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Recent congressional and public attention has focused on access problems at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, which provides medical care to servicemen and women once they have left active duty in a time of war or an official period of hostility. Although investigators note that improvements are under way, they say the VA has a long way to go. With this article

Nearly , active-duty personnel and reservists who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan’s Operation Enduring Freedom have been eligible for VA health care since healthhealth. More than health, have sought it out so far, the Congressional Budget Office reported in October.

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Pharmaceutical researchers are testing 92 medicines and vaccines to treat or prevent HIV/AIDS and related conditions, according to a report released by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

December 1 marks the 20th anniversary of “World AIDS Day” — a global awareness campaign that originated at the 1988 World Summit of Ministers of Health on Programmes for AIDS Prevention.

“We are greatly encouraged by the new, critically-important medicines and vaccines in development to treat and prevent HIV infection,” says PhRMA President and CEO Billy Tauzin.

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The biotechnology company Celgene said Sunday that it would pay $2.9 billion in cash and stock to acquire Pharmion, strengthening Celgene's cancer drug portfolio and its distribution in Europe.

It is one of the first big acquisitions for Celgene, a company most known for reviving the drug thalidomide, which caused birth defects in the 1950s and 1960s, as an effective cancer treatment.

Celgene's biggest-selling drug is Revlimid, a derivative of thalidomide intended to be more potent and have fewer side effects.

The acquisition will help Celgene expand from mainly an American company to a global one. Pharmion distributes Celgene's thalidomide in Europe under the brand name Thalomid.

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Schering-Plough Corporation has announced that it has completed the acquisition of Organon BioSciences N.V., creating a stronger combined company with broader human and animal health portfolios, an enhanced pipeline and increased R&D capabilities. Schering-Plough’s agreement to acquire Organon BioSciences was announced on March 12, 2007.

“By bringing together complementary businesses, we will be growing even stronger and even better in our people, products and science,” said Fred Hassan, chairman and chief executive officer, Schering-Plough Corporation. “The promise of this combination is profound.

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PARIS: The volume of greenhouse gases emitted by industrialized nations rose to near-record levels in 2005, the United Nations said Tuesday, two weeks before political leaders meet in Bali, Indonesia, to agree on a road map for negotiations on a new global treaty to fight climate change.

Among the nations responsible for the rising trend was the United States and a number of former Soviet bloc countries that advanced economically without restraining their pollution levels, said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“The story is that emissions are going up in a worrying way,” de Boer said.

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Two teams of scientists are reporting Tuesday that they turned human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without having to make or destroy an embryo — a feat that could quell the ethical debate troubling the field.

All they had to do, the scientists said, was add four genes. The genes reprogrammed the chromosomes of the skin cells, making the cells into blank slates that should be able to turn into any of the 220 cell types of the human body, be it heart, brain, blood or bone.

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Patricia used to approach the holidays with an overwhelming sense of dread, because she never knew what her alcoholic brother might do to ruin them. As Thanksgiving floral arrangements gave way to sparkling Christmas ornaments and the drone of holiday music, her stomach would clench more each day and her mood would grow darker.

“Some years were just awful,” she recalls. “So often my brother would show up drunk and make a scene at family gatherings. He’d scare his kids, embarrass his wife, and break my mother’s heart over and over again. One year he got arrested a week before Christmas for driving under the influence and for disorderly conduct.

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OA offers a spiritual solution to compulsive overeating

“I did not enter my first meeting with hope,” recalls one member of Overeaters Anonymous. “I entered with despair. But I left with hope, because it was the first time in my life that I realized or heard that I was not morally imperfect, that I was not weak-willed, that I was not some defect. I had a disease—the disease of compulsive overeating.”

These words capture some core principles of Overeaters Anonymous (OA). One is that its members have an abnormal relationship with food. Another is that no plan for healing this relationship can succeed when it’s based on personal willpower alone.

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There are two benefits from recovery: we have short-term gains and long-term gains.

The short-term gains are the things we can do today that help us feel better immediately.

We can wake up in the morning, read for a few minutes in our meditation book, and feel lifted. We can work a Step and often notice an immediate difference in the way we feel and function. We can go to a meeting and feel refreshed, talk to a friend and feel comforted, or practice a new recovery behavior, such as dealing with our feelings or doing something good for ourselves, and feel relieved.

There are other benefits from recovery, though, that we don’t see immediately on a daily or even a monthly basis.

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SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF. Energy conservation can be simple, but it has a big impact. If every home in the United States replaced just one incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), the energy saved would prevent greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to taking more than 1 million cars off the road, says Arthur Rosenfeld, a physicist and member of the California Energy Commission. He also says that if Americans achieved a 2 percent reduction in energy use each year for the next 30 to 40 years - a feasible rate - we would be halfway to stabilizing our greenhouse-gas emissions. “What many people don't realize is how easy conservation is,” says Rosenfeld.

MAKE SURE “OFF” IS OFF.

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