The world will not meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goals — which include reducing the burden of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by 2015 — unless wealthy nations increase their international aid budgets, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday at the release of a U.N. report on the goals, [click link for full article]

Possible new directions for the treatment of endometriosis, a painful condition associated with infertility that affects up to 15% of women of reproductive age, were outlined in the presentation of two experimental studies at the 23rd annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. Both concern targeting angiogenesis - the formation of new blood vessels — which encourages endometriosis by providing a rich blood supply.Dr. [click link for full article]

People with epilepsy are three times more likely to commit suicide than the general population, conclude authors of an Article published early online and in the August edition of The Lancet Neurology. The study also found that women with epilepsy were more likely to commit suicide than men with the condition, and people diagnosed with epilepsy in the previous six months were at an even higher risk of committing suicide. [click link for full article]

CMS on Friday sent letters to three hospitals in Texas, Minnesota and Indiana informing them that they have 30 days to submit plans to overhaul their heart transplant programs or risk losing Medicare funding, the Los Angeles Times reports. A fourth hospital, [click link for full article]

Acting CMS Administrator Leslie Norwalk on Monday discussed the agency’s newly announced pilot program targeting Medicare billing fraud committed by medical equipment companies in South Florida and Southern California, the two areas where the problem is believed to be most severe, the Miami Herald reports (Dorschner, Miami Herald, 7/3). [click link for full article]

CMS on Monday proposed reducing Medicare physician payments by 9.9% in 2008, Dow Jones reports. However, acting CMS Administrator Leslie Norwalk in a statement noted, “For the past five years, Congress has intervened to prevent the implementation of the negative updates resulting from this formula” (Mantell, Dow Jones, 7/2). [click link for full article]

In the war against food allergy, a vital molecule has been identified as a potential target for therapy.There is currently no way to treat food allergy and the only way for sufferers to manage the problem is to avoid certain foods and make sure they have injectable adrenaline at hand.Scientists led by Dr Claudio Nicoletti at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich have found that a molecule called Interleukin-12 (IL-12) is absent during allergic responses. [click link for full article]

After the Trinity nuclear test in New Mexico, what were the radiation exposures to nearby residents whom the government did not realize were there? On a scale of 1 to 7, what have international scientists rated nuclear incidents such as Three Mile Island and Chernoby? What strategies are agencies [click link for full article]

In what they call a ’stunning research advance,’ investigators at Georgetown University Medical Center have been able to use simple, non-toxic chemical injections to add and remove fat in targeted areas on the bodies of laboratory animals. They say the discovery, published online in Nature Medicine, could revolutionize human cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery and treatment of diseases associated with human obesity. [click link for full article]

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have published new research in the journal Development showing an unexpected link between a fundamental part of the immune system and the cells that produce milk in the breast during lactation.The researchers, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), found that cytokines, which have a central role in immune response, are used in the breast to promote the production of milk producing cells. [click link for full article]