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Malaria Vaccine Trial Offers Hope

Trials in Africa of a new malaria vaccine have shown it more than halves the number of serious bouts of the disease in small children, it was revealed yesterday.

Expectations are high for the vaccine, which has already shown promise in early trials. The latest trial results, published online in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), are better than before.

Early trials in Mozambique found the vaccine reduced by almost a third the number of cases of malaria warranting clinical care. In the new trials in Tanzania and Kenya, it reduced such cases by 53% in five- to 17-month-old babies. Malaria kills almost a million people a year, mostly babies and small children in Africa.

This is the latest of a series of trials designed to test the efficacy of the vaccine RTS,S – which is being developed by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals. The improved efficacy in Kenya and Tanzania resulted from using a different adjuvant system, a compound used to enhance the body’s response to the actual vaccine.

“Today’s study results strongly show that our investments in developing malaria vaccines are beginning to pay dividends,” said Christian Loucq, the director of the global Path Malaria Vaccine Initiative. “We are closer than ever before to developing a malaria vaccine for children in Africa. History has shown that vaccines are the most powerful tool to control and eliminate infectious diseases.”

A second study also published by the NEJM shows that the malaria vaccine can be safely given at the same time as the standard infant vaccinations for diphtheria, whooping cough and other diseases.

A trial in Tanzania involved 340 babies who were given the malaria vaccine at eight, 12 and 16 weeks of age, together with the combined DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis) and Hib vaccine. That trial found that the malaria vaccine did not interfere with the protection children received against other diseases.

Tags: Hope, Malaria, Offers, Trial, Vaccine

Trial Attorneys Take on Loss of Consortium in California

There is an eclectic system in each state concerning the “Loss of Consortium” laws. However, most of the state’s jurisdictions give permission to wives and husbands of those who have been victims, usually in a personal injury case, to recover damages due to loss of consortium.

This is actually a form of “non-economic damage” wherein a partner in a domestic partnership or marriage may be given special rights to recover compensation after the other partner has been a victim of wrongful death or severe personal injury.

This means, that aside from the actual victim’s pursuance of a personal injury case against the parties liable for the accident or defective products he/she had been involved in or taken that resulted in severe injuries, the victim’s spouse, if the jurisdiction permits it, can also sue the liable parties. The spouse’s case would be a claim for compensation on the loss of consortium he/she suffered that resulted from the victim’s injuries.

The usual legal action done in cases of loss of consortium comes from the uninjured spouse. He/she will file a case against the defendant for damages consequential from his/her inability to enjoy or feel the same warmth and companionship she had enjoyed or felt before his/her spouse sustained injuries. These kind of legal claims usually arise whenever a spouse become severely injured, even killed as an aftermath of another party’s wrongful/intentional acts and/or negligence.

The Basics

The conventional wisdom regarding loss of consortium is the losses that are suffered by the other spouse that results to the limited or decreased sexual activity after the injury of the other.

Realistically though, more implications are covered by this term. The damages sought to be compensated by an uninjured spouse is centered on the aftereffects of the injury on spousal functions that previously existed between the partners.

Given this, aside from deprivation or limitation in sexual relations, the claimant spouse who filed loss of consortium usually bids for compensation for the deprivation or loss of the following:

- Emotional care and support
- Companionship
- Affection
- Domestic services (e.g. caring for the small children, share in household chores)
- Love
- Comfort
- Society

These are among the terms covered in filing a loss of consortium claim, connoting that there are broader matters concerning this clause.

Damages

Since damages because of loss of consortium are non-economic, there is no defined monetary loss in this kind of cases. The claim also has no tangible cash value. As such, in cases that involved claims for loss of consortium, the jury or judge are given the discretion to determine the award to be given to the victim in case such claim has been established.

Loss of consortium in California

In California, a loss of consortium claim has a prerequisite of valid marriage. A court in California declared that absence of a valid marital relationship means that no such right exists.

Moreover, instructions to a California jury have explicit definitions of the loss of consortium, which is the “loss of [the spouse's] love, companionship, comfort, affection, society, solace or moral support; any loss or enjoyment of sexual relations or the ability to have children or any loss of the [the spouse's] physical assistance in the operation and maintenance of the home…”

Trial attorneys in California keep this in mind and analyze a personal injury case more thoroughly before introducing such claim from a spouse of a victim suing for personal injury and/or wrongful death.

Our Trial Attorneys California are well versed and highly experienced in representing clients in cases involving personal injury, social security disability, employment, and business.

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Jury Mulls Verdict in Trial Transfixing America

A murder case that has transfixed the US was delicately poised last night as the jury deliberated its verdict, the judge declared exasperation and cable TV channels kept a vigil outside the California court where the trial is being held.

The trial of Scott Peterson has all the ingredients of a primetime cop show: infidelity, an unborn child, a hot-shot lawyer, a motive but little evidence, a change in the law and now, possibly, a hung jury.

Mr Peterson denies murdering Laci Peterson, his pregnant wife, on Christmas Eve 2002, at their home in Modesto, California. But beyond that simple allegation lies a string of uncertain events.

