Lilly drug chosen for Alzheimer's prevention study

Researchers have chosen an experimental drug by Eli Lilly & Co. for a large federally funded study testing whether it's possible to prevent Alzheimer's disease in older people at high risk of developing it.

The drug, called solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab), is designed to bind to and help clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.

Earlier studies found it did not help people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's but it showed some promise against milder disease. Researchers think it might work better if given before symptoms start.

"The hope is we can catch people before they decline," which can come 10 years or more after plaques first show up in the brain, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, director of the Alzheimer's center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

She will help lead the new study, which will involve 1,000 people ages 70 to 85 whose brain scans show plaque buildup but who do not yet have any symptoms of dementia. They will get monthly infusions of solanezumab or a dummy drug for three years. The main goal will be slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study will be done at 50 sites in the U.S. and possibly more in Canada, Australia and Europe, Sperling said.

In October, researchers said combined results from two studies of solanezumab suggested it might modestly slow mental decline, especially in patients with mild disease. Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals of significantly slowing the mind-robbing disease or improving activities of daily living.

Those results were not considered good enough to win the drug approval. So in December, Lilly said it would start another large study of it this year to try to confirm the hopeful results seen patients with mild disease. That is separate from the federal study Sperling will head.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.

___

Online:

Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov

Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org

___

Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Costa Mesa confronts homelessness head-on

The police officers made their way though the Costa Mesa park known as "ground zero," the crowded hub for the city's homeless, handing out fliers and encouraging people to get on a bus that would take them out of town.

Like other cities, Costa Mesa has had a tenuous relationship with its homeless, and many would just as soon they all simply leave. But efforts on this crisp afternoon had a different motivation: They were nudging them to seek shelter from the near-freezing nights that had gripped the area and board a shuttle to the Santa Ana armory.

In the morning, they promised, the bus would bring them back, bright and early.

"There has been a shift," said Becks Heyhoe, director of the Churches Consortium, a collective effort of about a dozen churches in town. "The city has shown — really, for the first time in its history — they are willing to address homelessness in Costa Mesa. This is really the first time the city has taken a stab at it."

A back-and-forth relationship with the homeless has long been the blueprint in a city that is defined by the high-end elegance of South Coast Plaza at one end and the clusters of homeless dozing under the shade trees and hanging around Lions Park at the other.

But the response to the deaths of two homeless people last week as temperatures dropped down into the 30s highlighted an evolution of the city's outlook, as city services and local charities were kicked into action.

Those aiding the homeless have long been the target of scorn by those wanting to rid the city of the people who drift through the old city core and sleep in the park. The bounty of services there was seen as magnets for transients. A few months ago, the now-former mayor pushed for decades-old service providers — including a clinic and a soup kitchen — to be investigated. The problem might be cured, he said, "if we managed to put the soup kitchen out of business."

But the recent deaths have expedited ongoing efforts to improve services and care for a segment of the community considered vulnerable. Patrols were stepped up and volunteers handed out blankets. One woman who lived in her car and who suffered from a chronic illness was taken to a motel to spend the night.

"We don't want any more people dying on us," said Rick Francis, assistant chief executive of Costa Mesa. "That's the bottom line."

Two years ago, when tensions over the homeless population reached a peak, the city formed a task force to confront the issue. Residents had grown frustrated by the homeless taking over Lions Park, and complained about finding abandoned needles and drunk people in the middle of the day. "It's like everything came to a head," said Muriel Ullman, a longtime city employee who now works as a consultant on homeless issues.

At that point, many held to the theory that the homeless numbers were growing at such a swift clip that there was no hope to manage, said Edward J. Clarke, a professor of sociology at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, who had led a multi-year count of the homeless population.

But his count showed that those apprehensions were unfounded. He documented about 120 homeless people with ties to Costa Mesa, with a few dozen others who came from outside the city — a figure that remained close to the same over five years. He said many came from colder climates — "the kind of places where homeless people die in the winter — and others just wandered between cities in Orange County, "where you can easily cross the border by crossing the street."

The task force's recommendations, which came out last year, focused on streamlining services and tailoring them to the needs of that community, in particular those who are Costa Mesa natives.

