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

Rhode Island Considers Buying Drugs From Canada

A high-ranking Rhode Island official says the state ought to join the several cities and states that have plans to buy prescription drugs from Canada, the Associated Press reports.

Secretary of State Matt Brown says the state would save millions of dollars each year if state employees and retirees bought prescription medications from Canadian sources. The state faces a projected $37 million budget deficit for the current fiscal year, the AP reports.

If the state were to follow through on Brown's suggestion, it would join a growing list of states and cities that have implemented systems or expressed an interest in importing Canadian drugs, which are priced up to 80 percent less than their American equivalents. They include the states of Illinois, Minnesota and New Hampshire, and the Massachusetts cities of Boston and Springfield.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to fight the growing trend, saying it can't guarantee that Canadian imports are safe, effective, and properly labeled. While the FDA hasn't gone after the municipalities, it has attempted to close a small number of prominent U.S.-based brokers who sell Canadian drugs.

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Veterans Showed Fewer Stress Symptoms After 9/11: Study

U.S. war veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder showed fewer symptoms of stress in the six months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, than at other times before or since, according to a new study.

Lead researcher Dr. Robert Rosenheck tells the Associated Press that he expected the stress levels of already stressed veterans to rise even further after the attacks. But he says vets with PTSD may have been helped by the post-Sept. 11 wave of patriotism, an outpouring of respect for the military, and more talk in the media about post-traumatic stress.

Rosencheck, a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Yale University, examined the records of 9,650 veterans admitted to V.A. psychiatric hospitals between March 1999 and March 2002. His study excluded veterans treated in Washington, D.C., and New York City, where they may have been directly exposed to the attacks. About 93 percent of the study participants had seen combat duty, many in Vietnam.

The study examined factors including drug and alcohol abuse, violent behavior, and specific PTSD symptoms such as nightmares, feelings of social isolation, and sensitivity to loud noise.

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Bumble Bee Toys Recalled for Choking Hazard

Graco Children's Products Inc. is recalling 398,000 bumble bee toys sold separately and with certain high chairs and child entertainment centers. The toys' blue antennae may break, posing a choking hazard to young children. The company has 26 reports of broken antennae, including five reports of children who began to choke, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says. Only toys with blue antennae are affected. The toys were produced between October 2001 and March 2003 and sold at discount, department, and juvenile department stores nationwide. The CPSC says the toys should be discarded immediately, and consumers should contact Graco at 1-800-258-3213 to receive a free replacement.

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U.S. Bans Importation of Civets to Protect Against SARS

The United States announced Tuesday an immediate embargo on the importation of civets to the United States. The small animals have been identified as a possible link to SARS transmission in China.

"Public health experts are concerned that civets may transmit SARS to humans, who may then pass it on to other people," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said. "This embargo will help us protect the American public and prevent introduction of SARS in the United States."

The embargo applies to dead and live civets as well as civet products, and will remain in place indefinitely.

China, meanwhile, is reporting mixed news on its handful of suspected SARS cases.

On one hand, the government reportedly has confirmed that a 20-year-old waitress who worked at an eatery where civet cat had been served does, indeed, have SARS. Hong Kong television said the woman, hospitalized in Guangzhou since the end of December, is the country's second confirmed case in the past month. Civet is a Chinese delicacy.

By contrast, Beijing officials are denying that the most recent suspected case, first reported Monday, also has the disease. The official Xinhua New Agency said the man, who lives in the southern city of Shenzhen that borders Hong Kong, instead has bacterial pneumonia.

The recent flurry of confirmed and suspected cases of SARS has World Health Organization officials warning against hasty overreaction to the possibility of a second SARS epidemic. Health officials in China and other potential hotspots should be careful to weed out cases of cold and flu, or risk over-taxing their fragile medical systems, WHO spokesman Bob Dietz told the Associated Press.

"No one wants to overdiagnose, which is just as dangerous as underdiagnosing in terms of overloading the health care system," he said.

SARS first emerged in the Chinese province of Guangdong in late 2002, sickening more than 8,000 people worldwide and killing 774 before subsiding last June.

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Animal Viruses May Pose Major Human Health Threat

Animal disease viruses that break through the species barrier and infect humans may be the largest threat to human health in coming years, according to experts at a Royal Society conference in London, England.

One reason animal diseases pose such a potential threat to humans is that scientists know so little about them, University of Hong Kong microbiologist Malik Peiris told the conference, BBC News Online reports.

The microbiologist said more needs to be learned about what he referred to as the "animal-human interface." Peiris also suggested there could be global health havoc if a new flu pandemic, something considered inevitable by many experts, combines with an animal virus.

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Bird Flu Confirmed in 3 Vietnam Deaths

The World Health Organization confirmed Tuesday that three people in Vietnam had died of avian influenza, also known as bird flu.

The cause of death for the two children and one adult was confirmed by lab tests, CBC News Online reports.

The three victims were among 14 people in and around Hanoi who recently developed respiratory illnesses. Twelve of those people died.

There's no proof that all the cases were caused by bird flu. There's also no evidence bird flu is being passed between people in Vietnam, the WHO says.

In the three confirmed cases, the deceased all had direct contact with chickens or poultry products. None of the health workers who treated the three patients has shown any symptoms of respiratory illness.

Six people in Hong Kong died of bird flu in 1997 and 1998.

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