A surgeon and technician from a Mayo Clinic in Florida flying across the northern corner of the state to retrieve a heart for transplant died Monday in a helicopter crash that also killed the pilot, officials said.
The helicopter departed the clinic in Jacksonville around 5:45 a.m. but never arrived at the Gainesville hospital, Shands at University of Florida, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) to the southwest, said Kathy Barbour, a spokeswoman for Mayo, which is based in Rochester, Minnesota.
Full StoryAround 1,000 Dutch women were given potentially risky breast implants made by a French company and should see their doctors, a health watchdog said Tuesday.
Sold under the brand name "M-Implants" the product was made by Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), Dutch health authority inspectorate spokeswoman Diane Bouhuijs said.
Full StoryChina has discovered excessive levels of a cancer-causing toxin in milk produced by one of the nation's leading dairy companies, the firm said, in the latest in a series of food safety alarms.
The government's quality watchdog found high levels of an aflatoxin, which is caused by mold, in milk produced by the Mengniu Dairy Group, the company said in a statement issued Sunday.
Full StoryIndonesia is investigating the case of an Australian who is believed to have been infected with HIV while getting a tattoo on the resort island of Bali, an official said Monday.
"We received a report about this case from the health ministry yesterday and officials will be visiting tattoo parlors today to verify this claim," Bali health department chief Nyoman Sutedja told AFP.
Full StoryMore than 1,600 people who filed lawsuits claiming that their health was ruined by dust and smoke from the collapsed World Trade Center must decide by January 2 whether to keep fighting in court, or drop the litigation and apply for benefits from a government compensation fund.
For some, the choice is fraught with risk.
Full StoryThree times Hasrat Bibi gave birth. Each time her baby died before reaching the outside world. After the third, she was left a social outcast and unable to have more children, but in Afghanistan her story is all too familiar.
Bibi first fell pregnant as a teenager 22 years ago. Her body may have been too young to cope with nine months carrying a child, but she was living in a society where motherhood is considered a woman's primary, if not sole purpose.
Full StoryInterpol on Friday issued a "red notice" seeking the arrest of Frenchman Jean-Claude Mas, founder of the breast implant company at the center of a widespread women's health scare.
Mas, 72, whose picture appears on the Interpol website, is listed as being sought in Costa Rica for offences concerning "life and health."
Full StoryEva Peron, the glamorous first lady of Argentina in the 1940s and 50s, may have been given a secret lobotomy shortly before her death at age 33, scientific researchers said in a new report.
The study, published on the website of the academic journal World Neurosurgery, adds a new twist to the existing enigmas over Peron's agonizing death and subsequent burials.
Full StoryA 9-year-old autistic boy who misbehaved at school was stuffed into a duffel bag and the drawstring pulled tight, according to his mother, who said she found him wiggling inside as a teacher's aide stood by.
The mother of fourth-grader Christopher Baker said her son called out to her when she walked up to him in the bag Dec. 14. The case has spurred an online petition calling for the firing of school employees responsible.
Full StoryWalmart has pulled infant formula from the shelves of its 3,000 stores after two babies in Missouri got sick and one of them died, the retailer said Thursday.
Health officials have not yet determined whether the bacterial infection which sickened the newborns was linked to the powdered formula, but Walmart said it was pulling the product "out of an abundance of caution."
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