A man infected with an especially virulent strain of tuberculosis has spent eight months in a hospital jail ward under a court order and may be held until he dies.
Robert Daniels has not been charged with a crime, but the 27-year-old violated the rules of a voluntary quarantine, exposing others to a potentially deadly illness. Maricopa County public health officials got a court order to keep him locked up.
The TB strain Daniels has is so dangerous that he has never met his appointed lawyer, Robert Blecher, who describes the situation as "extremely unusual."
Are you an emotional basket case who can't get by without comfort food? If you had more strength, could you power through your problems without overeating? Should you feel ashamed of yourself for needing emotional sustenance from foods? No! I hope to help you understand why you are using food as self-medication. It's not because you are weak willed, it's because you're low in certain brain chemicals. You don't have enough of the brain chemicals that should naturally be making you emotionally strong and complete.
Washington - Government health officials said Friday they are reviewing whether popular medicines like Tylenol Plus Cold & Cough and Infant Triaminic Thin Strips are safe and effective in treating children's colds and coughs.
Disclosure of the ongoing review, which will take months to complete, came as critics charged that many over-the-counter cough and cold remedies can harm toddlers and preschoolers. Those critics, including public health officials and pediatricians, are pushing the government for stricter warnings to prevent life-threatening overdoses.
People see what they believe, not vice versa, when it comes to social injustice.
And this mind-altering trick of perception keeps moral outrage at bay, especially among the rich, a new psychological study suggests.
By reducing outrage, this mental hoodwink also impedes social change because it inhibits people from taking action, allowing injustices to persist, said lead researcher Cheryl Wakslak of New York University.
Research has shown that people become emotionally distressed when confronted with inequality. The privileged minority is particularly affected, and they are likely to have a nagging worry that their cash and prizes are undeserved.
A new study shows that brain circuitry makes some people more susceptible to becoming addicts. Researchers found that a pocket near the top of the brain stem may be key in determining whether someone is likely to engage in compulsive behavior or become hooked on drugs like cocaine, which is currently abused by an estimated two million Americans. The finding could help prevent addiction by predicting those predisposed to such behavior and could also lead to new ways to treat it.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge in England report in this week's Science that a lower number of specific types of receptors that bind the neurotransmitter dopamine - a chemical central to the brain's reward system - in the front (or ventral) section of the striatum (a midbrain region implicated in planning and movement as well as executive function) correlates to increased impulsive behavior in rats. In addition, they found that the more impulsive animals, when given the option, consumed more cocaine than the calmer rats did.
"Oops, wrong kidney."
In recent years, errors in treatment have become a serious problem for hospitals, ranging from operations on wrong body parts to medication mix-ups.
At least 1.5 million patients are harmed every year from being given the wrong drugs, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. That's an average of one person per U.S. hospital per day.
One reason these mistakes persist: Only 10% of hospitals are fully computerized and have a central database to track allergies and diagnoses, says Robert Wachter, the chief of medical service at UC San Francisco Medical Center.
The chairman of the federal panel that recommended the new cervical-cancer vaccine for pre-teen girls says lawmakers should not make the inoculation mandatory, as the District and more than 20 states, including Virginia, are considering.
No deaths have been confirmed, although a Pennsylvania family filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming a relative died from eating tainted peanut butter.
On November 1, President George W. Bush went to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland to hold a high profile press conference, to announce a 381-page plan, officially called the Pandemic Influenza Strategic Plan.
Readers can be helpful, and one just wrote in to inform us of a link that we had never imagined - Donald Rumsfeld, until he resigned and joined the Bush Administration, was the chairman of something called Gilead which just happened to make something called Tamiflu.
A boy of eight who weighs as much as an adult man could be taken from his family and placed into care for health reasons.
Tipping the scales at 14 stone, Connor McCreaddie is three times as heavy as the average child of his age.
At a meeting tomorrow, his mother Nicola McKeown must convince officials that she has not abused her son by allowing him to grow so fat.
Connor could be placed on the child protection register along with victims of physical and sexual abuse, or on the less serious register of children in need.
With childhood obesity soaring, doctors have warned that such desperate measures could become more common.
It would be a devastating blow for Mrs McKeown, who insists her boy "has always been big".
