions.?� What is this deal about them lying, lying to the Justice Department??�

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� Well, Ms. Luttig, that s the thing that s so troubling.?� They hold this investigation.?� These four CIA agents go before the United States Senate.?� Apparently, the senators believe they are lying to them.?� They conduct an investigation, and then they just dismiss it because the CIA is angry.?�

I want to ask??"John, let me ask you a question.?�

JOHN LUTTIG, FATHER OF KILLED MISSIONARY:?� Yes, sir.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� What would you like to say, father to father, to George W. Bush tonight??�

J. LUTTIG:?� I would just like to ask him to sit down with me for just a few minutes and answer some questions that I have.?� Nobody has ever notified us of anything.?� We had one phone call right after the incident that President Bush called us and told us he was sorry, that he just can t understand how we hurt, because he has two daughters.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� And yet, John, tonight, again, we are talking about a case where your daughter, and your 7-month-old granddaughter were murdered, shot down.?�

J. LUTTIG:?� Yes, sir, they were.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Shot down while serving God.?�

Four CIA agents reportedly lied to the Senate.?� The CIA pressures the Justice Department to drop this investigation, according to reports out of The New York Times, and you are still here.?� You haven t heard from the Justice Department, the CIA, anybody investigating this.?� The missionary board hasn t heard.?� How do you conduct an investigation without talking to the principals??�

J. LUTTIG:?� Good question.?� You tell me.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� And that s the question that you want George Bush to answer.

J. LUTTIG:?� Yes, sir.?� I would like to ask him that.?�

G. LUTTIG:?� And I would like to know why some of the CIA agents, some of the top agents are still serving.?� And one is in CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� All right.?� Thanks so much, Gloria and John.?� We are going to stay on this story.?� We appreciate you being with us.?� And we are going to ask you back.?�

I want to show you some footage taken, remarkable footage of the day that the plane was shot down, and Roni and her beautiful 7-month-old baby daughter were murdered.?� This??"it was a landing on a river deep in the jungles of Peru.?� Take a look.?�

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� The plane is talking to Iquitos tower on VHF.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� OK.?� OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� (SPEAKING SPANISH)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� Tell them to terminate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� Don t.?� Don t shoot.?�

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� Tell them to terminate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� (SPEAKING SPANISH)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� (SPEAKING SPANISH)?�

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� God.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... land back here.?�

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� OK.?� There.?� You got (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� Where??�

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� Right there.?�

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� (SPEAKING SPANISH)?�

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� OK, OK, OK.?�

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� Now, let s just circle over??"hang on.?� Just hang on.?�

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� They re smoking.?�

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� (SPEAKING SPANISH)?�

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� He s smoking.?� Oh, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:?� Yes.?� He s smoking.?�

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCARBOROUGH:?� With us now to talk about why the Justice Department dropped the case are renowned Florida attorney Bob Kerrigan, who also follows human rights closely, and also Peter Brookes from the Heritage Foundation.?�

Bob, a mother and baby are gunned down in the middle of a CIA operation.?� Apparently, the agents lie to Congress.?� Pressure is put on an agency, the Justice Department, to drop it, and they drop it.?� Is that justice??�

BOB KERRIGAN, HUMAN RIGHTS ATTORNEY:?� It s not justice.?� However, there s an obscure provision in the Defense Authorization Act of 1995 that actually grants prosecutorial immunity to anybody involved in shooting down one of these planes.?�

The real gravamen of the wrong, I think, is lying to Congress, and Congress needs to do something about it.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� But they are??"the CIA, according to The New York Times, the CIA was offended by this investigation, where you have a young mother and her daughter basically blown out of the sky, bleed to death in front of a 6-year-old boy, and yet we have the Justice Department saying, you know what, we are just going to drop it.?� What can be done??�

KERRIGAN:?� Well, something can be done, and something is odd.?� Within six months of this event, the United States Senate found culpable negligence by United States officials.?�

And then Colin Powell within a matter of two or three months said they are going to resume the shootdown.?� And then two and a half years later, nothing has happened until we get this announcement other than resuming these shootdowns in Colombia just a few months ago.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Robert Brookes, what s wrong with this picture??� A young American mother and her 7-month-old baby girl are shot out of the sky.?� The CIA reportedly lied to Congress.?� The CIA got offended by it, and the Justice Department dropped the investigation.?� Something is terribly wrong here.?�

