Giffords to have surgery while husband is in space (AP)

HOUSTON � Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' recovery isn't slowing down while her astronaut husband speeds around the Earth.

Giffords will undergo surgery Wednesday so doctors can replace a piece of her skull with a plastic implant, another encouraging step since the Arizona congresswoman was shot in the head more than four months ago.

The surgery � coming just days after Giffords traveled to Florida to watch her husband, Mark Kelly, launch into space � was confirmed to The Associated Press by two people familiar with the congresswoman's care. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the information has not officially been released.

Doctors removed a piece of Giffords' skull to allow room for brain swelling shortly after a would-be assassin shot her in the head Jan. 8, critically wounding her, killing six people and injuring 12 others at a political event in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz.

The three-term Democratic congresswoman has been wearing a helmet adorned with an Arizona state flag. Doctors said when she arrived in Houston in late January they hoped to do the cranial surgery in May.

Dr. Richard Riggs, chair of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said the surgery to place the plastic implant is relatively simple. Recovery is short � a day or two at the most � and is mostly from the effects of anesthesia, he said.

"This gives her quality of life because she won't have to worry about the helmet and protection when moving around," said Riggs, who is not involved in Giffords' care.

The implant is placed under the scalp, allowing hair to grow on top so it is not visible. Riggs said the piece of skull that doctors removed likely was contaminated or shattered by the bullet that pierced the left side of Giffords' brain. That would make the skull unfit to be reattached, which is why doctors would use an implant, Riggs said.

Giffords' chief of staff, Pia Carusone, declined to comment on whether Giffords would undergo the surgery on Wednesday. Giffords' doctors do not comment on her condition without approval from her family.

Giffords returned to Houston and rehab late Monday after watching her husband's shuttle launch in Florida. When Endeavour's five Americans and one Italian got off the ground Monday, Giffords watched in private from a wheelchair on the roof of the launch control center and remarked, "good stuff, good stuff," according to her staff.

That Giffords would watch the shuttle launch seemed improbable a little more than four months ago. And some patients don't have this type of surgery until after they are released from the hospital.

Her doctors have said she has made remarkable progress in what will be a long recovery.

The next step will be to release her from the hospital. Then she will continue speech, occupational and physical therapy at an outpatient clinic.

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APNewsBreak: Giffords set to undergo skull surgery (AP)

HOUSTON � Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords will undergo surgery on Wednesday to place an implant where a piece of her skull was removed by doctors after she was shot in January.

The surgery was confirmed to The Associated Press by a person familiar with Giffords' care. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the information has not officially been released.

Giffords had a piece of her skull removed shortly after the shooting to allow room for brain swelling, and has been wearing a helmet adorned with an Arizona state flag. Doctors had said when the three-term Democratic congresswoman arrived in Houston in late January they hoped to do the cranial surgery in May.

Dr. Richard Riggs, chair of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said the surgery to place the plastic implant is relatively simple. Recovery is short � a day or two at the most � and is mostly from the effects of anesthesia, he said.

"This gives her quality of life because she won't have to worry about the helmet and protection when moving around," said Riggs, who is not involved in Giffords' care.

The implant is placed under the scalp, allowing hair to grow on top so it is not visible.

The surgery, the latest sign Giffords' recovery is progressing as planned, comes just days after she returned from Florida where she watched her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, rocket into space. When Endeavour's five Americans and one Italian got off the ground on Monday, Giffords watched in private from a wheelchair on the roof of the launch control center and remarked, "good stuff, good stuff," according to her staff.

Giffords returned to Houston and rehab late Monday, hours after the launch.

While some patients don't have this surgery until after they are released from the hospital, Giffords' operation indicates she is recovering according to schedule.

That Giffords would watch the shuttle launch seemed improbable a little more than four months ago. The would-be assassin shot her in the head, critically wounding her, killing six people and injuring 12 others at a political event in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz.

The bullet pierced the left side of Giffords' brain, affecting speech and movement on her right side.

Her doctors at a Houston rehabilitation center have said she has made remarkable progress in what will be a long recovery.

The next step will be to release her from the hospital. Then she will continue speech, occupational and physical therapy at an outpatient clinic.

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How to square budget cuts, need for aging research (AP)

WASHINGTON � A disease standoff may be brewing: How can Alzheimer's research receive more scarce dollars without cutting from areas like heart disease or cancer?

In one of the stark realities of the budget crisis, scientists' chances of winning research dollars from the National Institutes of Health for any condition have dipped to a new low.

"We are clearly not able to support a lot of great science that we would like to support," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told senators last week. This year, for every six grant applications that NIH receives, "five of them are going to go begging."

That's down from nearly 1 in 3 grants funded a decade ago, and 1 in 5 last year. And it comes before the looming fight over how much more to cut in overall government spending for next year, and where to make those cuts.

Already, a new report says one of the biggest losers is aging research, despite a rapidly graying population that promises a worsening epidemic of dementia, among other illnesses.

