December 4, 2014
(Science) – Several of the authors, among them Mary-Claire King of the University of Washington, Seattle, BRCA1’s discoverer, say all women regardless of family history should learn whether they carry dangerous mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2. Other experts are not … Read More
December 4, 2014
(Science) – Advocates of “legal personhood” to chimpanzees have lost another battle. This morning, a New York appellate court rejected a lawsuit by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) to free a chimp named Tommy from captivity. The group had argued … Read More
December 4, 2014
(The Telegraph) – The cells from a human foetus have been injected into baby mice to create animals which have brains that are half human. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical said it was like ‘ramping up the power’ … Read More
December 4, 2014
(The Globe and Mail) – Rapid evolution of HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, is slowing its ability to cause AIDS, according to a study of more than 2,000 women in Africa. Scientists said the research suggests a less-virulent HIV could … Read More
December 4, 2014
(Chicago Tribune) – Karla Dunston’s only hope of becoming a biological mother after undergoing cancer treatment rests with three frozen pre-embryos at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Her former boyfriend, Jacob Szafranski, who donated the sperm, said he doesn’t want to be … Read More
December 4, 2014
(Pew Research Center) – A majority of older Americans say Medicare is working well. Nonetheless, they report more problems paying for health care and getting primary care than seniors in 10 other major advanced economies, according to a new Commonwealth … Read More
December 4, 2014
(Medical Xpress) – New research from Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center shows how ovarian tumors co-opt a specific type of adult stem cell from abdominal tissues to fuel their growth. The research, published online … Read More
December 4, 2014
(Eurekalert) – Researchers from the African Genome Variation Project (AGVP) have published the first attempt to comprehensively characterise genetic diversity across Sub-Saharan Africa. The study of the world’s most genetically diverse region will provide an invaluable resource for medical researchers … Read More
December 4, 2014
(BBC) – A personal DNA test that has sparked controversy in the US has launched in the UK. The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) says the 23andMe spit test, which is designed to give details about a … Read More
December 4, 2014
(Times of India) – Two decades after registering the first surrogate delivery in the country, Chennai is emerging as a hub for couples seeking a womb on rent. Fuelling this growth are the city’s healthcare infrastructure and proliferating fertility clinics. … Read More
December 3, 2014
(Associated Press) – Doctors talking privately to patients or families after a medical mishap could acknowledge responsibility or even admit a mistake without that conversation being used against them later in court, according to a proposal in the Ohio General … Read More
December 3, 2014
(U.S. News and World Report) – The first major U.S. polio epidemic occurred in 1894 in Vermont, with 132 cases. New York City experienced its first large-scale outbreak in 1916, with more than 27,000 cases and 6,000 deaths. By the … Read More
December 3, 2014
(Los Angeles Times) – Infections and other medical errors that harm patients in hospitals have declined significantly, the Obama administration said Tuesday, hailing the progress as a sign that new efforts to improve patients’ safety are bearing fruit. From 2010 … Read More
December 3, 2014
(The Wall Street Journal) – Every few weeks, the New England Journal of Medicine publishes a hypothetical case about the use of a medicine or procedure and asks its readers – who are largely physicians – what they would recommend … Read More
December 3, 2014
(Kaiser Health News) – Health care systems experimenting with a new way of being paid by Medicare would have three extra years before they could be punished for poor performance, the federal government proposed Monday. The proposal is one of … Read More
December 3, 2014
(The Atlantic) – Abortion is becoming ever rarer in the United States. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its latest survey of abortion in the United States. The CDC tallied 730,322 abortions in 2011, the smallest … Read More
December 3, 2014
(Huffington Post) – Transnational medical ethics expressly prohibits force-feeding. The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strikers states flatly that “[f]orcible feeding is never ethically acceptable.” A global consensus of medical ethics scholars agrees. “Even if intended to … Read More
December 3, 2014
(News-Medical) – Overcoming graft rejection is the main obstacle when it comes to stem cell regeneration or organ transplantation. Current treatment includes the use of systemic immunosuppression, which leaves the patient at risk for opportunistic infections. Scientists now are investigating … Read More
December 3, 2014
(BBC) – Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain’s pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. He told the BBC:”The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the … Read More
December 2, 2014
(Chicago Tribune) – John F. Kilner, Professor of Bioethics and Contemporary Culture and director of bioethics degree programs at Trinity International University, was recently awarded the 2015 Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence in Bioethics by The Center for Bioethics and … Read More
December 2, 2014
(The Guardian) – Millions of moments like this occur every day: a human being coming to another human being with the body or mind’s troubles and looking for assistance. That is the central act of medicine – that moment when … Read More
December 2, 2014
(Vox) – In the past, much of military research has focused on building tools to make soldiers more effective on the battlefield: more powerful guns, better communications, stronger armor. But there is also research underway to improve the human body … Read More
December 2, 2014
(Medical Xpress) – The epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse continues to take a deadly toll in the United States, with fatal overdoses involving drugs such as Oxycontin and Vicodin tripling over a decade, a new report shows. Deaths from another … Read More
December 2, 2014
(Washington Post) – Ten years ago, journalist Karen Masterson was taking a course on making effective use of the records at the National Archives in College Park. For an assignment, she was searching for records on World War II-era blood … Read More
December 2, 2014
(Nature) – Safety trials of Ebola vaccines are starting to return results: at least one is known to be safe and to summon an immune response against the virus. The challenge now is to use the results to guide the … Read More
