Health

Conjoined twins recovering well

NEW YORK - A day after their riskiest operation yet, two Filipino brothers joined at the tops of their heads greeted doctors with high-fives and a little dance Saturday.

Surgeons at Montefiore Medical Center said the 22-month-old brothers' liveliness following Friday's surgery was a sign they are still on course for surgery to fully separate them later this year.

"It's just incredibly moving to see that after this tremendous and delicate operation they're up and breathing on their own," said Dr. David Staffenberg after looking in on Carl and Clarence Aguirre.

The 51/2-hour surgery - the boys' third major operation - was treacherous and included such challenges as having to separate bone from blood vessels and trying not to damage delicate veins.

Staffenberg, Montefiore's chief of pediatric neurosurgery, said Carl performed a "wiggle dance" and Clarence offered his "usual shtick," which Dr. James Goodrich, the lead neurosurgeon, said included a high-five.

Doctors said it would be 72 hours before the main threat of bleeding and seizures passed.

In each of the three operations, a different window of bone has been cut into the boys' shared skull, then replaced. Goodrich said just 2 inches to 3 inches remain to complete the circle that will separate the boys.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration says it improperly altered a report documenting large racial and ethnic disparities in health care, but it will soon publish the full, unexpurgated document.

"There was a mistake made," Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of Health and Human Services, told Congress on Feb. 10. "It's going to be rectified."

Thompson said that "some individuals took it upon themselves" to make the report sound more positive than was justified by data.

The reversal comes in response to concerns of Democrats and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, R-Tenn. They are pushing separate bills to improve care for members of minorities.

HARTFORD, Conn. - Insurers Aetna and Humana are suing the maker of the painkiller OxyContin, claiming Purdue Pharma illegally blocked the sale of less expensive generic versions.

The antitrust lawsuit seeks restitution or the return of excess profits of an unspecified amount, the Hartford Courant reported Saturday. The complaint alleges that Stamford, Conn., Purdue obtained patents by misleading the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office about the effectiveness of OxyContin at low doses. The drug manufacturer reaped "excess profits" of more than $1-billion, the lawsuit says.

LONDON - A medical journal said Saturday it should not have published a controversial 1998 study linking childhood vaccinations and autism.

The editor of the Lancet, Dr. Richard Horton, said Dr. Andrew Wakefield and a team of British scientists who conducted the study on the triple measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR, vaccine didn't reveal that they were being paid by a legal aid service looking into whether families could sue over the immunizations.

Wakefield's study suggested that the MMR vaccine could put children at risk of autism - a developmental disorder often arising in the first few years of life - and inflammatory bowel disease.

The paper has since been discredited on scientific grounds, but some parents have clung to the findings and health officials say that vaccinations have fallen dangerously low since its publication.

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