Author: Marilynn Marchione
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New drug-resistant superbugs found in 3 states
BOSTON — An infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: Bacteria that have been made resistant to nearly all antibiotics by an alarming new gene have sickened people in three states and are popping up all over the world, health officials reported Monday. The U.S. cases and two others in Canada all involve people who had recently received…
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Recession may have caused lows in U.S., Colorado birthrates
The U.S. birth rate has dropped for the second year in a row, and experts think the wrenching recession led many people to put off having children. The 2009 birth rate also set a record: lowest in a century. Births fell 2.7 percent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the…
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AIDS breakthrough: Gel helps prevent infection
For the first time, a vaginal gel has proved capable of blocking the AIDS virus: It cut in half a woman’s chances of getting HIV from an infected partner in a study in South Africa. Scientists called it a breakthrough in the long quest for a tool to help women whose partners won’t use condoms.…
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A bullet in Baghdad, a son’s need, a mother’s love
MANASSAS PARK, Va. • There are mothers who will spend today missing sons and daughters fighting overseas. There are women who have lost children in those wars, for whom Mother’s Day will never be the same.And then there is Eva Briseno.Joseph Briseno Jr., Eva’s 27-year-old son, is one of the most severely wounded soldiers ever to…
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Kennedy proved cancer does not eradicate quality of life
He lived 15 months with an incurable brain tumor, a little longer than usual for a patient in his late 70s. Perhaps equally important is that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy lived those months well — able to work almost to the end, to sail the choppy New England waters he adored, to help elect a…
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Money one factor in Jobs getting a liver
A celebrity like Apple CEO Steve Jobs scores a rare organ transplant and the world wonders: Did he game the system? The rich have plenty of advantages that others don’t. But winning the “transplant lottery” involves more than the size of your wallet – and true medical need. A Tennessee hospital has confirmed that it…
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Alternative medicine goes mainstream
BALTIMORE – At one of the nation’s top trauma hospitals, a nurse circles a patient’s bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits. Another woman rubs a quartz bowl with a wand, making tunes that mix with the beeping monitors and hissing respirator keeping the man alive.They are doing Reiki therapy, which…
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$2.5 billion spent, no alternative medicine cures found
BETHESDA, Md. – Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do. Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh for…
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Tests show many supplements have quality problems
Lead in ginkgo pills. Arsenic in herbals. Bugs in a baby’s colic and teething syrup. Toxic metals and parasites are part of nature, and all of these have been found in “natural” products and dietary supplements in recent years. Set aside the issue of whether vitamin and herbal supplements do any good. Are they safe?…
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60 percent of cancer patients try nontraditional medicine
TAMPA, Fla. – With much of her lower body consumed by cancer, Leslee Flasch finally faced the truth: The herbal supplements and special diet were not working. “I want this thing cut out from me. I want it out,” she told her family. But it was too late. Her rectal cancer – potentially curable earlier…