San Diego naval hospital testing unusual PTSD treatment

Naval Medical Center San Diego is studying whether an anesthetic used during childbirth could help relieve symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

by Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

December 26, 2011

Reporting from San Diego -- The Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars searching for a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, the overarching term for the nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety and restlessness suffered by many troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nearly all of the dozens of research projects involve long-term counseling and prescription drugs.

But researchers at the Naval Medical Center San Diego believe that something as seemingly simple as injections of an anesthetic given to women during childbirth may be effective in alleviating the symptoms associated with PTSD.

Early testing on several dozen veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts has proved promising, with some, although not all, showing signs of relief from stellate ganglion block treatment, researchers said.

"It may be a significant tool in our armory" to fight PTSD, said Dr. Robert McLay, a psychiatrist and director of mental health research at the medical center.

McLay, whose book "At War With PTSD" will soon be published by Johns Hopkins University Press, says he was skeptical when he first heard about the treatment.

"I thought this was a little wacky when it was mentioned," he said.

But now McLay and Dr. Anita Hickey, a Navy captain and pain control specialist, are midway through a two-year study of 40-plus active-duty Marines, sailors and soldiers diagnosed with PTSD. One of the early findings is that volunteers receiving the injections are doing better than those receiving placebos.

McLay and Hickey hope to present their findings to the American Psychiatric Assn. at its May convention in Philadelphia.

Many questions are yet to be answered: Why does the treatment appear to work on some patients but not others? How many shots are needed? What about side effects? Are combat cases of PTSD different from non-combat cases?

"There is a lot to be studied," Hickey said.

Still, if the treatment proves effective, much of the credit will go to Dr. Eugene Lipov, a Chicago anesthesiologist who has pioneered its use among his patients, many of them former military personnel.

"If we don't get PTSD under control, our crime rate and social disability are going to be out of control," said Lipov, founder of Chicago's Advanced Pain Centers.

In hopes of treating recent veterans or active-duty personnel, Lipov submitted three applications for federal research funding. He was rejected three times by the Pentagon despite, in 2007, having support from the junior senator from Illinois at the time, Barack Obama.

Then, a Navy doctor from San Diego heard Lipov's impassioned testimony before a congressional committee and was intrigued. That led to a $250,000 grant to the Naval Medical Center San Diego, a modest amount in the world of medical research.

In fiscal year 2010, the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery allocated $800 million for more than 80 research projects on PTSD.

One of Lipov's patients, Raleigh Showens, 64, of McHenry, Ill., had suffered from PTSD since returning from service as an Army medic in Vietnam. "All I saw was torment, death and destruction," he said in a telephone interview.

A year ago, frustrated with counseling and medication, Showens said, he was on the verge of suicide. He took up Lipov's offer of free treatment and received an injection on Dec. 20.

"That was the first night in 40-plus years that I'd slept all night," he said. But three days later, the effect seemed to wear off, and Showens needed a second injection.

Showens said he feels so good that he has quit all counseling and medication.

McLay said his theory is that if the injection method proves effective, it will be best used in addition to therapy, not as a substitute. "I think it will be good to have a variety of treatments," he said.

There are differences between the work of Lipov and the Navy researchers involving what drug is best (obstetricians use several different ones for epidurals) and what is the best method for locating the precise location in the neck for the injection (Lipov likes X-ray, Hickey prefers ultrasound).

The treatment aims to affect the body's sympathetic nervous system through the nerves in the neck. The bundle of nerves that control the "fight or flight" syndrome in the brain are known as the stellate ganglion.

The injection, Lipov said, "resets" the nerve bundle to calm down the agitation and "hypervigilance" that are common to PTSD sufferers. Although denied federal funding, Lipov has received $81,000 from the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs and has 10 veterans enrolled in his own study.

Lipov and Maryam Navaie, president and chief executive of the La Jolla-based Advance Health Solutions, plan a trip to Washington early next year to lobby key members of Congress.

And in February, Military Medicine, the monthly publication of the Assn. of Military Surgeons of the U.S., will publish an article by Lipov, Navaie, Hickey and four other researchers discussing Lipov's findings and the early results from the Naval Medical Center San Diego study.

On one point all the researchers agree: PTSD will remain a medical challenge long after the end of the wars. McLay said PTSD, by different names, can be traced to the days of Achilles and the Spartans.

"I see Marines, SEALs, Green Berets — the toughest men on earth — and they still have PTSD," McLay said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ptsd-treatment-20111226,0,6614774,print.story

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Death penalty, by the numbers

Statistical evidence of racial bias should be considered when handing down capital punishment.

December 26, 2011

North Carolina is in the midst of a struggle between the governor and the Legislature over whether death row inmates should be allowed to use statistical evidence of racial bias to challenge their sentences. In our view, they should. Some communities have imposed the death penalty in such an unequal way that it makes sense to deprive them of the power to do it again.

Among the compelling arguments against capital punishment are its inherent brutality and its potential for error. But documented patterns of racial discrimination in sentencing are also well established and deeply troubling, particularly in cases in which the crime victim is white. A 2005 study of homicides in California from 1990 to 1999, for instance, drawing on FBI data, found that 2.1% of the offenders suspected of killing non-Latino whites were sentenced to death, compared with only 0.68% of those suspected of killing non-Latino African Americans.

In 2009, North Carolina's Legislature passed the Racial Justice Act, which allows defendants to make the case — at a pretrial hearing or after conviction — that statistics show that the death penalty has been imposed significantly more often on defendants in their geographical area because of their race or that of the victim. (Similar legislation was introduced in California in 2010 but languished in committee.) If the judge determines that race has been a factor — not in the individual case but statistically — then the death sentence may not be sought or would have to be vacated. Instead, the defendant would be sentenced to life without parole.

