Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs
by ilene - January 16th, 2010 5:03 pm
Interesting list on medical breakthoughs – with my comments in red. – Ilene
TIME’s Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs
By Alice Park at TIME
And the top ten are:
- New Mammography Guidelines
- AIDS Vaccine
- Funding Ban Lifted on Stem-Cell Research
- H1N1 Vaccine
- Stem-Cell-Created Mice
- Prostate-Cancer Screening
- New Research on Autism
- New Drug for Osteoporosis
- New Alzheimer’s Genes
- Brown Fat in Adults
It usually takes a Washington scandal to put the discussion of women’s breasts on political agendas, but in November it was a routine update of breast-cancer-screening guidelines by a government panel of medical advisers that stirred up a furor. Based on new calculations weighing the risks and benefits of routine screening, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s new recommendations advised women to begin routine mammograms at age 50 instead of 40 and to switch from yearly to biennial screenings; it also advised women to eliminate breast self-exams altogether…
That might be a bit of a relief to those of us who have been less than perfect in following the previous requirements, these new ones may be easier and less guilt-generating. And we all know stress is unhealthy.
In a field that has seen more failure than success, experts received the news of an effective new AIDS vaccine with a fair share of skepticism…
31% effective – but that’s about as good as it gets so far.
Funding Ban Lifted on Stem-Cell Research
It was eight years in coming — which felt like eons to some researchers — but on March 9, President Obama rescinded his predecessor’s Executive Order prohibiting the use of federal money to fund research on stem cells. A congressional law still prevents scientists from using government funds to create new lines of embryonic stem cells,..
The less politics is involved with science the better, maybe now we can move on?
…In many places around the country, there was not enough vaccine even to cover members of priority groups targeted by the government, including young children, pregnant women, health care workers, parents of infants younger than 6 months and those with underlying conditions such as asthma or diabetes. And yet according to the latest polls, 55% of Americans said they would not get the new vaccine — which was created and tested in record time after H1N1 first appeared last