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Reuters - Like many other elderly Americans, Edie Stark has been hard hit by the meltdown in U.S. financial markets. She is 84 and has been worried a lot lately about outliving her savings.

AFP - Pfizer has dropped its bid to market its potency pill Viagra over the counter in Europe, the US pharmaceutical giant announced Thursday.

AFP - The Roman Catholic church on Thursday said it has sufficient support in the Philippine congress to defeat a controversial family planning bill promoting sex education and the use of contraceptives.

Reuters - Banning fast-food advertising on television in the United States could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 percent, researchers said on Wednesday.

AP - Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz, a cardiac surgeon who performed the nation's first human heart transplant and who also developed lifesaving medical implants, has died. He was 90. Kantrowitz died Friday in Ann Arbor of complications from heart failure, said his wife, Jean Kantrowitz.

AFP - School pupils throughout Europe will soon be offered free fruit every week under an EU initiative agreed Wednesday to improve children's health and tackle obesity.

AP - Doctors have given a woman a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own stem cells, eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs. "This technique has great promise," said Dr. Eric Genden, who did a similar transplant in 2005 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. That operation used both donor and recipient tissue. Only a handful of windpipe, or trachea, transplants have ever been done.

AP - Doctors have given a woman a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own stem cells, eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs. "This technique has great promise," said Dr. Eric Genden, who did a similar transplant in 2005 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. That operation used both donor and recipient tissue. Only a handful of windpipe, or trachea, transplants have ever been done.

Reuters - A 4,600-year-old grave in Germany containing the remains of two adults and their children provides the earliest evidence that even prehistoric tribes attached importance to the family unit, researchers said on Monday.

Reuters - U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, battling a life-threatening brain tumor, returned to the Senate on Monday for the first time since July and pledged to work next year to expand health care for all Americans.

AP - What was left of Dan Sivia's ankle simply didn't work. He limped through his 30s by sheer force of will, one foot almost completely immobile from repeated broken bones and surgeries. Then a doctor offered his last hope: An ankle replacement. A what? Sivia knew about hip, knee, even shoulder replacements. But ankles?

AP - What was left of Dan Sivia's ankle simply didn't work. He limped through his 30s by sheer force of will, one foot almost completely immobile from repeated broken bones and surgeries. Then a doctor offered his last hope: An ankle replacement. A what? Sivia knew about hip, knee, even shoulder replacements. But ankles?

AP - What's the healthiest city in America? It appears to be Burlington, Vt.

AP - If breast cancer runs in the family, women can be at high risk even if they test free of the disease's most common gene mutations, sobering new research shows.

Reuters - Psychological group therapy for women with breast cancer may help them not only to cope better with their disease but also live longer, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

AP - As a portly woman plodded ahead of him on the sidewalk, the obese mayor of America's fattest and unhealthiest city explained why health is not a big local issue.

AP - As a portly woman plodded ahead of him on the sidewalk, the obese mayor of America's fattest and unhealthiest city explained why health is not a big local issue.

AP - Florence Wald, a former Yale nursing dean whose interest in compassionate care led her to launch the first U.S. hospice program, has died. She was 91.

AFP - An Australian scientist who developed a vaccine for cervical cancer is set to outline a breakthrough which could pave the way for a skin cancer vaccine, reports said Sunday.

AFP - Designers of anti-obesity drugs have suffered three major setbacks, but the potential reward from treating the world's fat epidemic is so great that their quest is unlikely to be deterred.

AP - Li Xiaokai died of kidney failure on the old wooden bed in the family farmhouse, just before dawn on a drizzly Sept. 10.

Time.com - A new study says that elderly short sleepers with high blood pressure are at particular risk for heart attack and stroke

AP - A research panel has concluded that federal research has not adequately tackled finding treatments for veterans afflicted by a collection of symptoms commonly called Gulf War illness. This even as potentially hundreds of thousands of veterans continue to suffer nearly two decades since the end of the conflict.

AP - A research panel has concluded that federal research has not adequately tackled finding treatments for veterans afflicted by a collection of symptoms commonly called Gulf War illness. This even as potentially hundreds of thousands of veterans continue to suffer nearly two decades since the end of the conflict.

Time.com - A new study says that elderly short sleepers with high blood pressure are at particular risk for heart attack and stroke

AP - An increasing number of countries worldwide are making spreading HIV a crime, according to a new report from the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

AP - An American man who suffered from AIDS appears to have been cured of the disease 20 months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant normally used to fight leukemia, his doctors said.

AP - The same kind of deep brain stimulation used to treat some patients for Parkinson's disease also helped a few people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, French scientists reported.

AP - Turns out men and women really are different at heart: New research finds that heart transplant patients have better odds of survival and a lower risk of rejection if they get organs from donors of the same sex.

AP - An American man who suffered from AIDS appears to have been cured of the disease 20 months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant normally used to fight leukemia, his doctors said Wednesday.

Reuters - A large European study has confirmed that simple measurements of the waist and hips may offer a better way of predicting obesity-related death than a standard, but more complicated, system of relating weight to height.

HealthDay - TUESDAY, Nov. 11 (HealthDay News) -- In earlier wars, it was known as shell shock. In later military combat -- Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan -- the emotional scars veterans brought back with them got new names for old problems: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, substance abuse.