The churches, Heyhoe said, were also prompted to do some soul-searching about services that were found to be redundant or simply ineffective: "Were we doing it because it made us feel good or because it was really meeting a need?"

Based on task force recommendations, a picnic shelter in Lions Park that was used to hand out meals — a place that had become a homeless hangout — was demolished, and bikes are now required to be secured to racks instead of strewn about the park.

At the same time, the city hired a social worker, who worked to help people find housing or enroll in substance abuse programs. The Churches Consortium has also built a storage facility for the homeless to tuck away their possessions — backpacks, bags and carts — and come by weekly to do laundry and take a shower. Heyhoe said more than 150 people used the service last year, freeing them to have a chance to go to job interviews or enter detox programs.

Heyhoe said the system citywide has become "a lot more strategic, a lot more coordinated and, I'd argue, a lot more effective." Ullman echoed that, saying that various forces — the city, charities and churches — seem to now be pushing in the same direction. "It's kind of like we're all a team now."

One of those most recent projects has been testing out a shuttle service, carrying people to the Santa Ana armory each night.

Heyhoe met up with Costa Mesa police officers one afternoon last week, starting at the city library at the center of Lions Park and fanning out into the streets.

They met resistance as they handed out fliers. One couple was suspicious, taking it as an attempt to run them out of Costa Mesa. Others thought the armory was too sketchy — or "where all the jailbirds are," one woman told Heyhoe. A man who had made the trek to the Santa Ana armory before refused to return: "That's the worst place I've ever been."

Rose Ouellette, 44, was hanging out at the Someone Cares soup kitchen and was receptive. She said she's noticed a change for the better in services, especially the storage facility known as a "check-in center."

"It has helped me out a lot," she said, grateful for the lighter load. "You don't have to carry your stuff."

But Ouellette, who said she has lived in Costa Mesa for 15 years, had enough of the outsiders coming in and leaving rubbish in the park. "It's disgusting," she said.

As the time approached for the bus to make its pickup, a small group had gathered in the church parking lot.

Trevor Martinez was one of them. "If they've got transportation over there, and I can stay out of the cold, that sounds like a good idea," said Martinez, who's been on the streets since May. "I can't walk that far."

One man, who took the ride to the armory the day before, was back again. "It's all right," he shrugged. "It wasn't cold."

When the bus pulled up, only four people climbed aboard. But Heyhoe was optimistic. It was one more than the day before.

rick.rojas@latimes.com

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New Northern Ireland Violence May Be About More Than the British Flag

Peter Muhly/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Police officers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, remained with their armored vehicles as a car burned after violence between unionists and loyalists on Jan. 12.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — For more than six weeks, it has been a dismal case of back-to-the-future, a crudely sectarian upheaval that has defied all attempts at peacemaking.

Paul Faith/Press Association, via Associated Press

Loyalist protests began in Belfast after the City Council voted to reduce the number of days a year the British flag was flown in public, to 18 from 365.

The scenes recall the sectarian bitterness that infused the 30 years of virtual civil war known as the Troubles: night after night of street protests marshaled by balaclava-wearing militants, who have updated their tactics by using social media to rally mobs; death threats to prominent politicians, some of whom have fled their homes and hidden under police guard; firebombs, flagstones and rocks hurled at churches, police cars and lawmakers’ offices; protesters joined by rock-throwing boys of 8 and 9; neighborhoods sealed off for hours by the police or protesters’ barricades.

Many had hoped that the old hatreds between Northern Ireland’s two main groups — the mainly Protestant, pro-British unionists, and the mainly Roman Catholic republicans, with their commitment to a united Ireland — would recede permanently under the auspices of the Good Friday agreement. That accord was reached 15 years ago as a blueprint for the power-sharing government that now rules the province.

But the fragility of those hopes has been powerfully demonstrated by more than 40 days and nights of violence that were triggered by a decision to cut back on the flying of the Union Jack, Britain’s red, white and blue national flag, over the grandly pillared, neo-Classical pile City Council building in central Belfast.

