Bill and Melinda Gates appealed to more than 300 malaria scientists and policy makers at a forum Wednesday to take the risky step of seeking to eradicate the disease worldwide instead of just keeping it under control.

A goal of anything short of eradication would be unethical and a bad business decision, despite unsuccessful efforts to stamp out the disease in the 1950s and 1960s, Melinda Gates said.

"It's a long-term goal; it won't come soon," she said, "but...

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A test that looks for the virus found in 99 percent of cervical tumors is far more effective than a Pap smear for detecting the early stages of cervical cancer, Canadian researchers said on Wednesday.

The test for the human papillomavirus, or HPV, found 95 percent of cases in which women had potentially pre-cancerous changes in the cervix. This compared to 55 percent of Pap smears, the team at McGill University in Montreal found.

"We're proposing to go straight...

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Two drug-resistant "superbugs" are becoming more common across the United States including one that causes hard-to-treat ear infections in children, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Another, called methicillin-resistant staph aureus or MRSA, killed an estimated 19,000 Americans in 2005 and made 94,000 seriously ill, according to one report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Michael Pichichero and Dr. Janet Casey, both of the University...

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