| December 19, 2012 | - Archaeologists unearthed a Roman oil lamp that depicts a woman receiving a gynecological exam by a doctor holding a vaginal speculum.
| Source:
Latin American Herald Tribune
|
| December 18, 2012 | -
Doctors found that women with overactive bladders and restless legs are more likely to have persistent imminent orgasms.
| Source:
Science Daily
|
| December 15, 2012 | - A three-day-old baby boy undergoing brain surgery to remove what was believed to be a tumor was instead found to have in his skull a tiny foot and other partially formed appendages. “It looked like the breech delivery of a baby,” the pediatric neurosurgeon said, “coming out of the brain.”
| Source:
Colorado Gazette
|
| May 5, 2009 | - Jeff Kepner, a 57-year-old Georgian man who lost both his hands to a bacterial infection ten years ago, received the nation's first double hand transplant.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 6, 2008 | - Researchers in Brazil found that medical students are often depressed.
| Source:
Science Daily
|
| November 13, 2008 | -
Doctors in Berlin announced that they had cured a man of AIDS by giving him transplanted blood stem cells from a donor naturally resistant to the virus; other researchers cautioned that the treatment was of little immediate use, and justified in this case only because the patient had leukemia. “Frankly,” said Dr. Robert C. Gallo of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, “I'd rather take the medicine.”
| Source:
NYT
|
| April 5, 2008 | -
Doctors in Al-Anbar province connected a deadly malarial infection to Blackwater, whose contract the U.S. State Department recently renewed and who are currently under investigation by the FBI for the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians.
| Source 1:
IPS.org
Source 2:
BBCnews.com
|
| March 14, 2008 | - The cubicle turned 40, Viagra turned 10, and Hotel Luxor, the oldest whorehouse in Germany's red light district, announced that it would close for lack of business.
| Source 1:
Time
Source 2:
Yahoo News
Source 3:
Associated Press
|
| November 2, 2007 | -
Rudy Giuliani conceded that although his campaign's statistic for prostate cancer survival rates in Britain was seven years old and 30 points off, Americans should still be wary of “socialized medicine.” “If we ever got to Hillarycare in this country,” said Giulani, “Canadians will have nowhere to go for health care.”
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| September 3, 2007 | -
Psychiatrists announced that diagnoses of bipolar disorder in U.S. children have increased by 4,000 percent over the last 10 years.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| August 11, 2007 | - An eight-foot-five-inch Ukrainian, Leonid Stadnyk, was declared the world's tallest man; locals attributed his size to a brain operation in adolescence, and the penurious Stadnyk lamented that his continuous growth had ended his career as a veterinarian when he became too large to fit into a car and his fingers grew too big for him to press buttons. “Doctors tell me I will live a long life,” he said. “I hope it will be in happiness.”
| Source:
Scotsman
|
| June 11, 2007 | -
Medical examiners announced that a 17-year-old U.S. track star who died in April overdosed on muscle-rub.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| May 31, 2007 | - An Italian
doctor built vaginas for two women who lacked them due to Mayer-von Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome.
| Source:
Reuters via ABC (Australia)
|
| May 31, 2007 | -
Serb farmers were exchanging cows for penis-enlargement
surgery.
| Source:
Independent Online
|
| May 29, 2007 | - In New York, a psychologist named Gordon Gallup announced that semen may be a powerful and addictive antidepressant for women.
| Source:
Psychology Today
|
| May 8, 2007 | - The trial of Rafiq Sabir, a physician charged with conspiring to provide medical care to Al Qaeda, began. Evidence presented in the case included a recording of jazz bassist and martial-arts expert Tarik Shah, a good friend of Sabir's, teaching an FBI informant how to rip out a throat. “It fills their lungs with blood,” he explained.
| Source:
NYT
|
| May 8, 2007 | - The Milwaukee Brewers were giving away two free tickets to any fan who had his prostate examined.
