AP - Republicans are seizing on this week's recommendations for fewer Pap smears and mammograms to fuel concern about government-rationed medical care — and to try to chip away support by women for President Barack Obama's proposed health care overhaul.

AP - Marines treated at Camp Lejeune for post-traumatic stress had to undergo therapy for months in temporary trailers where they could hear bomb blasts, machine-gun fire and war cries through the thin walls, according to servicemen and their former psychiatrist.

AP - A preliminary report commissioned by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops on the roots of the clergy sex abuse scandal found no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children, the lead authors of the study said Tuesday.

AP - Four North Carolina patients at a single hospital tested positive for a type of swine flu that is resistant to Tamiflu, health officials said Friday.

AP - Federal regulators have accused four people and two companies of fraud in an alleged $30 million Ponzi scheme that lured 300 investors nationwide in purported eco-friendly investments.

AP - When the nation's swine flu vaccination program began in early October, health officials predicted it was going to be "messy." They were right.

Reuters - A woman's risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS) during her lifetime is doubled if she was obese at age 18, new research shows.

HealthDay - THURSDAY, Nov. 19 (HealthDay News) -- A spray touted as the first potential treatment for premature ejaculation has proved effective in a second study, according to the company that developed it.

Reuters - Past the security man and his pit bull and through a haze of eye-watering smoke, two youths load up a pipe next to a row of shiny glass jars with two dozen varieties of marijuana bud displayed like candy.

AFP - Beaten or sexually abused children are more likely to show accelerated ageing of cells later in life, a condition linked to higher rates of cancer and heart disease, according to a study released Friday.

HealthDay - THURSDAY, Nov. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Seniors who eat plenty of fruits and vegetables and who have good cognitive function are much less likely to die from heart disease than those who have poorer cognitive function and eat fewer fruits and vegetables, a new study has found.

AFP - Women should not get their first cervical cancer screening before age 21, the leading US group of women's health care professionals said Friday, also recommending less frequent subsequent tests.

AFP - Days after controversy erupted over new breast cancer screening guidelines, a US health group has said women should wait longer to get their first cervical cancer test.

AP - Babies squirmed and wailed as needles plunged into their chubby thighs at a public health clinic on the outskirts of Hanoi on Friday. Like little ones everywhere, the reaction to the sting was never pretty.

AP - When Robin Webb lived in New York City, he was treated by HIV specialists and had access to counseling and nutritional programs. Now he lives in Mississippi, where few of those services exist.

AP - The first county-by-county survey of obesity reflects past studies that show the rate of obesity is highest in the Southeast and Appalachia. High rates of obesity and diabetes were reported in more than 80 percent of counties in the Appalachian region that includes Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to the new research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

HealthDay - FRIDAY, Nov. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Children born to women who take folic acid in late pregnancy are at increased risk for asthma, Australian researchers say.

HealthDay - THURSDAY, Nov. 19 (HealthDay News) -- While rates of obesity are climbing across America, they are especially high in sections of Appalachia and the Southeast, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports in its first county-by-county survey.