Dick Cheney has heart transplant
Dick Cheney has heart transplant
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney had a heart transplant Saturday, after five heart attacks over the past 25 years and countless medical procedures to keep him going. Cheney, 71, waited nearly two years for his new heart, the gift of an unknown donor.
An aide to Cheney disclosed the surgery after it was over, and said the ex-vice president was recovering at a Virginia hospital.
“Although the former vice president and his family do not know the identity of the donor, they will be forever grateful for this lifesaving gift,” aide Kara Ahern said in a written statement that was authenticated by several of the Republican politician’s close associates.
Cheney was recovering Saturday night at the intensive care unit of Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., after surgery earlier in the day.
More than 3,100 Americans currently are on the national waiting list for a heart transplant. Just over 2,300 heart transplants were performed last year, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. And 330 people died while waiting.
The former vice president suffered a heart attack in 2010, his fifth since the age of 37.
Iraqi in California dies after beating
EL CAJON, Calif. (AP) — A 32-year-old woman from Iraq who was found severely beaten in her California home with a note left next to her saying “go back to your country” has died.
The director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Shaima Alawadi was taken off life support Saturday afternoon.
Hanif Mohebi said he met with Alawadi’s family Saturday.
The mother of five had been hospitalized since her 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious Wednesday in the family’s house in El Cajon.
The daughter told KUSI-TV that her mother was hit repeatedly with a tire iron, and that the note said “go back to your country, you terrorist.”
Police said the family had found a similar note earlier this month but did not report it to authorities.
Eight killed in W.Va. house fire
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Alisha Carter-Camp had a new job, a wedding to plan and a 26th birthday to celebrate with a family cookout and toasts to the birthday girl in a yard full of children. By the end of the night, she was among eight dead, including six children, in one of this West Virginia city’s deadliest house fires in decades.
The blaze tore through the two-story home while the family slept early Saturday, hours after the last guest had left Carter-Camp’s party, authorities said. The dead children ranged from 18 months to 8. A seventh child, a 7-year-old boy, was hospitalized on life support.
The cause was under investigation, although arson wasn’t suspected, Charleston Mayor Danny Jones said. The fire started about 3:30 a.m. on the first floor. Jones said the home had just one working smoke detector; the city requires several. A building inspection that had been scheduled for last month didn’t happen because only children were home at the time.
A children’s picnic table, chairs and an umbrella were overturned in the yard of the home, roped off by police tape on a corner in a neighborhood tightly packed with small houses in north Charleston. Flames and smoke blackened the front of the house Two huge front windows were shattered, and what appeared to be an opening for an upstairs air conditioner was stuffed shut with clothes.
Merck heart drug performs poorly
CHICAGO (AP) — Officials at drugmaker Merck & Co. say they will take more time to decide what to do about an experimental blood thinner that gave disappointing results in a second big study.
The study was aimed at preventing repeat heart attacks and strokes in people who had already suffered one or were in danger of one because of hardened arteries in their legs.
The drug, vorapaxar, lowered the risk of those problems but also raised the risk of major bleeding, including dangerous bleeding in the head, which largely canceled out the drug’s benefit.
Results of the study were discussed Saturday at an American College of Cardiology conference in Chicago and published by the New England Journal of Medicine.
Merck had hoped vorapaxar would become a new, first-of-its-kind blood thinner.
The company-sponsored study involved more than 26,000 patients in 32 countries. All were given usual heart medicines plus aspirin, and half also received daily vorapaxar pills.
Safety monitors stopped part of the study last year after seeing higher rates of bleeding in the head among people with a history of stroke who were on the experimental drug. The study continued in the rest of the participants.
Sandusky called ‘likely pedophile’
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — A psychologist who looked into a 1998 allegation against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky told police at the time that his behavior fit the profile of a likely pedophile, NBC News reported Saturday.
Yet Sandusky was not criminally charged, nor placed on a state registry of suspected child abusers, and prosecutors say he continued assaulting boys for more than a decade until his arrest in November.
NBC obtained a copy of the campus police department’s investigatory report on an encounter in which Sandusky was accused of having inappropriate contact with an 11-year-old boy with whom he had showered naked on the Penn State campus.
The police file includes the report of State College psychologist Alycia Chambers, who interviewed and provided counseling to the boy.
“My consultants agree that the incidents meet all of our definitions, based on experience and education, of a likely pedophile’s pattern of building trust and gradual introduction of physical touch, within a context of a ‘loving,’ ‘special’ relationship,” Chambers wrote.
However, a second psychologist, John Seasock, concluded that Sandusky had neither assaulted the boy nor fit the profile of a pedophile.
Chambers and Seasock did not immediately return phone messages left at their offices Saturday.
Centre County prosecutors ultimately decided not to charge Sandusky, and the case was closed until a statewide grand jury accused the retired defensive coordinator of abusing the boy and nine others over a 15-year period. Sandusky, who faces more than 50 counts of child sex abuse, has pleaded innocent and awaits trial.