By the latest count, more than 100 police officers have been injured, along with dozens of protesters and bystanders. At times, the violence has expanded to other cities, including Londonderry. Business has slumped. Police commanders, their forces overwhelmed, have assigned dozens of officers to scan hundreds of hours of closed-circuit video, looking for ringleaders.

The crisis began modestly enough. The Belfast council, its pro-British members outvoted by a coalition of republicans and a small liberal bloc, decided in early December to limit the flag flying to 18 days a year, as specified by London for all of Britain. Through the decades when the council was dominated by Protestant unionists, committed to links with Britain, the flag flew from the pinnacle of the building every day of the year.

Incongruously, perhaps, most of those 18 days do not represent landmarks in Britain’s history — Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, say, or Germany’s surrender in the Second World War — but the birthdays of Queen Elizabeth II and her family members, including the former Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, on whose 31st birthday, Jan. 9, the Belfast flag fluttered for the first time since it came down in early December. Under Britain’s strict rules about flying the national standard on public and private buildings, not even the Parliament buildings in London fly it on any but government-designated days. But the hauling down of the Belfast flag provoked a furious reaction, the most protracted period of unrest in many years in Northern Ireland.

Among pro-British loyalists, the episode was seen as part of the step-by-step erosion of the British presence, a stripping of what many of them call their identity. Other examples they invoke have also been symbolic, including moves to delete the word Ulster — an ancient designation for the northern Irish provinces commonly used by Protestants but mostly shunned by republicans — from the formal names of the province’s police force and its military reservists, and to remove the British crown emblem from the cap and shoulder badges of prison guards and other public officials.

But many of the province’s political commentators see the flag dispute as a token of something more profound and ultimately more threatening to the hopes for a permanent peace here.

They say the council’s decision on the flag, made possible by the fact that nationalists now hold 24 seats on the council, compared with 21 for the unionists, reflects the rapid growth of the Catholic population in the years since the Good Friday agreement, unsettling the long-held assumption among unionists that Protestants would constitute a permanent majority in the province.

Read More..

Lilly drug chosen for Alzheimer's prevention study

Researchers have chosen an experimental drug by Eli Lilly & Co. for a large federally funded study testing whether it's possible to prevent Alzheimer's disease in older people at high risk of developing it.

The drug, called solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab), is designed to bind to and help clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.

Earlier studies found it did not help people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's but it showed some promise against milder disease. Researchers think it might work better if given before symptoms start.

"The hope is we can catch people before they decline," which can come 10 years or more after plaques first show up in the brain, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, director of the Alzheimer's center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

She will help lead the new study, which will involve 1,000 people ages 70 to 85 whose brain scans show plaque buildup but who do not yet have any symptoms of dementia. They will get monthly infusions of solanezumab or a dummy drug for three years. The main goal will be slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study will be done at 50 sites in the U.S. and possibly more in Canada, Australia and Europe, Sperling said.

In October, researchers said combined results from two studies of solanezumab suggested it might modestly slow mental decline, especially in patients with mild disease. Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals of significantly slowing the mind-robbing disease or improving activities of daily living.

Those results were not considered good enough to win the drug approval. So in December, Lilly said it would start another large study of it this year to try to confirm the hopeful results seen patients with mild disease. That is separate from the federal study Sperling will head.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.

___

Online:

Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov

Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org

___

Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

Read More..

West L.A. teacher's class act earns a Milken award

Jackie Bonilla knew there would be a special presentation at Clover Avenue Elementary in West Los Angeles on Friday morning.

She didn't know it would be for her.

The second-grade teacher was surprised by the announcement of the Milken Educator Award, an honor given to 40 teachers nationwide this year. Each recipient gets a $25,000 prize, no strings attached.

The honor is given by the Milken Family Foundation, which created the award in 1987 to motivate gifted teachers in a field in which financial gifts are rare.

Bonilla, who was awarded the prize by foundation Chairman Lowell Milken at an assembly also attended by L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy and State Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, is a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo graduate. She was the only California teacher so recognized this year.

Bonilla thought the event she would be attending was organized to recognize her school's new status as a National Blue Ribbon School. Then Milken took the microphone and asked the assembled students, "Have you seen a teacher get an A?" He then asked her to rise.

