Health & WellnessS


Health

Maine Middle School May Drug 11 Year Old Girls with Birth Control Patches

A middle school in Portland, Maine is considering a proposal to provide birth control pills and patches to students as young as 11 years old. King Middle School launched a reproductive health program after five of the 135 students who visited the school's health center in 2006 reported being sexually active. The program already provides condoms to students, but the new proposal would expand this to include prescriptions for birth control pills and patches (which would then have to be purchased at a pharmacy).

Health

Ex-drug salesman: We lured docs with gifts

We all want to think that our doctors prescribe pain pills for our aching backs because it's what we need, and not because a charming ex-cheerleader turned drug company sales rep has invited him to a Red Sox [team stats] game.

Syringe

Vaccines, Autism and Our Daughter, Hannah

To the Editor:

Re "Inoculated Against Facts," by Paul A. Offit (Op-Ed, March 31):

Our daughter, Hannah, developed normally until receiving nine vaccines at once. She immediately developed a fever and encephalopathy, deteriorating into what was diagnosed, based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M. IV, as autism.

Syringe

CDC Has Lost Control of the Autism Argument

On Wednesday, CNN's Larry King hosted Jenny McCarthy, myself, and several others to discuss the growing evidence of a link between childhood vaccines and autism. The CDC refused to send someone to appear on the show. Instead, on Thursday, the agency issued a statement meant to reassure the American public that all vaccines are safe for all kids.

Evil Rays

Vets 'at risk from miscarriage'

Female vets over-exposed to the anaesthetics, X-rays and pesticides they use could be raising their chances of miscarriage, research suggests. The Australian study, in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, found regular exposure to workplace hazards was linked to a doubling of risk.

Pills

Antidepressant Drugs Linked to School Shootings

A parents' rights organization has called on Congress to investigate a potential link between psychiatric drugs and school shootings, and called for parents to be better informed about the risks of such medications. New York-based Ablechild accused the mental health industry of "[continuing] to downplay the risks of drugs widely prescribed to millions."

According to statistics from Medwatch, the drug reporting system maintained by the FDA, there have been 63,000 cases of people on antidepressants committing suicide in the United States.

Heart

Men are six times as likely to die of a broken heart in the first year of being widowed

Dying from a broken heart might not be a sufficiently scientific explanation to convince everyone - but it does exist and now it can be measured.

Losing a wife puts the widower at a sixfold higher risk of death, while a widow's chances of dying are doubled, says research published yesterday.

The risk peaks for either surviving partner in the first year after bereavement and then declines, according to the Cass Business School in London.

Bomb

Bird flu spreads among dogs

A study has shown a bird flu strain that has killed dogs can spread from one dog to another, showing that the disease is capable of crossing species and causing sickness in mammals.

Black Cat

Flashback Jaguar Medicine

Until 1971, it was thought that the Nile was the longest river in the world. That year, National Geographic explorer Loren McIntyre, along with a local Indian guide and a friend who owned a pick-up truck, set out to discover the source of the Amazon. On October 15, 1971, McIntyre and his party reached a summit 18,200 feet in altitude, an icy ridge called Choquecorao from which they spotted a body of water 1,000 feet below them. Thirsty, they decided to descend to this small lake, and as they looked at the five brooks that trickled outward and down the mountainside, McIntyre realized they had found the origin of the great Amazon. This daring expedition would lead to the revelation that the twisting and turning river is longer than the Nile by nearly 100 kilometers, and would stir interest in uncovering the mysteries of this region of the world that had been almost completely hidden to westerners.[1]

Jaguar
©Wonderlane

Black Cat

Best of the Web: Cheaters sometimes prosper



cheaters
©Stephanie Findlay and Oker Chen

It is literally the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. Charming and often powerful, they seduce you to get your guard down. And then, without a second thought or any trace of remorse, they are able to cold-bloodedly thieve, rape, or murder you. Robert Hare, UBC's world-renowned professor emeritus of psychology, goes so far as to say that while they look and sound exactly like us, they are functionally a different species from human beings. And seven years ago, Hare estimated that up to one in one hundred Canadians is one of these people: psychopaths.