Wal Mart Recalls Animal Toys for Lead

(AP) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is recalling toy animals because of excessive lead levels discovered since it stepped up safety testing in August, the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said Friday.
Wal-Mart described the recalled items in a news release as toy sets of "realistic animals" that included farm animals, jungle animals and dinosaurs. It did not provide a brand name or say in the statement how many toys were subject to the voluntary recall or where they were made.

A Wal-Mart spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Wal-Mart said independent testing revealed excessive levels of lead in the base material, not the surface coating. The retailer said it was posting photos and details of the affected toys on its Web site, http://www.walmartfacts.com. It said customers may return the product to any Wal-Mart store, with or without a receipt, for a full refund.

If you have been injured by one of these toys, please contact us at our website http://www.thebaezlawfirm.com so that we could discuss your case, or call our office at (210) 979-9777. Have a blessed day!

Texas Hospitals don't have to make cases of deadly infection public

The antibiotic-resistant bacterium called MRSA is infecting more victims across the country, but most states, including Texas, are not tracking it.
The so-called "superbug" kills more people than AIDS, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which estimates that 18,700 people nationwide died of invasive MRSA in 2005. AIDS claimed about 17,000 lives in this country that year, the CDC reports.
The report resulted from the first federal study to track methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a form of staph that has haunted health professionals for the past few years but grabbed the public's attention only recently after several students in different parts of the United States died from a strain they caught in the community.
The infection traditionally has spread only in health care settings, and 85 percent of the more serious cases still originate there, according to the CDC. But now that it has made its way into the community, MRSA (pronounced MUR-suh) is becoming a household word.
Most hospitals track infections transmitted within their own grounds; a spokeswoman at one Houston hospital said it would be negligent not to keep that data. But few hospitals are willing to make the information public, either through the media or to their patients.
And they don't have to.
Unlike a long list of illnesses, including chicken pox, syphilis and Lyme disease, MRSA isn't a required reportable condition in Texas. So while hospitals may know their infection rates, the public often can't get that information.
"There's just a concern about public reporting and whether it would be interpreted correctly," said Dr. Rajiv Jain, director of the Veterans Affairs national MRSA initiative, which involves testing every admitted patient for the infection. Jain believes more in-depth tracking is needed.
Hospital administrators are reluctant to release infection-rate data, partly because they're worried that the public will use it to compare them with other hospitals that track the infection differently or that serve patients with different risk factors.
But without data, some patient advocates say, it's difficult to hold hospitals accountable.
New law, but no fundingThe Texas Legislature this year approved a law that requires reporting of health care-associated infections, although it doesn't specifically target MRSA. Like most laws adopted in about 20 other states in recent years, the new rules focus on the nature of an infection, not the type of bacteria that caused it. So while some infections caused by MRSA would be counted, they wouldn't be recorded as MRSA.
The law requires that three types of hospital-acquired infections be reported: surgical-site infections, respiratory syncytial virus — which causes pneumonia — and certain bloodstream infections. But since the law doesn't include funding for the project, state health officials are struggling to figure out how to pay for it.
"It's still not clear what funding is going to be available and if it's going to be sufficient to make things work," said Dr. Tom Betz, manager of infectious disease surveillance and epidemiology for the Texas Department of State Health Services. "If we can't do this right, we probably shouldn't do it at all."
While some health professionals, including Jain, say states should track MRSA specifically, others say that wouldn't do much good, partly because the staph infection can manifest in so many forms. Infections on the skin, which can look like pimples or boils, can be treated fairly easily and become potentially fatal only if the infection spreads to the bloodstream or infects a surgical wound.
Origin hard to determineThen there's the difficulty of determining the mode of transmission: Hospitals can't always differentiate between infections that originate in their facility or in the community.
"To track just MRSA by itself, that doesn't make a lot of sense," said Dr. Sheldon Kaplan, chief of infectious disease services at Texas Children's Hospital and professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. "There are lots of (other) hospital-acquired types of infections that are just as serious."
That's no consolation for Cary Yates, a Missouri City man whose 29-year-old son Shawn died in March from community-acquired MRSA. It took doctors several days to properly diagnose Shawn Yates, a father of two, and then it was too late, his father said.
"The medical community must take this seriously," said Yates, a banker. "They must hold themselves accountable and responsible and report these numbers so we can have an open dialogue to try and cure this disease or at least recognize it."
Bexar County to be firstBexar County, which includes San Antonio, soon will become the first in the state to track the infection. Under a state law approved in June, all clinical labs in the county will be required to report MRSA infections as soon as January. Lawmakers say the tracking system may later be expanded to the rest of the state if it's successful.
"The whole goal of getting the data is to get a baseline, so you can identify risk factors and then recommend measures to reduce those rates," said Dr. Bryan Alsip, assistant director of clinical and population-based services for the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District.
Bexar County has agreed to fund the pilot program. But for hospitals strapped for money and staff, tracking yet another condition could pull resources away from patient care, said Dr. Ed Septimus, medical director of clinical integration for The Methodist Hospital System in Houston.
"No one's against transparency," said Septimus, who serves on the board of directors for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "But it has to be done fairly and correctly."

