Even if you don’t have a family history of colon cancer, it is still essential to have a colonoscopy performed once you have turned 50, despite the prep and procedure being uncomfortable.

Pocono Medical Centre’s will be holding a colorectal screening at its Short Procedure Unit on Wednesday at 6:00 p. m. If, you wish to schedule your free screening, you are requested to call by Friday for your appointment. Call
570-476-3750 for eligibility criteria and registration for colorectal cancer screening, leaving your name and telephone number for your call to be returned.

Launching a unique collaboration Wednesday, researchers and three companies, in a bid to get cancer drugs to the market more quickly, will cooperate with the US government and non-profit groups in the testing of five experimental breast cancer drugs.

The five-year $26 million study titled Investigation of Serial Studies to Predict your Therapeutic Response with Imaging and Molecular Analysis or I-SPY2, aims to DNA match the best drug to each patient, getting rid of approaches that do not work or are too toxic.

A London seminar sponsored by a Virginia infertility clinic has sparked an international ethical controversy Wednesday, by giving away a chance of getting pregnant using eggs donated by an American woman.

The 90-minute session organized by one of the United States’ largest infertility clinics - the Fairfax City-based Genetics & IVF Institute at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel, was attended by around 240 people, mostly married couples in their 20s to 50s.

The epidemic rate of infection continues to worry city officials, as over 3% of District residents older than 12 are living with HIV or AIDS. However, a report released Wednesday offers hope, informing the past four years have seen a steady decline in new cases of AIDS and AIDS-related deaths.

According to the 2009 Epidemiology Update, a report the D. C. HIV/AIDS Administration (HAA) issues annually, in a 9% increase from the previous saw at least 16,513 residents tested had a form of the disease at the end of 2008.

Researchers reporting Wednesday said, while the study of genes linked to breast cancer could lead to better treatments sometime in the future, they do little to help doctor’s predict who is likely to develop a tumour.

Publishing their study in the New England Journal of Medicine, they said testing genetic code linked to breast cancer was no better than asking questions involving a woman's conventional risk factors for screening purposes, such as, family history, age of fertility and age when a first child was born.

A nine-month government investigation into the safety of anti-flea and tick products sold for use on dogs and cats reveals will not be banned or pulled from the market.

However, cat and dog owners the flea and tick products have serious side effects, triggering reactions ranging from skin irritation to neurological problems to deaths.

Spot-on as the products under scrutiny are called are liquid products applied topically to the skin, often between the shoulder blades, usually once a month. A reported spike in the number of dogs and cats falling sick or dying in

Over the next two years, Kraft Foods, the manufacturer of Oreo cookies and Velveeta cheese, plans to effect a 10% reduction of sodium levels in its North American products, which makes it the latest food manufacturers to address health concerns as the pressure from the government mounts.

Health experts agree Americans consume too much salt, most of which comes from processed food. Excessive salt is dangerous as salt contributes to high blood pressure, which can lead to stroke, kidney disease, heart disease or heart failure.

The middle class of American is overburdened with health-care costs, as is evident from the past two years of the East Liberty Family Health Care Centre seeing a 26% increase in uninsured patients coming through its doors.

Eileen Boyle, interim Executive Director of the care centre said the uninsured seeking care are not just the poor, but increasingly from the working class.

Even the centre faced with a 30% jump in health insurance premiums for its own staff, passed on some of it to their employees.

There has been an up side to the abysmal state of American economy, as more multi-generation families are choosing to live together, driven partly by job losses, which has seen children flocking home and helping care for grand-children or aging parents.