Advisory Panel

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Naval Academy must crack down on sexual harassment to rid the school of attitudes toward women that would never be tolerated in the rest of the Navy or the Marine Corps, a committee of the school's Board of Visitors said yesterday.The five-member committee, appointed after widespread reports of sexual harassment and hazing surfaced last spring, called for harsh penalties for those violations, including dismissal from the academy."It is essential that the academy lead the fleet, not follow the fleet, in eliminating bigotry, prejudice and sexism," said the committee's report, the product of a five-month investigation.

Medical experiments on chimpanzees are largely unnecessary and should be rare, concluded a report released Thursday from special panel of the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies of Science. The authors did not recommend an outright ban, as Europeans countries have done, but suggested strict parameters for research funded by the National Institutes of Health. Leaders there immediately said they would adhere to the recommendations. "The bar is very high," said Jeffrey Kahn, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, who chaired the panel.

Told by Anne Arundel County ethics officials to choose between being a member of a budget advisory panel and representing his neighbors in a school redistricting challenge, David C. Douglas has quit the Planning Advisory Board.Douglas, a resident of the Seven Oaks community, sent a resignation letter to County Executive John G. Gary last week. A spokeswoman for Gary would not release the contents of the letter yesterday because Gary had not seen it.Douglas could not be reached yesterday.The Odenton lawyer is representing Seven Oaks residents who oppose school board plans to switch their children from schools that feed into Arundel High School to schools in the Meade High School group.

The Anne Arundel County school board has approved a revamped countywide Citizen Advisory Committee, appointing a 29-member executive panel that it says will strengthen the panel's ability to advise the board on education-related matters. The board appointed 26 county residents Tuesday to join three representatives from countywide parent groups on the CAC. The retooling comes about a year after tensions between the CAC and the board prompted CAC Chairman Tom Frank to resign, saying that what he thought was the group's function was not consistent with what the school board expected.

WASHINGTON -- A vaccine for preventing most cases of cervical cancer moved closer to government approval yesterday, as an advisory panel recommended that federal drug regulators permit its use. The unanimous endorsement makes it more likely that the Food and Drug Administration will allow sales of the vaccine, Gardasil, when the agency issues a final decision, expected early next month. The FDA, which has been considering the vaccine on an expedited basis, usually follows the recommendations of its advisory committees, composed of scientists and representatives of consumers and industry.

WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration is pondering a new, stricter test to screen blood donations for the AIDS virus but will likely decide against it because it costs too much.The test, scientists say, would prevent up to 20 transfusions of HIV-infected blood a year but would come at a cost of at least $24 million."While I sympathize, I don't think that's an issue," said Louis M. Katz, chairman of an FDA advisory panel that ruled against the test after a controversial debate. "It's inconceivable in 1995 that we would consider a test that would cost so much."

The county is asking 14 Gambrills, Millersville and Severn residents for advice on the troubled Millersville Landfill.In an attempt to defuse concerns about the 567-acre site, County Executive Robert R. Neall has appointed the residents, who live in nearby communities, to a citizens advisory panel.County officials hope the committee will be a "conduit" of information to and from residents, said Jody Vollmar, a spokeswoman for the Department of Utilities, which assumed control of the Burns Crossing Road facility and other county landfills last month.

A development's appearance and harmony with its surroundings - or the lack thereof - have sparked many a suburban dispute, but Howard County officials say they may have a solution. Legislation to create a design review panel is to be discussed at a county Planning Board meeting Thursday night. After consideration by the board, a bill will likely be introduced before the County Council. The proposal would create a five-member design advisory panel made up of architects, engineers and planners to make recommendations on aesthetics and compatibility while development plans are being processed.

Advisory panel sought County Executive David R. Craig is preparing an executive order establishing a 20-member advisory commission to help the county prepare for the thousands of new jobs expected in and around Aberdeen Proving Ground over the next several years. Headed by economic development director J. Thomas Sadowski, the panel would include various county department leaders charged with advising Craig and the County Council on Harford's needs. The latest estimates suggest as many as 20,000 private-sector jobs could follow the 2,200 military jobs set to arrive as a result of a national base consolidation plan.

WASHINGTON - To slow the growth of Medicare, an influential federal advisory panel will soon recommend that Congress freeze payments to nursing homes and home care agencies and reduce the cost-of-living allowance that hospitals are scheduled to receive next year. Republicans in Congress and Bush administration officials welcomed the proposals, saying they would save money for taxpayers and the Medicare trust fund. But health care providers expressed alarm, saying the proposals could reduce access to care for the elderly and disabled.

Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Monday the appointment of six members to the newly revived Sexual Offender Advisory Board, which had lain dormant since being established by law in 2006. Last week, O'Malley tapped former Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. as the board chairman. Curran, who is O'Malley's father-in-law, has studied sex-offender reforms for years and favors civil commitments for certain predators. The appointees are Michele J. Hughes, director of a nonprofit domestic violence victim support center; Dr. Annette L. Hanson, a psychiatrist at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center; Karla N. Smith, a family violence prosecutor in Montgomery County; David Walsh-Little, a Baltimore public defender; Laura Estupian-Kane, a licensed psychologist who focuses on the assessment of adolescents who have committed sexual offenses; and J. Patricia Wilson Smoot, a deputy state's attorney in Prince George's County.

U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said Thursday that she will introduce an amendment to the Senate health reform bill guaranteeing women universal access to mammograms beginning at age 40. The move is a response to new recommendations from an advisory panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which said most woman do not need mammograms until they are 50, and only every two years after that. The mammograms result in too many false positives for women ages 40 to 49 and don't save many lives, the panel said.

U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said Thursday that she will introduce an amendment to the Senate health reform bill guaranteeing women universal access to mammograms beginning at age 40. The move is a response to new recommendations from an advisory panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which said most woman do not need mammograms until they are 50, and only every two years after that. The mammograms result in too many false positives for women ages 40 to 49 and don't save many lives, the panel said.

Mutual-fund executives have proposed rule changes to make money-market funds safer while heading off tougher regulations proposed by advisers to the Obama administration. The proposals include plans to introduce liquidity requirements, shorten maturity limits and require more disclosure of fund holdings, according to the summary of a report to be released today by Investment Company Institute. The board of the Washington-based trade association approved the plan yesterday. A committee headed by Vanguard Group Chairman John J. Brennan had studied money funds for more than a year, when the $62.5 billion Reserve Primary Fund collapsed in September, setting off an industrywide run by investors.

CHICAGO - Amid fresh signs of financial troubles, President-elect Barack Obama announced yesterday that he was tapping a seasoned figure from past economic struggles to head a new advisory panel dedicated to creating jobs and stabilizing the markets. Obama said that former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker would head the committee, bringing into his circle of top economic advisers an 81-year-old former Federal Reserve chairman credited with curbing the high inflation rates of the late 1970s.

The Board of Education of Harford County Public Schools is seeking applicants for its Citizen Advisory Committees. Membership is open to all Harford County residents, including those without children in the school system. Committees will meet as necessary to accomplish their charge. New members are confirmed in December to one-, two- or three-year terms. Harford residents interested in serving on any one of these committees should send a letter of interest to Teri Kranefeld, manager of communications, Harford County Public Schools, 102 S. Hickory Ave., Bel Air 21014.

WASHINGTON -- A federal advisory panel endorsed the controversial new scientific field of human embryo research yesterday, saying that it holds significant promise for medical advances, but proposed a strict framework for its conduct.The research has generated growing ethical concerns because it deals with creating and manipulating human life.While the human embryo "warrants serious moral consideration as a developing form of life, it does not have the same moral status as infants and children," the panel said in a report to the National Institutes of Health, which will study the report further before any guidelines are finalized.

Congress should require makers and distributors of dietary supplements to report incidents in which their products harm consumers, a government advisory panel said yesterday. The National Academies' panel of experts also said the Food and Drug Administration should require supplement makers and distributors to turn over all information they have on a new product's safety - favorable or not - before marketing it. The panel argued in its report that the federal agency doesn't need proof of human harm to ban a supplement.

Four months after shelving a contentious plan to increase impact fees on new construction, the Anne Arundel County Council is considering a less drastic proposal at a time when the development industry is reeling. The new version, backed by County Executive John R. Leopold, and sponsored by Councilmen Edward R. Reilly and Joshua Cohen and Chairwoman Cathleen M. Vitale, aims to raise historically low fees paid by developers to finance schools, roads and police and fire service necessary to handle growth.

A federal advisory panel has endorsed two new combination vaccines designed to reduce the number of needle sticks children must endure to get the recommended immunizations. The panel approved a four-in-one shot made by GlaxoSmithKline. It offers protection against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and polio, and costs $45. It's given once to preschool-age children. The panel also endorsed Sanofi Pasteur's five-in-one shot for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio and illness because of Haemophilus influenzae type b, or HiB. It costs about $69. Youngsters get four doses by age 2. Both combination shots were recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration.