Date: 1/30/2009
By KAMALA LANE
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Warrant Officer James Brad Smith broke five ribs, punctured a lung and shattered bones in his hand and thigh after falling more than 20 feet from a Black Hawk helicopter in Baghdad last month.
While he was recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, his doctor suggested he add acupuncture to his treatment to help with the pain.
On a recent morning, Col. Richard Niemtzow, an Air Force physician, carefully pushed a short needle into part of Smith’s outer ear. The soldier flinched, saying it felt like he “got clipped by something.” By the time three more of the tiny, gold alloy needles were arranged around the ear, though, the pain from his injuries began to ease.
“My ribs feel numb now and I feel it a little less in my hand,” Smith said, raising his injured arm. “The pain isn’t as sharp. It’s maybe 50 percent better.”
Acupuncture involves placing very thin needles at specific points on the body to try to control pain and reduce stress. There are only theories about how, why and even whether it might work.
Regardless, the ancient Chinese practice has been gradually catching on as a pain treatment for troops who come home wounded.
Now the Air Force, which runs the military’s only acupuncture clinic, is training doctors to take acupuncture to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. A pilot program starting in March will prepare 44 Air Force, Navy and Army doctors to use acupuncture as part of emergency care in combat and in frontline hospitals, not just on bases back home.
They will learn “battlefield acupuncture,” a method Niemtzow developed in 2001 that’s derived from traditional ear acupuncture but uses the short needles to better fit under combat helmets so soldiers can continue their missions with the needles inserted to relieve pain. The needles are applied to five points on the outer ear. Niemtzow says most of his patients say their pain decreases within minutes.
The Navy has begun a similar pilot program to train its doctors at Camp Pendleton in California.
Niemtzow is chief of the acupuncture clinic at Andrews Air Force Base. He’s leading the new program after training many of about 50 active duty military physicians who practice acupuncture.
The U.S. military encountered acupuncture during the Vietnam War, when an Army surgeon wrote in a 1967 edition of Military Medicine magazine about local physicians who were allowed to practice at a U.S. Army surgical hospital and administered acupuncture to Vietnamese patients.
Niemtzow started offering acupuncture in 1995 at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. Several years later, he became the first full-time military medical acupuncturist for the Navy, which also provides health care for the Marines.
Later, he established the acupuncture clinic at the Malcolm Grow Medical Center at Andrews, and he continued to expand acupuncture by treating patients at Walter Reed and other Air Force bases in the country and in Germany. Niemtzow and his colleague Col. Stephen Burns administer about a dozen forms of acupuncture — including one type that uses lasers — to soldiers and their families every week.
Col. Arnyce Pock, medical director for the Air Force Medical Corps, said acupuncture comes without the side effects that are common after taking traditional painkillers. Acupuncture also quickly treats pain.
“It allows troops to reduce the number of narcotics they take for pain, and have a better assessment of any underlying brain injury they may have,” Pock said. “When they’re on narcotics, you can’t do that because they’re feeling the effects of the drugs.”
Niemtzow cautions that while acupuncture can be effective, it’s not a cure-all.
“In some instances it doesn’t work,” he said. “But it can be another tool in one’s toolbox to be used in addition to painkillers to reduce the level of pain even further.”
Smith says the throbbing pain in his leg didn’t change with acupuncture treatment but that the pain levels in his arm and ribs were the lowest they’ve been since he was injured. He also said that he didn’t feel groggy afterward, a side-effect he usually experiences from the low-level morphine he takes.
Ultimately, Niemtzow would like troops to learn acupuncture so they can treat each other while out on missions. For now, the Air Force program is limited to training physicians.
He says it’s “remarkable” for the military, a “conservative institution,” to incorporate acupuncture.
“The history of military medicine is rich in development,” he said, “and a lot of people say that if the military is using it, then it must be good for the civilian world.”
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Merck: New pill may work for MS
Date: 1/23/2009
LONDON (AP) — German drugmaker Merck Serono is one step closer to releasing the first pill to treat multiple sclerosis, the company said Friday.
In a press statement, Merck said that patients taking cladribine tablets had a nearly 60 percent lower relapse rate than those on placebo pills. The two-year study included 1,326 MS patients who were randomly divided into three groups. Two groups received different doses of cladribine and one group received fake pills.
Patients on cladribine had up to a 60 percent reduced chance of having a relapse compared to patients on placebo. The study was paid for by Merck.
