SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2012
he a lt h & s c ie n c e
Students, experts recoil at alcohol enema case KNOXVILLE, Tennessee: Before an unruly Tennessee party ended with a student hospitalized for a dangerously high blood alcohol level, most people had probably never heard of alcohol enemas. Thanks to the drunken exploits of a fraternity at the University of Tennessee, the bizarre way of getting drunk is giving parents, administrators and health care workers a new fear. When Alexander “Xander” Broughton, 20, was delivered to the hospital after midnight on Sept 22, his blood alcohol level was measured at 0.448 percent - nearly six times the intoxication that defines drunken driving in the state. Injuries to his rectum led hospital officials to fear he had been sodomized. Police documents show that when an officer interviewed a fellow fraternity member about what happened, the student said the injuries had been caused by an alcohol enema. “It is believed that members of the fraternity were utilizing rubber tubing inserted into their rectums as a conduit for alcohol,” according to a police report. While Broughton told police he remembered participating in a drinking game with fellow members of the Pi Kappa Alpha chapter, he denied having an alcohol enema. Police concluded otherwise from evi-
dence they found at the frat house, including boxes of Franzia Sunset Blush wine. “He also had no recollection of losing control of his bowels and defecating on himself,” according to a university police report that includes photos of the mess left behind in the fraternity house after the party. Broughton did not respond to a cellphone message seeking comment on Friday. The university responded with swift investigation and a decision Friday to shutter the fraternity until at least 2015. The national Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity organization also accepted the withdrawal of the campus charter. Alcohol enemas have been the punch lines of YouTube videos, a stunt in a “Jackass” movie and a song by the punk band NOFX called “Party Enema”. But Corey Slovis, chairman of department of emergency medicine and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said actually going through with the deed can have severe consequences. “It’s something that offers no advantages, while at the same time risking someone’s life,” he said. The procedure bypasses the stomach, accelerating the absorption rate, Slovis said. Pouring the alcohol through a funnel can increase the amount
of alcohol consumed because it’s hard to gauge how much is going in. “When you’re dumping it into your rectum, often via a funnel, one or two ounces seems like such a minuscule amount,” he said. Ingesting more can create unconsciousness quite quickly, he explained. The effects have been fatal in at least one case. An autopsy performed after the death of a 58-year-old Texas man in 2004 showed he had been given an enema with enough sherry to have a blood alcohol level of 0.47 percent. Negligent homicide charges were later dropped against his wife, who said she gave him the enema. Students walking across campus this week generally responded with sighs and eye rolls when asked about the allegations. “It’s like a big joke,” said Erica Davis, a freshman from Hendersonville. “Because who does that?” Gordon Ray, a senior from Morristown, said the details of the case caught him off guard, but not the fact that fraternity members would be overdoing it with alcohol. “It is definitely over the top,” said Ray. “But it doesn’t surprise me, I don’t guess.” The harm the news has done to the university’s national reputation was on the mind of several students. “If someone wants to be stupid, then they should do it where it won’t
affect anyone else,” said Marlon Alessandra, freshman from Independence, Virginia. James E Lange, who coordinates alcohol and drug abuse prevention strategies at San Diego State University, said alcohol enemas aren’t a common occurrence on campuses, though normal consumption still contributes to hundreds of student deaths annually. And many of those can be attributed to reckless attitudes about the consequences of heavy drinking, he said. “It’s not unusual to hear that students are drinking to get drunk,” he said. Lange said he hopes students don’t draw the wrong lessons from the University of Tennessee incident. “Students and people in general are pretty good at denying that they are at risk for whatever happened to someone else,” he said. “So they can look at something like this and say ‘I’m OK because I would never do that.’ “However, they may be drinking heavily, or doing things like mixing alcohol with prescription meds that is putting them at serious risk,” he said. To Tennessee freshman Cody Privett of Sevierville, there’s nothing appealing about the incident on his campus. “It’s stupid, it’s an unfortunate situation,” said Privett, of Sevierville. “I mean there’s partying, and then there’s other things.” — AP
Indian state in grip of a drug epidemic 67% of Punjab households home to at least one addict
BELGRADE: Fisherman Renato Grbic steers his boat under the Pancevo Bridge over the Danube river in this Sept 18, 2012 photo. — AP
Hero fishes desperate from Danube suicide BELGRADE: On a bright autumn day, Renato Grbic was out fishing on the Danube with his brother when he heard a big splash. At first, he thought somebody had thrown something off the bridge. Then he saw a man flailing in the water. “We hurried and pulled the man out,” Grbic recalls. “I remember telling him: Such a glorious day and you want to kill yourself!” It was the first time Grbic saved a life. From that day 15 year ago, his own life would never be the same. The bright-eyed, tattooed restaurant owner from a shabby industrial zone on the outskirts of Belgrade has rescued 25 people who tried to kill themselves by jumping off the tall bridge over the Danube. Always on alert in his little wooden motor boat, the burly 51-year-old has pulled people out of the river’s muddy waters without asking for anything in return. “I couldn’t turn my back on them,” Grbic said. “They are desperate people.” Grbic has been dubbed the “Superman of the Danube” by his admirers and awarded a hero’s plaque by Belgrade city authorities. But even “Superman” can’t save everybody who jumps off the 18-mhigh bridge: At least as many as he had saved have killed themselves at the spot since Grbic’s first rescue. “When I hear that someone has jumped and I wasn’t there I really feel bad,” he said. “My eyes are always on the bridge.” The Pancevo bridge became a favored suicide spot because it’s Belgrade’s only bridge over the Danube, which is bigger and colder and has stronger underwater currents than the city’s other river, the Sava. The first person Grbic pulled out of the Danube turned out to be mental patient. Grbic took him ashore, gave him dry clothes, hot tea and cigarettes. Later, an ambulance came and took the man away. “That was it,” Grbic says. “He didn’t speak, they never do.” Over the years, Grbic has rescued men and women of all ages and social backgrounds.
