U.S. Cancer Deaths Drop
for 2nd Year in a Row
Declines seen in lung,
breast, prostate and colorectal malignancies, report says
The number of cancer
deaths in the United States has dropped for the second year
in a row, the first such decreases since researchers started
keeping national statistics more than 70 years ago. The most recent decline
was much larger than the year before with 3,014 fewer deaths
reported between 2003 and 2004, compared to 369 fewer deaths
from 2002 to 2003. "This second consecutive
drop in the number of actual cancer deaths, much steeper
than the first, shows last year's historic drop was no
fluke," John R. Seffrin, chief executive officer of the
American Cancer Society, said in a prepared statement.
Child Weight-Loss Surgeries More Popular
As the popularity of stomach surgery has
skyrocketed among obese adults, a growing number of doctors
are asking, "Why not children, too?"
For decades, the number of kids trying weight-loss surgery
has been tiny. The operations themselves were risky, with a
death rate of about 1 in 50. Children rarely got that fat,
and when they did, pediatricians hesitated to put the
developing bodies under the knife. Only 350 U.S. kids had
such an operation in 2004, according to federal statistics.
But improvements in surgical technique and huge increases in
the number of dangerously obese children have begun fueling
a change of heart.
A group of four hospitals, led by Cincinnati Children's
Hospital Medical Center, are starting a large-scale study
this spring examining how children respond to various types
of weight-loss surgery, including the gastric bypass, in
which a pouch is stapled off from the rest of the stomach
and connected to the small intestine.
Sex of any kind can harm teens emotionally
Teenagers often suffer emotional
consequences from having sex, even when it's "only" oral
sex, a study published recently suggests.
Researchers at the University of
California San Francisco found that up to one-half of the
sexually active teenagers in their study said they'd ever
felt "used," guilty or regretful after having sex.
Though such feelings were less common
among teens who'd only had oral sex, about one-third
reported some type of negative consequence.
Dr. Sonya S. Brady and Bonnie L.
Halpern-Felsher report the findings in the journal
Pediatrics.
The study, according to the researchers,
suggests that parents should be sure to talk with their kids
about the potential negative effects of having oral sex, not
only intercourse.