Influenza vaccinations are usually an afterthought for most people. Despite the easy availability of the shots, fewer than 40% of Americans get them in any one year—never mind that flu kills some 36,000 of us annually. But this flu season is likely to be different. Thanks to the new H1N1/09 virus, to which almost none of us are immune, flu anxiety is high—and demand for the new vaccine should be too. Washington is now gearing up to respond, hoping ...

If you could snap your fingers and make your allergies disappear, you'd probably do it in a second. But what if your pet is the cause of your watery eyes, sneezing, and runny nose? Suddenly that oh-so-simple decision becomes a much tougher call. For some, the psychological misery of giving up a pet may outweigh the everyday misery of allergy symptoms. That was true for John Ceballos, 43, who kept his cat, Suki, after an allergist told him the ...

An experimental drug has successfully reduced hip and spine fractures in the two largest patient populations at risk for osteoporosis — postmenopausal women and men being treated for prostate cancer — according to two major studies published online on Aug. 11 by the New England Journal of Medicine. The new compound, denosumab, is being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration. If approved, it has the potential to become a standard treatment for certain patients. Doctors say they are ...

Seated on a jetliner, Dr. Mary Gallagher and her husband, Don Dietrich, were about to take off for an anniversary vacation in Puerto Rico. But a glance at her husband of five years set off an alarm -- he was gasping for breath. Gallagher, an anesthesiologist, knew the signs: Dietrich was in cardiac arrest. Gallagher ran to tell the pilot; someone called 911 from a cell phone; another passenger started CPR. Paramedics appeared and then Gallagher made a crucial decision: ...

Days after the U.S. government announced upcoming trials for an H1N1 flu vaccine, Saint Louis University has been inundated with phone calls and e-mails from people volunteering for the study. The university's Center for Vaccine Development has received more than 500 responses from potential volunteers since Wednesday, when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced human trials for a swine flu vaccine would begin in early August. "This response has been exceptionally strong," Nancy Solomon, a spokeswoman for the university's ...

In a race to beat the flu season, medical institutes across the United States will begin human trials for a new H1N1 flu vaccine starting in early August, the University of Maryland announced Wednesday. In the hope of getting the vaccine to those who will need it most by October, the clinical trials will enroll as many as 1,000 adults and children at 10 centers nationwide, said officials at the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland School ...

President Obama announced Monday he has chosen Dr. Regina Benjamin, a family practice doctor from the Gulf Coast, to serve as surgeon general. The rural family physician has long provided medical care on the Gulf Coast. In 1990, she founded Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in the fishing village of Bayou La Batre, Alabama. The clinic was heavily damaged by Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but Benjamin rebuilt it each time and continued to ...

Our brains can give rise to all manner of odd psychiatric problems, but one of the strangest is trichotillomania — better known as hair-pulling. The uncontrollable desire to yank out one's hair may seem like a freaky sideshow diagnosis, but the disorder is actually not so uncommon, affecting perhaps two million American adults over 22. Exact numbers are hard to come by, since people with the condition often hide it — sometimes they don't even appear in public because ...

Researchers at Newcastle University in England report they have coaxed the first human sperm cells from embryonic stem cells, in a remarkable demonstration of how quickly the field of stem-cell science is moving. The achievement, described in the journal Stem Cells and Development, comes just 11 years after the first human-embryonic-stem-cell line was created — an eyeblink in scientific terms — in the lab of James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin. Although the development once again ...

Is there a filmmaker in the world with worse luck than Terry Gilliam? He was directing Heath Ledger in "The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus," when the actor died -- and it's not the first time he has lost a leading man. Jean Rochefort didn't die eight years ago, but Gilliam had to abandon "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" after a few days when 70-year-old star Jean Rochefort became seriously ill and a flash flood washed away the entire ...