Michael Weinstein

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health says a meningitis vaccine campaign is not needed for gay men in the Los Angeles area, but AIDS Healthcare Foundation president Michael Weinstein is still questioning the county's handling of meningitis cases among gay men.

On Friday, Public Health sent out a press release saying that it "has not identified any other cases of meningococcal disease associated with [West Hollywood resident Brett Shaad who tragically died from bacterial meningitis], nor identified any linkage between this patient and cases being reported in other areas of the country."

As a result, Public Health director Jonathan Fielding does "not recommend a vaccination campaign in response to the present situation of meningococcal disease in Los Angeles County." Weinstein, whose organization has been offering free meningitis vaccines to gay men in the L.A. area, serves up another opinion.

More »

UCLA

If you go to UCLA, you can sign up for military service and die for your country. You can vote (if you're at least 18). You drink (if you're 21). And you can take THC semi-legally, if you have a doctor's blessing (and keep it to yourself). But you can't smoke on campus.

Starting today the Westwood school's tobacco-toking ways are a thing of the past. The first day of the university's groundbreaking no-smoking rule coincides with ...

More »

UCLA

Public Health Director Jonathan Fielding

Updated at the bottom: Health experts say only some types of bacterial meningitis are spread person-to-person, these types are not as contagious as flu and are not sexually transmitted. The CDC says there is no increased risk among gays and no rationale for county officials to alter their approach. Brett Shaad's family, meanwhile, condemns media hysteria over his death.

Updated at the bottom: The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services has announced today that it will be providing free meningococcal vaccines for low-income and uninsured residents in Los Angeles County.

The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center has released new figures for the total number of gay or bisexual men who have been recently infected with meningitis in Los Angeles County. The center received that information from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and its director, Dr. Jonathan Fielding, late yesterday.

Fielding and county health officials also disclosed to the Gay & Lesbian Center that they've only been tracking meningitis cases among gay and bisexual men since November 2012 -- five and a half months.

Yet in New York City, health officials have been tracking sexual orientation during their investigations as a matter of policy for years.

More »

Legacy.com

Rjay Spoon

WeHo News is reporting that another gay men in the Los Angeles area recently died of bacterial meningitis, heightening concerns that the widely publicized death of West Hollywood resident and gay man Brett Shaad is not an isolated incident.

Downtown Los Angeles resident and gay man Rjay Spoon died from bacterial meningitis on December 16, 2012, according to WeHo News. He was only 30 years old. Spoon would have turned 31 on April 27.

Casey Hayden, Spoon's boyfriend at the time of the death, wrote on Facebook: "If anyone has any information as to where he could have been exposed, the [L.A. County] health department needs to know to help with this case. And again thank you all so much for everything. I know your hearts are hurting too over the loss of our beautiful, sexy man who is now our angel."

More »

Courtesy of Gage Middle School

Students & faculty play flag football at Gage Middle School

Huntington Park was dubbed the city with the fattest kids in California in 2012, which prompted students and faculty at heavily Latino Gage Middle School in Huntington Park to team up and try slim down the student body's bodies.

After an article posted by L.A. Weekly and headlined "Huntington Park Has the Fattest Kids in California; Manhattan Beach has the Skinniest," many parents and students spoke out in the comments section. While some blamed not enough public parks or awareness programs, others blamed fast food and the cost of raising a large family with a poverty-level income.

Gage Middle School has decided to try and cut the fat. "The students reacted angrily to the article, and felt that it was a dubious honor that they wanted to shed," explains teacher Ruben Hernandez.

Here's how:

More »

Bloody Marty Mix/flickr

So apparently gay married guys live longer than unmarried or divorced men.

That's what Danish researchers recently found after going through decades of statistics, and something conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas should consider when ruling in a few months whether to overturn California's gay marriage ban in Proposition 8.

The justices literally have a life-or-death situation before them -- so they'd better not screw it up!

More »

Rust O'leum / Flickr

The federal Centers for Disease Control says it's sending staffers to L.A. to help county and state officials deal with a tuberculosis outbreak on Skid Row.

A CDC spokeswoman told the Weekly today that staffers would likely be dispatched downtown within the next two weeks.

According to what the CDC official told the Weekly:

More »

Alex E. Proimos

Paralysis can be halted if you ice the head right away.

A groundbreaking clinical trial to prevent paralysis and death right after a stroke by cooling the brain is underway, led by Cedars Sinai, that researchers say could change everything.

The trial has been boosted from 50 to 400 patients with FDA approval, and used both "controlled hypothermia" and a "clot-busting" drug therapy. It is showing solid results in reducing neurological damage that leaves people devastated after a stroke.

Here's how it works:

More »

Couresy of Beverly & Pack

Everyone wants to live forever. But a study from USC and the National Academies suggests that if you'd like to see 51, it's time a lot of people stopped acting stupid. Americans spend more on health care than anyone, but are less healthy, birth to death, than residents in other developed countries. In fact, death before 50 accounts for about two-thirds of the difference between U.S. male life expectancy and guys in other nations. For women, not as bad.

