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<p>A partisan Democratic mantra began earlier in the book. McClellan writes George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign "acquiesced to certain advisers, including Roger Ailes and the late Lee Atwater," who opposed Bush's "civility and decency." (McClellan, then 20 years old, played no part in that campaign.) McClellan contends that thanks to Rove in 2002, "the first cracks appeared in the facade of bipartisan comity."</p>

People with diabetes have the same risk of a heart attack or stroke as patients who have survived one heart attack already, researchers reported on Monday. Diabetics have more than 2.4 times the normal risk of dying from cardiovascular disease -- about the same as those who have had a heart attack, the five-year Danish study of more than 3 million people found. "The increased risk was observed in people at all ages with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes who were receiving insulin or other drugs to reduce levels of sugar in the blood," said Dr. Tina Ken...

ORLANDO — Vitamin E has finally fulfilled its promise as an antioxidant that can slow the progression of cardiovascular disease. Patients with diabetes who also had the haptoglobin 2–2 genotype and who were treated with 400 IU of vitamin E daily for 18 months had about half the incidence of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, and stroke, compared with patients who received placebo in a study with 1,434 patients that was done in Israel, Dr. Shany Blum reported at the annual scientific sessions of the American Heart Association. Further analysis showed that the benefit was concentrated in patients with poorly controlled...

Before he was elected mayor in 2001, Michael R. Bloomberg had surgery to have two stents implanted in a coronary artery because of blockage in his heart, a person with knowledge of Mr. Bloomberg’s health said last night. Mayor Bloomberg has not had heart disease since the stents were put in, according to this person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Mr. Bloomberg had not authorized release of the information. The mayor is in excellent health today, this person said. Newsweek magazine first reported the implants this week. The person with knowledge of the mayor’s health said the procedure...

High consumption of trans fat, found mainly in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and widely used by the food industry, has been linked to an increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). New York and Philadelphia have passed measures eliminating its use in restaurants, and other cities are considering similar bans. A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) provides the strongest association to date between trans fat and heart disease. It found that women in the U.S. with the highest levels of trans fat in their blood had three times the risk of CHD as those with...

AP Medical Writer More than half a million people a year with chest pain are getting an unnecessary or premature procedure to unclog their arteries because drugs are just as effective, suggests a landmark study that challenges one of the most common practices in heart care. The stunning results found that angioplasty did not save lives or prevent heart attacks in non-emergency heart patients. An even bigger surprise: Angioplasty gave only slight and temporary relief from chest pain, the main reason it is done. "By five years, there was really no significant difference" in symptoms, said Dr. William Boden of...

Science Daily — Rush University Medical Center is one of the first medical centers in the country, and currently the only site in Illinois, participating in a novel clinical trial to determine if a subject’s own stem cells can treat a form of severe coronary artery disease. The Autologous Cellular Therapy CD34-Chronic Myocardial Ischemia (ACT34-CMI) Trial is the first human, Phase II adult stem cell therapy study in the U.S. designed to investigate the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of blood-derived selected CD34+ stem cells to improve symptoms and clinical outcomes in subjects with chronic myocardial ischemia (CMI), a severe form...

Opening a blocked artery with balloons and stents can be lifesaving in the early hours after a heart attack, but a new study concludes that it often does no good if the heart attack occurred three or more days before. The findings should change medical practice, researchers say, and could affect as many as 50,000 patients a year in the United States. They say doctors should stop trying to open arteries in people who had heart attacks days or weeks before and who are stable and free of chest pain. Currently, the balloon procedure, called angioplasty, is used in many...

A provocative review paper published this month has raised questions about the aggressive cholesterol-lowering recommendations made two years ago by a government panel. The panel, the National Cholesterol Education Program, urged patients at risk for heart disease to reduce sharply their harmful LDL cholesterol and to try to reach specific, very low levels. Though the authors of the new paper, published in the Oct. 3 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, endorse the use of cholesterol-lowering statins, they say there is not enough solid scientific evidence to support the target numbers for LDL cholesterol set forth by the government panel....

Researchers at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation have launched a study to examine whether administration of stem cells to first time heart attack patients can prevent the development of congestive heart failure (CHF). CHF diagnosis is the cause of hospitalization in the United States and is responsible for more than 50,000 deaths a year. Currently, heart transplantation is the only available cure.  Each year more than one million Americans have their first heart attack, putting them at risk of developing CHF as a result of cardiac cell death and scar formation which results in diminished pumping ability of the heart...

