With anti-addiction pill, ‘no urge, no craving’

A no-frills bar called Goober’s, just north of Providence, Rhode Island, is probably the last place you’d expect to find a debate over cutting-edge addiction therapy. But this is where Walter Kent, a retired mechanic, spends his Fridays. He helps in the kitchen and hangs out in the bar, catching up with old friends

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Prostate Exams: When Are They Necessary?

Science is not shy about ambiguity, never more so than when it comes to medical advice. So here’s the latest recommendation on prostate-cancer screening: Men should continue to have both a manual prostate exam and a blood test for prostate-specific antigen every year — bearing in mind that neither test may affect your odds of surviving prostate cancer. Those seemingly contradictory conclusions are part of the results of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening trial , a sweeping, 17-year project conducted by the National Cancer Institute

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A New Approach to Designing the AIDS Vaccine

The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services boldly announced in 1984 that there would be an AIDS vaccine within two years. The discovery of an AIDS-causing virus , she said, was already demonstrating “the triumph of science over a dreaded disease.” Today, 25 years and many failed attempts later, an AIDS vaccine seems as elusive as ever

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Obama’s FDA Pick: Margaret Hamburg

At least eight people have died from eating tainted peanut products in recent months, and the Food and Drug Administration has absorbed much of the blame. It is the latest in a series of black eyes for the FDA over unsafe foods, dangerous medicines such as Vioxx and allegedly cozy ties with the pharmaceutical industry it regulates

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Girl recovering after removal of 6 organs, tumor

Seven-year-old Heather McNamara was heading home Tuesday, a month after surgery that temporarily removed organs from her digestive tract to allow removal of a tennis ball-size tumor. According to her surgical team at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, the operation — referred to as an “auto-transplantation” because the patient’s own organs (instead of those from a donor) were reimplanted within four hours after being extracted — is the first of its kind to be performed on a child. “If this doesn’t work, there’s nothing left,” Dr

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The plight of young, uninsured Americans

They’re generally healthy and have a long life ahead of them. The health insurance industry even calls them ‘the young invincibles.’ So, what’s the problem Young adults, ages 19 to 29, are the largest age group of uninsured people across the country. For Maryland resident Bree Honey, all she can do for her chronic back pain right now is to exercise at the gym where she works and take Tylenol PM instead of other medicine she needs.

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NBA great Barkley begins 3-day sentence in Tent City

Basketball great Charles Barkley began serving a three-day sentence in Arizona’s infamous Tent City on Saturday, jailed by the same sheriff whose autobiography he endorsed 12 years ago. “You come here when you screw up,” Barkley said at a news conference hours after he reported at the Maricopa County jail

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Obama Stands Aside, Slightly, at Health Summit

There is a battle looming in Congress, a contest that will pit many of the most powerful companies in America against each other, potentially reallocate trillions of dollars in spending, and literally impact the future health and well-being of each and every American. No one knows how the conflict will end, just yet, or who the winners and losers will be

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