“This is promising news,” said Dr. Lee Dunster, head of research for the Multiple Sclerosis Society in the United Kingdom. Dunster was not linked to the Merck study. He said cladribine appeared to be twice as effective as current primary treatments for MS.
Multiple sclerosis is the most common neurological condition affecting young adults. It is the result of damage to myelin, the protective coating on nerve fibers of the central nervous system. When myelin is damaged, that interrupts the brain’s messaging system to other parts of the body.
Patients with MS often suffer from fatigue, muscle spams, problems with vision, speech, coordination, and the bladder. Relapses are often unpredictable and there is no known cure.
Current treatments for MS must be given by injections and have varying success rates.
Cladribine is already used to treat leukemia, but only for short periods of time. Doctors said more information was needed about the potential side effects from taking the drug in the long term, since multiple sclerosis is a lifelong condition.
Known side effects from cladribine include fatigue, an increased chance of infections, and anemia.
Merck has already asked American and European drug regulators to fast-track the drug to the market. In their press statement, Merck said they will submit cladribine for registration in the U.S. and Europe later this year.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG is also working on a pill to treat MS.
Though Merck’s study showed that cladribine reduced the relapse rate, Dunster said the real question was whether the drug slowed the disease’s progression. He expected that data to be released in the next few months.
“Relapses are not very nice things to have, but we are really looking to slow down the disease,” Dunster said. “For patients, it’s all about whether or not they will be able to kick around the ball with their kids in a few years.”
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
LONDON (AP) — German drugmaker Merck Serono is one step closer to releasing the first pill to treat multiple sclerosis, the company said Friday.
In a press statement, Merck said that patients taking cladribine tablets had a nearly 60 percent lower relapse rate than those on placebo pills. The two-year study included 1,326 MS patients who were randomly divided into three groups. Two groups received different doses of cladribine and one group received fake pills.
Patients on cladribine had up to a 60 percent reduced chance of having a relapse compared to patients on placebo. The study was paid for by Merck.
“This is promising news,” said Dr. Lee Dunster, head of research for the Multiple Sclerosis Society in the United Kingdom. Dunster was not linked to the Merck study. He said cladribine appeared to be twice as effective as current primary treatments for MS.
Multiple sclerosis is the most common neurological condition affecting young adults. It is the result of damage to myelin, the protective coating on nerve fibers of the central nervous system. When myelin is damaged, that interrupts the brain’s messaging system to other parts of the body.
Patients with MS often suffer from fatigue, muscle spams, problems with vision, speech, coordination, and the bladder. Relapses are often unpredictable and there is no known cure.
Current treatments for MS must be given by injections and have varying success rates.
Cladribine is already used to treat leukemia, but only for short periods of time. Doctors said more information was needed about the potential side effects from taking the drug in the long term, since multiple sclerosis is a lifelong condition.
Known side effects from cladribine include fatigue, an increased chance of infections, and anemia.
Merck has already asked American and European drug regulators to fast-track the drug to the market. In their press statement, Merck said they will submit cladribine for registration in the U.S. and Europe later this year.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG is also working on a pill to treat MS.
Though Merck’s study showed that cladribine reduced the relapse rate, Dunster said the real question was whether the drug slowed the disease’s progression. He expected that data to be released in the next few months.
“Relapses are not very nice things to have, but we are really looking to slow down the disease,” Dunster said. “For patients, it’s all about whether or not they will be able to kick around the ball with their kids in a few years.”
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Texas court asked to end abused kid’s life support
Date: 1/17/2009
DALLAS (AP) — A court may decide this coming week whether to end life support for a 6-month-old Dallas baby who has suffered severe brain damage, dozens of bone fractures and numerous scars, allegedly at the hands of his parents.
A physician noted that David Coronado Jr. had 42 skeletal injuries. His hands and feet appeared to have been pulled, twisted and crushed. His skin injuries included bruises and human bite marks, The Dallas Morning News reported in Saturday editions.
A court-appointed guardian for the boy has filed a motion in Dallas County juvenile court asking that doctors at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas be permitted to remove the boy from life support. The motion says the parents have not consented to withdrawing the support, but it argues that the move is in his best interests.
His parents, David Cesar Coronado Sr., 23, and Ruthy Marie Chabolla, 22, were arrested Dec. 23 on charges of injury to a child. Bail was set at $500,000 each and they remain in jail.