An alcoholic drink a day can significantly reduce the risk for heart disease in men, a new study finds, but women get almost the same benefit with only one drink a week. The report, which appears online in the British medical journal BMJ, suggests that for women, alcohol intake is the primary protective factor, while for men, it is drinking frequency. The Danish study included 27,178 men and 29,875 women volunteers who were free of coronary heart disease at the start of the study. They filled out questionnaires and underwent interviews about their eating and drinking habits, recording how many...

TOKYO, May 1 (Reuters) - The dollar struck a seven-month low against the yen and a one-year low against the euro on Monday, extending a slide as the Federal Reserve appears set to soon end a two-year run of credit tightening. A renewed focus on U.S. deficits after last month's meeting of Group of Seven industrialised powers, worries about Iran's nuclear ambitions and deteriorating technical signals have pummeled the dollar across the board. The yen gained across the board on solid buying by foreign hedge funds and investment banks, while some Japanese players squared positions heading into the country's Golden...

John McCain is running for President 2008. As a republican candidate, John McCain could win the republican nomination. Many feel if John McCain runs against Hillary Clinton, he would win the presidential election in 2008. John McCain graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958. After graduation, John McCain became a Naval Avaitor. For over 5 years, John McCain was a Vietnam captive. John McCain became a US Senator for Arizona in 1986. Senator John McCain is now Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and is known for his successful passing of Campaign Finance Reform. Express your...

A recent study looks at why aspirin's effect on female hearts seems to be different than its effect on male hearts. In both men and women, daily aspirin therapy is one of the mainstays of treatment in preventing heart attacks and strokes. Previous studies have shown as much as a 42-percent decrease in heart attacks among men who take aspirin compared to a placebo. However, the recent Women's Health Study of almost 40,000 women showed that low-dose aspirin's effects on women did not reduce coronary artery disease, but did reduce the risk of stroke. To investigate this and similar findings,...

AP MEDICAL WRITER ATLANTA -- People in a new study got their "bad cholesterol" to the lowest levels ever seen and saw blockages in their blood vessels shrink by taking a high dose of cholesterol drug, researchers reported Monday. Doctors say it is the best evidence yet that heart disease actually can be reversed, not just kept from getting worse. Two-thirds of the 349 study participants had regression of heart artery buildups when they took the maximum dose of Crestor, the strongest of the cholesterol-lowering statin drugs on the market and one under fire by a consumer group that contends...

A new report suggests that for women who have had hysterectomies, taking estrogen does not increase the risk of heart disease and may even protect the heart in those who are younger, from 50 to 59. The findings, being published today in The Archives of Internal Medicine, concern the use of estrogen alone and differ from earlier studies of estrogen and progesterone. The studies of combined hormones found that they increased the risk of heart disease, breast cancer and other ailments. The new results lend support to a theory held by some researchers, that hormone therapy may help prevent heart...

What started out as a frontpage supermarket tabloid story in the National Enquirer regarding Senator Ted Kennedy's "love child," is slowly but surely gaining some traction in the mainstream news media. After the story of appeared in the Enquirer, the Boston Herald in Kennedy's own backyard ran a similar story. Now the largest circulation newspaper in the Big Apple, the New York Daily News -- a decidedly liberal news organization -- is running a follow-up story. According to a column in the NY Daily News, Ted Kennedy's alleged love child, Christopher Allen, appears to have corroborated The National Enquirer's claim...

OUTSOURCING of design to India by car manufacturers has boosted sales of related design engineering software. "The influx of design outsourcing into India is helping," agreed Mr Narendra Reddy, Managing Director, India Operations, UGS, an engineering services company that offers Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD-CAM) solutions and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions. With General Motors and Ford entering the country, as well as Tata Motors and Mahindras setting up design labs, the necessity for engineering service solutions is increasing. Global products, as opposed to local ones, are being favoured with the setting up of microcosms of labs abroad. The...

A June 2004 meeting between Friendswood school officials and the chief appraiser of the Galveston County Central Appraisal District was to keep the school district from losing state funding because under-appraised homes in six Friendswood subdivisions, said FISD superintendent Trish Hanks. The meeting has become fodder for Houston talk radio station KSEV and its Lone Star Times web site, with allegations that the district tried to bring unwarranted influence to bear on the appraisal district to boost property values and therefore permit a "stealth" tax increase. In the arcane process of property appraisal for tax purposes, Hanks said the state...

Friendswood school district and appraisal district officials on Friday defended a meeting they had last year that resulted in higher property appraisals for residents in six subdivisions. Both Ken Wright, the appraisal district’s chief appraiser, and school Superintendent Trish Hanks said the meeting was to ensure the school district did not lose state funding because property in its boundaries had been under-appraised. Hanks, other officials and three school board members met with Wright last year, presenting him with records of home sales indicating the appraisal district had undervalued real estate in the school district. Hanks said school officials wanted to...