PETER BROOKES, HERITAGE FOUNDATION:?� Joe, it s a terrible tragedy.?�

There s no doubt about that.?�

But I think??"I am curious to know all the facts.?� I don t think we have all the facts yet.?� This was a very short article in The New York Times today.?� I think we need a full airing of what happened.?� I agree with you that, if there were, people need to be held accountable. ?�This is very important in our intelligence business.?� We know this.?� We know this from Iraq.?� We know this other issues.?� But I think we need to know more.?�

All I saw is the same article you saw in The New York Times today, and I don t know that anybody was successful in getting this dropped.?� I think we need a full public airing of what s been going on with this case, other than just a very short article in The New York Times this morning.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Robert, I agree with you.

And, Bob Kerrigan, you are from the area where this missionary s family is from, where she is from originally.?� Could it be that the reason why we don t know what s going on there is because the four-year investigation has been top secret??�

KERRIGAN:?� Well, they ought to bring the family into this top secret involvement.?�

Joe, the families of the church women killed in El Salvador 25 years ago still have no answers from the United States government on the death of those women serving their church in El Salvador.?� This is going to get stalled and covered up indefinitely from now on, no question about it.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Well, gentlemen, we need to blow the lid off the cover-up, if it is going on.?�

Bob Kerrigan, Peter Brookes, thanks for being with us tonight.?� We look forward to having you back to talk about this issue.?� We are going to stay on it until we get answers from the federal government.?�

Coming up next, Ward Churchill s laagsdhfgdf outrageous statement.?� You are not going to believe it.

That s when SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� More shocking comments from Colorado Professor Ward Churchill, who attacks America and says??"what does he say on the taxpayers dime??� That we need more 9/11s.?�

That story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWS BREAK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� Now, as we told you last week, University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill faces possible firing for comparing 9/11 victims to Nazis and for praising al Qaeda terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans.?� He called them heroes.?� The university has 30 days to read everything that Churchill has written.?� And they may want to read this interview from 2004.?�

He said??"quote??" One of the things I suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary.?� This seems like such a no-brainer that I hate to frame it in terms of actual transformation of consciousness.

Now, Denver radio talk show host Peter Boyles spoke to Churchill and the father of a 9/11 victim last week.?� Let s listen to that exchange.?�

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

FATHER OF 9/11 VICTIM:?� My son was an assistant trader at Cantor Fitzgerald.?� He was 23, his first job out of college.?�

(CROSSTALK)

WARD CHURCHILL, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO:?� Well, I would like to do something here.?� I would like to engage you.?�

PETER BOYLES, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST:?� Let me ask him, if I could, before it gets away, Ward, would his son have qualified as one of the little Eichmanns??�

CHURCHILL:?� Yes, he would have.?�

(END AUDIO CLIP)?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� That is unbelievable.?� That is just unbelievable that this guy, after this controversy breaks, this guy is telling the father of a dead 23-year-old son that he would qualify as an Eichmann, again, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi that was the architect of the Holocaust, six million Jews killed.?� The guy seems like a beast.?�

Well, author and now DVD star Ann Coulter is with us.?� It s a great honor to have her back in SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY.?� We also have Fordham University media Professor Paul Levinson.

Ann, let s begin with you.?� And I just got to ask you??"again, here s the quote.?� This guy says in 2004: More 9/11s are necessary. ?� We hear time and time again that this is about free speech, but I say, if it s public university, it s about taxpayer-funded speech.?� What is your take??�

ANN COULTER, AUTHOR, HOW TO TALK TO A LIBERAL (IF YOU MUST) :?� Right.?�

Well, more than that, don t call yourself a radical if you have tenure.?� Everyone else in the world suffers consequences for the things they say, if they said something as outrageous as this.?� These guys want to go around acting like big radicals, getting laid by coeds with hairy armpits, who probably don t like men, by going to conferences and saying, oh, yes, I m the one who said that.

