Will Obama's order lead to surge in gun research?

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Nearly as many Americans die from guns as from car crashes each year. We know plenty about the second problem and far less about the first. A scarcity of research on how to prevent gun violence has left policymakers shooting in the dark as they craft gun control measures without much evidence of what works.

That could change with President Barack Obama's order Wednesday to ease research restrictions pushed through long ago by the gun lobby. The White House declared that a 1996 law banning use of money to "advocate or promote gun control" should not keep the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies from doing any work on the topic.

Obama can only do so much, though. Several experts say Congress will have to be on board before anything much changes, especially when it comes to spending money.

How severely have the restrictions affected the CDC?

Its website's A-to-Z list of health topics, which includes such obscure ones as Rift Valley fever, does not include guns or firearms. Searching the site for "guns" brings up dozens of reports on nail gun and BB gun injuries.

The restrictions have done damage "without a doubt" and the CDC has been "overly cautious" about interpreting them, said Daniel Webster, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"The law is so vague it puts a virtual freeze on gun violence research," said a statement from Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's like censorship: When people don't know what's prohibited, they assume everything is prohibited."

Many have called for a public health approach to gun violence like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving laws that slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago even as the number of vehicles on the road rose.

"The answer wasn't taking away cars," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

However, while much is known about vehicles and victims in crashes, similar details are lacking about gun violence.

Some unknowns:

—How many people own firearms in various cities and what types.

—What states have the highest proportion of gun ownership.

—Whether gun ownership correlates with homicide rates in a city.

—How many guns used in homicides were bought legally.

—Where juveniles involved in gun fatalities got their weapons.

—What factors contribute to mass shootings like the Newtown, Conn., one that killed 26 people at a school.

"If an airplane crashed today with 20 children and 6 adults there would be a full-scale investigation of the causes and it would be linked to previous research," said Dr. Stephen Hargarten, director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

"There's no such system that's comparable to that" for gun violence, he said.

One reason is changes pushed by the National Rifle Association and its allies in 1996, a few years after a major study showed that people who lived in homes with firearms were more likely to be homicide or suicide victims. A rule tacked onto appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services barred use of funds for "the advocacy or promotion of gun control."

Also, at the gun group's urging, U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey, a Republican from Arkansas, led an effort to remove $2.6 million from the CDC's injury prevention center, which had led most of the research on guns. The money was later restored but earmarked for brain injury research.

"What the NRA did was basically terrorize the research community and terrorize the CDC," said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who headed the CDC's injury center at the time. "They went after the researchers, they went after institutions, they went after CDC in a very big way, and they went after me," he said. "They didn't want the data to be collected because they were threatened by what the data were showing."

Dickey, who is now retired, said Wednesday that his real concern was the researcher who led that gun ownership study, who Dickey described as being "in his own kingdom or fiefdom" and believing guns are bad.

He and Rosenberg said they have modified their views over time and now both agree that research is needed. They put out a joint statement Wednesday urging research that prevents firearm injuries while also protecting the rights "of legitimate gun owners."

"We ought to research the whole environment, both sides — what the benefits of having guns are and what are the benefits of not having guns," Dickey said. "We should study any part of this problem," including whether armed guards at schools would help, as the National Rifle Association has suggested.

Association officials did not respond to requests for comment. A statement Wednesday said the group "has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership" and that "attacking firearms" is not the answer. It said nothing about research.

The 1996 law "had a chilling effect. It basically brought the field of firearm-related research to a screeching halt," said Benjamin of the Public Health Association.

Webster said researchers like him had to "partition" themselves so whatever small money they received from the CDC was not used for anything that could be construed as gun policy. One example was a grant he received to evaluate a community-based program to reduce street gun violence in Baltimore, modeled after a successful program in Chicago called CeaseFire. He had to make sure the work included nothing that could be interpreted as gun control research, even though other privately funded research might.

