Month: April 2013

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The American College of Physicians (ACP) became the latest group to ask doctors to be clear about the limited benefits and “substantial harms” of prostate cancer screening before offering their male patients a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. The ACP’s guidance statement, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, also explicitly recommends against screening men younger than 50, older than 69 or with less than 10 to 15 years to live. …

By Scott Malone BOSTON (Reuters) – The top White House adviser on health care said on Monday she did not anticipate how lengthy and persistent the political opposition would be to healthcare reform – U.S. President Barack Obama's signature domestic legislative achievement. The administration had not anticipated opposition to the Affordable Care Act of 2010, nicknamed "Obamacare," would drag on years after the law's passage, said Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. …

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Strict school lunch standards that are similar to new regulations from the U.S. government may be tied to healthier body weights among students, according to a new study. "I think it's evidence that healthier school lunches have a positive effect but it's preliminary evidence. It's far from definitive," said Anne Barnhill, who studies food policy at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia but was not involved with the new research. The new findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, bode well for the standards introduced by the U.S. …

Celebrities who have battled the neurodegenerative disease.

LITTLETON, New Hampshire (Reuters) – A New Hampshire man who took several members of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign staff hostage in 2007 was taken into custody on Monday on suspicion of leaving a halfway house overnight without permission. Leeland Eisenberg, 52, faces a charge of escape punishable by up to seven years in prison after he was re-arrested in the lobby of a community center in Manchester, New Hampshire, the state's Department of Corrections said in a statement. …

CHICAGO (AP) — Constantly beeping alarms from devices that monitor the vital signs of the critically ill have “desensitized” hospital workers who sometimes ignore the noise, leading to at least two dozen deaths a year on average, a hospital accrediting group said Monday.

(Reuters) – The Maryland legislature approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes on Monday, and Governor Martin O'Malley has said he would sign the measure and make Maryland the 20th state to legalize medicinal cannabis. The Democratic-controlled state Senate passed the bill by a 42-4 vote. The House of Delegates had approved it last month. The measure allows seriously ill residents to obtain medical marijuana via state-regulated programs administered by academic medical centers. …

What if we were able to know exactly when, say, the next bird flu pandemic was going to hit—that two weeks before it appeared, scientists would have seen it coming and been able to prepare a vaccine and start the production and distribution processes to get the drug to the people who might need it.  Great, right?