American Healthcare

NEW YORK — Katrina Clark and Lindsay Greenawalt have much in common. Bright women in their 20s, raised by single mothers, keenly curious about the men whose donated sperm helped give them life.

Clark’s search for her father succeeded after only a month, though with a bittersweet aftermath. Greenawalt is still searching, seven years after she started – persisting despite doubts and frustrations.

“I’ve dreamt of you since I was a little girl,” Greenawalt wrote to her unknown dad in a Father’s Day blog posting in June. “There are so many things I want to know about you.”

Greenawalt, who lives near Cleveland, and Clark, a college student in Washington, D.C., are part of an increasingly outspoken generation of donor offspring. Full Post…

Just when you thought there was nothing new to say about Avandia, Time magazine reports — citing deputy FDA commissioner Josh Sharfstein — that the agency is investigating whether Glaxo broke the law by holding back from the FDA data indicating the drug carried an increased risk of heart attacks.

Avandia, once Glaxos blockbuster diabetes drug, has been under constant fire for more than three years because of links to heart problems. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who has become the bane of drugmakers, and the Senate Finance Committee (of which Grassley is ranking member) have been investigating Glaxo and Avandia for over two years, and in February released dozens of internal Glaxo documents relating to those potential cardiovascular risks. The

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My family were enjoying a seaside holiday in Bude in Cornwall. I was splashing in and out of the water and among the rocks when I fell and gashed my chin badly. As if by magic, a lifeguard appeared, stopped the bleeding and patched me up. I remember thinking, at the age of six, he really was a superhero. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to find out what the job of a lifeguard actually entails.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) lifeguards patrol more than 150 beaches in England and Wales and last year dealt with nearly 14,000 incidents, assisting over 16,000 people.

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The ozone that spread across Atlanta again Wednesday pushed the metro area over the threshold for another violation of federal clean air standards.

The hazy Atlanta skyline looms over I-20 motor traffic as it moves westward past Riverside Parkway while Atlanta reached a code orange smog alert for the fifth day in a row Thursday, Aug. 12, 2010.

Atlanta has now had 14 official bad air days this year — the same number seen in all of 2009. And the smog season continues through September, meaning more could be on the way.

“We’ve got another couple months of hot weather ahead of us, it’s a safe bet,” said Kevin Green, the executive director of the Clean Air Campaign.

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While more work is needed to develop the technology, the early success could lead to the development of a cheap, easy-to-use and portable test to help diagnose cancer earlier.

“If we can confirm these initial results in large-scale studies, this new technology could become a simple tool for early diagnosis of cancer along with imaging,” said Abraham Kuten of Technion Israel Institute of Technology.

Kuten and his colleagues studied the breath of 177 people — some healthy and some with various types of cancer — to detect the different chemicals emitted from the surface of cancer cells as they grow.

Their findings, published in the British Journal of Cancer, build on earlier research published by scientists at the same institute last year showing that a sensor made with gold nanoparticles could detect lung cancer in breath.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Louise Ireland)