| Source:
MLB.com
|
| April 20, 2007 | - Doctors in New York City
removed a woman's gallbladder through her vagina.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 23, 2007 | -
White House press secretary Tony Snow announced that he would soon undergo surgery to remove a growth from his lower abdomen.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| March 21, 2007 | - To test the integrity of ten local hospitals, journalists in Hangzhou, China, replaced their urine samples with tea; six of the hospitals diagnosed the reporters with urinary tract infections.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! Lifestyle
|
| February 15, 2007 | -
Chinese authorities sentenced businessman Wang Zhendong to death for his role in duping 10,000 investors out of $390 million in a giant ant-farming scam.
| Source:
BBC
|
| February 8, 2007 | - A study conducted at the University of Chicago found that 14 percent of American doctors thought it was morally acceptable to lie to their patients about treatment options.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| December 13, 2006 | - The National Institutes of Health said that circumcision is an effective method to limit heterosexual transmission of HIV.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| December 1, 2006 | -
Experts warned people with pacemakers that refrigerator magnets “can be a killer.”
| Source:
BBC
|
| November 20, 2006 | - American scientists announced the creation of a self-aware robot that can heal itself.
| Source:
Information Week
|
| November 1, 2006 | - A New Hampshire
orthodontist bought back local kids' Halloween candy for two dollars per pound.
| Source:
WSBTV Atlanta
|
| October 11, 2006 | - In Israel, four doctors were arrested for carrying out illegal, non-consensual medical experiments on their patients.
| Source:
Haaretz
|
| September 26, 2006 | - Milagros, a Peruvian “mermaid” girl whose fused legs were separated by surgeons, took her first steps.
| Source:
AP via SBS
|
| September 5, 2006 | -
Britain's Royal Preston Hospital unveiled the “Inter-Faith Gown,” a hospital garment modeled on the Muslim burka.
| Source:
Breitbart.com via the Drudge Report
|
| August 30, 2006 | -
Indian
doctors were attempting to treat a girl who weeps tears of stone.
| Source:
Times of India
|
| August 24, 2006 | -
F.D.A. representative Dr. Janet Woodcock said that selling the Plan B contraceptive over the counter would transform it into an “urban legend” that would tempt adolescents to create “sex-based cults.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 10, 2006 | -
Doctors in India speculated that the birth of a one-eyed girl might be attributable to her mother's exposure to Cyclopamine, a cancer drug derived from wild corn lily that causes cyclopia in sheep.
| Source:
Wired News
|
| July 30, 2006 | -
Doctors in India removed a 15-year-old dead fetus from a woman's womb.
| Source:
Times of India
|
| July 25, 2006 | -
Radiologists announced that many Americans were becoming too fat for X-rays.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 5, 2006 | -
Surgeons in Shanghai successfully removed a baby boy's third arm.
| Source:
AP
|
| May 31, 2006 | - In China
doctors were trying to determine which left arm to remove from a three-armed baby.
| Source:
BBC
|
| May 13, 2006 | - In Nigeria more than 150 people, some of them stealing fuel from a pipeline, died when the pipeline exploded. "By tomorrow," said a health commissioner, "we will dig a bigger ditch and bury them all."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 19, 2006 | -
British
doctors criticized China for harvesting organs for transplant from thousands of executed prisoners.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 7, 2006 | - A chiropractor in Ohio was in trouble for telling his patients that he could cure their ills by traveling back in time to when the injury occurred (a practice he calls "Bahlaqeem").
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| April 2, 2006 | - A Swedish
study linked heavy cell-phone use to malignant brain tumors.
| Source:
The Jerusalem Post
|
| March 6, 2006 | - Only 75 psychiatrists remained in Iraq.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| February 23, 2006 | - A hospital in Queens, New York, was investigating how a baby that died soon after birth was sent to a laundry service.
| Source:
Newsday.com
|
| January 18, 2006 | - The French
face-transplant patient was smoking through her recently grafted-on lips.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| November 30, 2005 | - Surgeons in France performed a partial face transplant, taking the nose and lips of a brain-dead donor and grafting them onto the face of a woman who had been severely disfigured by a dog.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| November 17, 2005 | - A new nasal spray made women want sex.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| November 14, 2005 | - In Chhattisgarh, India, a three-day-old baby died from an infection when her parents were unable to afford surgery. The baby had been born with her heart in her hand.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| October 24, 2005 | -
William Shatner
passed a kidney stone.
