Australia's prime minister Friday ripped those engaged in human trafficking after an explosion aboard a boat carrying Afghan refugees killed three people and injured more than 40 others near Ashmore Reef, off Australia's northwest coast. The Siouxland Urology Center in Dakota Dunes has been ordered to contact nearly 5,700 former patients treated there since 2002. A routine inspection found the facility was reusing sterile saline bags, tubing and other medical supplies from cystoscopies -- a diagnostic procedure that looks at ...

More than 5,000 patients of a South Dakota urology clinic may have been exposed to hepatitis and HIV when the facility reused single-use medical products, state health officials said Friday. The Siouxland Urology Center in Dakota Dunes has been ordered to contact nearly 5,700 former patients treated there since 2002. A routine inspection found the facility was reusing sterile saline bags, tubing and other medical supplies from cystoscopies -- a diagnostic procedure that looks at the lower urinary tract. "We ...

Burger lovers beware: People who eat red meat every day have a higher risk of dying over a 10-year period -- mostly because of cardiovascular disease or cancer --than their peers who eat less red or processed meat, according to a new study of about half a million people. "This is the biggest and highest quality study like this," says Barry M. Popkin, Ph.D., from the University of North Carolina, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, which was published ...

At first glance, it looks like the real thing. It's white, with a brown filter. When the tip glows red, a smoke-like puff follows. But this is not a typical cigarette -- it's an "e-cig." A what? An electronic cigarette. Makers of e-cigs tout their product as the first healthy cigarette, free of harmful chemicals and tar typically found in tobacco products. The only ingredient: pure liquid nicotine. "Our product is comparable to the nicotine patch except people still get ...

A person's risk of stroke is associated with the number of fast-food restaurants near their residence, according to a study presented Thursday at a stroke conference in San Diego, California. Researchers led by Dr. Lewis B. Morgenstern at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor counted 1,247 strokes caused by blood clots in 64 census tracts in Nueces County, Texas, which includes Corpus Christi, from January 2000 through June 2003. They also mapped the county's 262 fast-food restaurants and then ...

A special court ruled Thursday that evidence presented in three cases by parents of children with autism did not prove a link between autism and certain early childhood vaccines. The ruling came from a panel of "special masters" who began hearing three test cases in 2007 involving children with autism -- a disorder that their parents contend was triggered by the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella combined with vaccines containing thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury. ...