And they can say more and more outrageous things because they are never at risk of losing a job, unlike everyone else in the universe.?� Whatever you say about any of the crazy things professors say, maybe they are right.?� Maybe they have a very good point.?� Maybe it s worth listening to them.?� But the one thing you can t say about them is they are courageous.?� Other people are putting their jobs on the lines.?� So, if you want to be called a radical, then give up the tenure before you start going around shooting off your mouth like this.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Ann, I have been asking this question of conservatives and of moderates and even some liberals who are offended by this type of talk on campus.?� Why is it that everybody can be held accountable, but our Republican president, our Republican Senate, our Republican House, our Republican governors, our Republican state legislators all say the same thing, which is we can t do anything about it, academic freedom, when, again, we are not talking about free speech??� We are talking about speech, that, just like an NEA so-called art display where you put a crucifix in urine, that is subsidized.?�

It s not art, and this is not free speech.?�

COULTER:?� No, and it s especially preposterous coming from probably the least tolerant of free speech institutions in America, college campuses, where they have speech codes on hate speech and people??"students at risk of being expelled for jokes or inappropriate laughing.?�

I mean, of all places in the world where??"and Larry Summers, look over that the furor over that a few weeks ago, when he opined that there might??"we might want to have some scientific research into whether there are innate differences between men and women.?� He was nearly driven out of town, fainting, whining, screeching.?�

So of all places to be talking about academy freedom.?� But as many people who engage in free speech for a living know, there are consequences and you could lose your job.?� You could lose your show.?� People could not buy your books.?� You could lose a radio show.?� This is the one industry where you can t be fired for what you say.

And they have the audacity to walk around with the long hair and the shades acting like he s a radical.?� I mean, I really find that more offensive than anything else.?� This is a little craven chicken who can t lose his job squealing about the fact that his tenure is even being considered for revocation right now, show that he knew he had absolute job security, and he would just shoot off his mouth.?� And it s like farting in a church.?� It s just, what s the most outrageous thing I can say?

SCARBOROUGH:?� Yes.?� And the most interesting thing is, again, for these people at these college campuses to talk about free speech, they have obviously never been a conservative trying to give a speech at a campus, where you are booed and hissed and not allowed to continue.

Paul Levinson, let me bring in here.?� And I want to ask you to explain to Americans why somebody that speaks, a professor that is paid by the government, by taxpayers, why that person can t be held accountable for hate speech, whereas, if somebody works at a private institution, like Fordham, such as yourself, you know, it seems to me that institution should be isolated from taxpayer revolt.?�

PAUL LEVINSON, DIRECTOR OF MEDIA STUDIES, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY:?� Well, I think you and Ann don t understand how tenure works.?� No one is saying that this obnoxious, disgusting person has some kind of immunity from being fired.?� And, as a matter of fact, the last I heard, his university is looking over his record, and will make a decision.?�

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� How many tenured professors have been fired at Fordham in the past five years?

LEVINSON:?� I don t know.?� I have no idea.

SCARBOROUGH:?� Because they...?�

(CROSSTALK)

LEVINSON:?� But that s not the point.?� Tenure is not an absolute immunity.?�

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� It s about as damn close as you can get.?�

LEVINSON:?� As a matter of fact, one reason why tenured professors have been fired over the years is there aren t enough students in their courses.?� And for an economic reason, they can t be continued at the university.?�

So there s a sort of public myth that university professors with tenure can do anything they want and they can t be fired.?� That s just flatly not true.?�

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� I will ask you again, when is the last time that a tenured professor got fired at any institution where you worked??�

LEVINSON:?� The last time a tenured professor got fired at an institution where I worked, I can t give you an answer, because I am not an expert on when people get fired.

But I can flatly guarantee you that, if you look over the last, say, 50 years of American history, you will find that there are any number of tenured professors who have been fired, for a variety of reasons.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Ann Coulter...

LEVINSON:?� So this is a myth, which it may make you and Ann Coulter happy to imagine it s the case, but it s not the case.?� And furthermore...

SCARBOROUGH:?� Wow.?�

LEVINSON:?� To show you that you are wrong, why, then, is the University of Colorado considering whether or not to continue...?�

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� I will tell you why, because for the first time...

