SCIENCE

Perhaps it wasn't sex workers and fast-growing cities that launched HIV onto its deadly global rampage, but well-meaning doctors using dirty needles in the first half of the 20th century.

Health insurers should be able to exclude most federal taxes, but not all, in calculating spending rates to meet new healthcare law requirements, an insurance advisory group has proposed.

Efforts to prevent suicides among U.S. war veterans are failing, in part because distressed troops do not trust the military to help them, top military officials said on Thursday.

Abbott Laboratories posted a list of lot numbers on Thursday for the millions of recalled containers of its Similac powdered infant formulas and expanded Internet and call center capacity to handle a deluge of requests for information from concerned parents.

Nearly one in five gay and bisexual men in 21 major U.S. cities are infected with HIV, and nearly half of them do not know it, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.

Many people have difficulty falling asleep, others can't stay asleep the desired amount of time and others report they toss and turn all night hardly sleeping at all. According to the National Institute of Health this is called problem sleepiness that has many causes and has unwanted consequences.

The lack of clean drinking water and sanitation in the world's poorest nations threatens U.N. goals to cut poverty and disease, and raises the risk of conflict, leaders and aid groups said on Wednesday.

Virtually all U.S. states can quickly activate and staff emergency operations centers, receive and investigate urgent disease reports around the clock and quickly communicate with other laboratories, according to a federal report released on Tuesday.

U.S. health regulators knew that Johnson & Johnson's McNeil unit was using a contractor to buy back potentially faulty batches of Motrin, although there was no formal agreement with the government, lawyers for the company told lawmakers.

Pregnant women with epilepsy, particularly those on anti-seizure medications, may have higher rates of cesarean section and heavy bleeding after delivery than other women, a new study finds.

President Barack Obama launched a new attempt to convince Americans of the advantages of his healthcare overhaul on Wednesday, just six weeks before an election in which the plan has proved more of a liability than a benefit for his fellow Democrats.

Many Americans this week are finally getting to try on for size the Affordable Care Act. September 23 marks, just for starters, the end of lifetime payment caps as well as the expansion of parents' benefits to childrenunder 26. Insurers can also no longer cancel coverage if a policyholder falls sick.

Restoring levels of a nerve-protecting enzyme offers a new approach to developing treatments for Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

Malaria appears to have jumped to humans from gorillas, and the parasite may have spread globally from a single gorilla to a single human, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The raised risk of cancer in people using insulin decreases over time, a large study showed, Novo Nordisk, the world's biggest maker of insulin, said on Thursday.

Researchers in India have developed a genetically modified potato that is packed with up to 60 percent more protein and increased levels of amino acids.

Pregnant women who were around New York's World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001, attacks didn't have a higher risk of giving birth to premature or low-weight babies, researchers said on Tuesday.

Scientists have found that an enzyme is responsible for the death of nerve cells after a stroke and say an experimental drug that dramatically reduced brain damage in mice may also offer hope for humans.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced on Tuesday a U.S. contribution of some $50 million toward providing clean cooking stoves in developing countries to reduce deaths from smoke inhalation and fight climate change.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will announce on Wednesday a $40 billion launch to a plan to save the lives of 16 million women and children over the next five years, U.N. officials said.

Chances are slim to none that the U.S. will meet its public health goal of sharply reducing the number of obese adults by this year, according to federal health officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The worldwide costs of dementia will reach $604 billion in 2010, more than one percent of global GDP output, and those costs will soar as the number of sufferers triples by 2050, according to a report on Tuesday.

Cyber-bullying may be even harder on the victims than physical beatings or name-calling, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

Armed with a fake tan, government-funded researchers have found they can get women to cut back on sunbathing.

U.S. doctors increasingly are ditching pen and paper and sending prescriptions to pharmacies electronically, lured by up to $27 billion in government funds aimed at speeding the switch to electronic medical records.

The first genetically modified animal aimed at consumers' dinner plates faces an uncertain future following a federal advisory panel on Monday that gave a mixed assessment on whether such food -- a salmon -- is safe to eat.

Scientists have found a region of DNA that can increase or decrease the high chance of breast cancer linked to a particular gene variant - a finding that could help doctors keep a closer eye on women most at risk.

Researchers who discovered a hormone intimately linked to obesity, who found a protein linked to a common form of blindness and who worked on genetic blood diseases won the 2010 Lasker awards on Tuesday.

U.S. inspections of overseas pharmaceutical plants would increase and regulators would gain new recall power under proposals unveiled by Democrats in the House of Representatives on Monday.