"Nobody wants to say Alzheimer's is worse than diabetes or heart disease or cancer," says Dr. Sam Gandy, a prominent neuroscientist at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

But "part of the problem now with all the pressure to cut the budget ... is that for Alzheimer's to get more, something else has to lose," adds Gandy. His own lab is scrambling for funds to study a potential dementia drug after losing out on an NIH aging grant.

The NIH pays for much of the nation's leading biomedical research. Republicans and Democrats alike have long been staunch supporters. But the agency's nearly $31 billion budget offers an example of the hard choices facing lawmakers, especially if they're to meet House calls for a drastic scale-back of overall government spending.

Consider aging issues.

The NIH spends about $469 million on Alzheimer's research, says a new report from the Alzheimer's Foundation of America that criticizes overall aging research as "a minuscule and declining investment."

About 5.4 million Americans now have Alzheimer's disease, and studies suggest health and nursing home expenditures for it cost more than $170 billion a year, much of it paid by Medicare and Medicaid.

NIH's Collins told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that there's a "very frightening cost curve." In 2050, when more than 13 million Americans are projected to have Alzheimer's, the bill is expected to reach a staggering $1 trillion. But he said that cost could be halved merely by finding a way to delay people getting Alzheimer's by five years.

Monday, Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich jumped into the debate, saying that over the next four decades Alzheimer's could cost the government a total of $20 trillion. He suggested selling U.S. bonds to raise money for research rather than have the disease compete each year for a share of the federal budget.

"We are grotesquely underfunded," Gingrich said of health research dollars.

The Alzheimer's Foundation report goes beyond dementia, finding that the National Institute on Aging receives 3.6 cents for every dollar Congress sends to the NIH. Cancer and heart disease get nearly three to four times as much. Despite the tough economic times, the foundation has joined with other groups lobbying for an extra $300 million for the aging institute's overall work next year, to boost its budget to $1.4 billion.

Competition for today's dollars is fierce, with applications up 60 percent at the aging division alone since 2003. Aging chief Dr. Richard Hodes says last year, his institute couldn't pay for about half of what were ranked as the most outstanding applications for research projects. Still, he hopes to fund more scientists this year by limiting the number who get especially large grants.

What's the squeeze? Congress doubled the NIH's budget in the early 2000s, an investment that helped speed the genetic revolution and thus a host of new projects that scientists are clamoring to try. But in more recent years, economists say NIH's budget hasn't kept pace with medical inflation, and this year Congress cut overall NIH funding by 1 percent, less than expected after a protracted battle.

The Obama administration has sought nearly $32 billion for next year, and prospects for avoiding a cut instead are far from clear. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the issue, warns that under some early-circulating House plans to curb health spending, "severe reductions to NIH research would be unavoidable. That doesn't make sense."

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., pushed Collins to make the case that investments in medical research really can pay off.

Collins' response: Four decades of NIH-led research revealed how arteries get clogged and spurred development of cholesterol-fighting statin drugs, helping lead to a 60 percent drop in heart-disease deaths. Averaged out, that research cost about $3.70 per person per year, "the cost of a latte, and not even a grande latte," Collins told lawmakers.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE � Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington. Associated Press writer Philip Elliott contributed to this report.

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CDC: TB treatment can now be done in 3 months (AP)

ATLANTA � Health officials say there's a faster treatment for people who have tuberculosis but aren't infectious. A combination of pills knocks it out in just three months instead of nine.

That means more people are likely to finish their treatment. Some are calling it one of the biggest developments in tuberculosis treatment in decades.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presented the study Monday at a medical conference in Denver.

The CDC estimates that more than 11 million Americans have latent TB, meaning they're infected with the TB bacteria but haven't had symptoms and are not infectious.

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Zurich voters keep 'suicide tourism' alive (AP)

ZURICH � Voters in Zurich have overwhelmingly rejected calls to ban assisted suicide or to outlaw the practice for nonresidents.

Zurich's cantonal voters by about a 4-to-1 margin Sunday defeated both measures that had been pushed by political and religious conservatives.

Out of more than 278,000 ballots cast, the initiative to ban assisted suicide was opposed by 85 percent of voters and the initiative to outlaw it for foreigners was turned down by 78 percent, according to Zurich authorities.

Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, and has been since 1941, provided the helper isn't a medical doctor and doesn't personally benefit from a patient's death. About 200 people a year commit suicide in Zurich.

"It's everybody's own decision. It must be allowed � they do it anyway," said Felix Gutjahr, a Zurich voter who opposed the ballot initiatives.

Other Zurich residents said they also believe it's a matter of personal freedom, though some expressed unease and concern that Zurich has become something of a tourist destination for hundreds of people, mainly other Europeans, and a few Americans, who each year visit because they want to end their lives.

Last year, the Swiss government rejected calls to ban assisted suicide groups but said it would propose new rules to restrict their work. Government officials have said they want to cut down on suicide tourism, and that a majority of the groups and local governments they consulted were in favor of drawing up stricter rules to govern assisted suicide groups.

The Federal Democratic Union and the Evangelical Party had sought the bans, one of which would have required at least one year's residency in the canton of Zurich before being able to make use of legal assisted suicide. But both right-wing and left-wing parties campaigned against that.