Mr Peterson, 31, was arrested as he was playing golf in San Diego, a few miles north of the Mexican border. The dark-haired fertiliser salesman had dyed his hair blond, grown a goatee beard and had $15,000, along with an array of outdoor survival gear, in his car.

The police picked him up after becoming suspicions following his wife’s disappearance when she was seven months pregnant.

Her husband claimed he had been fishing at the time she went missing. But her body and that of the foetus of the couple’s child was found in San Francisco bay three months later, not far from the spot where Mr Peterson admitted he had been fishing.

The two corpses were separated from each other and the bodies were so badly decomposed that it was impossible to determine a cause of death.

Mr Peterson’s claim he knew nothing of his wife’s disappearance was undermined when it emerged that, a few months before she went missing, he had begun an affair with a blond masseuse called Amber Frey, and told her that he was a widower.

Realising she had been dating the husband of a missing woman, Ms Frey went to police and started taping phone conversations with her lover.

The prosecution claim that Mr Peterson had felt trapped by the prospect of starting a family. They also point to a lucrative life insurance policy as a potential motive.

Yet despite hauling away some 50 sacks of evidence from Mr Peterson’s house, as well as impounding his boat, the prosecution case is almost entirely circumstantial. The only piece of forensic evidence presented in court was a single hair belonging to Mrs Peterson, found on Peterson’s boat.

The defence, led by Mark Geragos, who used to be Michael Jackson’s lawyer, contends that the woman was kidnapped while out for a walk and murdered some time later, which explains how her body came to be separated from that of her child.

Mr Peterson faces a double murder charge. Under California law, a murder charge can be brought if a pregnancy is beyond the “embryonic stage”. This became federal law this year when George Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, popularly known as “Laci’s Law”.

The jury has been deliberating for five days.

Tags: America, Jury, Mulls, Transfixing, Trial, Verdict

Plea Bargain Avoids Trial for Boston Woman Who Slit Baby’s Throat

By Linda Orlando

In December 2002, Natalie Rodriguez was so angry at being kicked out of her best friend’s apartment that she retaliated in a horrific way. At 3 a.m., she silently lifted 9-month old Xavier Antonio Miranda out of his crib and grabbed a knife from the kitchen on her way out the door. She walked a little way down the road, placed the tiny crying baby face down on a frigid snow bank in a neighbor’s driveway, slashed his throat so savagely she severed his spinal cord, and let him bleed to death. She then hid the boy’s body under a trash can in the driveway and returned to the apartment, where she went to bed. Later that day, when police were looking for the missing baby, they found his body and arrested Rodriguez, who confessed to killing Xavier.

Rodriguez, 23, sat in a Boston courtroom and sobbed Tuesday as the prosecutor described the terrible events of that night. “It wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said. Through her tears she apologized as she plead guilty to second-degree murder and kidnapping charges, saying “I have to live with it for the rest of my life, with the agonizing sadness and guilt.” David Procopio, a spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, explained the prosecutor’s reasoning behind the plea agreement. “We removed the uncertainty of a trial and assured a conviction, and allowed the family to hear the defendant stand up in open court and take responsibility for her actions,” he said. The plea bargain will send Rodriguez to prison for at least 26 years for killing little Xavier.

Rodriguez and Giselle Miranda, Xavier’s mother, grew up together in the Jamaica Plains section of Boston. They were best friends for most of their lives, and when she was 16, Rodriguez had a son with Miranda’s brother. One month before killing Xavier, Rodriguez lost her job at a Social Security office and was kicked out of her family home. Her friend Giselle quickly offered to help, taking in her friend and her 4-year old son into their three-bedroom Chelsea apartment. But Rodriguez repaid her friend’s generosity by getting drunk frequently, being belligerent, and not contributing any rent money. The Miranda family had no choice but to tell her to move out. On the day of the deadline they had given her for leaving, Rodriguez took out her revenge on them by destroying their life.

“She was there when my son was born,” Giselle said Tuesday, staring at Rodriguez from the witness stand. “It really hurts to know my only friend did this to me. I was there for her through good and bad. Where did I go wrong for her to do this to me? It destroyed my family. It destroyed everybody.” Rodriguez told the stunned courtroom that her actions were the result of years of “dysfunctional ways of living and not having control of my life.” According to her lawyers, she is an admitted alcoholic with a history of attempted suicide and mental illness, and she had been drinking before the murder. “I was the cause of the death of a precious boy who I loved dearly,” Rodriguez said to dozens of relatives and friends of the Miranda family who had gathered in the courtroom. “I want to apologize to the family. I’m very sorry.”

Giselle and Walter Miranda now have three other children, ages 1 through 3. They had hoped for a longer prison sentence for Rodriguez. “My son was innocent,” Giselle said after the sentencing. “If she had any type of grudge she could have taken it out on me or my husband, not my son. My son had the right to live. I have no words for her.”

Tags: Avoids, Baby's, Bargain, Boston, Plea, Slit, Throat, Trial, Woman

Thursday, May 6th, 2010 Grants No Comments