Bonilla, visibly moved, paused to compose herself before thanking her principal and colleagues and accepting the award.

"I am extremely honored and humbled," she said. "Teaching is truly is my passion; I don't look at it as a job."

With the help of each state's board of education, the awards are made based on a confidential process that takes into account teachers' methods, leadership outside the classroom and their students' test scores.

Bonilla, who switched to second grade this year, is rated among the "most effective" of district teachers in math and English, according to The Times' value-added analysis. During the 2011-12 school year, 87% of her third-grade students scored proficient or above in English language arts on the California Standards Test.

She now joins "a great network of teachers" who have won the award, said Shannon Garrison, a fourth-grade teacher at Solano Elementary who received the award in 2008.

The Milken Foundation nominated Garrison for her position on the National Assessment Governing Board — the committee that sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, test — and she carried the Olympic torch in Edinburgh, Scotland, before the 2012 Summer Olympics.

"That award changed my life. It created an immediate support system of people that think you're going to do great things," Garrison said.

Back in Bonilla's colorful classroom, each of her students recited Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream" speech.

"She makes math fun," said one student. "And she's the only teacher to laugh at all our jokes."

dalina.castellanos@latimes.com

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In Regional Elections, a Microcosm of Trouble Ahead for Merkel

BERLIN — With the national parliamentary election scheduled for September, many in Germany are looking to Lower Saxony, which holds regional elections on Sunday, for clues of what could happen in Berlin this autumn.

Political experts insist that regional elections in Germany have traditionally had little direct influence on the outcome of national elections. But several similarities between Lower Saxony and the German government make it appear a microcosm of the larger political scene.

Like Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, Lower Saxony’s is led by a center-right coalition of her Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats. The Christian Democratic candidate in the state, David McAllister, is personally popular with voters, as is the chancellor, helping him to close in on his Social Democratic rival, Stephan Weil, making for a tight race.

But also like the chancellor, Mr. McAllister will rely heavily on the Free Democrats’ winning enough votes to earn seats in the regional legislature to continue his current government. In recent surveys, the party has hovered around 5 percent, the threshold needed to secure representation at the regional and national levels.

That polling has focused attention on the vote in Lower Saxony as a make-or-break moment for the party and perhaps even for Ms. Merkel’s coalition in Berlin.

The Free Democratic Party ended a string of losses at the regional level by winning slightly more than 8 percent of the vote in two states last year, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. But for now that performance has not translated into a stronger position at the national level.

Many blame a lack of leadership. The party chairman, Philipp Rösler, who also serves as economy minister, consistently ranks as among the country’s least-popular politicians. But Karl-Rudolf Korte, a professor of politics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, says the party’s problems reach deeper than who is at its helm.

“It is not a problem of personality — it is a problem of issues,” Mr. Korte said.

Regardless of the outcome Sunday, he predicts that the party would be well advised to go for a two-pronged approach, keeping Mr. Rösler as its leader, but choosing the party’s parliamentary leader, Rainer Brüderle, as its main candidate because of his popularity.

Traditionally the Free Democrats have provided a clear voice for individual citizens’ rights against an overly powerful nanny state. They have served in more governments in postwar Germany than any other political party, although as the junior coalition partner. Two respected presidents, Theodor Heuss and Walter Scheel, hailed from the Free Democrats, as did an influential former foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

Four years ago, the Free Democratic Party, or F.D.P., emerged with its strongest showing ever, earning 14.6 percent of the vote after campaigning on a promise to cut taxes. But with the euro crisis, that promise has been watered down and the party has failed to find other issues that resonate with voters.

At a party congress this month, Mr. Brüderle sought to drum up support by singling out legislation passed by the current coalition that clearly reflected the Free Democrats’ influence.

“The F.D.P. made the union better,” he said of the coalition, citing the scrapping of required military service, a €10 payment at doctors’ offices, policies affecting growth and consumer protection laws. “We need to believe in ourselves then many others will believe in us.”

