Only 11-years old when his mother died of cancer, Chris Way, 17, is in his senior year of high school, and only too aware of the mother and son moments missed. Still, he remains philosophical, adding his mother’s legacy has made him who he is, as if she was alive; he would be a far more different person.

That is, he feels he would be less independent, less motivated, perhaps even less positive. But, he is nothing like that as his mother showed him a different way, and those memories drive him on. Still, life is without his mother is not easy, Chris says.

A recent debate about health insurance on Fox News had Bob Beckel, the Democratics political strategist explaining that the president needed an enemy, and he got one in the form of the insurance companies.

A point President Obama proved in his Pennsylvania stump speech, asking how much higher the premiums would have to go, before something was done about it, adding that it wouldn’t do to have a system that worked better for the insurance companies than for the American people.

The Chronicle has learnt that even though the drug lab technician’s sister told the police she suspected the woman may have taken a cocaine vial home, the San Francisco police took two months before launching a criminal probe.

The delay and the Police Department’s inability to ensure the integrity of seized evidence has doomed hundreds of narcotics prosecutions could be doomed, as drugs continued to be tested at the lab even after suspicions arose about the technician.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued a warning against using baby sling carriers after 14 deaths were associated with their use. There were three infant deaths in 2009 and 12 such deaths involved babies under the age of 4 months.

While, many stories have been written about the many aspects of health-care reform, there are few on how the Americans have reacted and responded to the idea.

In general, the public supports key elements of the healthcare reform such as:

* 52% support the establishment of a government health-care plan to compete with private health-insurance plans.
* 65% would like all Americans to have health insurance, with financial help provided by the government to those who cannot afford it.

Abbott Laboratories hopes to win the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval to launch its new device – MitraClip that has been designed to improve leaky heart valves without undergoing any major surgery. In a key study released Sunday, the device was found to meet all safety and effectiveness goals.

International trials of Novartis AG’s blood pressure pill Diovan and diabetes drug Starlix show, which they neither prevent heart attacks, strokes or deaths in high-risk patients, nor the development of heart disease or diabetes, respectively.

These results only serve to highlight the difficulty in finding drugs for preventing both heart disease and diabetes. Which is why, researchers recommend preventing and treating two of the most common chronic medical conditions, by focusing on exercise, eating a healthy diet, two proven methods for better health.

Alarmed by the unjustified use of potentially cancer-causing CT scans, the Medicare watchdog and senior radiologists have been prompted to call on doctors to stop ordering scans, indiscriminately.

Medical research finds over 400 new cases of cancer diagnosed in Australia every year, can be attributed to diagnostic radiology. Despite this, there has been an increase of 12% a year in the number of computerised tomography scans, known to generate far more radiation than X-rays.