February 24, 2012
Cancer patients who are young, female or from an ethnic minority face a longer wait to be diagnosed and referred to a cancer specialist, researchers say. (BBC News)
February 24, 2012
Elderly nursing home residents who take certain antipsychotic drugs for dementia have an increased risk of death, a new study found. (ABC News)
February 23, 2012
Couples can find themselves in the situation of having a succession of boys and are disappointed to discover that their unborn child is not going to be the girl they hoped for but another boy. (Telegraph)
February 23, 2012
Many of the most prominent names in the field of kidney transplantation agree that the way to maximize the number of transplants through paired exchanges is to create a single, nationwide registry. (NY Times)
February 23, 2012
It wasn’t quite the lynching that Henry Markram had expected. But the barrage of skeptical comments from his fellow neuroscientists–“It’s crap,” said one–definitely made the day feel like a tribunal. (Scientific American)
February 22, 2012
Gene-sequencing breakthroughs, spawning a fast-growing, multibillion-dollar market for drugs and medical tests, are also creating thorny questions over how to regulate commercial use of the human genetic code. (Bloomberg)
February 22, 2012
Some 85,000 HIV-infected people in Myanmar are not getting treatment due to a lack of funding, despite renewed international engagement with the government amid a wave of political reform, a medical aid group said Wednesday. (Washington Post)
February 22, 2012
People who constantly reach into a pocket to check a smartphone for bits of information will soon have another option: a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time. (NY … Read More
February 22, 2012
A breast cancer survivor says she is challenging a patent claim on cancer genes because she does not want biotech companies to own human material. (ABC Sydney)
February 22, 2012
The New England Journal of Medicine (Volume 366, Issue 5, February 2, 2012) is now available on-line and by subscription only. Articles include: “Improving Childhood Vaccination Rates” by D.S. Diekema, available on-line.
February 21, 2012
The stem-cell tourism industry is not exactly renowned for ethical probity, much less scientific rigor. Given its reputation for peddling untested remedies to desperate patients, not to mention its starring role in several sting operations on 60 Minutes, a few … Read More
February 21, 2012
Americans have long gone to China to adopt babies. In a twist, Chinese couples are now coming here to become parents — through surrogacy. (Chicago Tribune)
February 21, 2012
The government’s attempt to reduce childhood obesity is moving from the school cafeteria to the vending machines. (NY Times)
February 21, 2012
The Supreme Court of Georgia has struck down — on First Amendment grounds — a state law intended to prevent assisted suicide. Reversal of the law means that a physician and three others who were charged with helping a man … Read More
February 21, 2012
Lexington, Ky., pathologist Gregory J. Davis, MD, credits autopsies for many of the medical and public health advancements made in the past few decades. (American Medical News)
February 20, 2012
A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics. … Read More
February 20, 2012
Should scientists be allowed to create extremely aggressive and highly infectious influenza viruses? Dutch virologists have done it and, in the process, triggered a fierce debate over the risks of bioterrorism and the potential release of deadly viruses. (ABC News)
February 20, 2012
Dementia has been described as a “time bomb” in society. As more people are living longer, more are being affected by the illness which slowly but surely annihilates brain function. (BBC News)
February 20, 2012
It may look like an ordinary USB memory stick, but a little gadget that can sequence DNA while plugged into your laptop could have far-reaching effects on medicine and genetic research. (New Scientist)
February 20, 2012
In 2010, Pamela Fink, an employee of a Connecticut energy company, made a new kind of discrimination claim: she charged that she had been fired because she carries genes that predispose her to cancer. Fink quickly became the public face … Read More
February 20, 2012
The Journal of the American Medical Association (Volume 307, Issue 5, February 1, 2012) is now available by subscription only. Articles include: “The Ethical Hazards and Programmatic Challenges of Genomic Newborn Screening” by Aaron J. Goldenberg; Richard R. Sharp, 461-462.
February 17, 2012
A colour-blind artist has become the world’s first government-recognized cyborg with a head-mounted device that translates colour to sound. (Daily Mail)
February 17, 2012
Everyone has to die one day, yet often the issue of death and dying still remains a taboo, despite the fact that palliative care is a major public health issue. (Medical News Today)
February 17, 2012
Practicing defensive medicine to avoid medical liability lawsuits may not be a formal part of medical school curriculum, but it’s still being taught to medical students and residents, a study shows. (American Medical News)
February 17, 2012
Grief following the death of a loved one isn’t a mental illness that requires psychiatrists and antidepressants, according to editors of The Lancet, who oppose “medicalizing” an often-healing response to overwhelming loss. (ABC News)
