A drug that could do for women what Viagra has done for men is being tested at the University of Virginia. The drug is a testosterone-laden ointment called LibiGel and it's intended to boost the libido of women who have lost interest in sex. It will be prescribed at UVa in coming months to women who are suffering from hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

The condition is believed to affect one-third of American women.

"It is the most common sexual problem that women...

Angel

It's called eco-anxiety — free-form worry triggered by concerns about the worsening fate of the planet — and if you suffer from it, you might want to give Lester Brown's new book, Plan B 3.0, a pass. Brown — the president of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental think tank — paints a comprehensive and depressing picture of the planet, with ream after ream of dire statistics. Here's just a handful: Arctic summer sea ice shrinkage increased by 9.1% a decade between 1979 and...

Angel

It's no longer a surprise that many surgeons are reconsidering their career options.

• 25-40 percent of 1,302 physicians are "seriously thinking of leaving medical practice altogether1
• 63 percent of 1,302 physicians would not recommend clinical medicine as a career to their children2
• 31 percent of 1,100 young physicians (under 40) "would not become a physician again"3
• surgery contains the

...

Angel

The great-grandparent of all human blood cells has been identified. And if could lead to new treatments for blood cancers and other blood diseases.

Researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine isolated the cell - called the multipotent progenitor – which fills an important gap in the human blood cell family tree. It is the first offspring of the bone marrow stem cell.

The scientists isolated the human progenitor cell by grouping blood cells according to...

Angel

BMJ 2006;332:1341 (3 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7553.1341-a - Link

Clinical myths

I realise now that much of the teaching I received (and much I have given) has actually been rather dishonest. The true variation of disease presentations and the low predictive value of any one of the clinical features were never explained. We were taught "classical" presentations. The pictures in the books—like rashes in a dermatology textbook—were gross examples (in every...

Angel