LEVINSON:?� Because tenure is not an absolute guarantee.

SCARBOROUGH:?� For the first time in 30 years, since radicals have taken over campus, it s taken a clown like Ward Churchill to wake Americans up and say enough is enough.?�

(CROSSTALK)

LEVINSON:?� It s nonsense to say that radicals have taken over campuses.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Oh, good God.?� What are they, conservatives??�

(CROSSTALK)

LEVINSON:?� There s a very vibrant Republican Party.?� One of my students by the name of Lara Hanson organized a debate between Democrats and Republicans.

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� I m not talking about Fordham specifically.?�

LEVINSON:?� Then don t say radicals have taken over campuses.?� That s just not true.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Are you suggesting that there s an equal conservative presence on campus??�

LEVINSON:?� Yes, I am suggesting that if you look at the last election...

SCARBOROUGH:?� You are suggesting that??�

LEVINSON:?� Yes.?� I think that there are conservatives.?� There are radicals.

SCARBOROUGH:?� Among professors??�

LEVINSON:?� It s a continuum.?� Conservatives like to put up as sort of a boogeyman...

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� College professors??� Are you saying there s an equality among college professors in America between liberals and conservatives??� Because if so, and I fat Fordham..

LEVINSON:?� Have you done a survey??� Do you know that there isn t?

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� Well, actually, there was a survey out six months ago that said seven out of eight??"it was reported in The New York Times that seven out of eight, tenured professors, interviewed said they leaned to the left.?� But I ll tell you what.

LEVINSON:?� Nobody asked me in that survey.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Well, I will tell you what, though.?� You know what??� My son wants to go to school in New York.?� And he s looking at Fordham.?� If it s that split down the middle, I am going to order him to go.?�

(LAUGHTER)

SCARBOROUGH:?� Ann Coulter, am I??"listen, I respect Paul Levinson, but there s a part of me that says he is kind of like Dan Rather when Dan Rather said, The New York Times biased??� Wait a second.?� The New York Times is in the mainstream of American politics.?�

(LAUGHTER)

COULTER:?� No.?� In fact, I think I can tell you the last time a professor in the United States of America had his tenure revoked.?� My law firm defended him here in New York, Professor Levin??"I think it was at CCNY??"for academic articles he had written on ethics that were not P.C.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� I was going to say, he must have been a conservative.

(CROSSTALK)

COULTER:?� Yes.?� It was a major investigation into??"it was directly on free speech.?�

And I think the point that Professor Levinson doesn t understand is that in industries other than teaching with tenure, it doesn t take 17 TV shows featuring your comments every night for you to have your job at risk.?� You can be fired a lot faster.?�

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� We are going to have to leave it there.

But, Ann Coulter and Paul Levinson, thank you so much.?� I have always loved Jesuit institutions.?� I think my son is going to be going to one in a year and a half, whether he likes it or not.?�

Joey, return the card to Fordham University.?�

Still ahead on SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY, female soldiers just having fun in the mud find themselves in military quicksand.?� Now, that s a tease.?� We will talk about and much more with my political roundtable coming up next.?�

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� Coming up next, from Bill Cosby to the Super Bowl to Britney Spears, plus, female soldiers mud wrestling.?� Well, let s just say you would be wise to stick around.?� That s coming up.

But, first, let s get the laagsdhfgdf news that your family needs to know.?�

(NEWS BREAK)

ANNOUNCER:?� From the press room, to the courtroom, to the halls of Congress, Joe Scarborough has seen it all.?� Welcome back to SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY.

SCARBOROUGH:?� Hey, we are back here with Ann Coulter.?� She s got a new DVD coming out.?� And The New York Post today calls it a behind-the-scenes look at Ann s life.

And sort of??"they were a bit snide, Ann.?� Tell me about it.

