■ A Canadian man was scratching his back when he noticed a pointy protrusion. It turned out to be a 3-inch knife blade that was buried in his flesh three years earlier. Billy McNeely, 32, said he’d often complained to doctors about chronic back pain after he was stabbed in a 2010 brawl, but physicians told him it was just […]
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Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have found that antibiotic resistance has risen to dangerous levels. If drastic action is not taken soon it will become a bigger killer than cancer by the year 2050. The report shows that at least 2 million people in the US are infected each year with germs that are resistant […]
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People who use sleeping pills regularly are far more likely to die prematurely than those who don’t, according to a new study. Researchers compared the health records of more than 10,000 sleeping-pill users with those of other patients of similar ages and health histories who didn’t use the drugs. They found that the heaviest sleeping-pill users were five times more […]
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Marijuana may now be legal in Colorado, said Jordan Weissmann, but do purchasers really know what they’re buying? New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd highlighted that problem last week by describing what happened when she went to Denver to sample edible marijuana. Dowd ate too much of a weed-laced candy bar, which had no dosing instructions, and spent eight hours […]
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To the surprise of doctors, new research on acupuncture has found that the ancient Chinese healing technique provides real pain relief. Acupuncture involves sticking needles into specific points in the body that Chinese healers believe contain unseen energy pathways; the needles supposedly stimulate the flow of “qi,” or energy. Western medicine has viewed these claims with deep skepticism, contending that […]
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A new study has found the strongest link yet between air pollution and autism, which experts now say affects one in 50 U.S. schoolchildren. Pregnant women who lived in areas with high levels of diesel exhaust and airborne mercury were found to be twice as likely to have a child with autism as those living in places with the lowest […]
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A huge virus discovered in sediment on the Chilean coast and another in an Australian pond are not only the largest scientists have ever seen, but also among the most baffling. A single so-called pandora virus is 1,000 times the size of the influenza virus and holds 2,556 genes, compared with the flu’s 13. Only 6 percent of its genes […]
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