“Both parents are responsible for long-term, extensive physical abuse to their only infant son,” a Child Protective Services report alleged.
Authorities said the couple’s only child wasn’t breathing when they took him to Methodist Dallas Medical Center in December. Hospital staff revived the infant and transferred him to Children’s Medical Center.
Authorities said many of the boy’s fractures had partially healed, indicating they were a few weeks old.
“If he survives his injuries, he will have severe and permanent disability as a result of these injuries,” a doctor wrote in one report, the newspaper said.
The parents have denied deliberately causing any of his injuries. “I would never hurt my child,” Chabolla told police, according to a Child Protective Services report.
Coronado said he may have picked his son up “too hard” in the middle of the night, but said he never hurt David intentionally, the report said.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://tbilaw.com
https://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2009
DALLAS (AP) — A court may decide this coming week whether to end life support for a 6-month-old Dallas baby who has suffered severe brain damage, dozens of bone fractures and numerous scars, allegedly at the hands of his parents.
A physician noted that David Coronado Jr. had 42 skeletal injuries. His hands and feet appeared to have been pulled, twisted and crushed. His skin injuries included bruises and human bite marks, The Dallas Morning News reported in Saturday editions.
A court-appointed guardian for the boy has filed a motion in Dallas County juvenile court asking that doctors at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas be permitted to remove the boy from life support. The motion says the parents have not consented to withdrawing the support, but it argues that the move is in his best interests.
His parents, David Cesar Coronado Sr., 23, and Ruthy Marie Chabolla, 22, were arrested Dec. 23 on charges of injury to a child. Bail was set at $500,000 each and they remain in jail.
“Both parents are responsible for long-term, extensive physical abuse to their only infant son,” a Child Protective Services report alleged.
Authorities said the couple’s only child wasn’t breathing when they took him to Methodist Dallas Medical Center in December. Hospital staff revived the infant and transferred him to Children’s Medical Center.
Authorities said many of the boy’s fractures had partially healed, indicating they were a few weeks old.
“If he survives his injuries, he will have severe and permanent disability as a result of these injuries,” a doctor wrote in one report, the newspaper said.
The parents have denied deliberately causing any of his injuries. “I would never hurt my child,” Chabolla told police, according to a Child Protective Services report.
Coronado said he may have picked his son up “too hard” in the middle of the night, but said he never hurt David intentionally, the report said.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://tbilaw.com
https://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2009
Busy Gupta performs brain surgery, reports for CNN
Date: 1/7/2009
By DAVID BAUDER
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — If Barack Obama wants a surgeon general with visibility to promote health issues in his administration, it can’t hurt to hire a CNN correspondent called one of People magazine’s “sexiest men alive.”
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon and one of CNN’s busiest personalities, is under consideration by the president-elect for the job. Should the offer come, CNN said Gupta has indicated he is likely to take it. Obama will have a man who has interrupted a TV assignment to perform emergency brain surgery and gotten into it on air with Michael Moore.
He has a weekend health show on CNN and has traveled across the country for a series on the dangers of obesity called “Fit Nation.” Soon he may have the chance to do something similar for the government.
Gupta, 39, grew up in the Detroit area, the son of parents who moved from India in the 1960s to work at a Ford plant. He earned undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Michigan.
While he works at CNN and for CBS News, Gupta is also a faculty member at the neurology department at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He performs surgery at Emory University Hospital and Grady Memorial Hospital.
Gupta’s no stranger to the White House; he was one of 15 White House fellows appointed in 1997 and he advised Hillary Rodham Clinton while she was first lady.
Gupta joined CNN in 2001 as a health correspondent. In addition to efforts like “Fit Nation” and 2008 documentaries on the health toll taken on presidents, Gupta has talked about health angles of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. Since 2006, he’s also had a contract with CBS News to do health stories on the “CBS Evening News.”
“He’s an amazing communicator,” said CBS News President Sean McManus. “He has a way of breaking down the most complicated medical and health issues into language that everyone understands. He’s very, very likable and he has the ultimate credibility in that he is literally a brain surgeon.”
When reporting for CNN on a U.S. Navy medical team in Iraq in 2003, Gupta unexpectedly became part of the story when he was called upon to conduct emergency brain surgery on a 2-year-old Iraqi boy shot by U.S. Marines when he was in a car that did not stop at a checkpoint. The boy did not survive.