COULTER:?� Well, I didn t see the Post item.?� Apparently, they claim I am behind this and, actually, you just implied by saying I have a DVD coming out.?�

It wasn t my idea.?� I didn t do any of the editing, the participation in the content, the merchandising, the packaging.?� In fact, I haven t even seen it.?� It was someone else s project.?� I merely cooperated.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Yes, so The Post wrote that.?�

COULTER:?� And I thank you for asking me.?� Usually, when nasty, untrue things are said about me, you get the bust.?� You never get the counterbust.?� This is not my DVD.?� It s a DVD about me.?� I haven t seen it.?� Maybe they have, so, apparently it s a good DVD, but I think I still want to watch it.?�

(LAUGHTER)

SCARBOROUGH:?� OK.?� Let s talk.?�

I want to bring in Karen Hanretty right now.

But, Ann, I want to talk about the president s budget today.?� The media s take on the budget has been mixed.?� The New York Times said that it cuts veterans benefits and cuts benefits to grandmas and kids and furry barnyard animals.?� USA Today and others say it doesn t cut enough.?� We have talked about how this president and this Republican Congress have spent money irresponsibly.?�

Do you think George Bush and the Republicans in Washington have backed themselves into a corner it s going to be hard to get out of now that we ve got the largest deficit, the largest debt ever, and Republicans acting like big spenders??�

COULTER:?� I hope so.?�

There is a good complaint, that we are supposed to be the party of smaller government.?� Well, we have the House and Senate now.?� It is Congress that is responsible for the purse.?� So, I think they will have something to answer for if they don t cut the budget.?�

Most of all, I want to see if liberals are as concerned about the deficit as they were when we were cutting taxes.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Karen Hanretty, you re a Republican strategist also.?� How could the Republicans have acted so irresponsibly over the past four years and led Americans to the largest deficit and the largest debt ever??�

KAREN HANRETTY, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST:?� Well, you know, Joe, there was an interesting report that came out today that says that, with regard to education spending, $66 billion went unspent by states across the country.?�

So, while Democrats are out there complaining about spending cuts to education and all of their pet projects, I think it s important that finally this president is stepping up, looking at how money is being spent.?� And is there wasteful spending??� And I think, if you ask just about any voter, certainly in California, but throughout the country, if they think that there is waste and abuse in government, they will unanimously agree, regardless of blue state, red state.

So I think that the spending is certainly long overdue.?� And I think it s a positive signal for Republicans.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� It could be positive if they do it.?�

OK.?� So let s say that all voters say that there is waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.?� Well, the Republicans have controlled the White House.?� They have controlled the Senate.?� They have controlled the House of Representatives since 2001.?� And now John McCain is even saying he is afraid that members of Congress won t even go along with the president on these budget cuts.?� What is the difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to spending??�

HANRETTY:?� Well, I think that John McCain is right to raise this issue.?�

I think that there are a lot of Republicans across the country who have been very concerned about how fiscally conservative this administration is, although granted, the spending in this administration has gone up due to homeland security and the military.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Well, everything, farm subsidies.?� You name it.?�

HANRETTY:?� Well, and I think it s...

SCARBOROUGH:?� If you want money from the federal government, this president has given it.?�

HANRETTY:?� Well, and I think that he is in an interesting position right now, and we ll see if the Republicans??"I hope the Republicans have the courage to stand up and support this president, who is saying, you know, maybe we need to cut back on some of our farm subsidies and Amtrak and some other pet projects that, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, and you are looking to get reelected, these are the issues you run on.

And I am hoping that the Republicans have the courage to stand up, support this president and say, moving forward, we have got to get spending under control.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Let s hope so.

HANRETTY:?� We know what happens when that doesn t happen.?� We have seen what happens here in California when spending is out of control.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Yes.?� Let s hope so, because spending is out of control everywhere.?�

Now, Ann, today, the French said they want to make nice with America.?� The French foreign minister said his country wants a fresh start in relations with the United States.?� And his comments come one day before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Paris.?� But it s a little late, isn t it??� They obviously read the headlines from the Sunday elections.?� And they don t mean it.?�

COULTER:?� No, but it s interesting that the French are ready to start being nice about America.?� Liberals aren t yet.?� Maybe Chirac should run the Democratic National Committee, instead of Howard Dean.?� They are sounding a little warmer toward Bush than liberals are.?�

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� Well, Bush is also, though, sounding warmer to what Rumsfeld called old Europe than he did in the first term.?� Obviously, he and Condoleezza Rice have been stressing that they need to reach out to Europe.?� They need to bring this alliance back together.?� Do you think that s going to work or you think...?�

COULTER:?� It must be the influence of that magnificent new secretary of state we have, Condoleezza Rice, whom the Democrats opposed.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Yes.?�

Karen Hanretty, what is your response??� Should we reach out to France or should we tell them, too late??�

HANRETTY:?� Well, you know, this has got to be a very difficult day for France.?� And I am sure that it was not without a little bit of trepidation that they made that statement.

