Health Highlights: Feb. 26, 2005

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Blacks Losing in the Battle Against HIV Infection

While the rate of HIV infection has reached a plateau among whites in the United States, that rate has doubled among blacks in the last decade, according to the Associated Press.

Government scientists said Friday that stark difference throws a spotlight on the ever-widening racial gap in the epidemic. The findings were released Friday at the 126th Annual Retrovirus Conference in Boston, the AP reported.

"It''s incredibly disappointing," Terje Anderson, director of the National Association of People With AIDS, told the wire service. "We just have a burgeoning epidemic in the African-American community that is not being dealt with effectively."

Scientists chalked the high HIV infection rate among blacks up to factors such as drug addiction, poverty and poor access to health care.

According to the AP, the data was culled from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, which look at representative households and contain the most complete HIV data in the country. Federal researchers compared 1988-1994 figures to statistics from 1999-2002.

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Aide to Pope to Deliver Weekly Blessing

John Paul II won''t lead the weekly Angelus prayer on Sunday as he recovers from a throat operation, according to published reports.

Instead, an aide will deliver the five-minute blessing on the steps of St. Peter''s Square while the pope remains at Rome''s Gemelli hospital, the Vatican said Saturday. This is the first time in his 26-year papacy that he has not delivered the blessing himself.

However, the pontiff will "follow the ceremony" from his hospital room, according to the Vatican, which did not elaborate.

The pope does not have pneumonia and is breathing on his own, the Vatican said in a statement Friday, a day after he had surgery on his windpipe to help him breathe easier.

For the second time in less than a month, the 84-year-old pontiff was rushed to a hospital early Thursday to treat respiratory problems stemming from an earlier case of the flu. Late Thursday afternoon, he underwent a tracheotomy -- a surgical procedure to cut a small breathing hole in his neck.

The pope -- who suffers from Parkinson''s disease and serious hip and knee ailments -- required hospitalization from breathing problems similar to those that sent him to the same hospital Feb. 1 for 10 days, the AP reported.

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Fla. Judge OKs Removal of Woman''s Feeding Tube

A Pinellas Circuit Court judge has given Michael Schiavo permission to remove his wife''s feeding tube in three weeks, the Associated Press reported Friday.

In a written order issued to both sides, Judge George Greer said Michael Schiavo could remove Terri Schiavo''s feeding tube at 1 p.m. ET on March 18, against the wishes of her parents.

In his order, the judge said he wanted the case to end, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Schiavo''s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, however, can still appeal that they need more time to obtain medical tests to prove their brain-damaged daughter has more mental capacity than doctors recognize.

Michael Schiavo has argued for years that his wife -- who has been comatose for more than a decade following a chemical imbalance that stopped her heart -- would not have wanted to be kept alive by artificial means.

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FDA Painkiller Panel Had Drug Industry Ties

Almost a third of the members of a government advisory panel that recommended allowing the blockbuster arthritis drugs Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx to remain on the market have consulted for pharmaceutical firms, The New York Times reported Friday.

Ten of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel''s 32 members had such ties, the newspaper said, citing disclosures in medical journals and other public records. The 10 members voted 9 to 1 to keep the Pfizer drug Bextra on the market, and 9 to 1 to allow the Merck drug Vioxx, which was pulled from store shelves last fall, to return to the market, the Times said. Had those members not voted, the newspaper reported, the two drugs would not have won committee endorsement.

The 10 members didn''t significantly sway the panel''s recommendation to keep the Pfizer drug Celebrex on the market, the newspaper said. All three drugs known as cox-2 inhibitors are under scrutiny for possible links to cardiovascular problems.

Meanwhile, an FDA spokeswoman told Bloomberg News that the agency screened all panelists before the hearings for possible conflicts of interest.

Eight of the 10 panel members said in interviews that their past relationships with drug companies didn''t influence their votes, the newspaper said. The other two did not respond to requests for interviews.

Several of those who talked with the newspaper said they wound up donating any money earned in their consulting work to their universities or institutions, the Times said.

It isn''t uncommon for researchers with drug industry ties to serve on such panels, the newspaper reported, although their presence has been an ongoing issue of contention.

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Most Polled Have Negative View of Drug Firms

Most Americans polled realize the positive impact of prescription drugs in their lives but have a negative view of the companies that produce them, a new survey finds.

Some 78 percent of participants in the Kaiser Family Foundation poll said they had benefited from prescription drugs, and 91 percent acknowledged that drug companies made an important contribution to society, the foundation said in a statement. But 70 percent of respondents said the drug giants seemed to put profits ahead of people.

And 69 percent of those polled said drug companies are largely to blame for soaring health-care costs in general.

The February survey also found that 22 percent were "very confident" and 55 percent "somewhat" confident in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration''s ability to regulate the safety of prescription drugs, despite recent questions about the agency''s competence. And almost two-thirds of respondents said there should be more government regulation of prescription drug prices, the foundation said.

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Too Much Salt in Foods, Consumer Group Asserts

Excessive salt in Americans'' diet is posing a public health hazard, the Center for Science in the Public Interest says, and it''s gone to court to try to force the government to limit sodium levels.

Reducing the average person''s salt intake by half could prevent high blood pressure and related conditions, saving 150,000 lives per year, Michael Jacobson, a spokesman for the consumer group, told CBS News.

While current guidelines recommend 1,500 milligrams of salt each day for the average adult, the group says most Americans are way overdoing it, especially those who fill up on processed foods.

The group also wants the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to recognize salt as a food additive that should be disclosed on restaurant menus, CBS News reported.