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Smokers trying to quit the habit were mistakenly prescribed anti-impotence drug Viagra by doctors.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said the error was due to a computer glitch at two city GP practices.
When GPs selected anti-smoking pill Zyban, computers selected sildenafil, the generic name for Viagra.
A health board spokeswoman said: “At no time was patient care affected by this as all prescriptions are subject to stringent double checking.”
The e-Formulary computer system used by GPs automatically selects a list of the most popular drugs when doctors fill out prescriptions.
Some patients went to the pharmacy with a prescription for the anti-impotence drug instead of tablets to help them stop smoking.
The health board was made aware of the problem on Tuesday and alerted all its GPs to the problem.
It is not thought anyone left a chemist with the wrong medication.
A health board spokeswoman said: “A computer glitch was discovered by two Glasgow GP practices that use the Glasgow e-Formulary, following a recent update of the online GPass system used throughout Scotland.
“As a precaution an advisory e-mail and memo was issued to all practices which use GPass and have installed the e-Formulary to alert staff.”
Reported assassination of Russian spammer deemed a hoax
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San Francisco (IDGNS) -
The reported assassination of an alleged Russian spammer is a hoax, according to
security researchers.
On Thursday, a blog post on the Web site Loonov.com claimed a spammer named Alexey Tolstokozhev was found murdered in a villa outside Moscow. “He has been shot several times with one bullet stuck in his head. According to authorities, this last head shot is a clear mark of Russian hit men,” the post said.
The reported assassination of Tolstokozhev echoed the 2005 murder of an actual Russian spammer, Vardan Kushnir. Kushnir was found beaten to death in a Moscow apartment, prompting speculation his murder was related to his activities as a spammer. However, a police investigation later said Kushnir was killed by robbers and his death was not connected with his spam activities.
The Tolstokozhev story caught the attention of the security community as well as blogs, even making it on to Slashdot, one of the most popular sites for technology-related news. But security researchers soon debunked the report.
The story began to unravel when researchers failed to locate Tolstokozhev in records of known spammers, even though Loonov.com claimed he was responsible for “up to 30 percent of all Viagra and penis enlargement-related spam” and made more than $2 millionin 2007 from these unsolicited e-mails. More questions were raised when researchers discovered that the Loonov.com domain name was registered on the same day the assassination post appeared.
“We got the feeling pretty quickly that it was a hoax,” said Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager at McAfee&39;s idea of a joke or they were using a real person&39;s SunbeltBlog and Taint.org, a blog written by Justin Mason, a software developer in Ireland.
The motivation behind the Tolstokozhev hoax is not clear. The Loonov.com domain was registered anonymously and the identity of the person behind the hoax is not known.
“It&39;s name, because this guy&39;s computer, but didn&39;t found any malicious code embedded in the site,” he said.
Perhaps ironically, all of the attention that&39;s getting an awful lot of traffic being driven to the site because of all the attention he&39;ll get a lot of Google juice out of this,” Marcus said, referring to the way Google&39;ve already got good Google activity built up, but that's just a guess.” (more…)
Protein Mimetics Could Lead To More Successful Coronary Bypasses
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Science Daily — TEMPE, ARIZONA, May 12, 2003 — Severe spasm of blood vessels contributes to the failure of coronary bypass surgeries and to strokes following the rupture of an aneurysm in the brain. A complex signaling pathway controls relaxation in smooth muscle cells, but researchers at Arizona State University have discovered how to bypass it.
The research team has created a mimetic of the last protein in the pathway, HSP20, which causes relaxation in the same way as the natural protein. This research, published May 8 in the online version of The FASEB Journal, is a major step in the development of a drug that promotes blood vessel relaxation.
The signaling pathway that causes relaxation in smooth muscle cells involves many different proteins, but the last step is the addition of a phosphate group, or phosphorylation, of the protein HSP20, which actually effects relaxation.
Other groups have developed molecules, such as the active ingredient in Viagra, that affect earlier steps in this pathway. But if a problem occurs in later steps, these compounds are ineffective.