U.S. residents are more likely to prematurely die of anything and everything, and the causes for that include many lifestyle-driven diseases such as diabetes and HIV. Are they really so much more fit and careful in Europe?

More »

Courtneey Carmody / Flickr

We survived the end of the world, the worst economy since the Great Depression, and the fiscal cliff. And you thought we were out of the woods?

Nope.

Flu season is your next big obsession if you're a pessimistic Debbie Downer who dwells on a dark future. Emergency room visits for this bug are exploding nationwide, and L.A. is bracing for the worst:

More »

Waggenseller Law Firm

One tiny Ugandan orphan Laine Waggenseller met in 2012.

A Thousand Oaks host family this week welcomed Ugandan orphan Adolf Baguma, 11, who was burned by his aunt at the age of 7 as punishment for trying to grab some food. Famed Dr. Peter Grossman will perform multiple surgeries so that Adolf -- forced by his burns to crawl on all fours for years -- can stand tall.

Adolf, a happy child, arrived by British Airlines on Monday, the final leg of his saga. Echo Park business litigator and human rights activist Laine Waggenseller stumbled onto his plight in 2011. Carol Horvitz, executive director of Children's Burn Foundation, says "Laine went with friends to an orphanage in Uganda, and heard about Adolf. We got hold of the orphanage, got a lot of paperwork done -- a lot -- to get Adolf here."

More »

Raul Aguilar Defez / Flickr

Just in time for the impending heat wave (yeah, it's actually going to get even hotter), L.A. County officials announced that the West Nile Virus has been detected in tony Beverly Hills of all places.

Now, before you blame that gilded city for being a dirty bird, note that the infected crow in question could have traveled as far as 10 miles. So the central L.A. basin and Westside in general should beware.

What is West Nile, you ask?

More »

Zumba.com

State-sanctioned mental health: so hot right now.

California Governor Jerry Brown is asking for another tax hike this November: He hopes the dead-broke people of this dead-broke state will have the heart to toss a few coins at our crumbling education system.

But how do we know our money won't end up paying for some bedazzled charter-school megagym?

A scary new Associated Press report shows how state health officials really spent the $7.4 billion fruits...

More »

medilogy.net

Your glioma tumor doesn't stand a chance.

Two of L.A.'s most prestigious institutions come together, today, for some cutting-edge teamwork:

Cedars-Sinai is announcing that it has borrowed a special space camera from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to get a better look at patients' complex tumors. Hospital to the stars, indeed!

If you're one of 20 lucky adults to participate in the trial (only requisite: a need for open-skull tumor surgery), picture this:

More »

ABC7

Gail Anderson, center.

Well, this is bizarre: The former chief medical officer of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (a giant Torrance hospital run by the county) was paid over $400,000 to sit in his lavish Manhattan Beach home for the last year.

That's because Gail Anderson was unofficially fired by the L.A. County Department of Health Services in August 2011, and has been on paid leave ever since. According to his lawyer, Richard Carroll, the county's attitude has been...

More »

occupywallst.org

Obamacare: Just another money-making scheme of the 1 percent?

Who knew? Occupy Wall Street (and its Los Angeles faction) hates Obamacare.

That's because, though your run-of-the-mill Westside liberal is likely to applaud the "health care for all!" initiative, the more skeptical end of the 99 percent sees it as just another victory for corporate America:

More »

Dr. Mitchell Katz: Now it's up to this guy

The Supreme Court's ruling today upholding the healthcare reform law will have a major effect close to home. In Los Angeles County, some 2.2 million people do not have health insurance.

Thanks to the ruling, 1.7 million of them will have access to coverage, according to a statement from Mitchell Katz, the director of the county Department of Health Services. Of those, nearly 1 million residents will be eligible through the expansion of Medicaid. The remainder will have access through the California health insurance exchange.

The county has already signed up about 200,000 people through its Healthy Way L.A. program, but it's got a lot of work to do between now and 2014 to fully implement the health reform law.

More »

hriday.org

The huge, highly trafficked Redondo Pier.

Little by little, various government entities within L.A. County are forcing cigarette smokers off public property and quarantining them into their own nasty tobacco dens.

The Department of Beaches and Harbors banned smoking on any beach within the county years ago. But the piers, because they're owned by individual cities, have remained skinny little safe spots...

More »

Google Maps

Huntington Park has three McDonalds.

As we're sure you've heard, childhood obesity levels are not doing so good in America. Though they've leveled off overall, our lowest-income cities are still stuffing over 50 percent of their young with enough French fries to earn them "obese" Post-Its on their foreheads.

Fattest city in California? That dishonor goes to Huntington Park, says the California Center for Public Health Advocacy in a new report. Fifty-three percent of kids in the southeast L.A. County town are overweight.

And the skinniest?

More »

mandalinarossa

Ouch.

Guys who cycle regularly are skinny, in shape and oh-so attractive to the ladies.

Except that the time spent bounding on that bicycle seat turns out to be not so good for a dude's reproductive health. Just another danger for those who prefer peddle power in L.A.

And the problem isn't just with all that equipment bouncing around. UCLA researchers found that men who ride a lot end up producing more of a form of estrogen, and the results can include ...

More »