A new drug for melanoma has been shown to rapidly shrink malignant tumors in an early trial at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York. Among 27 patients whom the experimental new drug was tested on, "19 showed a 30 percent or greater reduction in tumor size," Dr. Paul Chapman, the lead researcher told CNN from a cancer conference in Berlin. Melanoma develops in cells that produce melanin, the pigment that gives skin its color, and is the most serious ...

Cosmetic adverts in Asia are targeting men with blunt campaigns aimed at skin color that one lawmaker labels racist. In one TV commercial, two men, one with dark skin, the other with light skin; stand on a balcony overlooking a neighborhood. The dark skin guy turns to his friend and says in Hindi, "I am unlucky because of my face." His light skin friend replies, "Not because of your face, because of the color of your face." Suddenly the light ...

You know that fat in your body you wish you didn't have? It turns out those cells could be used to create stem cells that one day may be able to cure disease. Scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that the millions of fat cells removed during liposuction can be easily and quickly turned into induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, more easily than the skin cells that researchers used when the first iPS cells were ...

The world has a new alliance to save vanishing frogs, toads and salamanders. A coalition of organizations established the Amphibian Survival Alliance this month to conserve species threatened by deadly fungus, habitat loss, pollution, pesticides and climate change. The scientists said amphibians are the world's most threatened group of animals. Though they thrived on Earth for more than 360 million years, one in three of the 6,000 recognized amphibian species are now at risk of extinction and as ...

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 ...

It's no secret that stress isn't good for you. But what's less clear is how social stressors like a high-pressure job or a failing marriage affect your physical well-being. Researchers at Wake Forest University who study stress in monkeys think they may have discovered a clue: fat. More specifically, the particular form of fat called visceral fat that tends to build up in the abdomen . Researchers believe this abdominal fat lodges deep within visceral organs, such as ...

Mice are bred all the time in laboratories around the world. So, generally speaking, the birth of a couple dozen more lab mice isn't worth noting. But this week, two groups of scientists in China separately reported that they had created a new kind of mouse — grown entirely from a type of stem cell that originated from already mature cells, instead of from embryos. Researchers took skin cells from donor mice, reprogrammed them to revert back to ...

Africa is not a country, and Africans generally do not live in trees or hunt game with spears. Nor do they all walk around in the nude among lions and zebras. African immigrants to the United States say cartoonish caricatures and a Western media penchant for reporting on Africa's disease, hunger and war -- rather than the continent's successes -- trivialize their cultures. They complain they have trouble dispelling the stereotypes once they arrive in the States. They concede, though, ...

Michael Jackson's single white glove was his trademark -- an iconic image for a performer whose career constantly set, then redefined, pop culture trends. But it also was an early effort to mask a skin condition that he would struggle with for the rest of his life, say some who were close to him. Actress Cicely Tyson, a friend of Jackson's, said the two shared a fashion designer in the 1980s. "All of a sudden, he said, 'I'm doing this ...

Floridians are generally not flummoxed by the variety of reptile species invading their state. Even when pythons started turning up on the peninsula in large numbers a few years ago, most residents laughed off the huge, not-native snakes as yet another imported nuisance, little worse than some condo developers. But that nonchalance vanished in a heartbeat last week when 2-year-old Shaiunna Hare was strangled to death in her crib by a 9-foot-long Burmese python kept as a pet, illegally, ...