The Daily HIT

“Mammography and the Corporate Breast” is the best commentary I’ve seen on the recent breast cancer screening guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. It’s posted on the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum, by Adrienne Fugh-Berman, MD, of Georgetown University Medical School, and Alicia Bell of the National Women’s Health Network. The authors are responding to [...]

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This is a catastrophe in the making. “We forecast that in the next 25 years, the population size of people with diabetes — both diagnosed and undiagnosed — will rise from approximately 24 million people to 44 million people by the year 2034,” said Dr. Elbert Huang of the University of Chicago, whose study appears [...]

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There is no such thing as going bankrupt due to health expenses in any advanced nation other than the United States. Whatever imperfections the current Senate and House health reform bills may have, the fact that they address this issue directly (by making lifetime maximums illegal and capping out-of-pocket expenses at $10,000 a year) is [...]

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Advances in technology sometimes outpace rules designed for an earlier, simpler era. This bill banning employment discrimination based on genetic testing is an important step in the right direction. Reporting from Washington – The most sweeping federal anti-discrimination law in nearly 20 years takes effect today, prohibiting employers from hiring, firing or determining promotions based on [...]

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The Senate Democrats’ blended bill contains the nondiscrimination language championed by Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT), along with a couple of other steps forward. Here’s today’s report from the American Chiropractic Association: Reid’s Reform Bill Includes ACA Supported Provider Non-Discrimination Provision Of specific interest to the chiropractic profession, is the fact that [...]

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Apparently it’s a very old story, not solely a modern phenonemon. CT scans of Egyptian mummies, some as much as 3,500 years old, show evidence of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, which is normally thought of as a disease caused by modern lifestyles, researchers said Tuesday. However, the diet of these upper-crust Egyptians sounds remarkably [...]

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This is the kind of profiteering behavior for which the drug manufacturers have become famous. It flies in the face of all reasonable norms of civilized behavior, yet here it is for all to see. Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s [...]

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Exercise brings many health benefits but its stand-alone effects on weight loss are less than some have claimed. From today’s New York Times: “The message of our work is really simple,” although not agreeable to hear, Melanson said. “It all comes down to energy balance,” or, as you might have guessed, calories in and calories [...]

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Plenty of room for improvement here, obviously. Pre-term births figure prominently, for reasons not yet well understood. Most of the deaths are among pre-term infants and the United States has a very high rate of pre-term births, according to the report from the National Center for Health Statistics. “In 2005, the latest year that the [...]

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A new study from Singapore shows a protective effect of soy for hip fractures. The effect is noted in women but not men. Postmenopausal women may lessen their chances of fracturing a hip by adding soy-based foods to their diet, a study from Singapore hints.Women in the study were 21 to 36 percent less likely to [...]

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