The Swiss group Dignitas helps people commit suicide legally. More than 1,000 foreigners gained assistance from the group last year, more than half of them from Germany.

Bernhard Sutter, vice president of EXIT, a Swiss group that assists people to commit suicide, called the outcome of the Zurich vote a strong affirmation that Swiss voters believe in "self-determination at the end of life."

He said it also sends "a clear signal" to the Swiss parliament that it should lower the legal hurdles for elderly clients seeking its help.

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China gives press more freedom ? for food safety (AP)

BEIJING � Toxic bean sprouts, filthy cooking oil, drug-tainted pork: The relentless headlines in Chinese media have churned up queasy feelings for months about the dangers lurking in the nation's dinner bowls.

The stories are grim reading but show China's usually strict censors are allowing the press more latitude to help it monitor a food industry long riddled with problems.

The central government has been cautiously encouraging a sudden burst in food safety muckraking. That's in contrast to before the new food safety campaign, when local officials would delay or quash reporting on food safety or the provincial government had to give permission for coverage of food scandals, said Peter Leedham, a China-based food testing executive.

"It was very tightly controlled. That seems to have gone now. There's much more openness," said Leedham, the managing director of Eurofins Technology Service in Suzhou.

Few think the looser controls on food reporting signal a broader reform of Chinese media, which remains strictly controlled by the ruling Communist Party. Blogging and publishing are also muzzled, and those who challenge the government risk being harassed or detained. Some, like the writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, have been convicted of inciting to subvert state power for their dissident writings. Liu is currently serving an 11-year prison term.

"Is it a U.S.-style openness?" said Christopher Hickey, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's country director for China. "Clearly not, but I do think it's one of these areas where there is a limited amount of freedom, more than there was in the past."

Chang Ping, a former columnist fired from the gutsy Southern Metropolis Weekly for his critiques, said reporters have long had a freer hand on food troubles as long as they portray them as isolated rather, than systemic problems.

"The reports may look very free, but in fact they don't push anyone to really consider the root causes of what's going on," said Chang.

Still, the shift underscores official alarm over the scope of China's food safety problem and a recognition that government inspectors alone aren't going to be able to tackle it.

Zhang Yong, the director of the executive office of the new Cabinet-level Food Safety Commission, recently praised the media's "important watchdog role" after being asked why journalists have frequently able to find food safety problems before inspectors.

Many challenges lie in the way of cleaning up the rampant use of illegal additives and drugs, which are often churned out by makeshift chemical factories, making them particularly hard to trace.

Too many agencies oversee food safety, penalties for violations are too light and local officials lack sufficient incentives to crackdown on businesses in their area that produce bad food.

The problems persist despite a crisis in 2008 when six babies died and 300,000 were sickened from drinking infant formula or other dairy tainted with the industrial chemical melamine. The scandal prompted the government to overhaul how it polices food, forming a Cabinet-level food safety commission and passing a comprehensive new food safety law.

"The melamine scandal really served as a real wake-up call in the area of food safety both for the Chinese public and the Chinese government," said Hickey, the U.S. FDA official.

In response, the government introduced reforms that addressed a patchwork of imprecise and out-of-date standards, promised stepped-up food chain supervision from farm to fork and scrapped inspection exemptions for "famous brands." But since the government doesn't release detailed data about outbreaks of food-related illness, or product recalls, it's hard to chart progress.

The latest wave in media coverage has zeroed in on parts of the fast growing food industry.

In early March state broadcaster China Central Television ran a segment on its 'Weekly Quality Report' show revealing that pork from Henan Shuanghui, the country's largest meat producer, contained the banned drug clenbuterol.

After the news broke, Shenzhen-listed Shuanghui's shares plunged 10 percent and the government ordered nationwide inspections of pork to ferret out other stocks tainted with the drug, which speeds up the conversion of fat to muscle, producing leaner meat but that can cause health problems for humans. Henan authorities also announced they had detained 95 suspects for manufacturing, selling or using clenbuterol.

A similar hidden camera report on another CCTV channel a month later revealed how a steamed bun factory in Shanghai was taking expired bread, mixing it with food coloring and sweeteners and repackaging it. The Shanghai Shenglu food plant was closed, five Shenglu managers detained and a districtwide inspection was ordered as a result.

Provincial media have catalogued pesticide-tainted leeks in Qingdao, the coastal resort city famous for its Tsingtao beer, and bean sprouts soaked in chemicals to make them grow fatter and appear fresher in the northeastern province of Liaoning.

Caixin Media, one of China's most daring media outlets ran a story about cadmium-tainted rice in February, citing researchers at the Nanjing Agricultural University who estimated that as much as 10 percent of China's rice could be tainted with the poisonous metal.

Caixin's opinion desk editor Yang Zheyu said it went out without a hitch though they did get some "pressure" afterwards.

"We didn't have a lot of pressure but there was some," Yang said. "It's not convenient for me to go into specifics about that, but our report got out and that was our goal, so we were satisfied."

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