[NatureNews] A long-sought loosening of Japan’s guidelines on human embryonic stem-cell research came into effect on 21 August. But some say the new rules are too little, too late for a struggling field that was once a source of national pride.
On the surface the previous guidelines, set in 2001, were permissive. They allowed scientists to [...]

The seamy underside of the organ transplant business made the news recently when Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, a Brooklyn businessman, was arrested on accusations of trying to broker the purchase of a kidney for $160,000.
That the organ shortage is so great in this country that people are resorting to buying and selling kidneys is not a surprise; [...]

Scripps research prompts potential concerns
[San Diego Union Tribune] Scientists in San Diego and in other parts of California are working on numerous projects related to stem cell research, and some of that research is showing promise, at least in the early stages. At a time when the state’s finances are bordering on distress, this research [...]

A third man has died of pneumonic plague in north-western China where a town of more than 10,000 people has been sealed off, officials say.

 
[BBC] The 64-year-old man was a neighbor of the first two people to die from the plague in Ziketan in Qinghai Province.
Police have set up checkpoints around Ziketan, as medics are [...]

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Visiting the Cleveland Clinic this week,President Obama held up that well-known hospital as a model for the rest of the country. But for most of the nation’s nearly 6,000hospitals, copying the Cleveland Clinic would be like asking the Durham Bulls, a minor league team, to copy the New York Yankees.

Articles in this series are analyzing [...]

Congress can encourage competition within an increasingly important class of prescription drugs.
[Washington Post] With a name like the Affordable Health Choices Act, you’d think the health-care reform bill that passed the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this month would have made an effort to provide affordable health choices. But instead, the bill includes [...]

[NPR] In a widely watched case in Florida this week, a jury ruled that a hospital acted “reasonably” when it sent an undocumented immigrant who had no health insurance back to his native Guatemala. The case highlights a rare but growing problem, and it could affect how hospitals treat such patients in the future.
The case [...]

Donors may get up to $10,000, an amount critics say could induce women to take unnecessary medical risks.
 
[American Medical News] The board that administers New York’s stem cell research funding program recently approved using state money to pay women who donate fresh oocytes for an experimental technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, also known as [...]

 
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida [Reuters] – A Canadian astronaut aboard the International Space Station said on Sunday it looks like Earth’s ice caps have melted a bit since he was last in orbit 12 years ago.
Bob Thirsk, who is two months into a planned six-month stay aboard the station, said he is mostly in awe when he looks [...]

[NYT] Baseball scouts are agog over Miguel Sano’s hands — strong, supple and deft. But he still had to place them under a bone-scan machine, just in case.
Sano, a shortstop roundly considered the best unsigned prospect from the talent-rich Dominican Republic, twice underwent such a procedure to help assess whether he actually is 16 years old [...]