Vaccination for flu finds a believer

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Vaccine skeptics gain converts

People who do not believe in vaccinating children have never had much sway over Leslie Wygant Arndt. She has studied the vaccine debate, she said, and came out in favor of having her 10-month-old daughter inoculated against childhood diseases. But there is something different about the vaccine for the H1N1 flu, she said.

"I have looked at the people who are against it, and I find myself taking their side," said Wygant Arndt, who lives in Portland, Ore. "But then again, I go back and forth on this every day. It's an emotional topic."

Anti-vaccinators, as they are often referred to by scientists and doctors, have toiled for years on the margins of medicine.

Day care operator charged with injuring baby

A day care operator who spent much of her life tending babies now faces a charge that she shook one so violently that he'll never recover.

Cheryl Alston, 53, was arrested last week, more than two months after Chris Lear found his son limp in Alston's arms at her home day care on the outskirts of Chapel Hill.

Every moment since, 7-month-old Lucas has struggled to live, spending much of his first summer strapped to tubes and machines at the neonatal unit of UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill. His brain had swelled so dramatically that doctors had to drill a hole in his skull to relieve pressure, said John McCabe, an attorney for the family.

N.C. State must pay $300,000

N.C. State University must pay $300,000 to two research assistants who were among 10 women a professor harassed over the course of a decade, according to court records.

Evalyn Gonzales and Kathy A. Wood had worked for Shuaib Ahmad, a civil engineering professor who has left the university. The women sued NCSU, and a deputy commissioner with the state Industrial Commission ruled in their favor last week.

University officials, including former Chancellor Larry Monteith, learned in 1987 that Ahmad had been accused of sexual harassment, the deputy commissioner's order says. But the university later promoted Ahmad to full professor and made him head of a research laboratory.

Family gets the home they earned

Her fingernails are manicured, but don't be fooled.

Trina Shah's palms are still rough with callouses after hammering nails into her new home for the past five months.

She, her husband, Aaron, and their six children now own their first home.

Study finds 1 in 5 babies lags on shots

Nearly one in five North Carolina toddlers fails to get properly vaccinated against childhood diseases, says a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

State health officials point out that North Carolina's compliance rate is higher than all other states except Massachusetts. But with the rapid rebound of childhood diseases once thought to be in firm check, children whose vaccines and booster shots aren't properly administered can face a greater risk of preventable illnesses such as measles, mumps, whooping cough and polio, the CDC study says.

"We stand by our record," said Dr. Leah Devlin, state health director, while acknowledging the study's value for further improvement. "We really do a good job on immunization, between the health departments and the pediatric providers."