[Trust.org] The Syrian regime is conducting a campaign of unrelenting repression against people wounded in demonstrations and the medical workers trying to treat them, the international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders) said today.
While MSF cannot work directly in Syria, it has collected testimonies from wounded patients treated outside the country [...]

[NYTimes]- Last October, in Foshan, China, a 2-year-old girl was run over by a van. The driver did not stop. Over the next seven minutes, more than a dozen people walked or bicycled past the injured child. A second truck ran over her. Eventually, a woman pulled her to the side, and her mother arrived. [...]

[National Journal] In an address that barely mentions health care, President Obama hits on the message heard repeatedly from the health care industry: If you want more jobs, don’t cut off federal funding.
Obama implores Congress not to “gut” investments in research, so American can maintain its spot as a world leader in medical innovation. That [...]

[The Body] There’s a new drug trade in town: selling HIV medications. In Washington Heights, a Manhattan neighborhood, officials are seeing a growing number of HIV-positive individuals selling their meds. This growing trend of trading health for much-needed cash isn’t new, but it illuminates how a crippling economy and disproportionate poverty impacts people living with HIV.
Trading [...]

[WSJ] The quest to harness the power of DNA to develop personalized medicine is on the threshold of a major milestone: the $1,000 genome sequencing.
Life Technologies Corp., a Carlsbad, Calif., genomics company, plans to introduce Tuesday a machine it says will be able to map an individual’s entire genetic makeup for $1,000 by the end [...]

(PharmPro / AP) — Following fatal shootings in two New York pharmacy robberies, a U.S. senator is warning that a new batch of “super painkillers” now under review could force repeats of recent violent robberies that left six people dead.
“It’s tremendously concerning that at the same time policymakers and law enforcement professionals are waging a [...]

[Thomas V. Berg, hprweb]  My experience as a teacher, counselor and confessor has repeatedly confirmed that there is a tremendous amount of confusion, especially among Catholics, about the nature of moral conscience.  That experience has also taught me just how sensitive this topic is. Want to make a group of people immediately uncomfortable? Start talking [...]

BERKELEY —  Emotional differences between the rich and poor, as depicted in such Charles Dickens classics as “A Christmas Carol” and “A Tale of Two Cities,” may have a scientific basis. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that people in the lower socio-economic classes are more physiologically attuned to suffering, and quicker [...]

[msnbc.com] Researchers have created a remarkable portrait of life for those with Down syndrome — and the people who love them.
Through the  lens of a series of surveys conducted by Children’s Hospital Boston, the Down syndrome experience looks far different — and far happier — than the one most of us are used to picturing.
Most [...]

[NYT] WASHINGTON — The Obama administration issued new standards on Monday that require health insurance plans to cover all government-approved contraceptives for women, without co-payments or other charges.
The standards, which also guarantee free coverage of other preventive services for women, follow recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences and grew out of the new health [...]