Health Glance
It has been prescribed since 1978 and reports of the ingredient sodium valproate causing birth defects such as spina bifida go back almost as far. FACS is believed to have affected up to 20,000 babies – ten times more than Thalidomide.
FACS is, Dr Turnpenny points out, less dramatic than the missing and distorted limbs caused by Thalidomide, but the neurological effects are far worse. ‘About ten per cent of foetuses exposed to sodium valproate will have a major congenital malformation such as cleft palate. Twelve per cent are likely to be diagnosed with a neuro-developmental disorder.’
In what may be a ground-breaking decision, the Italian Court of Rimini has ruled that causation between an MMR vaccine and the resulting autism in a young child “has been established.”
The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy.
A woman who lost the use of her limbs after a devastating stroke nearly 15 years ago has taken a sip of coffee by guiding a robotic arm with her thoughts.
Who would think that sunscreen causes cancer? It has been only a fairly recent development, but it still could cause some serious shock and awe when everyone figures out that conventional sunscreen found in drugstores nationally could be a potential risk factor for skin cancer. Sunscreens are made to protect and help your body, so why are we finding out that sunscreen causes cancer? It could be simply widespread ignorance, or it could be that the FDA has kept this secret under wraps for at least a decade.
Bacteria, viruses and parasites cause around two million cases of cancer in the world each year, experts believe. Of the 7.5 million global deaths from cancer that occurred in 2008, an estimated 1.5 million may have been due to potentially preventable or treatable infections.