A poll by the Forsa Institute, published by the weekly Stern on Wednesday showed the Free Democratic Party getting only 3 percent support, which would translate to their ejection from lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag.

Such an outcome would force Ms. Merkel, whose center-right Christian Democrats appear to be stronger than ever, earning 43 percent support in the Forsa survey, to find a new partner in government.

The center-left Social Democrats, however, polled their lowest since 2011, earning only 23 percent, largely because of a plunge in popularity for their candidate in the national election, Peer Steinbrück.

Manfred Güllner, who heads the Forsa Institute, said that even if the Social Democratic candidate in Lower Saxony, Mr. Weil, could pull off a victory, it would be unlikely to translate into increased support for Mr. Steinbrück.

“The latest survey shows that peoples’ image of Mr. Steinbrück has become increasingly negative,” Mr. Güllner said. “People view him as greedy, arrogant and awkward. Very few people associate him with political competence.”

Mr. Steinbrück’s image as a former finance minister who shepherded Germany through the first days of the financial crisis has been battered by a drawn-out debate over his private earnings from a book and, more recently, a comment that Ms. Merkel benefited from a “women’s bonus.”

Even an attempt by Mr. Steinbrück to change that image by inviting undecided voters to his home for a personal talk backfired earlier this week when the media began reporting that the family of a person in Lower Saxony that was selected from 150 candidates included an active member of the party’s local branch.

A victory by the Social Democrats in Lower Saxony, however, could have a greater impact on national politics through the upper house of Parliament, the Bundesrat, which is made up of representatives of the country’s 16 states. Together with their main political allies, the Greens, they could form a majority.

“If a party is clever, such a majority can be used to block, drag out or otherwise delay any legislative procedure,” Mr. Korte said.

That power would effectively hamper the government’s ability to pass legislation, regardless of their popularity.

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ASUS in talks with Microsoft to develop a Windows Phone 8 smartphone

The PC industry is in shambles and manufacturers have begun to explore new options to increase revenue. According to The Wall Street Journal, ASUS (2357) is in talks with Microsoft (MSFT) on a licensing deal to offer Windows Phone 8 device. This makes sense for ASUS since smartphone shipments increased by nearly 50% in 2012, compared to a mere 3.2% growth in computer shipments, and the company already has experience in the mobile world after developing a variety of Android tablets.

[More from BGR: Cable companies called ‘monopolies that stifle competition and innovation’]

Benson Lin, the company’s corporate vice president of mobile communication products, revealed in a recent interview that ASUS was hoping to bring its PadFone, a smartphone that can dock into a larger tablet, to the Windows 8 ecosystem.

[More from BGR: Clash of the bantams: The bloody smartphone battle that will take shape in 2013]

“With our Padfone concept, the phone plus tablet, I think it makes sense for Windows 8,” Lin said. “There is no target timeline…but we are interested in making Windows phones.”

The executive also said that ASUS has been in talks with a variety of American carriers in the hopes that its smartphones will launch in the United States in 2013.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Inspiring Singers Outshine American Idol's Feuding Judges

TV Watch

American Idol

By Steve Helling

01/17/2013 at 11:00 PM EST

From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban

George Holz/FOX

The second episode of American Idol delivered more drama, but a handful of singers managed to eclipse the ongoing feud between new judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj. And that's no easy task considering one of the battling divas is wearing a blonde and pink wig.

The night's most memorable contestant was Lazaro Arbos. As he entered the audition room, one thing became immediately clear: the 21-year-old from Naples, Fla., had a severe stutter. Arbos, who emigrated from Cuba when he was 10, told viewers that he had few friends growing up due to his speech impediment.

But something magical happened when he began to sing. His stutter vanished and he gave a moving performance of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." As the judges unanimously put him through to Hollywood, Arbos dissolved into tears.

Equally inspiring was Mariah Pulice, a 19-year-old restaurant hostess from Darien, Ind. The last two years have been difficult for Pulice, who told judges she was recovering from anorexia. "If there was no music," she said, "I would not be alive." After singing the Beatles' "Let it Be," the judges were unanimous in their praise. "I really, really, really felt that song coming from you," said Minaj.

