Antidepressants could ruin the ecosystem

While antidepressants are made to improve people's mental health, the opposite reaction seems to be occurring in shrimp, which become five times more likely to commit suicide when exposed to the drug fluoxetine.

Shrimp who show normal signs of behavior typically swim away from the light due to the fact that birds and fisherman are usually waiting to catch them in well-lit open areas. But when shrimp come in contact with fluoxetine in the water, they begin to swim toward the light putting themselves in harms way.

Forget the age-old remedies of yoga, meditation or popping pills. Relieving chronic stress could soon be as simple as having an injection, according to scientists.

Academics say they are close to developing the first vaccine for stress - a single jab that would help us relax without slowing down.

Dendreon Inc.’s $93,000 price tag for its Provenge prostate cancer treatment must be covered under the rules of the U.S. Medicare health plan, according to a letter submitted by the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the government agency that determines which treatments will be reimbursed, is required by the Social Security Act to pay for all cancer drugs approved by U.S. regulators, the cancer society said in a public letter submitted to the agency.

The number of 11 and 12-year-old girls prescribed the pill by a family doctor has soared five-fold in the past decade, according to figures.

More than 1,000 girls in the first year of secondary school have been given prescriptions for the pill, according to figures from GPs, while a further 200 have long-term injectable or implanted contraceptive devices.

The disclosure prompted warnings that Britain was “facilitating the sexualisation of young people at an every younger age”.

The world's major pharmaceutical corporations are collectively known as Big Pharma. Like other globalised corporate giants, Big Pharma has in recent years accrued massive power in shaping regulation of business to suit their own interests. They will be sniffing around Gleneagles in July, claiming to support efforts to tackle disease and HIV/AIDS in Africa, but the profit motive comes first. The political influence of Big Pharma has serious implications for populations in both rich and poor countries, for distinct reasons.