Wearable Electronics Pave Way for Smart Surgeon Gloves. How Science Got The 'Crack Baby' Epidemic So Wrong. Lead Poisoning And The Middle Class: The Silent Epidemic That Doesn't Discriminate. Freezing Food Doesn't Kill E. Coli And Other Germs : The Salt. Hide captionThe NPR Science Desk freezer: now we know we can't presume it's germ-free.
Daniel M.N. Turner/NPR The NPR Science Desk freezer: now we know we can't presume it's germ-free. Think that freezing food kills E. coli and other nasty microbes? Seniors In The South Are More Apt To Be Prescribed Risky Drugs : Shots - Health News. Hide captionSeniors in the Southeast were much more likely to be prescribed more than one high-risk medications in 2009.
Danya Qato and Amal Trivedi/Alpert Medical School, Brown University. Could an app replicate the placebo effect? Los Angeles launches probe of alleged 'patient dumping' by Nevada. By Ronnie Cohen SAN FRANCISCO | Fri May 3, 2013 8:35am IST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Nevada health officials acknowledged on Thursday that a state-run hospital improperly bused 10 newly discharged psychiatric patients out of the state with deficient plans for their care, while Los Angeles launched a criminal probe into the alleged "patient dumping.
" Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital has been under fire since last month, after a Sacramento Bee investigative series reported that hospital staff gave as many as 1,500 patients one-way Greyhound bus tickets from Las Vegas to California and 46 other states over the past five years. "If the conduct is true as alleged, it's no less than human trafficking," Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich told Reuters, adding he was working with San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who last month opened an investigation into the practice. Controversial update to 'bible' of psychiatry fuels debate over foundations of mental health. For years, the diagnosis of mental illness has largely relied upon one book — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM.
Published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the DSM offers detailed classifications and criteria for conditions like depression, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia. Psychiatrists around the world consult it when treating patients, insurance companies use it to verify reimbursement claims, and criminal investigators use it to assess a suspect's mental health. Today, the DSM is widely referred to as the "bible" of psychiatry — but not everyone is a believer. The book has undergone four major revisions since first being published in 1952, with each one drawing varying degrees of criticism. The book's forthcoming fifth edition, known as DSM-5 and due to be published in May, has sparked a particularly fierce debate, prompting accusations of bias and recklessness on the part of the APA, and even eliciting calls for a boycott.
Measles outbreak: man suspected to have died of disease in Swansea. Link to video: Measles outbreak in Wales shows children need MMR jab, says expert The Swansea coroner is investigating whether a 25-year-old man has died of measles.
The city is at the centre of a major outbreak of the highly infectious disease, and the fatality – if the cause is confirmed – would be the first UK death from measles since 2008. Seventy-seven people have needed hospital treatment during the outbreak. More than 800 cases, many among 10- to 18-year-olds, have been reported since November, and numbers are rising steadily and spreading north from the south of the country despite health authorities organising special immunisation clinics at hospitals and schools. New strain of avian flu in China is deadlier to humans than birds, researchers report. Researchers in Japan and the US have analyzed the genes of a new strain of avian (bird) flu that's killed at least 17 people in China in recent weeks, and discovered that some of the new H7N9 viruses have mutated to be more effective and deadlier in humans than they are in birds.
The findings "raise concerns regarding their [the virsues'] pandemic potential," according to the researchers, who published their findings in a paper in the journal Eurosurveillance last week. Viruses "raise concerns regarding...pandemic potential" Specifically, the researchers examined genes from four infected people in China and found that in all cases, the viruses in their bodies lacked certain genes of H7N9 in birds and that "this deletion is associated with increased virulence in mammals," or increased ability to cause illness, and eventually death.
By contrast, in birds, the illness caused by these viruses is only relatively mild. Will Generics Ban Make OxyContin Safer, Or Just More Profitable? : Shots - Health News. Hide captionOxyContin's long-acting formulation makes it popular but also prone to abuse.
Toby Talbot/AP OxyContin's long-acting formulation makes it popular but also prone to abuse. Banning cheaper, generic forms of a dangerous drug sounds like a worthy idea. But the Food and Drug Administration's decision to bar generic OxyContin may also push patients towards less effective drugs without eliminating the risk of addiction, experts say. "Obviously, there's a cost issue," says Lynn Webster, president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. Health Index. FYI: What Causes Muscle Twitches? Got a twitch in your eyelid, arm, or leg?