Private funds from foundations have come nowhere near to filling the gap from lack of federal funding, Hargarten said. He and more than 100 other doctors and scientists recently sent Vice President Joe Biden a letter urging more research, saying the lack of it was compounding "the tragedy of gun violence."

Since 1973, the government has awarded 89 grants to study rabies, of which there were 65 cases; 212 grants for cholera, with 400 cases, yet only three grants for firearm injuries that topped 3 million, they wrote. The CDC spends just about $100,000 a year out of its multibillion-dollar budget on firearm-related research, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said.

"It's so out of proportion to the burden, however you measure it," said Dr. Matthew Miller, associate professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. As a result, "we don't know really simple things," such as whether tighter gun rules in New York will curb gun trafficking "or is some other pipeline going to open up" in another state, he said.

What now?

CDC officials refused to discuss the topic on the record — a possible sign of how gun shy of the issue the agency has been even after the president's order.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement that her agency is "committed to re-engaging gun violence research."

Others are more cautious. The Union of Concerned Scientists said the White House's view that the law does not ban gun research is helpful, but not enough to clarify the situation for scientists, and that congressional action is needed.

Dickey, the former congressman, agreed.

"Congress is supposed to do that. He's not supposed to do that," Dickey said of Obama's order. "The restrictions were placed there by Congress.

"What I was hoping for ... is 'let's do this together,'" Dickey said.

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Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Pregnant woman hogtied by officers gets $250,000 settlement

A pregnant woman who was pulled over for talking on her cellphone — and then hurled to the ground and hogtied by CHP officers on the shoulder of the busy Harbor Freeway — has been paid $250,000 in damages.

The 30-year-old woman was charged with resisting arrest and driving with a suspended license, but the charges were dropped after a judge was shown a video of the incident, captured on a camera mounted on the dashboard of a California Highway Patrol cruiser.

"The conduct here is outrageous. What these officers did here was bewildering to me. They knew she was pregnant," said Howard Price, the attorney for Tamara Gaglione. "She never resisted arrest."

The eight-minute video of the August 2011 incident shows a CHP officer tailing Gaglione on the 110 Freeway, with the Los Angeles skyline looming in the distance.

Once she pulls to the shoulder, after first pulling into the fast lane and appearing to cut off other drivers, a pair of CHP officers orders her to toss out her car keys, get out of her dark green Dodge Caravan and put her hands on the vehicle.

Instead, the video shows, she stands and stares at the patrolmen, appearing confused. Officers, in their official report, said she appeared to raise her arms in a menacing manner.

The action caught on the video picks up quickly from there:

Guns drawn, the officers approach the driver, and one of the patrolmen sweeps away her legs with a kick and pushes her face-first to the asphalt. Another officer then presses his knee into the woman's back and pins her to the ground.

At another point, it appears the woman is kicked in her left ribs. Eventually she is hogtied and placed in a squad car.

"I'd never seen a gun for real before," Gaglione said later. "I just froze. I was scared they'd shoot me."

Gaglione said she told the officers she was pregnant when they first approached her, but Officer Daniel Hernandez — one of the initial officers on the scene — said she didn't mention that until she was on the ground.

Hernandez said in his report that he kneed the woman in an effort to distract her so that his partner, Officer Roberto Martinez, could handcuff her.

In their report, the officers said the incident had escalated because the woman had ignored their orders and appeared to raise her arms in an aggressive manner after hopping out of the van.

Based on the report, Gaglione was charged by the Los Angeles city attorney with misdemeanor evading and resisting arrest and driving on a suspended license.

After the charges were dismissed, Gaglione pleaded no contest to a simple infraction of using her cellphone while driving. Gaglione and her attorney said the judge questioned the actions of the officers after watching the video.

CHP officials declined to discuss the incident, saying only that both sides concluded that settling the lawsuit for $250,000 was in the best interest of everyone.