“You’ve got all those signaling pathways, but, boom, you can bypass them by putting in a mimetic of the protein that’s the effector molecule,” said primary investigator Colleen Brophy, research professor of bioengineering at ASU, director of the Center for Protein and Peptide Pharmaceuticals in the Arizona Biodesign Institute, and chief of vascular surgery at the Carl T. Hayden Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
The HSP20 mimetic developed at ASU consists of a 13 amino acid stretch of the protein attached to a protein transduction domain, a peptide that allows the mimetic to enter cells. The HSP20 portion of the mimetic includes a phosphate group attached to the same amino acid as in the active version of natural HSP20.
Brophy and colleagues measured the contraction of thin rings of smooth muscle from the coronary arteries of pigs with a force transducer. They pre-contracted the muscles by adding the hormone serotonin, then added either their HSP20 mimetic, a scrambled version of the HSP20 mimetic, or papaverine, a compound known to relax muscles by acting earlier in the signal pathway.
The HSP20 mimetic caused the rings of muscle to relax in a dose-dependent fashion, as did papaverine. The scrambled mimetic did not cause any change.
Furthermore, in collaboration with Intrinsic Bioprobes, Inc. of Tempe, Ariz., the researchers used a mass spectrometer to look at the natural HSP20 proteins in the rings. They found both phosphorylated and non-phosphorylated HSP20 in papaverine-treated muscle, but only non-phosphorylated HSP20 in mimetic-treated muscle. Thus, the mimetic induces relaxation by its own action.
Brophy and colleagues also attached a fluorescent protein to their mimetic so that they could see the location of the mimetic in the rings of muscle and individual muscle cells. They found that it was evenly distributed, with a transduction efficiency of about 90 percent.
This research is part of an overarching goal to create protein-based pharmaceuticals to treat a variety of diseases. The next step is to take a HSP20 mimetic into stage one clinical trials so that its efficacy and safety in humans can be tested.
“I’m interested in approaching science from a bedside to bench and back to bedside approach,” said Brophy, who is also a vascular surgeon. “We hope to be very applied in terms of looking at clinically relevant problems for which there’s an unmet need, then developing experimental approaches to solving these problems, and then, based on experimental discoveries, engineer molecules that can be used to treat human disease.”
This research will be published in the print version of The FASEB Journal in July.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Arizona State University. (more…)
News - California’s porn industry HIV scare
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We had our invitation, street name and house number. All that remained was to agree a time.
“Come early,” our host advised, “before the orgy begins.”
And so I found myself at a large secluded house one chilly Wednesday morning, producer and cameraman in tow.
Expensive cars dotted the driveway. By the front door, two bored looking technicians were adjusting the lights.
To one side a long veranda afforded a panoramic view of the San Fernando Valley, capital of America’s adult film industry.
The grand piano was decked with family photos of a middle-aged man, his wife and child.
The man in the picture appeared from the kitchen.
It turned out he was an accountant who had taken time off from attending to his clients’ tax returns to watch as his palatial home was transformed into a porn set.
Where was the woman in the picture and the cherubic child, I wondered?
“Staying with their in-laws.”
Were they aware of what was going on?
The accountant smiled. “I told them we were filming an exercise video - well it’s a form of exercise isn’t it?”
‘Lucrative’
The director of the shoot, Paul Thomas, looked a little like Burt Reynolds’ character Jack Horner in the film “Boogie Nights” - a movie all about the California porn industry.
Mainstream Hollywood is still the biggest player in the movie industry
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Now 53-years-old, Thomas is virtually unique among his porno peers as someone who not only had mainstream ambitions but the talent to realise them.
The young Paul Thomas starred as Peter in the film “Jesus Christ Superstar” as well as on Broadway, before tiring of the constant auditions and falling into a more lucrative, less demanding means of making a living.
Famed for making plot-driven sex films, he is now regarded as the Fellini of adult entertainment and is now under contract to Vivid Video.
