Just eight months ago, 6-year-old Emma Whitehead was gravely ill with leukemia and running out of options.Two rounds of chemotherapy had already failed, and a bone marrow transplant was no longer possible, The NewYorkTimes reports. So her parents opted for an experimental therapy developed at the University of Pennsylvania that aimed to enlist Emma’s own immune system in the fight […]
Read more
The Commonwealth Fund ranked health care systems in 11 wealthy nations according to criteria such as quality and access. Below, a sampling of the rankings:
Read more
Alaska man shot himself – Waited 5 days to go to doctor An Alaska man who accidentally shot himself in the head self-treated his wound for five days with antibiotic ointment rather than go to a doctor. Police said that James Doppler, 43, was “playing around” with his .22 long rifle when he pulled the trigger, blasting himself in the […]
Read more
■ A husband’s act of solidarity on behalf of his cancer-stricken wife may have saved his life. When Dolly Stringer of Moultrie, Ga., shaved her head last spring in preparation for chemotherapy to treat breast cancer, her husband, Bud, shaved his too. Only then did he discover a black mark on his pate, which was an aggressive form of skin […]
Read more
When President Obama began lifting restrictions on travel, diplomatic and economic relations between the US and Cuba earlier this year, many Americans celebrated the fact that Cuban cigars and rum, among other things, would become more accessible. Now we hope for other things such as the Lung Cancer Vaccine that was discovered. For half a century, Cuban products have been rare in […]
Read more
Psychiatric medications passing through sewage treatment plants could be dramatically changing the behavior of fish. After researchers discovered low levels of common anti-anxiety drugs called benzodiazepines in perch living downstream from a treatment plant in southern Sweden, they tested the same concentrations of the drug on fish in the lab. They found that the medicine made the fish lose their […]
Read more
The number of children diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is exploding, raising concerns that doctors are overprescribing powerful drugs to kids and teens. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The diagnosis rate of the disorder has soared 41 percent in the U.S. over the past decade. More than one in 10 school-age children have been diagnosed […]
Read more
A hallucinatory party drug could point the way to the first new treatments for depression in a generation. Scientists have discovered that ketamine (“Special K”), which club-goers take for dream-like highs, also improves mood disorders by repairing damaged connections in the brain. What’s more, ketamine works within hours as opposed to weeks— even for people whose mood disorders have proved […]
Read more