"The CHP conducted a review of the tactics and, as necessary, took appropriate action," said Fran Clader, department spokeswoman.

The involved officers remain on the force.

Gaglione said she discovered the existence of the dashboard video when the officers later drove her to the hospital, discussing it in play-by-play fashion.

Price said Hernandez failed to mark a box on the arrest report noting the existence of the dash cam video and a prosecutor initially told him none existed. But Price said his client persisted.

Initially, he said, Price got a video from a backup patrol car and was told the dash cam video could not be copied. He said he went to the CHP and videotaped the original recording himself.

Gaglione later sued the CHP and the five officers and one sergeant involved in the incident, alleging that her civil rights had been violated and that she had been subjected to excessive force and malicious prosecution.

Before any of the CHP officers could be deposed and the video admitted as evidence, CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow agreed in August to settle the suit. The state paid $250,000 to Gaglione in November.

For Gaglione, now the mother of a 9-month old son, the incident on the freeway changed her life, she said. She left Los Angeles, where she worked as nanny and ran a pet care business.

"I will always be scared of police officers because of these knuckleheads," she said.

richard.winton@latimes.com

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World Briefing | Middle East: Jordan: Fire Kills Family at Camp for Syrian Refugees

A fire caused by a kerosene heater that flipped over in a center for refugees who had fled the Syrian civil war killed seven members of a family, a civil defense spokesman said Wednesday. The center is a temporary shelter for refugees before they are moved to a camp called Zaatari, which has been battered by a flash flood.

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Commentary: Background Checks? Yes, but Leave Video Games Alone

COMMENTARY | I have mixed feelings toward the White House‘s gun violence response. I agree that background checks should be required before people are allowed to buy a firearm and that an assault weapon ban should be reinstated into law. While limiting the number of bullets in a weapon’s magazine will decrease the number of deaths in a mass shooting, the public does not need high-capacity magazines. Therefore any weapon using high-capacity magazines should be banned from public use, not just capping the magazines to 10 bullets.

But violent video games and other media images and scenes real-life violence? These media do not kill people. The shooters kill the people. Those who are mentally unstable may not understand that violent video games are not real life and should not be duplicated in real life. As long as gamers understand the difference between video games and real life, that shouldn’t be touched.

– Edmond, Okla.

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Large study confirms flu vaccine safe in pregnancy

NEW YORK (AP) — A large study offers reassuring news for pregnant women: It's safe to get a flu shot.

The research found no evidence that the vaccine increases the risk of losing a fetus, and may prevent some deaths. Getting the flu while pregnant makes fetal death more likely, the Norwegian research showed.

The flu vaccine has long been considered safe for pregnant women and their fetus. U.S. health officials began recommending flu shots for them more than five decades ago, following a higher death rate in pregnant women during a flu pandemic in the late 1950s.

But the study is perhaps the largest look at the safety and value of flu vaccination during pregnancy, experts say.

"This is the kind of information we need to provide our patients when discussing that flu vaccine is important for everyone, particularly for pregnant women," said Dr. Geeta Swamy, a researcher who studies vaccines and pregnant women at Duke University Medical Center.

The study was released by the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday as the United States and Europe suffer through an early and intense flu season. A U.S. obstetricians group this week reminded members that it's not too late for their pregnant patients to get vaccinated.

The new study was led by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. It tracked pregnancies in Norway in 2009 and 2010 during an international epidemic of a new swine flu strain.

Before 2009, pregnant women in Norway were not routinely advised to get flu shots. But during the pandemic, vaccinations against the new strain were recommended for those in their second or third trimester.

The study focused on more than 113,000 pregnancies. Of those, 492 ended in the death of the fetus. The researchers calculated that the risk of fetal death was nearly twice as high for women who weren't vaccinated as it was in vaccinated mothers.

