Interesting
Via Kevin Drum:
Overturning a century of conventional medical wisdom, Japanese researchers reported Thursday that simple chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth ventilation save twice as many heart attack victims as traditional CPR.
What's not shocking here is that this only applies to people who are suffering a plain heart attack. Why? Such people can still breathe. As such, only chest compressions are needed to reestablish minimal circulation. For those people who are suffering respiratory arrest, forced breathing is still necessary.
From the same article, this is depressing:
As many as three-quarters of bystanders who observe a heart attack in a stranger decline to perform CPR, fearing infectious diseases.
That's just sad. You're more susceptible to diseases from all the bathroom doorknobs you touch. A single case of giving CPR to a stranger is not likely to give you anything, and nothing more than a cold in any case. This risk is worth it to save someone's life.