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The "War on Drugs" has failed, particularly with regard to the spread of HIV in middle-income nations and some developing nations in Asia. The disease is now starting to bleed into Africa as well. [More]



drug war - Drugs - HIV - Health - Africa

Welcome or not, dying is a natural part of the circle of life. Death initiates a complex process by which the human body gradually reverts back to dust, as it were. In the language of forensics, decomposition transforms our biological structures into simple organic and inorganic building blocks that plants and animals can use.

Four main factors affect the pace and completeness of decay. The most important is temperature: the rate of chemical reactions in a cadaver doubles with each 10 degree Celsius rise. Humidity or water from the environment buffers those reactions, slowing their effects. Extreme acidity or alkalinity hastens how quickly enzymes degrade biological molecules--although again, the presence of ample water can mediate the effects. Finally, anything that blocks exposure to oxygen, such as burial, submersion or high altitude, will slow decomposition. Depending on the interplay of these four factors, the body can turn into a skeleton as rapidly as two weeks or take more than two years.

Death used to be a simple affair: either a person’s heart was beating, or it was not. That clarity faded years ago when heroic medical technology started to keep hearts beating in­definitely. Although we have had decades to ponder the distinctions between various states of grave physiological failure, if anything our confusion has grown. When is it ethical to turn off a ventilator or remove a feeding tube? When does “life support” lose its meaning? And most critically, at what point is it acceptable to cut into a body and remove the heart that could save another life?

These issues are not academic. They raise questions about health care costs--is it worth using expensive machinery on a body that is for all intents and purposes dead?--as well as about dignity in end-of-life care. This year’s “death panel” subplot of the health care debate fed off the real fears people have about being taken advantage of when at their weakest.

Infectious tropical diseases such as river blindness and trachoma can be compelling targets around which to rally government and community campaigns to combat these scourges . But are these programs diverting limited resources away from basic medical and preventive care? [More]



Health care - Health - Preventive medicine - Onchocerciasis - Conditions and Diseases

A child that is easily distracted, fidgety and interruptive in school might not have a clinical case of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but might rather just be acting his or her age, posit researchers behind two new studies of diagnosis trends. [More]



Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder - Health - Mental Health - Disorders - ADD and ADHD

Scientists are still assessing the ecological damage wrought by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year. Other researchers, however, are looking at subtler signs of the disaster's potential impacts on human health. [More]



Oil spill - Gulf of Mexico - Deepwater Horizon - Environment - Health

Earlier this year, consumers were close to being able to pick up a saliva-based genetic test for disease risk the next time they ran to the drug store for aspirin or sunscreen. But even though the tests are still available for purchase online, consumers, geneticists and other groups quickly started to ask questions about the reliability of these off-the-shelf, over-the-counter genetic tests--and whether consumers would be savvy enough to digest results on their own. [More]



Genetic testing - Genetics - Genetic Programming - Artificial Intelligence - Health care

As hospitals struggle to integrate electronic medical records , some have already instituted electronic drug ordering systems to help reduce prescription errors . But not all so-called computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems are specially tuned to different patient populations. And while some can catch potentially dangerous drug-drug interactions for individuals, only one has been alerting providers when they are ordering something that could be dangerous for seniors.  [More]



Computer physician order entry - Hospital - Electronic health record - Medical prescription - Risk

A long lunch out with co-workers or a late-night conversation with a family member might seem like a distraction from other healthy habits, such as going to the gym or getting a good night's sleep. But more than 100 years' worth of research shows that having a healthy social life is incredibly important to staying physically healthy. Overall, social support increases survival by some 50 percent, concluded the authors behind a new meta-analysis. [More]



Health - Social support - Meta-analysis - Conditions and Diseases - Sleep Disorders

Curious differences in gene expression between reprogrammed adult stem cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), and the embryonic stem cells that the former are designed to mimic might now be explained by a new discovery about just how much information a "reprogrammed" adult stem cell retains. [More]



Induced pluripotent stem cell - Embryonic stem cell - Stem cell - Biology - Biotechnology