U.S. flu vaccination rates for pregnant women grew in the wake of the 2009 swine flu pandemic, from less than 15 percent to about 50 percent. But health officials say those rates need to be higher to protect newborns as well. Infants can't be vaccinated until 6 months, but studies have shown they pick up some protection if their mothers got the annual shot, experts say.

Because some drugs and vaccines can be harmful to a fetus, there is a long-standing concern about giving any medicine to a pregnant woman, experts acknowledged. But this study should ease any worries about the flu shot, said Dr. Denise Jamieson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The vaccine is safe," she said.

___

Online:

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

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State agency says U.S. removed wildlife habitat without permit

A state regulatory agency Wednesday said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to obtain a required permit before it removed 43 acres of wildlife habitat in the Sepulveda Basin and filled in a pond used by migrating waterfowl.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board has directed the Army Corps to provide information by Feb. 11 about its decision to eliminate woodlands and potentially foul the Los Angeles River with sediment. Sepulveda Basin is an engineered flood control zone for the river.

"The corps did not notify us before it proceeded to destroy wetlands, and that is a great concern to us," said Maria Mehranian, chairwoman of the water quality control board. "The federal Clean Water Act requires anyone working in wetlands to obtain a permit from us. They failed to do so."

The board will determine later whether enforcement actions are needed to prevent such unauthorized activities in the future, the agency said in a letter to the corps.

Col. Mark Toy, head of the corps' Los Angeles District, was unavailable for comment. But corps spokesman Jay Field said, "We are working with the Regional Water Quality Control Board to provide information we believe will address any concerns."

Separately, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service authorities are looking into possible violations of endangered species protections in the Sepulveda Basin.

On Dec. 10, corps crews cut down the swath of basin greenery just west of Interstate 405 and south of Burbank Boulevard, destroying what had been a lush urban refuge for kingsnakes, bobcats and white pelicans.

The area existed for three decades as a designated wildlife preserve. In 2010 it was reclassified as a corps "vegetation management area" and given a new five-year mission of replacing trees and shrubs with native grasses as part of an effort to improve access for corps staffers, increase public safety and discourage crime.

The management plan has been temporarily halted, pending the outcome of ongoing discussions with the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society and the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Areas Steering Committee.

Toy has spent much of the last two weeks meeting privately with critics of the project including the Audubon Society, Sierra Club and state Sens. Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) and Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills).

On Tuesday, San Fernando Valley Audubon Society President Dave Weeshoff and Conservation Chairman Kris Ohlenkamp asked corps officials in the Pentagon to revoke the 2010 plan and replace it with a new project designed to "return the area to a diverse native habitat that supports wildlife and fulfills the public's need for a natural outdoor experience in the middle of the city."

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

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Room for Debate: A New Line in the Sand Against Terror?

The arid northern African state of Mali once seemed like one of the continent’s rare stable democracies. But a coup, an influx of Libyan arms after the fall of Muammar el-Qaddafi, and an uprising by well-financed militants have led to Islamists controlling the north. Even as they face off against French troops protecting the south, the stronghold raises the specter of a new base of terror just south of the Sahara.

With Islamist groups in Mali connecting with militants from Libya, Nigeria, Algeria and elsewhere, how can northern Africa avoid fostering terrorism and becoming the next Afghanistan?

Read the Discussion »

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It's a Boy for Elton John

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

01/15/2013 at 10:00 PM ET

George Pimentel/WireImage

Elton John is a father again!

The musician and David Furnish welcomed their second child, son Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John, via surrogate on Friday, Jan. 11 in Los Angeles, the couple confirm to HELLO.

Born at 6:40 p.m., Elijah weighed in at 8 lbs., 4 oz.

John and Furnish, who married in 2005, are already parents to son Zachary Jackson Levon, 2.

“Both of us have longed to have children, but the reality that we now have two sons is almost unbelievable. The birth of our second son completes our family in a most precious and perfect way,” the couple say in a statement.

“It is difficult to fully express how we are feeling at this time; we are just overwhelmed with happiness and excitement.”

