Word: preventative
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Four months after losing the presidential vote to Felipe Calderón, former Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador--alleging election fraud and dirty campaigning--launched a parallel government last week, even swearing himself in as Mexico's "legitimate" President. He plans to draft a constitution and prevent Calderón's Dec. 1 inauguration by staging street protests...
Nobody looks forward to a colonoscopy, but there's still no better way to detect and prevent colon cancer. There may, however, be a less intrusive alternative to the dreaded test. Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City tested a newly improved version of a noninvasive fecal DNA test to screen for early signs of the deadly cancer. Fecal samples from 162 patients who had undergone colonoscopies in the previous 14 days revealed 35 cases of cancer (compared with 40 detected in the colonoscopies). That translates into an impressive 88% sensitivity rate. The fecal screen, however...
After years of back-and-forth deliberations, the FDA finally approved over-the-counter sales of Plan B, a contraceptive that can be taken after sex to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. The drug has been available by prescription since 1999. In a 2003 ruling, the agency refused to change the drug's status, over the objections of its own scientific advisory committee. That ruling angered pro-choice groups. The reversal predictably infuriated right-to-lifers, but those who favor reproductive rights weren't thrilled either: the FDA allowed over-the-counter sales only to women...
...antioxidant called resveratrol found in grape skins (and, in fact, grape juice seems to be just as effective if not as much fun). Now researchers at Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging say that high doses of resveratrol fed to obese mice seemed to prevent problems usually seen in chubby rodents (and people), including diabetes, liver damage and premature death. But you would need more than 100 glasses of wine a day to get that much resveratrol. And even if you took it in supplement form, there's no proof it would work as well in humans...
...children and their families don't have enough food to build up their strength or clean water to keep from picking up infections. Tough as it has been to focus attention on children with AIDS, it has been harder for clinics to get and use a common antibiotic to prevent pneumonia and other ills in HIV-positive children who don't yet need ARVs. "One of the biggest obstacles in treating children has been having a consistent guardian," says Dr. Martha Sommers, head of clinical services at Embangweni Hospital, a church-run facility in rural Malawi. "Often the guardian...