When London marathon medical director Sanjay Sharma was called to attend someone who had collapsed with suspected cardiac arrest a mile from the finish line last month, he expected to find a man in his seventies.
“I had to hide my horror as I saw a young, athletic woman,” he says. “I had to … compose myself for a few seconds before we started resuscitation.”
Lying on the ground was 30-year-old Claire Squires, whose sudden death, along with those of Italian footballer Piermario Morosini and Norwegian Olympic swimmer Alexander Dale Oen, has …

WASHINGTON – Sunscreen confusion won’t be over before summer after all. The government is bowing to industry requests for more time to make clear how much protection their lotions really offer.
The Food and Drug Administration ordered changes to sunscreens last summer but gave their makers a year – until this June – to get revised bottles on the shelf.
The changes aimed to finally distinguish which brands protected against both sunburn-causing ultraviolet B rays and the deeper-penetrating ultraviolet A linked to skin cancer and premature aging. They also couldn’t claim to …

Bone-strengthening drugs such as Merck & Co. (MRK)’s Fosamax, used to treat and prevent osteoporosis in older women, may have little long-term benefit, U.S. regulators said in an analysis of previously released studies.
Research from the Food and Drug Administration, published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, renews a debate about whether use of the drugs after more than three to five years provides any protection against the risk of bone fractures. The agency has been evaluating the safety of the treatments since 2007 and last September an advisory …

The FDA says Truvada, which has been used for years to help manage HIV, appears to be safe and effective in preventing the virus that causes AIDS.
WASHINGTON — A pill that has long been used to treat HIV has moved a step closer to becoming the first drug approved in the U.S. to prevent healthy people from becoming infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that Gilead Sciences’ Truvada appears to be safe and effective for HIV prevention. It concluded that taking the pill …

South Korea has seized thousands of smuggled drug capsules filled with powdered flesh from dead babies, which some people believe can cure disease.
- 07 May 2012 -
The capsules were made in northeastern China from babies whose bodies were chopped into small pieces and dried on stoves before being turned into powder, the Korea Customs Service said.
Customs officials refused to say where the dead babies came from or who made the capsules, citing possible diplomatic friction with Beijing.
Chinese officials ordered an investigation into the production of drugs made from dead fetuses …