A year after the measure passed, a new, Republican-controlled Legislature came into office and sought to repeal it. The Legislature is now locked in a battle with Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, over the future of the law.

Admittedly, the use of statistical data is a departure from traditional notions of justice, which focus on the facts of the individual case. But it is possible that the system may be skewed as a whole without a judge consciously taking race into account when sentencing. Presenting statistical evidence could give a judge second thoughts about his unconscious biases.

In 1987, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that statistics showing bias in imposition of the death penalty amounted to a denial of equal protection of the law in a particular case. But the court left it up to state legislatures whether they wanted to authorize the use of statistical evidence in their own courts. In the long run, states should do away with capital punishment altogether. But as long as they permit it, they shouldn't ignore evidence that it is being carried out unequally.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-1226-death-20111226,0,1131396,print.story

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From Google News

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'Anonymous' hackers target US security think tank

by CASSANDRA VINOGRAD

LONDON -- The loose-knit hacking movement "Anonymous" claimed Sunday to have stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to clients of U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor. One hacker said the goal was to pilfer funds from individuals' accounts to give away as Christmas donations, and some victims confirmed unauthorized transactions linked to their credit cards.

Anonymous boasted of stealing Stratfor's confidential client list, which includes a range of entities from banks to Apple the U.S. Air Force to the Miami Police Department, and mining it for more than 4,000 credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.

"Not so private and secret anymore?" the group taunted in a message on Twitter, promising that the attack on Stratfor was just the beginning of a Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.

Anonymous said the client list it posted was a small slice of its 200 gigabytes worth of plunder it stole from Stratfor and promised more leaks. It said it was able to get the credit details in part because Stratfor didn't bother encrypting them -- an easy-to-avoid blunder which, if true, would be a major embarrassment for any security-related company.

Austin, Texas-based Stratfor provides political, economic and military analysis to help clients reduce risk, according to a description on its YouTube page. It charges subscribers for its reports and analysis, delivered through the web, emails and videos.

Lt. Col. John Dorrian, public affairs officer for the Air Force, said that "for obvious reasons" the Air Force doesn't discuss specific vulnerabilities, threats or responses to them.

"The Air Force will continue to monitor the situation and, as always, take apporpriate action as necessary to protect Air Force networks and information," he said in an email.

Miami Police Department spokesman Sgt. Freddie Cruz Jr. said that he could not confirm that the agency was a client of Stratfor, and he said he had not received any information about any security breach involving the police department.

It soon became clear that proprietary information about the companies and government agencies that subscribe to Stratfor's newsletters did not appear to be at any significant risk, and that the main threat was posed to individual employees.

Hours after publishing what it claimed was Stratfor's client list, Anonymous tweeted a link to encrypted files online with the names, addresses and account details.

"Not as many as you expected? Worry not, fellow pirates and robin hoods. These are just the "A"s," read a message posted online that encouraged readers to download a file of the hacked information.

It also linked to images online that it suggested were receipts for charitable donations made by the group manipulating the credit card data it stole.

"Thank you! Defense Intelligence Agency," read the text above one image that appeared to show a transaction summary indicating that an agency employee's information was used to donate $250 to a non-profit.

One receipt -- to the American Red Cross -- had Allen Barr's name on it.

Barr, of Austin, Texas, recently retired from the Texas Department of Banking and said he discovered last Friday that a total of $700 had been spent from his account. Barr, who has spent more than a decade dealing with cybercrime at banks, said five transactions were made in total.

"It was all charities, the Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children. So when the credit card company called my wife she wasn't sure whether I was just donating," said Barr, who wasn't aware until a reporter with the AP called that his information had been compromised when Stratfor's computers were hacked.

"It made me feel terrible. It made my wife feel terrible. We had to close the account."

Stratfor said in an email to members that it had suspended its servers and email after learning that its website had been hacked.

"We have reason to believe that the names of our corporate subscribers have been posted on other web sites," said the email, passed on to The Associated Press by subscribers. "We are diligently investigating the extent to which subscriber information may have been obtained."

The email, signed by Stratfor Chief Executive George Friedman, said the company is "working closely with law enforcement to identify who is behind the breach."

"Stratfor's relationship with its members and, in particular, the confidentiality of their subscriber information, are very important to Stratfor and me," Friedman wrote.

Repeated calls to Stratfor went unanswered Sunday and an answering machine thanked callers for contacting the "No. 1 source for global intelligence." Stratfor's website was down, with a banner saying "site is currently undergoing maintenance."

Wishing everyone a "Merry LulzXMas" -- a nod to its spinoff hacking group Lulz Security -- Anonymous also posted a link on Twitter to a site containing the email, phone number and credit number of a U.S. Homeland Security employee.

The employee, Cody Sultenfuss, said he had no warning before his details were posted.

"They took money I did not have," he told The Associated Press in a series of emails, which did not specify the amount taken. "I think why me? I am not rich."

One member of the hacking group, who uses the handle AnonymousAbu on Twitter, claimed that more than 90,000 credit cards from law enforcement, the intelligence community and journalists -- "corporate/exec accounts of people like Fox" news -- had been hacked and used to "steal a million dollars" and make donations.

It was impossible to verify where credit card details were used. Fox News was not on the excerpted list of Stratfor members posted online, but other media organizations including MSNBC and Al-Jazeera English appeared in the file.

Anonymous warned it has "enough targets lined up to extend the fun fun fun of LulzXmas through the entire next week."

The group has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on companies such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, as well as others in the music industry and the Church of Scientology.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9RROBRO3.htm

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