CLAIM: MMS cures HIV. Jim Humble claims it cured "96- 97%" of a test group of 500 people with HIV in Malawi.

VERDICT: Hefin Davies of the Food Standards Agency: "We are not aware of any research that shows MMS is effective in treating HIV, or in fact in any other condition it is claimed to cure."

CLAIM: The claim that MMS cures HIV cannot be proved to be right or wrong because "you can't prove that a person has no HIV virus in their body".

VERDICT: Catherine Moore, a virologist at Public Health Wales: "This is not true because people with HIV can be and routinely are tested for the virus using molecular tests that show evidence of viral genes in the blood."

When a Welsh schoolboy tweeted a warning about a so-called 'miracle drug' that was in fact industrial bleach, he had little idea his message would be taken worldwide. Clare Hutchinson reports

When schoolboy Rhys Morgan was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, a chronic condition that causes inflammation of the digestive tract, he turned to the one place he knew for help.

The 15-year-old computer obsessive switched on his laptop and began browsing the internet.

Like many others who are given such life-changing news, Rhys was desperate for answers and to find the right medication that might make his condition bearable.

That was when he found out about MMS, also known as Miracle Mineral Solution.

"I was on the Crohn's forum, which is a site for people with Crohn's to talk to each other, and saw mention of this substance MMS," said Rhys, as he sat on his sofa at home in Cyncoed, Cardiff, with his mum Dawn by his side.

"It was being discussed on the forum and someone was saying they had a sore throat since taking it. Someone else, who was often pushing it on the site, kept saying 'keep taking it, you will get better'.

"A few days later the original person came back and said 'look, I can hardly swallow my spit now, it is that sore' and, once again, the guy just said to take more.

"I was thinking 'this can't be right'."

This professionally-produced 28-minute documentary presents a powerful indictment of the fluoridation program and features a Nobel Laureate in medicine, three scientists from the National Research Council's landmark review on fluoride, practicing dentists, medical doctors, as well as leading researchers in the field. If fluoride is so roundly condemned, why is it added to water supplies the world over?

Our homes and the products we fill them with are making us chronically sick, according to an Australian expert in natural medicine and building biology.

Household cleaning products, plastic food containers and baby bottles are causing a rise in maladies such as infertility, diabetes and obesity, says Nicole Bijlsma, founder of the Australian College of Environmental Studies.

Ms Bijlsma is calling for the offending products to be stripped from supermarket shelves - although this view puts her at odds with toxicology experts.

Ms Bijlsma warns our houses themselves are also to blame, with mould, toxic-laden dust and electro-magnetic fields also leading to chronic illnesses such as reoccurring colds and flues and even leukemia, she claims.

She said that in her 21 years working as a naturopath she has treated numerous patients suffering ailments such as the flu, insomnia and weight gain - and often found that the patient's house was the cause.

Bisphenol A, or BPA, a chemical used to make some hard plastic containers and toys, has formally been declared a toxic substance by Canadian authorities.

The federal government added BPA to Canada's toxic substances list on Wednesday.

"We are continuing our leadership on this issue and Canadians can rest assured that we are working hard to monitor and manage bisphenol A," Environment Minister Jim Prentice said in a statement.

BPA, also found in resins that coat the interior of food cans to prevent corrosion, has been shown to mimic the hormone estrogen and does not occur naturally in the environment.

In August, Statistics Canada reported that measurable levels of BPA were found in the urine of 91 per cent of Canadians aged six to 79.

BGU research finds gene in Jews of Moroccan and Iraqi origin that may cause serious mental retardation, epilepsy beginning at infancy.

A mutant gene carried by one out of 40 Jews of Moroccan and Iraqi ancestries that - if found in both parents - may cause serious mental retardation and epilepsy beginning at infancy, has been discovered by a Ben- Gurion University of the Negev team.

As the disease is both severe and common, testing for these mutations will probably soon become a routine prenatal genetic screening test in these two populations so that future cases can be prevented, by carriers either not marrying each other or having children together, or by abortion or pre-genetic diagnosis to choose healthy embryos for in-vitro fertilization.

Government health officials warned doctors and patients Wednesday about an increased risk of thigh fractures with a widely used group of bone-strengthening drugs.

The Food and Drug Administration said patients taking bisphosphonate drugs such as Fosamax and Boniva appear more likely to suffer a rare type of fracture of the femur. The fractures occurred just below the hip joint and make up less than 1 percent of all femur fractures.

"We know from clinical trials that these drugs do prevent the common osteoporosis fractures," said Dr. Sandra Kweder, FDA's deputy director for new drugs. "The fractures we're talking about today are very unusual and rare."

In more than half the cases reported to the FDA, patients experienced pain or aching of the groin before the fracture.

It's unclear whether the drugs directly trigger the problem, but the FDA said it is updating the drugs' labels about the potential risk. Drugmakers will also be required to distribute pamphlets about the risks to patients.

Bisphosphonates work by slowing the loss of bone cells that lead to osteoporosis. Prescription drugs in that class include Merck & Co.'s Fosamax and Roche's Boniva, as well as Warner Chilcott's Actonel and Atelvia and Novartis' Reclast.

Cancer is a man-made disease, fuelled by the excesses of modern life, study of ancient remains from fossils to mummies has concluded.

A review of Egyptian mummies, fossil records dating back to dinosaurs and classical literature found tumours to be extremely rare until recent times, when factors from pollution to poor diet made life more toxic.

They discovered that the disease rate has risen dramatically since the Industrial Revolution, in particular childhood cancer - proving that the rise is not simply due to people living longer.

They believe that a better understanding of the origins of cancer could lead to new treatments for the disease which claims more than 150,000 lives a year in the UK alone.

Estrogen therapy was associated with risk for nephrolithiasis in healthy postmenopausal women, according to the results of an analysis from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) published in the October 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Observational studies examining the role of estrogen in the risk of kidney stone formation have shown conflicting results," write Naim M. Maalouf, MD, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and colleagues from the WHI Hormone Therapy Trials. "However, randomized trial evidence on nephrolithiasis risk with estrogen therapy in postmenopausal women is lacking.... Because the process of kidney stone formation is influenced by a variety of lifestyle and other health-related factors, the true impact of estrogen therapy on the risk of kidney stone formation is difficult to infer from observational studies."

Using data from the WHI estrogen-alone and estrogen-plus-progestin trials performed at 40 US clinical centers, the investigators analyzed the incidence of kidney stones. Participants included 10,739 postmenopausal women with hysterectomy who were randomly assigned to receive 0.625 mg/day conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) or placebo, and 16,608 postmenopausal women without hysterectomy who were randomly assigned to receive placebo or estrogen plus progestin, given as CEE plus medroxyprogesterone acetate (2.5 mg/day).

Average duration of follow-up for determination of kidney stone risk was 7.1 years for the CEE trial and 5.6 years for the estrogen-plus-progestin trial.

The first patient has been treated with human embryonic stem cells in the first study authorized by the Food and Drug Administration to test the controversial therapy.

A patient who was partially paralyzed by a spinal cord injury had millions of embryonic stem cells injected into the site of the damage, according to an announcement early Monday by the Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., which is sponsoring the groundbreaking study.

The patient was treated at the Shepherd Center, a 132-bed hospital in Atlanta that specializes in spinal cord and brain injuries, Geron said. The hospital is one of seven sites participating in the study, which is primarily aimed at testing whether the therapy is safe. Doctors will, however, also conduct a series of specially designed tests to see whether the treatment helps the patients. No additional information about the first patient was released.