Syringes

An autopsy will be performed on an unidentified man who died yesterday after being shot with two lead-filled "beanbag" shotgun rounds while threatening police with two syringes in the living room of a vacant West Baltimore rowhouse, according to a department spokesman.Sgt. Scott Rowe said the man, in his 40s, died at Maryland General Hospital, and that the incident has been ruled an "in-custody death." Rowe said police expected the autopsy to reveal whether the man died from being shot or some other cause.

In response to health care workers' worries about HIV, Maryland might follow the lead of California and require hospitals to use syringes designed to reduce the risk of accidental needle-pricks.The General Assembly will hold a hearing this week on a proposal to direct the state Occupational Safety and Health Advisory Board to develop rules by 2001 requiring safer needles.The legislation, drafted by Del. Dan K. Morhaim, a Baltimore County Democrat who is also an emergency room doctor, is part of a national trend.

County police have charged a homeless woman, found with her 3-year-old son in a Glen Burnie motel room littered with syringes and drugs, with child abuse and drug possession.Officers were called to the Budget Motel in the 4800 block of Ritchie Highway before 2 p.m. Monday for a dispute between the manager and a patron. Police said the manager wanted the woman to leave because she had not paid.When officers escorted the woman to the room, police said, they found syringes in the sink with suspected heroin, two vials of what police identified as cocaine and 22 tablets of Percocet, a painkiller, in a prescription bottle with another person's name.

Led by Baltimore's mayor and health commissioner, officials of needle-exchange programs meeting here yesterday expressed fury and frustration with President Clinton's decision this week not to provide federal funding for their controversial strategy to slow the spread of AIDS.But they said needle-exchange programs will continue toproliferate -- even where giving out clean syringes is against the law -- because they work."I'm very angry," Health Commissioner Peter C. Beilenson told more than 300 health advocates at the North American Syringe Exchange Convention.

A Manchester man, who is serving 18 months in an unrelated Baltimore case, was sentenced yesterday in Carroll Circuit Court to a concurrent prison term of one year and one day after he was convicted of heroin possession.Keith P. Domzalski, 21, of the 5000 block of Grave Run Road pleaded not guilty but agreed to accept the prosecutor's version of what happened.Court records show Domzalski was arrested Feb. 6 at residence in the 3100 block of Church St. in Manchester after police found three syringes.

Walking right up to the bright red mailbox, the Baltimore man glanced around, nervously pulled down the lid and dropped a needle inside.Like other injection drug users, he has begun using a converted mailbox as a place to get rid of his dirty needles. The experiment, launched about a month ago on four city street corners, aims to create an easy way for addicts to dispose of their used needles, rather than tossing them in gutters, alleys and sidewalks. The boxes were donated by the U.S. Postal Service to the city, whose workers collect the needles weekly.

Susan E. Kron, a former Anne Arundel Medical Center employee accused of giving three newborns dangerous doses of morphine last month, plans to fight criminal charges and continue her work as a pharmacist, her lawyer said yesterday.Ms. Kron, 45, of Crofton was charged last week with reckless endangerment and practicing without a license after hospital administrators accused her of accidentally drugging three newborns in the critical-care nursery.The babies were placed on ventilators Jan. 31 after Ms. Kron is alleged to have filled at least six syringes with morphine instead of heparin, a common blood thinner used to flush intravenous tubes, hospital officials said.

After blood-filled syringes and rubber gloves washed out of a Canton storm drain into the Baltimore harbor recently, city investigators began tracking down the source.They are planning to identify medical sites, such as clinics, labs and doctor's offices, in the areas of Southeast Baltimore where streets drain into the tunnel. Health officials plan to notify those facilities and local physicians, sternly reminding them of laws that require safe disposal of medical waste.It is the latest incident in a chronic situation.

Backed by hundreds of studies, including work done in Baltimore, a national panel of scientists declared yesterday that needle-exchange programs reduce the spread of HIV without encouraging greater drug use by participants.Programs that swap dirty needles for new, sterile ones are so effective that the scientists recommended lifting the ban on federal funding of needle-exchange programs, allowing people to get needles over the counter without a prescription and making it legal to carry needles and syringes.

In the chilly wind and spitting rain, a dozen people lined up alongside the Winnebago, quietly waiting their turn. One by one, they climbed into the warm van, nodding hello.Then they got down to business.Reaching deep in their pockets, plastic bags and even a child's lunch box decorated with cartoon characters, they pulled out handfuls of syringes -- needles they had used to inject themselves with heroin and cocaine. Some had five or six, others as many as 80.This is the Baltimore City Health Department's Needle Exchange Program.

