Health & WellnessS


Alarm Clock

US: Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High

Kathleen Kingsbury
Time
Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:27 UTC
As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies - more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there's been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town.

School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says.

All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," the principal says, shaking his head.
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Cut

U.K. to Begin Harvesting Organs from Dead Patients Without Consent!

David Gutierrez
Natural News
Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:54 UTC


doctors
©Unknown

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced his support for the harvesting of organs from dead patients without prior consent, and said that he hopes for such a policy change to take place within the year.

"A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the United Kingdom and the limits imposed by our current system of consent," Brown wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.
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Magnify

The Silence Surrounding Diagnostic Errors

Maggie Mahar and Niko Karvounis
Health Beat Blog
Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:34 UTC
Despite all of the talk about medical errors and patient safety, almost no one likes to talk about diagnostic errors. Yet doctors misdiagnose patients more often than we would like to think. Sometimes they diagnose patients with illnesses they don't have. Other times, the true condition is missed. All in all, diagnostic errors account for 17 percent of adverse events in hospitals according to the "Harvard Medical Practice Study," a landmark study that looks at medical errors.
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Bell

Poll says debt stress tears at body

Jeannine Aversa
Associated Press
Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:06 UTC
The stress from deepening debt is becoming a major pain in the neck - and the back and the head and the stomach - for millions of Americans.

When people are dealing with mountains of debt, they're much more likely to report health problems, too, according to an Associated Press-AOL Health poll. And not just little stuff; this means ulcers, severe depression, even heart attacks.

Take Edward Driscoll, 38, of Braintree, Mass. He blames debt - $10,000 worth - for contributing to his ulcers and his wife Kimberly's panic attacks. "Just worrying, worrying, worrying, you know, where the next payment of this is going to come from," he says.
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Alarm Clock

Flame retardant linked to deaths of falcons could affect humans

David Bird
The Gazette
Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:48 UTC
After decades of being trapped and shot out of the skies as vermin and having their food poisoned by organochlorines like DDT, birds of prey in North America have made a remarkable comeback.

Thanks to protective laws and the banning of harmful chemical pesticides, bald eagles and peregrine falcons have had their "endangered species" status removed both in the U.S. and in Canada. However, there could be dark clouds on the horizon for all raptorial birds, especially peregrines.
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Bandaid

Flashback Bipolar Disorder: Epidemic Without a Disease


Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD
Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:33 UTC
In the Newsweek cover story of May 26, 2008, Growing Up Bipolar, Mary Carmichael describes yet another magical psychiatric epidemic. In any report of an epidemic there should be a description of the disease of which the epidemic is comprised and mention of the test by which the disease is diagnosed. But nowhere is there mention of a physical abnormality-gross (visible to the naked eye), microscopic or chemical, to make it a disease. Where is the proof that Max Blake, now ten, is other than physically, medically normal?
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Binoculars

Exposed: Harvard Shrink Gets Rich Labeling Kids Bipolar

Bruce E. Levine
Alternet
Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:59 UTC
Meet the man who got rich by popularizing bipolar disorder for children. Congressional investigators and the NY Times expose the scandal.
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Health

Canada: People tell of cancer fears as New Brunswick pathology inquiry moves to Miramichi


The Canadian Press
Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:30 UTC
Miramichi - Two men with advanced prostate cancers have told a public inquiry into pathology problems in New Brunswick that they are a paying a high price for the apparent misreading of their biopsies years earlier.

The men, both from northeastern New Brunswick, testified Monday that their cancers were detected too late for surgery and they are now facing lengthy hormone and radiation therapies to save their lives.

"If I had been properly diagnosed the first time, I would have had my prostate removed and that would have been it," said one of the men, who testified on the condition that his identity not be made public.

"But as it turned out, over the course of time, it got worse and by the time they found it, it was beyond being taken out."
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Info

Soccer Parents: Why They Rage


Science Daily
Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:26 UTC
Wonder if you could be one of "those" parents who rant and rage at their kid's soccer game? Well, you don't have to look much farther than your car's rearview mirror for clues.

Image
©iStockphoto/Julie Johnson
Wonder if you could be one of "those" parents who rant and rage at their kid's soccer game?

According to a new study if you have a tendency to become upset while driving, you're more likely to be the kind of parent who explodes in anger at your kids' sports matches.

Research by kinesiology Ph.D student Jay Goldstein of the University of Maryland School of Public Health found that ego defensiveness, one of the triggers that ignites road rage, also kicks off parental "sideline rage," and that a parent with a control-oriented personality is more likely to react to that trigger by becoming angry and aggressive.

By surveying parents at youth soccer games in suburban Washington, D.C., Goldstein found that parents became angry when their ego got in the way. "When they perceived something that happened during the game to be personally directed at them or their child, they got angry." says Goldstein. "That's consistent with findings on road rage."
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People

Study shows 'being fat in today's world' invites social discrimination


The Endocrine Society
Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:17 UTC
Obese people feel "a culture of blame" against them, which they say has been made worse by media reports about the health risks of obesity, a new study from Australia found. The results will be presented Tuesday, June 17, at The Endocrine Society's 90th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Researchers at Monash University in Melbourne conducted one-hour personal interviews with 76 obese individuals (62 females, 14 males), ranging in age from 16 to 72 years. The aim of the study was to better address issues of concern to obese people, in an attempt to improve interventions for the increasing epidemic of obesity, said the lead author, Paul Komesaroff, MD, PhD, director of the university's Centre for Ethics in Medicine and Society.
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