| Source:
14WFIE
|
| October 6, 2005 | - A new vaccine that prevents cervical cancer was found to be 100 percent effective.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| September 12, 2005 | - It was revealed that, several months before it issued a warning, the FDA had been aware that the Guidant Ventak Prizm 2 DR heart defibrillator had a tendency to short-circuit.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| August 29, 2005 | -
Scientists announced that they had created mice that could regrow amputated extremities.
| Source:
The Australian
|
| August 25, 2005 | - The FDA was working out a plan to regulate medicinal maggots and leeches, both of which it has classified as "devices." "The primary mode of action for maggots," said a representative from a medicinal maggot firm, "is chewing."
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| July 15, 2005 | - Prayer was found to be no help for heart patients.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| June 30, 2005 | - In New Zealand a baby boy undergoing penis-enlargement treatment was accidentally given ten times the recommended dose of testosterone by his nurse, causing the boy to become angry and irritable and to develop pubic hair. A doctor warned that the baby might also suffer from painful erections, but that problem had yet to arise.
| Source:
Stuff.co.nz
|
| June 26, 2005 | -
Bangladeshi
doctors removed a dead fetus from the abdomen of a teenage boy.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| June 9, 2005 | -
Plastic surgery on women's genitalia was becoming more popular; surgeons reported that they were keeping busy plumping outer labias, tightening vaginas, and restoring hymens.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| April 10, 2005 | - Many conservative American pharmacists were refusing to dispense birth control.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 23, 2005 | - Senator Bill Frist--a doctor who as a Harvard
medical student adopted pound cats as pets, then killed them to practice his surgical technique--diagnosed Terri Schiavo from afar, suggesting that her condition could improve.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 23, 2005 | - Only 17 percent of large- and medium-sized employers were fully covering the cost of their employees' health premiums.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 21, 2005 | - A woman in India committed suicide so that her two blind sons could each receive one of her eyes. Doctors said there was little chance that such a transplant would work.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 20, 2005 | - Schiavo's husband, who wants to let her die, wondered why Congress was expending so much energy on the case. “Why doesn't Congress worry about people not having health insurance?” he asked. “Or the budget? Let's talk about all the children who don't have homes.” Schiavo described House Majority leader Tom DeLay, who is leading the fight to reinsert Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, as a “little slithering snake.”
| Source:
The Terri Schiavo Case
|
| March 16, 2005 | - The Department of Homeland Security was preparing for: the detonation of a ten-kiloton nuclear device; a biological attack with aerosolized anthrax; an outbreak of pneumonic plague; a flu pandemic starting in south China; the spraying of a chemical blister agent over a football stadium; an attack on an oil refinery; the explosion of a tank of chlorine; a 7.2-magnitude earthquake; a major hurricane in a metropolitan area; three Cesium-137 dirty bombs going off in three different cities, each contaminating thirty-six city blocks; the detonation of improvised bombs in sports stadiums and emergency rooms; liquid anthrax in ground beef; a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak; and a cyber attack on the nation's financial infrastructure.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 14, 2005 | - A North Carolina
dentist was in trouble for filling syringes with his semen and squirting it into the mouths of several female patients.
| Source:
AP
|
| December 24, 2004 | - Studies showed that doctors were much more likely to kill themselves than the general population.
| Source:
The Times of India
|
| December 24, 2004 | - A study found that doctors talk less when treating white patients than they do when treating black patients.
| Source:
AJC.com
|
| December 24, 2004 | - A study showed that 22 percent of medical devices were not adequately studied.
| Source:
Boston.com
|
| December 23, 2004 | - A study found that nearly three quarters of doctors believe in miracles.
| Source:
WorldNetDaily
|
| December 21, 2004 | - Paralyzed rats, injected with brain cells culled from human embryos, were rising up and walking.
| Source:
AP
|
| October 15, 2004 | - An Australian doctor claimed that one of his patients had a sleep disorder that caused her to sneak out of her house at night and have sex with strangers.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| September 3, 2004 | -
Bill Clinton underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery.
| Source:
MTV
|
| August 31, 2004 | - It was discovered that full-body CT scans expose patients to the same level of radiation that people a few miles from Hiroshima received in World War II, and that the scans increase one's risk of developing cancer.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| July 24, 2004 | -
Janssen Pharmaceutica Products, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, warned doctors that it had "minimized potentially fatal risks, and made misleading claims" about Risperdal, an anti-schizophrenia drug; the drug can cause stroke, diabetes, and other fatal complications, the company said, and contrary to claims on the label it is not safer than similar drugs. It was reported that some boys who were given Risperdal in Florida, where it is used as a "chemical restraint" in state facilities, developed lactating breasts.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| July 23, 2004 | - A new study of the evidence suggested that Napoleon died from getting too many enemas.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| July 16, 2004 | - Boston Scientific Corporation recalled 85,000 drug-coated heart stents.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 9, 2004 | - Four organ-transplant recipients died from rabies; all four received tissue from the same infected donor.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 24, 2004 | - New research suggested that needle biopsies might help spread breast cancer to the sentinel node.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 29, 2004 | - Scientists developed a type of computer made of DNA that they hope could someday diagnose and treat diseases from inside the particular human cells that require treatment.
| Source:
UPI
|
| April 27, 2004 | - A clinical trial suggested that stem cell therapy might be able to heal broken hearts.
| Source:
Nature.com
|
| February 14, 2004 | - An FDA advisory panel recommended widespread testing for mad cow disease, saying that absent such testing there is no way to assess the risk of transmission from meat, drugs, vaccines, cosmetics, or dietary supplements.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 13, 2004 | - Attorney General John Ashcroft defended issuing subpoenas for abortion records and said that the records were necessary to find out whether doctors who have sued to overturn the ban on so-called partial-birth abortions are telling the truth when they say they have performed the procedure out of medical necessity.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 13, 2004 | - Three pharmacists were fired in Denton, Texas, for refusing to fill a prescription for emergency contraception.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 9, 2004 | - A two-headed baby died after doctors removed its "parasitic head."
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| February 1, 2004 | -
China reported a new SARS case after the patient had already recovered.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| January 8, 2004 | - The popularity of herbal medicines, environmentalists warned, threatens to wipe out thousands of wild medicinal plant species.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| January 2, 2004 | - A new study found that CAT scans might permanently damage young children's brains.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| December 29, 2003 | - A psychiatrist declared that Armin Meiwes, the famous German cannibal, is sane but would benefit from psychotherapy.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| December 22, 2003 | -
British health officials reported the first possible transmission of mad cow disease to a human via blood transfusion.
| Source:
Nature.com
|
| December 16, 2003 | -
Colin Powell underwent surgery for prostate cancer.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 8, 2003 | - President George W. Bush signed a $400 billion Medicare bill that will provide a prescription-drug benefit to elderly Americans; the bill permits private insurance companies to compete with Medicare, which many think will destroy the program, but bans policies that would cover gaps in the drug benefit on the theory that people with good prescription coverage take too many pills and drive up medical costs.
| Source:
Associated Press, New York Times
|
| November 27, 2003 | - Clinical trials of an "orgasmatron" were underway in North Carolina.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| November 19, 2003 | - Britain's Royal College of Surgeons said that face transplants, though technically possible, probably should not be performed.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| November 4, 2003 | - A new study found that tiny golden "nano-bullets" could be used in the future to destroy cancer tumors.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| October 27, 2003 | -
Autopsies of 11 people in Pennsylvania revealed high concentrations of cadmium, a toxic metal.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 22, 2003 | - The U.S. Senate banned "partial-birth abortions," a procedure known by doctors as "intact dilation and extraction."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 20, 2003 | -
Tony Blair was hospitalized with heart palpitations and was told to take it easy.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 20, 2003 | -
Australian
doctors warned people not to eat slugs.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| September 29, 2003 | - The Bush Administration relaxed regulations governing nursing homes so that people with only one day of training can feed patients who are unable to feed themselves.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 18, 2003 | -
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was hospitalized and underwent surgery for an unknown gynecological condition.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 16, 2003 | - Canada's government-grown medical
marijuana was getting very poor reviews.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 29, 2003 | - Hospitals in the United States were having a hard time meeting the growing demand for stomach-reduction surgery.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 26, 2003 | -
British health officials apologized for telling a black woman whose lower leg was scheduled to be amputated that she would have to pay $4,700 if she wanted her prosthesis to match her skin color; a white limb, she was told, would be covered by the National Health Service.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 2, 2003 | - Johns Hopkins University's medical center announced that it had been the first in the nation to perform three simultaneous kidney transplants.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 25, 2003 | - The FDA approved a hormone shot for short kids.