Of course, those contentions are that McNamee injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone 16 times in 1998, 2000 and 2001. The physical evidence that McNamee is said to have handed over to investigators are syringes and gauze pads with traces of Clemens' blood. Reportedly, McNamee produced the material about a month ago. It's all vaguely reminiscent of Monica Lewinsky preserving Bill Clinton's DNA evidence on the infamous blue dress that helped prove the two had inappropriate moments together.

CHICAGO -- Being a journalist, I'm no expert on making money. But you don't have to be Warren Buffett to recognize one way to get rich: Find someone who will give you $600,000 if you give him 25 cents. A few swaps like that, and you're a permanent resident of Easy Street. You might assume that no such deal exists and that if it did, no one would pass it up. You would be wrong. This advantageous exchange is available any time our leaders in Washington want to take it. But so far, they've refused.

CHICAGO - Heroin addiction is a regrettable condition, and there are lots of theories about how to help people overcome it. But it is a truism, not a theory, that you can't help addicts once they are dead. Step 1 in assisting or even forcing heroin users into more socially productive behavior is keeping them alive. This elementary insight is one resisted by many supporters of the drug war. They fear that if we reduce the risk of gruesome death from injecting heroin or other drugs, everyone this side of Hilary Duff will soon be lying in a gutter with a needle in her arm. They don't want drug users to practice their habit in a less dangerous way; they want them to give it up, period.

Michele Brown lays three syringes on the table in front of a pretty, 27-year-old blond woman with a tattoo of Tigger on her upper right arm. One after another, Brown uncaps each of the syringes to show the younger woman the needle. "This one has a long needle with a fine point," Brown says. "This one has a long needle but a thicker point. It's the sturdiest. "And this one," she says of the last syringe, "this one has a short needle and a fine point. That's the one most people like." The young woman elects to go with the popular choice, and Brown drops a dozen or more into a brown paper lunch bag. Next she dangles a tourniquet in front of the woman.

An autopsy will be performed on an unidentified man who died yesterday after being shot with two lead-filled "beanbag" shotgun rounds while threatening police with two syringes in the living room of a vacant West Baltimore rowhouse, according to a department spokesman.Sgt. Scott Rowe said the man, in his 40s, died at Maryland General Hospital, and that the incident has been ruled an "in-custody death." Rowe said police expected the autopsy to reveal whether the man died from being shot or some other cause.

In response to health care workers' worries about HIV, Maryland might follow the lead of California and require hospitals to use syringes designed to reduce the risk of accidental needle-pricks.The General Assembly will hold a hearing this week on a proposal to direct the state Occupational Safety and Health Advisory Board to develop rules by 2001 requiring safer needles.The legislation, drafted by Del. Dan K. Morhaim, a Baltimore County Democrat who is also an emergency room doctor, is part of a national trend.

A Manchester man, who is serving 18 months in an unrelated Baltimore case, was sentenced yesterday in Carroll Circuit Court to a concurrent prison term of one year and one day after he was convicted of heroin possession.Keith P. Domzalski, 21, of the 5000 block of Grave Run Road pleaded not guilty but agreed to accept the prosecutor's version of what happened.Court records show Domzalski was arrested Feb. 6 at residence in the 3100 block of Church St. in Manchester after police found three syringes.

Led by Baltimore's mayor and health commissioner, officials of needle-exchange programs meeting here yesterday expressed fury and frustration with President Clinton's decision this week not to provide federal funding for their controversial strategy to slow the spread of AIDS.But they said needle-exchange programs will continue toproliferate -- even where giving out clean syringes is against the law -- because they work."I'm very angry," Health Commissioner Peter C. Beilenson told more than 300 health advocates at the North American Syringe Exchange Convention.

County police have charged a homeless woman, found with her 3-year-old son in a Glen Burnie motel room littered with syringes and drugs, with child abuse and drug possession.Officers were called to the Budget Motel in the 4800 block of Ritchie Highway before 2 p.m. Monday for a dispute between the manager and a patron. Police said the manager wanted the woman to leave because she had not paid.When officers escorted the woman to the room, police said, they found syringes in the sink with suspected heroin, two vials of what police identified as cocaine and 22 tablets of Percocet, a painkiller, in a prescription bottle with another person's name.

Walking right up to the bright red mailbox, the Baltimore man glanced around, nervously pulled down the lid and dropped a needle inside.Like other injection drug users, he has begun using a converted mailbox as a place to get rid of his dirty needles. The experiment, launched about a month ago on four city street corners, aims to create an easy way for addicts to dispose of their used needles, rather than tossing them in gutters, alleys and sidewalks. The boxes were donated by the U.S. Postal Service to the city, whose workers collect the needles weekly.