Health Highlights: Jan. 18, 2009

Jan. 19 -- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Second Human Bird Flu Case Reported This Month in China

A second case this month in China of a human contracting a deadly form of avian flu has been reported.

According to the Associated Press, a 2-year-old girl in northern China has tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus, the type that health experts worry could some day mutate into a human worldwide pandemic.

The girl, from the Hunan province, is in the hospital in critical condition, the wire service reported. Her family members and others who came in close contact with her were under medical observation, the A.P. quotes Chinese officials as saying.

A 19-year-old woman died in Beijing earlier this month, after being in contact with ducks in a market, the wire service said.

The A.P. cites World Health Organization (WHO) statistics that say this strain of bird flu has killed 248 people worldwide since 2003, when it was first reported to have infected humans. Twenty-one of those deaths have been in China, with a total of 32 cases reported.

None of these cases has been found to be spread by human-to-human contact, according to WHO medical experts, but rather by close contact with different species of birds, especially poultry and fowl.

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'Conscience Rule' Gets Legal Challenge

The Conscience Rule, one of the last items on President George W. Bush's health agenda, has been challenged in U.S. District Court.

The Washington Post reports that a lawsuit was filed Jan. 15 in Connecticut by that state's attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, seeking to block a new federal regulation that protects health workers if they refuse to perform medical services to which they object. The rule went into effect in December.

Blumenthal's suit included the states of California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island, the Post reported. Separate lawsuits were also filed by Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association.

Central to the Conscience Rule, the newspaper reports, is that it stops federal funding to any health organization -- public or private -- if it doesn't allow health professionals the right to refuse to perform or take part in any health care services they consider objectionable on ethical, moral or religious grounds.