| Source:
AP
|
| July 21, 2003 | - Austrian surgeons conducted the first successful transplant of a human tongue.
| Source:
AP
|
| January 21, 2003 | -
A new study found that surgeons leave tools inside about 1,500 patients every year.
| |
| May 21, 2002 | -
Medical
marijuana advocates were complaining about the quality of the government-grown pot being provided to patients in California.
| |
| May 14, 2002 | -
German scientists announced that they had grown carrots genetically modified to produce the vaccine for hepatitis B.
| |
| May 14, 2002 | -
The director of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., refused to hand over the medical records of a dead giraffe, saying that the doctor-patient confidentiality rule applied “in principle” to animals.
| |
| December 18, 2001 | - The Drug Enforcement Agency agreed for the first time in two decades to permit research on the medical effectiveness of marijuana; the agency also decided to ban any food products that contain trace amounts of THC, the active ingredient in pot, which is a problem for many natural-foods companies that use hempseed or hempseed oil in their products. “Pasta, tortilla chips, candy bars, nutritional bars, salad dressings, sauces, cheeses, ice cream, and beer” containing hemp have been banned, but not hats, shirts, lotion, paper, or rope, because they “do not cause THC to enter the human body.”
| |
| December 11, 2001 | - Believing that his penis was a “cobra” driving him to sin, a Filipino farmer lopped it off with his machete and cast it away. “He wanted to be nailed to a coconut tree,” his mother reported. Doctors reconstructed the penis, though at considerably shorter length, and said the man would still be able to have children.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - Raelians wish to clone full-grown humans into whom memories and such can be downloaded: “That is what interests us — it is to be able to live eternally through several bodies.” “The use of embryos to clone is wrong,” President Bush declared. “We should not as a society grow life to destroy life.” Objections by the United States prevented an international agreement that would have limited the advertising of tobacco products, which are estimated to kill 4 million people each year.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | - Federal agents, who now believe the anthrax to be the work of a lone domestic terrorist, still have not gotten around to locating all the labs in the United States where the bacteria can be legally handled, though they were busy cracking down on medical
marijuana in California and assisted suicide in Oregon.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | - A couple in Colorado who because of their religious beliefs allowed their 13-year-old daughter to die of diabetes and gangrene without medical treatment were sentenced to 20 months' probation and 1,300 hours of community service. They were also required to provide medical insurance for their remaining 12 children.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | - American doctors were concerned about the ethics of treating people who had received organ transplants in China, where executed prisoners are the most common organ donors.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - Northern Alliance soldiers in Afghanistan were upset that the American bombing was so paltry that it was raising Taliban morale: “If the United States did this for a hundred years, it's not enough.” There was a report that American forces had passed up a chance to destroy a convoy carrying Taliban leader Mulla Omar Mohammed because they didn't have authority to do so.
| |
| September 25, 2001 | - Video-game makers delayed introducing several new titles; WTC Defender, a video game in which players try to shoot down airplanes before they destroy the World Trade Center, was removed from the Internet.
| |
| September 25, 2001 | -
Doctors in the United States used a remotely controlled robot to remove a gallbladder from a patient in France, inaugurating a new era of globalized surgery.
| |
| September 25, 2001 | - Another disabled child won a lawsuit against doctors in France based on the argument that she should have been aborted.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | -
Medical staff at an old-folks' home in Denmark claimed that porn and prostitutes do more good than drugs in treating the elderly.
| |
| August 28, 2001 | - A 36-year-old Peruvian man chopped off his testicles to protest his low wages; last year he amputated his penis because he was unemployed.
