Tuesday, Feb 03rd
Last update07:25:45 AM GMT
Health Glance
Thousands of women who attend routine breast screening checks are wrongly told that they have life-threatening cancer and undergo unnecessary treatment each year, researchers claim today.
An independent scientific review of the NHS breast screening programme accuses the Government of providing misleading propaganda to persuade women of the benefits of screening, without mentioning the drawbacks.
For heart disease patients, omega-3 fatty acids may protect against morbidity and mortality by slowing biological aging, researchers say.
Patients who had the highest omega-3 fatty acid blood levels also had telomeres that shortened at a significantly slower rate than patients with lower intake, Ramin Farzaneh-Far, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues reported in the Jan. 20 JAMA.
Merck pulled Vioxx, a popular pain reliever widely used by arthritis patients, off the market in September, saying it was "putting patient safety first" but the Wall Street Journal reported earlier that company officials had fought for years to protect the highly profitable drug and to keep news of the health risks quiet.
About 20 million Americans had taken Vioxx by the time Merck withdrew it.
European Council officials investigating vaccine industry corruption and media frights that prompted governments worldwide to over-stock risky H1N1 vaccines and expensive drugs for the unusually mild "2009 swine flu pandemic" have a Special Reportonline in Medical Veritas to consider.
A simple eye test might be able to detect Alzheimer's and other diseases before symptoms develop, according to UK scientists. The technique uses fluorescent markers which attach to dying cells which can be seen in the retina and give an early indication of brain cell death.
The research has been carried out on mice, but human trials are planned.
The severity of the H1N1 outbreak was deliberately exaggerated by pharmaceutical companies that stood to make billions of dollars from a worldwide scare, a leading European health expert has claimed.
The New Jersey Assembly approved a measure on Monday that would make the state the first in the region and the 14th in the nation to legalize the use of marijuana for medical reasons.
The measure was to be voted on by the State Senate later in the afternoon, the final day of the legislative session. If passed, it would allow patients diagnosed with severe illnesses like cancer, AIDS, muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis to have access to marijuana distributed through state-monitored dispensaries.
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