John, 65, has been open about his desire to expand their family.

“I know when he goes to school there’s going to be an awful lot of pressure, and I know he’s going to have people saying, ‘You don’t have a mummy,’” says the singer-songwriter of his decision to have another baby.

“It’s going to happen. We talked about it before we had him. I want someone to be at his side and back him up. We shall see.”

– Sarah Michaud

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Risk to all ages: 100 kids die of flu each year

NEW YORK (AP) — How bad is this flu season, exactly? Look to the children.

Twenty flu-related deaths have been reported in kids so far this winter, one of the worst tolls this early in the year since the government started keeping track in 2004.

But while such a tally is tragic, that does not mean this year will turn out to be unusually bad. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, and it's not yet clear the nation will reach that total.

The deaths this year have included a 6-year-old girl in Maine, a 15-year Michigan student who loved robotics, and 6-foot-4 Texas high school senior Max Schwolert, who grew sick in Wisconsin while visiting his grandparents for the holidays.

"He was kind of a gentle giant" whose death has had a huge impact on his hometown of Flower Mound, said Phil Schwolert, the Texas boy's uncle.

Health officials only started tracking pediatric flu deaths nine years ago, after media reports called attention to children's deaths. That was in 2003-04 when the primary flu germ was the same dangerous flu bug as the one dominating this year. It also was an earlier than normal flu season.

The government ultimately received reports of 153 flu-related deaths in children, from 40 states, and most of them had occurred by the beginning of January. But the reporting was scattershot. So in October 2004, the government started requiring all states to report flu-related deaths in kids.

Other things changed, most notably a broad expansion of who should get flu shots. During the terrible 2003-04 season, flu shots were only advised for children ages 6 months to 2 years.

That didn't help 4-year-old Amanda Kanowitz, who one day in late February 2004 came home from preschool with a cough and died less than three days later. Amanda was found dead in her bed that terrible Monday morning, by her mother.

"The worst day of our lives," said her father, Richard Kanowitz, a Manhattan attorney who went on to found a vaccine-promoting group called Families Fighting Flu.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gradually expanded its flu shot guidance, and by 2008 all kids 6 months and older were urged to get the vaccine. As a result, the vaccination rate for kids grew from under 10 percent back then to around 40 percent today.

Flu vaccine is also much more plentiful. Roughly 130 million doses have been distributed this season, compared to 83 million back then. Public education seems to be better, too, Kanowitz observed.

The last unusually bad flu season for children, was 2009-10 — the year of the new swine flu, which hit young people especially hard. As of early January 2010, 236 flu-related deaths of kids had been reported since the previous August.

It's been difficult to compare the current flu season to those of other winters because this one started about a month earlier than usual.

Look at it this way: The nation is currently about five weeks into flu season, as measured by the first time flu case reports cross above a certain threshold. Two years ago, the nation wasn't five weeks into its flu season until early February, and at that point there were 30 pediatric flu deaths — or 10 more than have been reported at about the same point this year. That suggests that when the dust settles, this season may not be as bad as the one only two years ago.

But for some families, it will be remembered as the worst ever.

In Maine, 6-year-old Avery Lane — a first-grader in Benton who had recently received student-of-the-week honors — died in December following a case of the flu, according to press reports. She was Maine's first pediatric flu death in about two years, a Maine health official said.

In Michigan, 15-year-old Joshua Polehna died two weeks ago after suffering flu-like symptoms. The Lake Fenton High School student was the state's fourth pediatric flu death this year, according to published reports.

And in Texas, the town of Flower Mound mourned Schwolert, a healthy, lanky 17-year-old who loved to golf and taught Sunday school at the church where his father was a youth pastor.

Late last month, he and his family drove 16 hours to spend the holidays with his grandparents in Amery, Wis., a small town near the Minnesota state line. Max felt fluish on Christmas Eve, seemed better the next morning but grew worse that night. The family decided to postpone the drive home and took him to a local hospital. He was transferred to a medical center in St. Paul, Minn., where he died on Dec. 29.