“Medically and morally, I thought it was absolutely the right thing to do,” Gupta told The Associated Press at the time. “It was a heroic — it was not an elective operation, it was a heroic attempt to try to save the child’s life.”
Gupta took on “Sicko” filmmaker Moore in 2007, saying in a fact-checking report that Moore had fudged some facts in his documentary on the health care system. It led to an angry on-air confrontation between them. “I and others are going to be a lot more skeptical with what I see on CNN,” Moore said.
People magazine named Gupta one of its sexiest men in 2003, two years before he married his longtime girlfriend Rebecca Olson. People said Gupta lived dangerously by sometimes driving his Jaguar XK8 too fast and had fans who called themselves the Gupta Girls.
He has made a handful of political donations to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In a 2005 segment on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” on health problems that were surfacing with widely used prescription drugs such as Vioxx, Gupta talked about drug companies’ efforts to woo physicians by offering everything from free pens to free trips. He admitted that he had accepted pens from time to time.
“If you take a pen, are you going to prescribe that drug more often? I haven’t seen a situation where the drug company says, listen, we’ll only give you X if you prescribe the drug so many times. I haven’t seen that, that transparent a sort of thing,” Gupta told Zahn.
“But there is a sort of more implicit sort of understanding between the pharmaceutical companies and doctors, I think. It is not so clear that they’ll say, OK, you got to do X number of procedures and we’ll give you a trip to Aspen, or you got to prescribe the drug so many times and we’ll give a free lunch. You don’t see that. But there is a sort of, again, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”
Gupta’s show “House Call” airs Saturday and Sunday mornings. He also does a global health program for CNN International.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
By DAVID BAUDER
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — If Barack Obama wants a surgeon general with visibility to promote health issues in his administration, it can’t hurt to hire a CNN correspondent called one of People magazine’s “sexiest men alive.”
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon and one of CNN’s busiest personalities, is under consideration by the president-elect for the job. Should the offer come, CNN said Gupta has indicated he is likely to take it. Obama will have a man who has interrupted a TV assignment to perform emergency brain surgery and gotten into it on air with Michael Moore.
He has a weekend health show on CNN and has traveled across the country for a series on the dangers of obesity called “Fit Nation.” Soon he may have the chance to do something similar for the government.
Gupta, 39, grew up in the Detroit area, the son of parents who moved from India in the 1960s to work at a Ford plant. He earned undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Michigan.
While he works at CNN and for CBS News, Gupta is also a faculty member at the neurology department at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He performs surgery at Emory University Hospital and Grady Memorial Hospital.
Gupta’s no stranger to the White House; he was one of 15 White House fellows appointed in 1997 and he advised Hillary Rodham Clinton while she was first lady.
Gupta joined CNN in 2001 as a health correspondent. In addition to efforts like “Fit Nation” and 2008 documentaries on the health toll taken on presidents, Gupta has talked about health angles of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. Since 2006, he’s also had a contract with CBS News to do health stories on the “CBS Evening News.”
“He’s an amazing communicator,” said CBS News President Sean McManus. “He has a way of breaking down the most complicated medical and health issues into language that everyone understands. He’s very, very likable and he has the ultimate credibility in that he is literally a brain surgeon.”
When reporting for CNN on a U.S. Navy medical team in Iraq in 2003, Gupta unexpectedly became part of the story when he was called upon to conduct emergency brain surgery on a 2-year-old Iraqi boy shot by U.S. Marines when he was in a car that did not stop at a checkpoint. The boy did not survive.
“Medically and morally, I thought it was absolutely the right thing to do,” Gupta told The Associated Press at the time. “It was a heroic — it was not an elective operation, it was a heroic attempt to try to save the child’s life.”
Gupta took on “Sicko” filmmaker Moore in 2007, saying in a fact-checking report that Moore had fudged some facts in his documentary on the health care system. It led to an angry on-air confrontation between them. “I and others are going to be a lot more skeptical with what I see on CNN,” Moore said.
People magazine named Gupta one of its sexiest men in 2003, two years before he married his longtime girlfriend Rebecca Olson. People said Gupta lived dangerously by sometimes driving his Jaguar XK8 too fast and had fans who called themselves the Gupta Girls.
He has made a handful of political donations to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In a 2005 segment on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” on health problems that were surfacing with widely used prescription drugs such as Vioxx, Gupta talked about drug companies’ efforts to woo physicians by offering everything from free pens to free trips. He admitted that he had accepted pens from time to time.