| |
| August 21, 2001 | - Celltech Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Metadate CD, an attention-deficit-disorder drug, was using a cartoon superhero in its brochures: “A new hero for ADHD patients is here!”
| |
| August 7, 2001 | - The United States House of Representatives voted to ban human cloning for both reproduction and medical research; the measure also prohibits the sale of treatments derived from such procedures.
| |
| August 7, 2001 | -
Canada's very cool medical
marijuana
law went into effect.
| |
| August 7, 2001 | - After two weeks of flying lessons, a Pizza Hut employee took off in an airplane from the Florida Keys on his first solo flight and ended up in Cuba, where he suffered a “hard landing” and was hospitalized.
| |
| July 31, 2001 | -
Japanese
scientists invented a bionic suit to help nurses lift patients.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - As President Bush continued to ponder the political expediencies of permitting or banning federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, science was marching on, aided and comforted by medical ethicists.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - One company was using donated eggs and sperm to create human embryos from which stem cells could be harvested, a procedure that destroys the embryos.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - A French court upheld a “right not to be born” and awarded damages to the families of three children who would have been aborted if doctors had detected their deformities.
| |
| July 10, 2001 | - The Bush Administration drafted a new policy that would let states define unborn children as persons eligible for medical coverage.
| |
| June 26, 2001 | -
Doctors in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, removed 26 ounces of material, including 222 rusty nails, from the stomach of a crazy man.
| |
| June 19, 2001 | - Holland's “abortion ship,” Women on Waves, was unable to pick up Irish women and give them abortions because it lacked a Dutch permit to perform medical procedures and an Irish permit to take on passengers.
| |
| May 29, 2001 | -
Doctors in Egypt removed a 100-pound cyst from the stomach of a 17-year-old girl.
| |
| May 29, 2001 | - Surgeons removed a beer-can ring-pull from the lung of a New Zealand man.
| |
| May 1, 2001 | -
Biologists persuaded embryonic stem cells from a mouse to generate insulin-producing organs; other scientists proved that therapeutic cloning, a procedure that also uses cells from an embryo, can produce tissue for any part of a mouse's body.
| |
| May 1, 2001 | -
Britain's Ministry of Defense admitted that the British army had paid for a number of female soldiers to have breast augmentation surgery: “This is not done purely on cosmetic grounds, but as a last resort,” a spokesman said.
| |
| April 17, 2001 | -
Doctors in Singapore successfully separated a pair of Siamese twins who were joined at the head; the operation, which took five days, was particularly difficult because the girls' brains were partially fused.
| |
| April 10, 2001 | -
Israeli
religious leaders declared that Viagra was not kosher for Passover, though a rabbi can authorize its use “in the event of urgent medical
need.” Customs officials in New York arrested a Canadian stripper who tried to smuggle 78,771 hits of ecstasy into the United States inside some Legos.
| |
| April 3, 2001 | - Anti-abortion activists won the right to publish a hit list of doctors who perform abortions; the list, called the “Nuremberg Files,” appears on a website and gives personal details such as address, license plate numbers, and names of relatives.
| |
| March 20, 2001 | -
Afghanistan's ruling Taliban sacrificed 100 cows to atone for being so slow to destroy ancient stone statues of the Buddha.
| |
| March 13, 2001 | - Twenty-five thousand body parts, including nine hundred baby hearts, were found in hospitals and other institutions in Australia.
| |
| March 13, 2001 | - A study found that injecting fetal cells directly into the brains of Parkinson's patients does not help them; in fact, it caused some patients to writhe and jerk spontaneously.
| |
| March 13, 2001 | - An Australian physicist warned that invisible asteroids made out of “mirror matter,” a form of invisible dark matter, could strike the earth and destroy us all.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | - A drug used to cure sleeping sickness—which infects about 300,000 Africans a year, makes them go crazy, and kills them—was back in production after its former manufacturer discovered that it removes facial hair on women, thus ensuring a lucrative Western market for the drug; Doctors Without Borders had been down to its last 1,000 doses.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | - A British hospital apologized to plastic-surgery patients for selling their surplus skin to the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency for chemical-weapons research.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | - The Roman emperor Claudius was poisoned by his wife Agrippina, the mother of Nero, a medical researcher announced after studying Claudius' symptoms.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | - A Dutch man was hospitalized in the Hague after he jumped, three times, from a bridge in three successive suicide attempts; police found him back up on the bridge, suffering from hypothermia, staring down at the icy depths.