Grbic remembers them all, but “they never return or call, they hardly ever say thank you”. Goran Penev, a researcher with Serbia’s Institute of Social Sciences, said Serbia’s suicide rate is at the upper side of the European average. Penev noted there was a sharp rise in the early 1990s, at the beginning of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, but the situation has been relatively stable ever since. In 2011, nearly 1,300 people in Serbia - a country of 7 million people - took their lives. Grbic has found that some of the people he rescued suffered from cancer or other terminal illnesses, while others cited poverty or unrequited love. All, he said, felt lonely. “It is a cry for help,” he said. “They often do it in daytime so they would be seen, they want attention, love.” Only a couple weeks ago, a 22-year-old girl threw herself off the bridge near Grbic’s restaurant. He was there to pick her up and ask: “Why did you do it?” “For my boyfriend,” she replied. “Do you think he would do it for you?” he asked in return. Grbic said the girl was conscious and clear-minded when he plucked her out of the water. In winter, however, it is a question of minutes before people will lose consciousness in the freezing Danube and drown. On one of those days, in mid-January about seven years ago, Grbic was just preparing to turn his boat to the shore and go home - when he heard a scream. An 18year-old woman going through a mental crisis had burst out of her parents’ car at the bridge, taken off her jacket and jumped, shouting: “Goodbye mom!” Grbic said something had made him stick around: “It was a very windy day, a few minutes later and I would have gone.” The girl, Grbic said, is the only one who has stayed in touch. Every January she comes to his fish restaurant to celebrate her “second birthday”. She is married now and has a child. —AP
NEW DELHI: On a muggy evening in the north Indian city of Amritsar, Sunil Sharma prepares for another heroin hit in a decrepit, abandoned building. Before inhaling the fumes of his brown paste heated on a piece of tinfoil, the 23-yearold explained he had tried heroin for the first time six months ago when his girlfriend left him to marry another man. “I feel bad... why have I become like this? Why have I tied this noose around my neck?” he told AFP, slurring his words. There are thousands like him across the state of Punjab, which leads the country in drug-related crime with a rate that is nearly ten times the national average, according to police records. In an affidavit submitted in 2009 to the state high court, the local government estimated that 67 percent of all rural households in Punjab were home to at least one drug addict. Located on a long-standing smuggling route that sees heroin transported from Afghanistan via neighbouring Pakistan and on to markets elsewhere in the region, Punjab is now increasingly a final destination for the contraband. When local couriers involved in smuggling “came to know that drugs have a lot of profit then they began to indulge in local selling of these things,” says S Boopathi, assistant inspector general of the state police narcotics cell. He said it was impossible to estimate the amount of drugs crossing Punjab, but added that “trade is huge”. Rajiv Walia, regional coordinator at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told AFP that Punjab had “a serious problem because it borders trafficking routes and drug-producing regions.” In the
1970s, Punjab was regarded as India’s “bread basket”, due to its fertile soil, prosperous farmer community and booming agricultural output. Some, like former addict Navneet Singh, see the growing appetite for drugs as “a problem of abundance”. Singh, a successful restaurant owner who has been clean for 11 years, grew up in a wealthy family. He believes that Punjab’s relative affluence and its cultural norms, coupled with the easy access to drugs, make addiction a commonplace reality. “Punjab has a very macho culture, very prone to showing off. It’s a ready-made market for drugs,” the 38-year-old told AFP. “What does the Punjabi do when he gets rich? He buys an SUV, a gun and he gets high,” he said. “Then as time passes and you get addicted you will do anything to support the habit,” he added. Doctor J P S Bhatia has witnessed the problem of addiction in Punjab from close quarters. When the psychiatrist set up his hospital in 1991, he would see one or two drug-related cases a week. Today, out of the 130 patients he sees every day, some 70 to 80 percent are battling drug addiction, he tells AFP. In response to the expanding scale of the problem, Bhatia set up a rehab centre for recovering addicts in 2003. “I see cases where the son is into addiction, the father is into addiction...the whole family is sick,” he says, comparing the state’s situation to “a ticking time bomb”. Those who are too poor to afford heroin or cocaine take to swallowing or injecting cheap prescription drugs or consuming a locally-produced crude form of opium called “bhukki”, a tea-like drink made from
CT scanners part of Myanmar upgrade YANGON: Myanmar has contracted to buy more than two dozen CT scan machines as an increased budget and easing of Western sanctions allows it to upgrade its ailing public health system. The local agent for General Electric’s health care division, Win Zaw Aung, said Saturday that the health ministry will buy 22 CT scan machines and four CT simulators for training, according to the results of a recent tender. GE announced Thursday that it has contracted to sell seven CT machines for use in public hospitals in Yangon and other cities in a deal worth about $5 million. Myanmar’s health care system was considered among the region’s worst under the previous military government, whose own leaders would fly to Singapore for critical medical care. A reformist elected government that took power last year has