“If you take a pen, are you going to prescribe that drug more often? I haven’t seen a situation where the drug company says, listen, we’ll only give you X if you prescribe the drug so many times. I haven’t seen that, that transparent a sort of thing,” Gupta told Zahn.
“But there is a sort of more implicit sort of understanding between the pharmaceutical companies and doctors, I think. It is not so clear that they’ll say, OK, you got to do X number of procedures and we’ll give you a trip to Aspen, or you got to prescribe the drug so many times and we’ll give a free lunch. You don’t see that. But there is a sort of, again, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”
Gupta’s show “House Call” airs Saturday and Sunday mornings. He also does a global health program for CNN International.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Ex-Boeing worker gets 10 months for copter damage
Date: 1/5/2009
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A former Boeing employee who vandalized a $24 million military helicopter was sentenced Monday to five months in prison and five months on home confinement after telling the judge the tension and tedium of his assembly-line job had gotten to him.
“I know now that a factory environment is not the place for me,” Matthew Montgomery said in court.
Montgomery, 33, of Trevose, used his work-issued wire cutters to sever about 70 electrical wires running from the cockpit to the main body of a nearly finished H-47 Chinook on May 10 — his last shift on an assembly line in Ridley Township, in suburban Philadelphia.
The helicopter would not have been able to fly, so there was no risk of injury, and the damage was readily spotted by plant officials two days later. The vandalism led Boeing officials to shut down the assembly line for two days.
The same week, a suspicious washer was found in a second helicopter. No one has been charged in that incident, which remains under investigation, authorities said Monday.
Montgomery told the judge he did not know how to deal with the stress of the job. He also was upset about being transferred to another job at the Ridley Township plant after applying for positions at other Boeing Co. sites.
“He was upset about the repetitive nature of his tasks,” public defender Mara Meehan wrote in a sentencing memo that also outlined family problems beginning in Montgomery’s childhood.
Meehan also said that in a psychiatric evaluation, Montgomery said he “took his frustration out on a machine because he would never harm another person.”
Montgomery, who earned $19 an hour, pleaded guilty in September to one count of destroying property under contract to the government. He also was ordered to pay $110,000 in restitution.
U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick sentenced Montgomery at the low end of the 10- to 16-month guideline range.
“Although the defendant has no prior criminal history, the defendant’s crime was violent and senseless,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Votaw wrote in a recent memo asking for a sentence within the guideline range.
Montgomery was ordered to report to prison on Feb. 17.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A former Boeing employee who vandalized a $24 million military helicopter was sentenced Monday to five months in prison and five months on home confinement after telling the judge the tension and tedium of his assembly-line job had gotten to him.
“I know now that a factory environment is not the place for me,” Matthew Montgomery said in court.
Montgomery, 33, of Trevose, used his work-issued wire cutters to sever about 70 electrical wires running from the cockpit to the main body of a nearly finished H-47 Chinook on May 10 — his last shift on an assembly line in Ridley Township, in suburban Philadelphia.
The helicopter would not have been able to fly, so there was no risk of injury, and the damage was readily spotted by plant officials two days later. The vandalism led Boeing officials to shut down the assembly line for two days.
The same week, a suspicious washer was found in a second helicopter. No one has been charged in that incident, which remains under investigation, authorities said Monday.
Montgomery told the judge he did not know how to deal with the stress of the job. He also was upset about being transferred to another job at the Ridley Township plant after applying for positions at other Boeing Co. sites.
“He was upset about the repetitive nature of his tasks,” public defender Mara Meehan wrote in a sentencing memo that also outlined family problems beginning in Montgomery’s childhood.
Meehan also said that in a psychiatric evaluation, Montgomery said he “took his frustration out on a machine because he would never harm another person.”
Montgomery, who earned $19 an hour, pleaded guilty in September to one count of destroying property under contract to the government. He also was ordered to pay $110,000 in restitution.
U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick sentenced Montgomery at the low end of the 10- to 16-month guideline range.
“Although the defendant has no prior criminal history, the defendant’s crime was violent and senseless,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Votaw wrote in a recent memo asking for a sentence within the guideline range.
Montgomery was ordered to report to prison on Feb. 17.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Autopsy completed on Travolta’s son
Date: 1/5/2009
By CHRIS GILLETTE
Associated Press Writer
FREEPORT, Bahamas (AP) — Doctors in the Bahamas conducted an autopsy Monday on John Travolta’s 16-year-old son, but authorities did not immediately disclose the results.