And the thought of France surrendering to America has a bit of a nice ring.?� But I am sure that people like Condoleezza Rice would be much more gracious than perhaps myself or Ann Coulter.?� But we ll see what France does and what their true motives are.?� And I think a lot of us suspect that they have ulterior motives.?� So I guess, in the coming months, we will see if they actually cooperate with the United States or not.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� All right, women, ladies, I want to ask you a question.?�

Ann, I will start with you.?� It s a tough question.?� OK.?� So you decide you want to serve the United States military.?� You are in Iraq for, I don t know, a year or so.?� People are shooting at you.?� Your life is on the line.?� Right before you are about to come home, you and your company go out.?� You have a little fight in mud.?� And after dodging bullets, after risking your life, because you are in a mud wrestling conagsdhfgdf, you get demoted.?� And the American media seems to be making it an international incident.?�

Do you think that s fair cure of these women that have been demoted??�

COULTER:?� I think you got the wrong girl here.?� You lost me the moment you said, I am in the military.?�

(LAUGHTER)

COULTER:?� I would like a United States military capable of winning wars, which will not involve sending girls to do fighting.?� No, from the moment you start sending women in to do the fighting, you have lost me.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� All right, Karen, Hanretty, I will ask you the same question.?�

HANRETTY:?� I am not going to argue the military s criteria for demoting soldiers.

But I think that, once again, the media has proven that, on a slow news day, they can turn women mud wrestlers into a major international incident.?� All the while, they ignore stories of schools being built and all of the improvements in Iraq.?� They don t want to tell those stories.?� They want to sink to reality TV, but, increasingly, that s what the media does.?�

(CROSSTALK)

COULTER:?� Well, apparently, it s also what these girls did.?�

(LAUGHTER)

HANRETTY:?� Well, you know what??� If men were mud wrestling, would this be a story all over the Drudge Report and the Internet and television??�

(CROSSTALK)

COULTER:?� No.?� No, it would not.

HANRETTY:?� No, it wouldn t.?�

COULTER:?� And I think you can check with Larry Summers on whether there could be an innate difference between men and women.?� And, yes, I think it s appalling that these women are mud wrestling, but I think it s appalling that they are in the military.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Let me bring in Jim Warren right now with The Chicago Tribune.

HANRETTY:?� Well, I would not agree with that.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Jim, I want to ask you a question that I asked Ann and Karen before regarding the president s budget.?� I know you have been fighting traffic.?� Thanks for being with us.?�

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� Do you think George Bush, who is now getting attacked from both sides for his new budget, do you think he has backed himself into a corner with the largest deficit and debt ever that he is not going to be able to get out easily??�

JIM WARREN, DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE :?� No, although I have to first put aside this discussion of mud wrestling.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Well, no, but, well, please...

WARREN:?� I just had this image of Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard...

SCARBOROUGH:?� Mud wrestling.

WARREN:?� ... being involved in mud wrestling in Iraq.?�

I think, if you put aside the facile and certainly the easy criticisms, this??"what he presented today does not take note of the cost of Iraq, of Afghanistan, of whatever his Social Security plan is.?� I still think you can argue that it is quite notable.?� He is taking, attempting to take a whack, as you know, former Congressman, at some truly politically sensitive matters, which include agricultural subsidies.

It also includes something like medicines for vets.?� So I have got to hand it to him for having the nerve to try to do that and also in taking a whack at discretionary spending.?� For those whose eyes glaze over, that s the stuff that folks like Joe Scarborough s old colleagues in Congress actually have a chance to take a shot at.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� That you can actually control, right.