Carey agreed: "You touched me," she said. "I know what it's like to have to sing through tears. I'm proud of you."

But it wasn't all drama and emotion. Minaj started a baffling trend of asking handsome singers if they had a girlfriend. (She also managed to charm the shirts off of a couple of them, although you get the feeling they were happy to show their abs on national TV.) "You have a hole in your pants," she told one contestant. "Why are you looking?" he shot back.

And poor Keith Urban. Sitting between Minaj and Carey, he found himself in the crossfire. "I feel like a scratching post," he said at one point, before repeatedly banging his head on the table.

The judges found a lot of talent in Chicago. All told, 46 contestants were put through to Hollywood. The competition will head to Charlotte, N.C., next Wednesday.

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Will Obama's order lead to surge in gun research?

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Nearly as many Americans die from guns as from car crashes each year. We know plenty about the second problem and far less about the first. A scarcity of research on how to prevent gun violence has left policymakers shooting in the dark as they craft gun control measures without much evidence of what works.

That could change with President Barack Obama's order Wednesday to ease research restrictions pushed through long ago by the gun lobby. The White House declared that a 1996 law banning use of money to "advocate or promote gun control" should not keep the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies from doing any work on the topic.

Obama can only do so much, though. Several experts say Congress will have to be on board before anything much changes, especially when it comes to spending money.

How severely have the restrictions affected the CDC?

Its website's A-to-Z list of health topics, which includes such obscure ones as Rift Valley fever, does not include guns or firearms. Searching the site for "guns" brings up dozens of reports on nail gun and BB gun injuries.

The restrictions have done damage "without a doubt" and the CDC has been "overly cautious" about interpreting them, said Daniel Webster, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"The law is so vague it puts a virtual freeze on gun violence research," said a statement from Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's like censorship: When people don't know what's prohibited, they assume everything is prohibited."

Many have called for a public health approach to gun violence like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving laws that slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago even as the number of vehicles on the road rose.

"The answer wasn't taking away cars," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

However, while much is known about vehicles and victims in crashes, similar details are lacking about gun violence.

Some unknowns:

—How many people own firearms in various cities and what types.

—What states have the highest proportion of gun ownership.

—Whether gun ownership correlates with homicide rates in a city.

—How many guns used in homicides were bought legally.

—Where juveniles involved in gun fatalities got their weapons.

—What factors contribute to mass shootings like the Newtown, Conn., one that killed 26 people at a school.

"If an airplane crashed today with 20 children and 6 adults there would be a full-scale investigation of the causes and it would be linked to previous research," said Dr. Stephen Hargarten, director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

"There's no such system that's comparable to that" for gun violence, he said.

One reason is changes pushed by the National Rifle Association and its allies in 1996, a few years after a major study showed that people who lived in homes with firearms were more likely to be homicide or suicide victims. A rule tacked onto appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services barred use of funds for "the advocacy or promotion of gun control."

Also, at the gun group's urging, U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey, a Republican from Arkansas, led an effort to remove $2.6 million from the CDC's injury prevention center, which had led most of the research on guns. The money was later restored but earmarked for brain injury research.

"What the NRA did was basically terrorize the research community and terrorize the CDC," said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who headed the CDC's injury center at the time. "They went after the researchers, they went after institutions, they went after CDC in a very big way, and they went after me," he said. "They didn't want the data to be collected because they were threatened by what the data were showing."

Dickey, who is now retired, said Wednesday that his real concern was the researcher who led that gun ownership study, who Dickey described as being "in his own kingdom or fiefdom" and believing guns are bad.

He and Rosenberg said they have modified their views over time and now both agree that research is needed. They put out a joint statement Wednesday urging research that prevents firearm injuries while also protecting the rights "of legitimate gun owners."

"We ought to research the whole environment, both sides — what the benefits of having guns are and what are the benefits of not having guns," Dickey said. "We should study any part of this problem," including whether armed guards at schools would help, as the National Rifle Association has suggested.

Association officials did not respond to requests for comment. A statement Wednesday said the group "has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership" and that "attacking firearms" is not the answer. It said nothing about research.