Bahamian Minister of Health Hubert Minnis said the autopsy was finished but declined to comment on what may have caused the death of Jett Travolta, who had a history of seizures and was found unconscious in a bathroom Friday at a family vacation home.
Jett’s body was expected to be transferred soon to Grand Bahama’s Restview Memorial Mortuary, said Glen Campbell, an assistant funeral director.
The family plans to send his remains by Wednesday to Ocala, Florida, where the actor owns a home, said Obie Wilchcombe, a family friend and member of the Bahamian parliament.
Travolta tried CPR to revive his son, and Jett may have died in his arms before an emergency medical technician took over, Usmagazine.com reported, citing McDermott and another attorney for Travolta, Michael Ossi.
“We are heartbroken that our time with him was so brief. We will cherish the time we had with him for the rest of our lives,” Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, said Sunday in their first public statement since Jett’s death.
Travolta, 54, and Preston, 46, have said that Jett became very sick when he was 2 years old and was diagnosed with Kawasaki Syndrome, an illness that leads to inflamed blood vessels in young children. Preston has blamed household cleaners and fertilizers and said that a detoxification program based on teachings from the Church of Scientology helped improve his health, according to People magazine.
A police statement said that Jett had not been seen since Thursday when a caretaker, Jeff Kathrain, found him unconscious late Friday morning.
But Michael McDermott, an attorney for the actor, said police wrongly left the impression that Jett was unsupervised. He said two nannies were with Jett throughout the evening, and he does not believe the teen was in the bathroom for a long time.
About a dozen security guards and Bahamian police officers patrolled around the luxury Old Bahama Bay resort community Sunday where Travolta and Preston remained inside their home. The white-sand beach in front of the suites was closed.
The couple also have an 8-year-old daughter, Ella Bleu.
Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham sent condolences to the Travolta family and said the autopsy is a formality the country requires in cases of sudden death to rule out foul play.
____
Associated Press writers Vanessa Rolle in Freeport and Juan McCartney in Nassau, Bahamas contributed to this report.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
By CHRIS GILLETTE
Associated Press Writer
FREEPORT, Bahamas (AP) — Doctors in the Bahamas conducted an autopsy Monday on John Travolta’s 16-year-old son, but authorities did not immediately disclose the results.
Bahamian Minister of Health Hubert Minnis said the autopsy was finished but declined to comment on what may have caused the death of Jett Travolta, who had a history of seizures and was found unconscious in a bathroom Friday at a family vacation home.
Jett’s body was expected to be transferred soon to Grand Bahama’s Restview Memorial Mortuary, said Glen Campbell, an assistant funeral director.
The family plans to send his remains by Wednesday to Ocala, Florida, where the actor owns a home, said Obie Wilchcombe, a family friend and member of the Bahamian parliament.
Travolta tried CPR to revive his son, and Jett may have died in his arms before an emergency medical technician took over, Usmagazine.com reported, citing McDermott and another attorney for Travolta, Michael Ossi.
“We are heartbroken that our time with him was so brief. We will cherish the time we had with him for the rest of our lives,” Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, said Sunday in their first public statement since Jett’s death.
Travolta, 54, and Preston, 46, have said that Jett became very sick when he was 2 years old and was diagnosed with Kawasaki Syndrome, an illness that leads to inflamed blood vessels in young children. Preston has blamed household cleaners and fertilizers and said that a detoxification program based on teachings from the Church of Scientology helped improve his health, according to People magazine.
A police statement said that Jett had not been seen since Thursday when a caretaker, Jeff Kathrain, found him unconscious late Friday morning.
But Michael McDermott, an attorney for the actor, said police wrongly left the impression that Jett was unsupervised. He said two nannies were with Jett throughout the evening, and he does not believe the teen was in the bathroom for a long time.
About a dozen security guards and Bahamian police officers patrolled around the luxury Old Bahama Bay resort community Sunday where Travolta and Preston remained inside their home. The white-sand beach in front of the suites was closed.
The couple also have an 8-year-old daughter, Ella Bleu.
Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham sent condolences to the Travolta family and said the autopsy is a formality the country requires in cases of sudden death to rule out foul play.
____
Associated Press writers Vanessa Rolle in Freeport and Juan McCartney in Nassau, Bahamas contributed to this report.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.