increased the health budget fourfold for the 2012-13 fiscal year. The political and economic reform measures undertaken by the government of President Thein Sein are intended to revive a moribund economy after five decades of repressive military rule that estranged Myanmar from many Western nations. Thein Sein’s political reforms, including reconciliation with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, have convinced Western nations to lift most of the sanctions they had imposed against the previous military government. In the case of the United States, this allowed companies such as GE that had been banned from doing most business in Myannar to re-enter the market. GE announced that it has already sold two CT scan units to private hospitals in Myanmar since sanctions were eased. — AP
US approves underskin defibrillator
SAMPOINIET, Indonesia: This photo taken on Sept 27, 2012 shows a ranger inspecting a 10-day-old baby elephant at Sarah Deu conservation response unit in Aceh Jaya. There are fewer than 3,000 Sumatran elephants remaining in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, marking a 50 percent drop in numbers since 1985. — AFP
WASHINGTON: US health authorities on Friday approved a a heart defibrillator with leads that can be implanted just under the skin instead of connected directly to the heart. The new subcutaneous device “uses a lead that is implanted just under the skin along the bottom of the rib cage and breast bone,” the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a statement. “Because the lead is placed under the skin rather than through a vein into the heart, a physician can implant the device without accessing a patient’s blood vessels or heart and without the need for fluoroscopy,” the FDA said. Until now defibrillators - small battery-powered devices that monitor a person’s heart rhythm and deliver small electric shocks to restore an irregular rhythm - were connected directly to the heart. The delicate operation to implant traditional defibrillators have potentially grave side effects, such as an infection in an already weak patient. “Some patients with anatomy that makes it challenging to place one of the implantable defibrillators currently on the market may especially benefit from this device,” said FDA official Christy Foreman. The subcutaneous defibrillator is marketed by the US firm Boston Scientific. — AFP
ground poppy husk. The Amritsar neighbourhood of Maqboolpura has lost so many young men to overdoses or drug-related illnesses, that it is locally known as “the village of widows”. Schoolmaster Ajit Singh has two cousins who are addicted to crude forms of heroin. Another cousin, whose morphine habit saw him leave home to beg on the streets, died at the age of 31. According to Singh, who grew up in Maqboolpura, the working class community here began to dabble in the sale of opium in the 1960s, when they realised how lucrative the business could be. “First, it was an easy way to make money. Then they developed a taste for the stuff,” he said. Today, he estimates that each house along the 13 narrow streets that make up this neighbourhood is home to at least one drug addict. Unlike his older cousins, Singh managed to finish school and he became a teacher of political science and a local community worker. He began by offering evening classes to local children whose fathers had fallen victim to addiction and went on to found a school for more than 600 pupils. Local mother, Kiran Kaur whose two children attend the school, worries for her husband who has struggled to find work as a labourer since developing a prescription drug habit. “I have asked him many times to quit but I don’t think he can do it,” the 32-year-old sighed. As she waited for her children to finish class, she added: “I can’t see a way out of my life, but things can be different for my children if they study hard.” — AFP
FDA warns of fake online pharmacies WASHINGTON: The US Food and Drug Administration launched a national campaign Friday alerting consumers to the risks of phony web pharmacies. The warning comes as nearly one in four people who shop online say they have bought prescription drugs on the Internet, according to the FDA. “Buying medicines from rogue online pharmacies can be risky because they may sell fake, expired, contaminated, not approved by FDA, or otherwise unsafe products that are dangerous to patients,” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said in a statement. “Fraudulent and illegal online pharmacies often offer deeply discounted products. If the low prices seem too good to be true, they probably are.” False online drug stores use sophisticated marketing techniques or fake Web storefronts to make themselves appear legitimate, the FDA said. Drugs bought from such sources may contain the wrong or even harmful ingredients, putting patients’ health at risk, it added. To avoid being scammed, members of the public who choose to buy medication online should pick pharmacies that, among other things, require a valid prescription, are located in the United States and have a licensed pharmacist available for consultation, the FDA recommended. — AFP