'Super flu' fears grip the world

Other FDA-related developments:
*More bad news about pain killers. Merck's withdrawal of the popular arthritis medication Vioxx from the market in September 2004 was followed in March by Pfizer's withdrawal of Bextra. Both were tied to increased heart risks. Merck lost the first but won the second of many lawsuits alleging it hid information on Vioxx's dangers, and the third ended in a mistrial after a medical journal said Merck failed to report three deaths in one Vioxx study.

*Over-the-counter medications became suspect, too. Warnings were posted on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDS, a wide class of pain killers including Motrin, Aleve and Advil. Aspirin wasn't included because studies show that it cuts heart risks rather than increases them.

*Three makers of heart defibrillators issued huge recalls. Guidant Corp. drew criticism for waiting three years to warn doctors and patients about a defect with one model that's been linked to two deaths.

*Silicone-gel breast implants took a step toward returning to market. FDA advisers recommended that one company be allowed to resume selling them but voted against similar plans by another.

*BiDil, the first race-based pill, won approval for blacks with heart failure.

*Natrecor, another heart failure medication, was ordered to carry warnings that it might raise the risk of death.

*Pargluva, a novel Type 2 diabetes drug that had been expected to win government approval, was dealt a blow when a study linked it to higher risk of deaths, heart attacks and strokes.

But the biggest concern about drugs for many people remained how to pay for them. As 2005 drew to a close, seniors struggled to make sense of the complex choices that will give them their first prescription drug benefits under Medicare, starting in 2006.

In other medical news:
*The Terry Schiavo case became a referendum on the right to die as the comatose Florida woman's husband battled her parents to remove a feeding tube keeping her alive. She died last spring after her husband prevailed. An autopsy revealed her brain had stopped working years ago.

*French doctors said they had done the world's first partial face transplant, grafting a nose, mouth and chin from a person who recently died onto a 38-year-old woman mauled by a dog. In the United States, the Cleveland Clinic proceeded with plans to do a full face transplant, interviewing about a dozen potential candidates who were severely burned or disfigured and had exhausted normal reconstructive surgery methods.

*Prostate cancer got big attention. Researchers held the first major scientific conference focused on the disease, which is more deadly to men than breast cancer is to women.

*Research mounted on the benefits of vitamin D, a nutrient the body makes from sunshine. A prominent Harvard doctor made it the topic of his keynote lecture at a major cancer conference, and the American Cancer Society has been reviewing its sunscreen guidelines to see whether modest amounts of sunshine can be termed beneficial.

*Smoking rates continued to decline in the United States. Lung cancer awareness increased with the deaths of newsman Peter Jennings and actress Barbara Bel Geddes, and the diagnosis of the disease in Dana Reeves, a non-smoker.

*Researchers argued about how many deaths obesity really causes, and how bad it is to be overweight. Researchers are keeping an eye on rimonabant, an experimental medication under FDA review that fights overeating in a new way, by blocking a pleasure center in the brain.

*April marked the 50-year anniversary of the Salk polio vaccine.

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