Texans on Justice

Do you have what it takes to create a video? Can you be a director of a video? If you answered yes to any of the two previous questions, this one if for you. Create a three-minute-or-less video that captures your vision of the importance and value of the justice system in our daily lives.
This contest is open to residents of Texas and attorneys licensed to practice in Texas.
To enter the "Lone Star Stories: Texans on Justice" contest:
1. Complete this online entry form, and agree to these rules.
2. Make a video. Be creative!
3. Submit/post your video to www.youtube.com/group/texansonjustice between Oct. 15, 2007, and Dec. 15, 2007. Videos must be three minutes long or less.
If you are under the age of 18, be sure to submit a signed parental permission form.
Good luck to any and all of you who enter the contest.

We careabout your legal needs! http://www.thebaezlawfirm.com

Woman wins lawsuit over sponge

United Press International (UPI via COMPTEX) - October 5, 2007

A Florida jury has awarded more than $2.4 million to a woman whose doctor left a foot-long sponge in her pelvis after she gave birth.Karlene Chambers of Pembroke Pines, Fla., sued Dr. Joseph Becerra, the Pembroke Pines OB/GYN Associates, Memorial Hospital West and other medical agencies, the Miami Herald said Thursday.

The newspaper said Chambers gave birth to a healthy baby girl by Cesarean on Sept. 11, 2001, but returned to the hospital after she developed an infection.

On Sept. 19, a radiologist spotted a foreign object and reported it, but nothing was done, Chambers' attorney told the newspaper. On Sept. 22, the gauze-like sponge showed up in a CAT scan and doctors conducted emergency surgery.

The lawsuit said Chambers lost her ability to have more children and suffers from other health problems related to the incident.

URL: www.upi.com
Copyright 2007 by United Press International

Injured by your spouse?

Texas law recognizes two different forms of assault. First, there is the bodily injury contact, which requires injury, and second there is the offensive contact, which does not. The latter could be in a form of a sexually transmitted disease (STD). For instance, if your spouse has an extramarital affair while you are married to them, you in fact may have a cause of action against your spouse, if you become infected with an STD. Many spouses stay on abusive relationships even after this phenomena.

The reason why a spouse may have a legal cause of action against a spouse is simple. How many of you would have sex with your spouse if your spouse would tell you, "honey, I just had sex with another person, I may be infected with something, but let’s have sex." It would be hard to imagine that any one of us would allow such a intimate contact with ourselves, after our spouse breaks that trust. Many, if not all of us, would consider that offensive.

When a spouse commits adultery, most of the time, if not always, they do not inform the other about the affair. And if the same spouse continues to have sex with his/her spouse, after having sex with another person, other than their spouse, and infects the spouse with an STD; unless the spouse uses protection for the other spouse, the spouse that committed the affair has, for all legal purposes, "offensive contact" with the other spouse. WOW, that was a mouth full one!

If you have been injured by your spouse, or if you would like us to review your case:
Come visit us at our website http://www.thebaezlawfirm.com or call us (210) 979-9777. Because, "we care about your legal needs."