(CROSSTALK)

WARREN:?� That you can actually control.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Outside of Social Security, outside of Medicare, outside of the mandatory spending.?�

Well, Jim, what...

(CROSSTALK)

WARREN:?� The real question...

SCARBOROUGH:?� Are Republicans going to follow him, for instance, let s say Republicans in red states, on farm subsidies??�

WARREN:?� Well, you know, you tell me.?�

Tell me about some Republicans in Florida who might be very sensitive to sugar subsidies.?� Tell me about some folks in other parts of the South who might be very sensitive to cotton subsidies.?� I think the devil is in the details.?� And the devil is who is going to be lobbying for the most powerful force, as you know, in that town, which is the status quo.?� They are going to get a lot of Republicans on the Hill who are going to say, no way, don t want you to go after those veteran benefits, no way, don t want you to go after those ag subsidies.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� And, of course, as a representative of Florida, I saw people voting for the peanut subsidies, voting for the sugar subsidies.?� I voted against them, but I am not in Washington anymore.?�

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

WARREN:?� On the surface, this does hint at being quite serious about the deficit.?� Now, it s not in the same ballpark as one of those Clinton budgets, which you well remember, which, by and large, was DOA, dead on arrival, when it got to at least the Republican-controlled House.?�

It s a little different here.?� It will be a little bit more interesting here.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� All right, Jim, Ann and Karen, thanks so much for being with us.?� We greatly appreciate it.?�

And I have got to tell you, I am going to be watching the House and Senate Republicans, who got elected to Congress talking about how conservative they were on fiscal issues.?� And the second they got up there, the second Republicans got in control of everything, they decided they wanted to stay in control, so they started spending money at a rate that even Democrats never spent.

Now, that makes a lot of my Republican friends angry, but you know what??� It s the facts.?� Don t be mad at me.?� Be mad at your Republican so-called conservative Republican senator.?� You write them a letter and tell them it s time to get the deficit and the debt under control, or else you and your children and your grandchildren are going to pay for it.?�

Now, coming up next, I have got issues with John Kerry.?� He tried to defend himself today on Imus, but Imus doesn t think he did such a great job.?�

I ll tell you about that coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWS BREAK)?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� Just another manic Monday, and I ve got issues.?�

First of all, I ve got issues with Senator John Kerry.?� This morning on the Imus show, the senator responded to the Cheney family s complaints at Kerry s mention of Mary Cheney being a lesbian during the third and most important presidential debate.?�

Take a listen.?�

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, IMUS IN THE MORNING )

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS:?� They had talked a number of times themselves publicly about their daughter with considerable pride.?� And I thought I was doing it in a constructive, decent, gentle way.?� It was intended, and we made it very, very clear, as nothing more than affirmation of their own family s love for her.?�

(END AUDIO CLIP)

SCARBOROUGH:?� An affirmation of love.?� I feel like getting with the senator and singing We Are the World.

Senator, are you serious??� In the most important debate of your life, you bring up the fact that the vice president s daughter is lesbian, and you want to pretend that you were doing the vice president and his family a favor??� You know what??� If they had wanted that out there publicly in that forum, you know, you should have let the president say it.?� Or John Edwards, when he brought it up also, should have let the vice president say it.?� Not good.?�

And I have got issues with last night s Super Bowl ads.?� Now, I thought the funniest ads of the night belonged to CareerBuilder.com??"or .net??"which featured a man surrounded by monkeys in the workplace.?� I just love monkeys.?� I don t know what there is about them.?�

But a more controversial ad mocked last year s wardrobe malfunction.?� So, did I find that ad offensive??� Well, absolutely not.?� At least not as offensive as I found the ad for Tadalafil.?�

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, CIALIS AD)

NARRATOR:?� Tadalafil is the only male erectile dysfunctional tablet clinically proven to not only work fast, but also work up to 36 hours.?� Side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backup for muscle ache.?� Erections lasting longer than four hours, though rare, require immediate medical help.?�

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCARBOROUGH:?� I don t want to see it.?� I just??"I don t want to see it.?� Thank you, Tadalafil, for ruining that song for me forever.?� I ll no longer be able to hear the Ronettes without hearing a voice-over speaking of glory of overwhelming male erectile dysfunction.?�

Again, thank you, Tadalafil.?� Now, leave.?� Go home.?� No mas.