It is the biggest company in the business, and one of the only producers in America which requires its male performers to wear condoms on the set.
As Paul Thomas’ wife sat knitting a scarf in the corner, I asked the two performers, 18-year-old Lexi-Marie and 27-year-old Trent Tesoro, what they made of the condom-only rule.
The performers
Trent, a former chef who intended to spend no more than three months in the porn industry, but three years later shows no sign of returning to the kitchen, said that “like most men” he preferred not to wear a condom.
He also works with production companies which do not have such strict rules as Vivid, and boasted that he had probably had unprotected sex “hundreds” of times on film.
Lexi, whose surgically-enhanced breasts lent an almost cartoon-like quality to her willowy frame, said she would have unprotected sex on screen if she “got to know someone really well”.
As the day wore on, Trent coyly confided that he harboured a secret desire to get to know Lexi really well.
Like a teenager with a crush he told me he had a date with her on Saturday night.
He seemed much more nervous about that than having sex with her in front of a room full of people.
HIV scare
Condoms became an issue in the San Fernando Valley eight months ago when one of the industry’s major stars, Darren James, tested positive for HIV.
Four women he had worked with were subsequently diagnosed, prompting a scare which brought the entire industry to a standstill for two months.
It was the first such outbreak for many years, and the publicity it generated spurred state authorities into action.
Officials from the Californian Health and Safety at Work division imposed 30,000 dollar fines on the two production companies at the centre of the outbreak.
And there was even talk of enshrining condom use in law.
Yet for all the brouhaha, it is estimated that fewer than 20% of porn stars currently engage in safe sex.
The performers blame the producers, maintaining they would not get work if they insist on using condoms.
The producers blame the performers, and cannot believe they have not banded together to demand that condoms be used.
‘Sexual gymnastics’
Back on the set, as Trent and Lexi were rehearsing the rudimentary dialogue that would serve as a brief prelude to a vigorous bout of sexual gymnastics, the director was distracted.
The porn industry has capitalised on LA’s glamorous image
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Paul Thomas had lost interest in the mechanical movements and blunt choreography of his shoot.
There was a problem, he was short of a body - would I like to help?
The crew explained what was required and I dutifully signed the release forms, pondering for about half an hour what my “stage name” should be.
I settled on “Dirk Diggler”, the name used by the gauche waiter turned porn star in “Boogie Nights”.
Then I sat back and did what everyone does on movie sets, legitimate or otherwise, and that is wait.
Had I known of my impending 15 minutes of fame when I met her a few days earlier, I could have got all the tips in the book from Sharon Mitchell.
The star of more than 1,000 sex films, she finally decided to call it quits when an obsessed fan attacked and raped her on her doorstep.
She returned to school to study for a doctorate in human sexuality and went on to found a health-care organisation which tests porn stars for sexually-transmitted diseases.
Protection
 |
Most of the people who gravitate to this industry do so because they can’t make it in the real world
Former porn actress Sharon Mitchell
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It was her clinic which detected the recent outbreak of HIV.
“Anyone with a handful of Viagra and a Hi-8 camera can be a porn star nowadays,” she told me matter-of-factly.
“But most of the people who gravitate to this industry do so because they can’t make it in the real world. They can’t organise lunch let alone crime. Those are not the sort of people who learn a lesson.”
When I inquired of the companies at the centre of the HIV scare, whether they now insist that their performers wear condoms, I was told it was up to the individuals involved.
State legislators know that, by cracking down on condom use in the San Fernando Valley, they run the risk of forcing the industry underground and forfeiting millions of dollars in taxes.
Before you ask, my career as an extra is on hold.
They ran out of time to film the scene while we were there and I thought better of returning the next day.
For those like Lexi and Trent, who have made pornography their lives, HIV remains an “occupational hazard”.
One the love-sick Trent is desperately hoping will not sabotage their burgeoning relationship.
They have already had the sex.
All they need now is the love.
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 1 January 2005 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.
Original article ‘News - California’s porn industry HIV scare‘
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