| |
| February 6, 2001 | - People in Malaysia were tearing up forests looking for tongkat ali, a traditional medicine that, according to researchers, stimulates the libido of rats.
| |
| December 26, 2000 | -
Canada's Health Ministry gave a $3.8 million contract to a company that will grow medical
marijuana in a mine deep below a lake in Flin Flon, Manitoba, a famously remote town where there is little to do but play hockey and smoke medical marijuana.
| |
| December 12, 2000 | -
British
scientists succeeded in making marijuana soluble, which could enable a wide array of medical uses for the drug.
| |
| December 5, 2000 | - Holland legalized the killing of terminally ill patients by doctors; a provision that would have allowed children to choose death was withdrawn.
| |
| November 28, 2000 | -
Dick Cheney had an itsy-bitsy heart attack, which was described by his doctors as “the smallest possible heart attack that a person could have that could still be classified as a heart attack”; one of his coronary arteries was “about 90 to 95 percent blocked.”
| |
| November 21, 2000 | - Shobha Guruputrayya Sutturmath, a 14-year-old girl in the Indian village of Maradur, was attracting attention for her ability to cry stones; doctors concluded that Shobha was slipping small stones under her eyelids, which then fell out to the amazement of all.
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| November 14, 2000 | - Jodie and Mary, a pair of Siamese twins in Britain, were separated pursuant to a court order which concluded that Mary, being “incapable of independent existence,” was “designated for death.” Jodie was doing fine; doctors said they might put a mirror next to her to lessen the loss of her sister. Mary “sadly died,” the hospital said, “despite all the best efforts of the medical team.” It was unclear what the team hoped to accomplish; she had no heart, no lungs.
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| November 14, 2000 | - Herpes virus 8, which causes Kaposi's sarcoma, a skin cancer that commonly afflicts AIDS
patients, may be spread by kissing, according to a new study.
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| November 7, 2000 | - Questions emerged about the safety of Lotronex, a drug used to treat irritable bowel syndrome; in its first eight months on the market, five patients died, several had surgery on their bowels, one colon was removed entirely, and forty-nine people came down with ischemic colitis, which can kill.
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| October 31, 2000 | - The House of Representatives voted to establish retirement homes for chimpanzees who have been the subject of medical experiments.
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| October 10, 2000 | - A baby was born who was bred in a test tube and genetically selected to be compatible with his sister, who received a stem-cell transplant that might save her from leukemia.
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| September 26, 2000 | -
Britain's Task Force on Near Earth Objects issued a report calling for the establishment of an early warning system to help protect the earth from a collision with a major asteroid, 900 of which are in orbits that cross the earth's; an encounter with any one of them could destroy civilization.
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| September 19, 2000 | - Former Indonesian president Suharto, whose son has been implicated in the recent bombings, called in sick again for his corruption trial; the court ordered medical tests to determine his true state of health.
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| September 19, 2000 | -
New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani was treated for cancer; doctors implanted radioactive seeds in his prostate.
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| September 19, 2000 | - A study by the American Veterinary Medical Association concluded that Rottweiler dogs now kill more people than do pit bulls.
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| September 5, 2000 | - The Supreme Court issued an emergency stay preventing California from allowing the medical use of marijuana.
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| September 5, 2000 | - Some 7,000 Chinese
bears were being farmed for bile on 247 licensed bear farms: farmers insert a tube into a live bear's gall bladder to extract the bile, which is sold as a traditional medicine.
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| August 15, 2000 | - The National Rifle Association accused the Democratic Party of wanting to destroy the Second Amendment.
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| August 1, 2000 | -
Scientists discovered that extreme pain suffered by infants, who once routinely underwent surgery without anesthesia, may have long-term neurological effects.
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| July 25, 2000 | - In California, a federal judge ruled that the government had failed to present convincing arguments against the medical use of marijuana.
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