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he left spent much of the week feeling Hugo Chavez's pain. But it was in no mood to feel the pain of unborn children. A bogus study's claim that unborn children don't feel any pain at all generated a flurry of tendentiously hopeful media reports. "Researchers: Fetal Pain Not An Abortion Issue; Review of 2,000 Studies Concludes Fetus Feels Nothing Up to 29 Weeks," read one headline. Who are these "researchers"? Abortion activists, it has come out. A San Francisco abortion clinic doctor and a former NARAL employee spearheaded the article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA),...

CHICAGO - Here's some medical news you can trust: A new study confirms that what doctors once said was good for you often turns out to be bad — or at least not as great as initially thought. The report is a review of major studies published in three influential medical journals between 1990 and 2003, including 45 highly publicized studies that initially claimed a drug or other treatment worked. Subsequent research contradicted results of seven studies — 16 percent — and reported weaker results for seven others, an additional 16 percent. That means nearly one-third of the original results...

BAGHDAD (IslamOnline.net) – The Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (Jama`) has urged all its members to remain committed to the Front's guidelines in fighting the US-led occupation, chiefly avoiding the use of bobby-trapped cars inside the cities, the slaughter of hostages and the killing of any Iraqi. Sources close the Front revealed to IslamOnline.net that Jama` has issued a statement early March to distance itself from people shown lately on Iraqi satellite and ground TV stations confessing membership in armed groups involved in carrying out attacks against Iraqi police and army troops and in slaying “collaborators” with the occupation....

Folic Acid, Vitamin B12 Decrease Risk of Hip Fracture in Stroke Patients LibrariesMedical News   KeywordsFOLATE FOLIC ACID VITAMIN B12 HIP FRACTURE STROKE PATIENTS OSTEOPOROSIS Contact InformationAvailable for logged-in reporters only DescriptionPatients who took folic acid and vitamin B12 after their stroke had a reduced risk of hip fracture compared to patients who took placebo, according to an article. Newswise — Patients who took folic acid and vitamin B12 after their stroke had a reduced risk of hip fracture compared to patients who took placebo, according to an article in the March 2 issue of JAMA.According to background information in...

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Men with prostate cancer that does not appear to have spread have better survival chances when they get short-term hormone treatment along with standard radiation, rather than radiation alone, a small study has found. Almost five years after treatment, 88 percent of men who received the combined treatment were still alive, compared with 78 percent who had only radiation. The study involved about 200 men and was conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. An article on the study appears in the current issue of The Journal of the...

CHICAGO, July 6 (Reuters) - Soy protein, a supplement many doctors recommend as a substitute for hormone therapy for postmenopausal women, did not decrease bone loss or affect other symptoms in a study of Dutch women, researchers reported Tuesday. Naturally occurring compounds called isoflavones, which are found in soybeans, are thought to mimic estrogen compounds in hormone therapy. Some women want to avoid hormone therapy because recent studies have indicated that long-term use could raise the risk of stroke, dementia and some forms of cancer. In the new study, which followed 175 Dutch women for a year, half the participants...

Firms Violate U.S. Law By Not Registering Trials The pharmaceutical industry has repeatedly violated federal law by failing to disclose the existence of large numbers of its clinical trials to a government database, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Doctors and patients say that compliance with the law would go a long way toward addressing their growing concerns that they are not being given the full picture about the effectiveness of many drugs because they are not told about drug trials that fail. The issue has gained urgency with recent disclosures that the publicly available research on treating children...

As many as 10 million women who have had hysterectomies and who no longer have a cervix are still getting Pap tests, a new study finds. The screening Pap test looks for precancerous cells in tissue scraped from a woman's cervix and can prevent what would otherwise be a common and deadly cancer. But testing most women without a cervix makes little sense, leads to false positives and wastes money, said Dr. Brenda E. Sirovich, a research associate at the Outcomes Group at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vt., and the study's lead author. Each test...

Reprinted from JAMA - The Journal of the American Medical Association March 21, 1986, Volume 256 Copyright 1986, American Medical Association By Permission of Mayo Foundation ON THE PHYSICAL DEATH OF JESUS CHRIST William D. Edwards, MD; Wesley J. Gabel, MDiv; Floyd E Hosmer, MS, AMI From the Departments of Pathology (Dr. Edwards) and Medical Graphics (Mr. Hoamer), Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.; and the Homestead United Methodist Church, Rochester, Minn., and the West Bethel United Methodist Church, Bethel, Minn. (Pastor Gabel). Reprint requests to Department of Pathology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN 55905 (Dr. Edwards) * Jesus of Nazareth underwent Jewish...

Frequent use of antibiotics has been linked to a greater risk of breast cancer, say researchers who studied thousands of American women and found that those who took the drugs most often had twice the risk of the disease. The study uncovered a relationship between greater use of antibiotics and a heightened risk of breast cancer, but researchers sought to temper their findings by cautioning that they had only highlighted an association, not a causal link. "This is potentially worrisome, but we don't know why this connection exists, we only have an observation," said Dr. John D. Potter, director of...

Air travel 'fuelled Sars spread' More than 800 people died in the global Sars outbreak Scientists investigating the rapid spread of the Sars virus earlier this year say they have evidence that air travel played a role. But experts found that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome was been passed on only in cases where carriers exhibited the symptoms of the virus. The study, in The New England Journal of Medicine, said passengers who sat closest to carriers were most at risk. Sars killed over 800 people, infecting up to 8,000, in the worldwide outbreak. Proximity risk In the course of...

(CBS) There is new evidence that age matters when it comes to introducing cereal to the diet of a baby at risk from type 1 diabetes. Medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay explains on The Early Show that those with type 1 diabetes have the misfortune of their immune system attacking and destroying the cells in the body that produce insulin. The medical community does not fully understand what causes it. But, Senay explains, a baby is at risk if there's a family history or genetic susceptibility. Two new studies in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association show a...

CHICAGO - Air pollution from the World Trade Center attacks may have resulted in smaller babies among pregnant women who were in or near the collapsing towers, preliminary research suggests. Pregnant women in the study who were exposed to dirt and soot from the attacks faced double the risk of delivering babies who were up to about a half-pound smaller than babies born to women who weren't exposed. The size differences suggest a condition called intrauterine growth restriction, or IUGR, which has been linked with exposure to air pollution. Previous research has found that babies affected by IUGR may be...

It has been more than 200 years and yet the miracle has not been dulled. A population of a few million people provided an unbelievable wealth of talent, integrity, intelligence, and honesty. How could we have been so fortunate to have the likes of Washington, Madison, Jefferson, and Franklin providing leadership for an idea about how people could best live in the aggregate? There are explanations that have some plausibility. Genius clusters may not be random, as genius may attract genius. There certainly were not the possibilities that exist today in medicine, physics, computer sciences, and business to pull the...