December 30, 2011
Over the past few years, there has been a sharp rise in the number of women terminating one foetus or more but continuing with a pregnancy and bearing at least one other child. (Telegraph)
December 30, 2011
The last time Mark Stella went to the dentist he didn’t need an insurance card. Instead, he pulled out a Groupon. (ABC News)
December 30, 2011
The World Health Organization issued a stern warning on Friday to scientists who have engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying their work carries significant risks and must be tightly controlled. (Reuters)
December 29, 2011
When Harvard Medical School researchers came up with the idea to open up clinical notes to patients as an experiment, their first step was finding out how people felt about the idea — and what they expected to happen as … Read More
December 29, 2011
Doctors have drawn up plans to sequence the full genetic code of thousands of people in a landmark project to personalise their medical care. (Guardian)
December 29, 2011
Thousands of children are conceived across the United States, including in Utah, using donated sperm or eggs. Some people do not know they were conceived through the use of a donor until they reach an age when their parents feel … Read More
December 28, 2011
Surgeons lift the face off one person and transplant it onto another person. Sounds like a scene out of a John Travolta and Nicholas Cage movie. (ABC News)
December 28, 2011
The most widespread medical implant failure in decades — involving thousands of all-metal artificial hips that need to be replaced prematurely — has entered the money phase. (NY Times)
December 28, 2011
Hanneke Hops wasn’t afraid of dying. What concerned her was growing old and not being able to run marathons, ride horses, or fly planes. (CNN)
December 28, 2011
Starting in 2012, the government will charge a new fee to your health insurance plan for research to find out which drugs, medical procedures, tests and treatments work best. But what will Americans do with the answers? (Washington Post)
December 27, 2011
The U.S. Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in a case centering on whether the government is liable for disclosing to another agency the medical history of an HIV-positive patient. (American Medical News)
December 27, 2011
After an Israeli biotech company stopped working on a promising medication, two U.S. families took an unusual step: They bought the drug and decided to develop it themselves as a possible treatment for their children’s muscular dystrophy. (Wall Street Journal)
December 27, 2011
The free clinic here opened about a year ago to serve illegal immigrants. But these days, it is mostly caring for Greeks like Vassiliki Ragamb, who was sitting in the waiting room hoping to get insulin for her young diabetic … Read More
December 26, 2011
More than 1,600 people who filed lawsuits claiming that their health was ruined by dust and smoke from the collapsed World Trade Center must decide by Jan. 2 whether to keep fighting in court, or drop the litigation and apply … Read More
December 26, 2011
Something was happening to Katie Strignano. After she was moved into a state-run group home, the 26-year-old woman, who is severely mentally retarded, started gaining weight, drooling, breaking out in pimples and pulling out her hair, leaving a bald spot … Read More
December 26, 2011
ChemGenex Pharmaceuticals found out the hard way how important it is to have a trustworthy companion. (NY Times)
December 26, 2011
Drug companies are working to develop a pure, more powerful version of the nation’s second most-abused medicine, which has addiction experts worried that it could spur a new wave of abuse. (Gazette Xtra)
December 26, 2011
France took a costly and unprecedented leap Friday in offering to pay for 30,000 women to have their breast implants removed because of mounting fears the products could rupture and leak cheap, industrial-grade silicone into the body. (ABC News)
December 26, 2011
Stanford University School of Medicine investigators have shown that iPS cells, viewed as a possible alternative to human embryonic stem cells, can mirror the defining defects of a genetic condition – in this instance, Marfan syndrome – as well as … Read More
December 21, 2011
James Breedin cannot keep track of how often he has been admitted to Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., for heart problems. “It’s been so many,” said Breedin, a 75-year-old disabled truck driver. (ABC News)
December 21, 2011
Couples who break up often fight over many things, but in vitro fertility treatments have created a new frontier: Who controls the frozen embryos that often result from such procedures? (Wall Street Journal)
December 21, 2011
Scientists are developing ever more sophisticated versions of “virtual patients” with the aim of testing medical devices and procedures that can’t readily be assessed in real people. (Wall Street Journal)
December 21, 2011
The U.S. government paid scientists to figure out how the deadly bird flu virus might mutate to become a bigger threat to people — and two labs succeeded in creating new strains that are easier to spread. (Washington Post)
December 21, 2011
Women who live in low-income neighborhoods are more likely than their wealthier counterparts to get misinformation about emergency contraception from their local pharmacies, a new study finds. (Scientific American)
December 20, 2011
Our risk of cancer rises dramatically as we age — cancer is, after all, a disease of aging, a consequence of our increasing longevity. So it makes sense that the elderly should be routinely screened for new tumors — or … Read More
