Health Glance
The most lucrative job in Washington these days just might be health care lobbyist -- as prominent interest groups announce plans to pour millions of dollars into fighting over President Obama's efforts to create a universal health care system.
The White House has sought to curtail the role of lobbyists, but the heated public debate over Obama's health plan has made them very much a part of the legislative process.
Lobbyists Spend Millions Fighting Over Obama's Universal Health Care Plan
Chemical Stops Breasts from Growing Bigger
Study: Dioxin pollution may explain why as many as 6 million women can't breast-feed their babies. Learn how to avoid dioxins in your diet.
The health benefits of breast-feeding are many -- everything from lower obesity rates to lower rates of asthma have been attributed to breast-feeding and other good nutritional habits early in life. For mothers, breast-feeding can actually lower the risk of heart disease, according to one recent study.
Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products
Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactive metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world.
Common kitchen cheese graters, reclining chairs, women's handbags and tableware manufactured with contaminated metals have been identified, some after having been in circulation for as long as a decade. So have fencing wire and fence posts, shovel blades, elevator buttons, airline parts and steel used in construction.
A Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found that -- because of haphazard screening, an absence of oversight and substantial disincentives for businesses to report contamination -- no one knows how many tainted goods are in circulation in the United States.
But thousands of consumer goods and millions of pounds of unfinished metal and its byproducts have been found to contain low levels of radiation, and experts think the true amount could be much higher, perhaps by a factor of 10.
AP IMPACT: Alternative medicine goes mainstream
People turn to unconventional therapies and herbal remedies for everything from hot flashes and trouble sleeping to cancer and heart disease. They crave more "care" in their health care. They distrust drug companies and the government. They want natural, safer remedies.
But often, that is not what they get. Government actions and powerful interest groups have left consumers vulnerable to flawed products and misleading marketing.
Key to blood clotting discovered
Scientists have discovered a molecular mechanism that is key to regulating the way blood clots.
The team from Harvard University, writing in the journal Science, said the finding could help treat people who have blood-clotting disorders.
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Immune therapies finally working against cancer
First there was surgery, then chemotherapy and radiation. Now, doctors have overcome 30 years of false starts and found success with a fourth way to fight cancer: using the body's natural defender, the immune system.The approach is called a cancer vaccine, although it treats the disease rather than prevents it.
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New Warning on Hormone Replacement
Hormone therapy taken by women to counter the effects of menopause can increase the risk of dying from lung cancer, researchers reported here on Saturday.
The findings represent the latest black mark against a therapy already being used much more sparingly than it once was. But researchers said the new data should serve as a caution to women who did continue to take hormones not to smoke.
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