After more than five months of going it alone, Iran's opposition Green Movement is reaching out to the United States for help. Via public and private channels, the Obama Administration has received several appeals in recent weeks to take a stronger stand against human-rights abuses in Iran, avoid military action and impose more aggressive and rapid-fire sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards and its vast business interests. The opposition's outreach comes as the Administration weighs the next move ...

The uproar in the medical community was immediate. In a reversal of standard practice that bewildered physicians and patients around the nation, an independent government panel this week abandoned its long-standing recommendation that healthy women over age 40 get a breast-cancer screen once every year or two years. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force began advising women instead to delay regular screening until age 50, and even then, to get tested only every other year. The American Cancer Society ...

Few medical conditions rival autism as a magnet for controversy. Practically everything about the disorder — its cause, its treatment, the way it is diagnosed, how it is studied — is subject to bitter dispute, sometimes to the point of death threats. The most impassioned disagreements are propelled by desperate parents of autistic children, but increasingly, people who themselves have an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis are speaking up. And their priorities, surprisingly enough, are not always in ...

Some dude outside my supermarket just asked me to sign a petition to legalize marijuana. Apparently he was so high that he forgot he's in California, where pot is already more legal than budget-balancing. Last year I was granted a medical-marijuana license, even though I'm healthy and I don't smoke weed. I went to a doctor's office that consisted of a desk, a TV, two cans of air freshener and a man wearing a Hawaiian T-shirt. I told Dr. ...

It's hard to fight an epidemic when no one wants to talk about the cause. In China, a country whose last decade has been defined by economic growth and social opening, silence still enshrouds many aspects of the nations' sex life, and not, health experts say, without consequences. While most industrialized nations have seen HIV/AIDS death rates steadily decline in the past 10 years, China announced in February that the HIV virus took the lead as the deadliest infectious disease in the nation in 2008, ...

On the surface, the line of two-room dwellings on a dusty street in west Delhi appears little different from thousands of other roads in India's crowded capital. The paint flakes off buildings' walls and the grass grows in parks that haven't been mowed in months. Kids play cricket in the street, fruit and vegetable sellers push their wooden carts through narrow lanes and women busy themselves with housework and cooking. What sets this impoverished community apart is one ...

Over the last two decades humanitarian organization International Medical Corps has cared for hundreds of thousands of victims of wars and natural disasters in more than 25 countries.

Singer Morrissey was hospitalized overnight after reportedly collapsing on stage during a concert, medical officials told CNN Sunday.

Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, emerged from a hospital for the first time Friday since seeking medical attention more than a month ago. The 81-year-old appeared outside the Bangkok hospital as onlookers shouted, "God bless the King." He was wheeled to an outdoor area of the hospital, where he paid respects to a statue of King Rama V. He then paid respects to a portrait of his late mother. The monarch's appearance was televised on ...

The maker of Taser stun guns has advised law enforcement agencies to avoid hitting suspects in the chest, partly "to minimize controversy." "Taser has long stood by the fact that our technology is not risk free and is often used during violent and dangerous confrontations," Taser International spokesman Steve Tuttle said in a memo referring to an October 12 training bulletin. "The issuing of a preferred target zone is a prime example of training advice based on best practices and ...