The 1996 law "had a chilling effect. It basically brought the field of firearm-related research to a screeching halt," said Benjamin of the Public Health Association.

Webster said researchers like him had to "partition" themselves so whatever small money they received from the CDC was not used for anything that could be construed as gun policy. One example was a grant he received to evaluate a community-based program to reduce street gun violence in Baltimore, modeled after a successful program in Chicago called CeaseFire. He had to make sure the work included nothing that could be interpreted as gun control research, even though other privately funded research might.

Private funds from foundations have come nowhere near to filling the gap from lack of federal funding, Hargarten said. He and more than 100 other doctors and scientists recently sent Vice President Joe Biden a letter urging more research, saying the lack of it was compounding "the tragedy of gun violence."

Since 1973, the government has awarded 89 grants to study rabies, of which there were 65 cases; 212 grants for cholera, with 400 cases, yet only three grants for firearm injuries that topped 3 million, they wrote. The CDC spends just about $100,000 a year out of its multibillion-dollar budget on firearm-related research, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said.

"It's so out of proportion to the burden, however you measure it," said Dr. Matthew Miller, associate professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. As a result, "we don't know really simple things," such as whether tighter gun rules in New York will curb gun trafficking "or is some other pipeline going to open up" in another state, he said.

What now?

CDC officials refused to discuss the topic on the record — a possible sign of how gun shy of the issue the agency has been even after the president's order.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement that her agency is "committed to re-engaging gun violence research."

Others are more cautious. The Union of Concerned Scientists said the White House's view that the law does not ban gun research is helpful, but not enough to clarify the situation for scientists, and that congressional action is needed.

Dickey, the former congressman, agreed.

"Congress is supposed to do that. He's not supposed to do that," Dickey said of Obama's order. "The restrictions were placed there by Congress.

"What I was hoping for ... is 'let's do this together,'" Dickey said.

___

Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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EPA proposes compromise on Navajo Generating Station's emissions

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing regulations to reduce emissions from the massive Navajo Generating Station by as much as 84%, in a compromise that would give the plant's operators more time to install scrubbers and would ease the economic impact on two Native American tribes.

Situated in northern Arizona, less than 20 miles from the Grand Canyon, the generating station is the source of haze viewed by tourists at nearly a dozen parks and wilderness areas in the Southwest.

The EPA's proposed rules would allow the 2,250-megawatt plant until 2023 to install pollution controls to meet emissions standards mandated by a Regional Haze Rule. The plant is one of the largest sources of harmful nitrogen oxide emissions in the country, but the agency is proposing to add five years to the compliance date in response to concerns by Navajo and Hopi tribes, EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld said.

"It's a deserving compromise, given the real economic threats that face the tribal nations," Blumenfeld said, calling the issue the most complicated he'd ever dealt with. "We wanted to provide enough time to work out the economics so that the facility remains open."

The coal-fired power plant is on land leased from the Navajo Reservation and burns coal mined on both the Navajo and Hopi reservations. The equipment required to bring the plant into emissions compliance would cost an estimated $500 million, and the tribes and a number of groups argued that the economic burden might cause the operators to close the facility, which employs hundreds of tribal members.

The generating station is co-owned by several entities, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Blumenfeld said the EPA proposed extending the compliance period also in recognition that the plant's operators had previously installed emission-reducing equipment. When the plant is in compliance, its emissions will total no more than 28,500 tons per year.

"For 90% of the year, the Grand Canyon's air quality is impaired by a veil of pollution haze that reduces the pristine natural visual range by an average of more than 30%," Blumenfeld said in a statement.

National parks and wilderness areas are required to maintain Class I airsheds — the highest level of clear skies. In addition to the Grand Canyon, nearby parks include Zion, Bryce Canyon, Mesa Verde, Arches and Canyonlands.

The plant also provides the power that drives the Central Arizona Project, an expansive aqueduct system that provides water to much of Arizona. State agencies had petitioned the EPA to consider the proposed rules' effect on the cost of water delivery.

The proposed regulations are open to a 90-day comment period.

julie.cart@latimes.com

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