And, finally, I have got issues with forgetful pop stars.?� Britney Spears is suing eight insurance companies for $10 million for failing to pay up after a knee injury forced the diva to cancel last year s summer tour.?� The insurance companies say they are not paying, and for good reason, because Britney told them she had no previous injuries, when in fact she already had knee surgery once.?�

But Britney claims she forgot about the surgery and the injury because it healed up.?� Hey, Britney, you are 22 years old, and this ain t like marriage.?� You should be able to remember having a knee surgery four years ago, when you were 18 years old.?� I think you re out of luck.?� The insurance companies win on this one.?�

And now one from Celebrity Justice. ?� Two weeks ago, a female acquaintance of Bill Cosby claimed the sitcom dad drugged and fondled her in January of 2004.?� Mr. Cosby s publicist has called the charges categorically false.?�

And with me now to talk about it more, from Celebrity Justice is Harvey Levin.?�

Harvey, give us the very laagsdhfgdf on what you know.?�

HARVEY LEVIN, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, CELEBRITY JUSTICE :?� Well, we know that there s an ongoing police investigation.

We also know that Bill Cosby has told the cops in Philadelphia he did have a sexual encounter with this woman.?� The difference is, he says it was purely consensual.?� And here s what s really interesting about the case.?� This woman maintained a cordial relationship with Bill Cosby all last year.?� And, in fact, seven months after this incident, we know that she actually called Bill Cosby and said, look, I would love to go to your concert near Toronto, your performance.?� Can you get me tickets for myself and my parents?

And Cosby actually got them tickets.?� It wasn t this woman who complained.?� Last month, it was her mother that contacted Cosby and got really upset.?� And we are told from sources connected with Cosby that the mother made overtures about getting some kind of money from Cosby.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� I was going to ask, is there any proof out there that this mother, again, not the daughter who was involved in the incident, but this mother actually saw an opportunity to shake down a public figure like Bill Cosby and thought, hey, I am going to milk this for all it s worth?

LEVIN:?� Well, Joe, that s exactly what Cosby s people are saying happened.?� We are told that she didn t make a specific money demand.?� She merely talked around it and said it would be nice if you would help with my daughter s education.?� It would be nice if you would help her out.?� They never really talked about a specific amount.

But we know that Cosby actually called her at one point, called the mother and basically said, look, what can we do to work it out??� Not that he was worried about any kind of criminal allegation, because he had no idea at the time.?� He just didn t want the embarrassment of this happening.?� So, before she went to the cops, we are told these conversations occurred where there were these overtures about dough.?�

SCARBOROUGH:?� All right, Harvey, thanks for being with us.?� We are going to ask you to come back as we follow this story.?� Again, it sounds like a pure shakedown operation to me.?� Thanks for being with us.?�

And we will be back with some amazing footage of a multimillion-dollar home being ruined by rain.?� That s coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� My blog today talks about media bias in covering the president s new budget.?� You can read that and much more on my Web site at Joe. .?�

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCARBOROUGH:?� You know, there s some very unhappy homeowners in Southern California, as several multimillion-dollar homes are sliding off their foundations and down hills.?�

After last month s torrential rain, this home in Anaheim Hills, California, has been one that s been declared unlivable and is literally sliding away.?� Witnesses say they can hear windows popping and the house slowly ripping apart.?� Ugly scene out there.?�

Now, if you can, send us an e-mail.?� Tell us what you think about the show and what you want to see.?� You can do that by e-mailing me at Joe. .?� We will be reading your e-mails as we move forward on a lot of these stories we have been talking about, whether it s eradicating radicalism on college campuses or whether it s about the CIA cover-up of these Christian missionaries being killed.?� Whatever it is, e-mail us at Joe. .?�

Hey, we appreciate you being with us tonight.?� Thanks so much.?�

And you can catch Senator Joe Lieberman tomorrow morning on Imus in the Morning. ?� And, of course, that s Imus in the Morning live from world headquarters.?�

See you tomorrow.?�

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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