Kids in poverty have less parent time: census
American children living in poverty or in single-parent homes have less interaction with their parents and are more likely to have trouble at school than youths in wealthier, two-parent homes, according to a report released on Thursday.
The U.S. Census Bureau report, “A Child’s Day: 2003,” looked at factors that affect the well-being of American youngsters, only the third time the agency has studied issues affecting children.
Pakistan promotes birth control to slow birth rate
Faced with the prospect of its population doubling to over 300 million people in the next 40 years, Pakistan on Thursday launched a project to promote contraception in urban and industrial areas.
“This initiative has the potential for a major breakthrough in our efforts to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice in inculcating responsible parenthood,” Population and Welfare Minister Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain told reporters in Islamabad.
Prostate cancer treatment may shorten penis
Men who receive combination treatment with hormone therapy plus radiation for local or locally advanced prostate cancer may experience a significant reduction in penile length, according to a report in the January issue of the Journal of Urology.
There has been anecdotal evidence that radiation therapy can reduce penile length but, to the authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first to determine if penile length changes following combination treatment with hormone therapy plus radiation.
Drugmakers to pay for FDA review of TV ads
Drugmakers will have to pay $6.25 million in new fees next year to help fund a U.S. Food and Drug Administration review of television commercials for their products, the agency said Thursday Pharmaceutical companies have been warned in the past about misleading claims.
The advertising plan accompanies an agreement for proposed legislation to renew industry funding for FDA drug reviews through 2012. The FDA also receives money from the federal budget.
Young asthmatics reliably describe health status
The results of a study published in the medical journal Pediatrics indicate that children as young as 7 years old can dependably report on their asthma health status.
“Whether to collect patient-reported data (such as health status or health-related quality of life) from parents or children is an important question in both pediatric research and clinical practice,” Dr. Lynn M. Olson, of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Elk Grove Village, Illinois, and colleagues write.
The secret women keep from themselves
Do women have a secret so painful that they even keep it from themselves?
According to Dr. Anita H. Clayton of the University of Virginia Health System, the secret exists, and it’s big. In an era when so many women are over-achievers with high expectations for almost every area of their lives, too many of them settle for mediocre sex.
Dr. Clayton, who is one of the world’s preeminent experts on women’s sexuality and a psychiatrist with the University of Virginia Health System, exposes and explores this secret in her new book, Satisfaction: Women, Sex, and the Quest for Intimacy, which is scheduled for release by Ballentine/Random House in mid-January.