He'd been accepted to Oklahoma State University before the Christmas trip. And an acceptance letter from the University of Minnesota arrived in Texas while Max was sick in Minnesota, his uncle said.

Nearly 1,400 people attended a memorial service for Max two weeks ago in Texas.

"He exuded care and love for other people," Phil Schwolert said.

"The bottom line is take care of your kids, be close to your kids," he said.

On average, an estimated 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People who are elderly and with certain chronic health conditions are generally at greatest risk from flu and its complications.

The current vaccine is about 60 percent effective, and is considered the best protection available. Max Schwolert had not been vaccinated, nor had the majority of the other pediatric deaths.

Even if kids are vaccinated, parents should be watchful for unusually severe symptoms, said Lyn Finelli of the CDC.

"If they have influenza-like illness and are lethargic, or not eating, or look punky — or if a parent's intuition is the kid doesn't look right and they're alarmed — they need to call the doctor and take them to the doctor," she advised.

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CDC advice on kids: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/children.htm

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San Jose State program to offer entry-level subjects online

San Jose State University launched a program Tuesday that will offer low-cost, online classes in entry-level subjects that are often in high demand for students seeking to transfer or obtain a degree.

The university will partner with Udacity, a Silicon Valley online education group, to create for-credit courses. If successful, the program could expand access to tens of thousands of underserved students, including those in high school and community college, wait-listed San Jose State students and nontraditional students such as veterans and adults with jobs and families.

The program was announced at a news conference attended by Gov. Jerry Brown, who has been pressuring the state's public universities to more aggressively pursue online education as a way to curtail costs and serve more students. He is scheduled to attend the University of California regents' meeting in San Francisco this week and a meeting of the California State University trustees next week in Long Beach to push his agenda.

Brown's 2013-14 budget proposal released last week included about $17 million for community colleges and $10 million each for UC and Cal State to increase online classes.

"We all know that only 16% of students at Cal State get out in four years, and the longer you stay the more you spend," Brown said. "So this is a big, huge problem, with student debt approaching a trillion dollars. Online is a part of that solution."

The new venture will initially offer three so-called gateway courses — remedial math, college-level algebra and elementary statistics — that most students must complete to progress. Currently, about 50% of Cal State students arrive needing remedial math, English or both, and those roadblocks can extend the length of time students are in school.

Each class will cost $150 with no state or federal support. By comparison, a typical course offered through extended education can cost from $750 to $1,000. The courses should transfer to most other public and private institutions, officials said.

The courses will be developed by San Jose State faculty and presented on Udacity's online platform with interactive videos and quizzes. Despite the growing popularity of online education, there has been scant research of its effectiveness as a teaching tool. And some faculty have expressed concern about who will control content.

Massive open online courses offered by top universities attract tens of thousands of students for a single course. But their proliferation has led to misgivings that the students most in need of low-cost or free online classes are also the ones who need support they can't easily get via the Internet.

About 90% of students who enroll in these online courses drop out, a failure noted by Udacity co-founder and Chief Executive Sebastian Thrun. He said he doesn't think such open courses are a "viable model for education."

Thrun, a Stanford computer science researcher, said he believes it's vital to "bring along the people who need some extra attention, some extra help and make the professor an essential element of that experience. We believe we have a formula … that is actually sustainable financially at the levels that we will be charging for these classes."

At San Jose State, courses will initially be limited to 100 students. One of the highlights of the program is a grant from the National Science Foundation to evaluate student outcomes.

Despite some concerns, the program has potential, said California Faculty Assn. President Lillian Taiz.

"You can't do this stuff and not stop to ask questions about whether it works," said Taiz, a Cal State Los Angeles history professor. "One of the pluses of this program seems to be they are intending to really assess the success of it."

carla.rivera@latimes.com

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