“Medicine” on The Daily Caller

Dick Cheney has a new heart (okay, not new but rather “pre-owned,” in the parlance of the used car trade), and his picture is all over the news. He’s doing well, the transplant team is high-fiving one another and another load of cash has cascaded through the transplant industry ($997,700 is the average U.S. cost of a replacement heart). (more)

The following is an excerpt from “The Undead: How Medicine is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death” (Pantheon Books). (more)

A new survey in the Archives of Internal Medicine has found some potentially disturbing results. When faced with certain hypothetical treatment scenarios, doctors were more likely to recommend treatments with higher risk of death, but less severe side-affects, when told to imagine themselves as the patient. (more)

For a brief time earlier this month, the National Cancer Institute, a branch of the federal government’s National Institutes of Health, had posted a webpage touting the possible benefits of marijuana in fighting cancer tumors. But less than two weeks after it went up, the webpage was altered and the approving words stricken. (more)

So much for John Wayne and the masculinity of yore. More men than ever before are getting cosmetic surgery, according to new statistics from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). (more)

Doctors at a Boston hospital last week performed the first full face transplant in the United States, attaching a donor face to a 25-year-old Fort Worth man whose face was severely burned when his head touched a high-voltage line three years ago. (more)

With all the worries over radiation leaks from Japan, and hoarding of potassium iodide tablets, many people might be surprised to learn that they will get more radiation from eating a single banana today than they will from Japan’s nuclear reactor problems. (more)

In late January, Obama administration officials announced that they were very concerned about the slow pace of new drugs coming from the pharmaceutical industry. They should be concerned. The number of new chemical entities (NCEs) launched in recent years is near historic lows. And there are many unmet medical needs for which no therapies are available or on the horizon. (more)

Neil Lansing was arrested Friday on a petty theft charge. When he appeared in court, a judge ordered him to jail. (more)

An unnamed British woman has died from medical complications after flying to the states for an illegal backroom buttock-enhancement procedure, reports the New York Daily News. (more)

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration will evaluate brain-controlled prosthetic arms in a new program designed to bring innovative medical devices to market faster. (more)

Last week the federal government released its official 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the last step in a process that’s repeated every five years. (more)

Although the U.S. Senate voted along partisan lines Wednesday to defeat repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — it overwhelmingly on the same day voted to repeal one of the provisions that has proven most burdensome to entrepreneurs: the mandate for business to file IRS 1099 reports on any purchase over $600. (more)

As Valentine’s Day approaches and married people take a moment to express their boundless and eternal love for their spouse by buying chocolates made in faraway China a romantically long time ago, they tend to take pity on single folk. They imagine a vast tribe of female lonely hearts roaming an emotional Sahara, confounded by mirages that look like marriage-minded men. But according to what may be the biggest study of single people ever, that image is, like the enthusiasm for the chocolate, quite false. (more)

Go Red for Women has been helping fight cardiovascular disease–the number one killer of females, even greater than all cancers combined–since 2004, empowering women everywhere to understand their risks and take action to prevent potential heart disease. They’ve designated the first Friday in February (ie, tomorrow!) “National Wear Red Day,” and they’re asking people all across the country to show their support and help raise awareness for their fundraising efforts to get all dolled up in the hot hue. (more)

On Monday, in a Manhattan town house that once belonged to polio’s most famous victim, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bill Gates made an appeal for one more big push to wipe out world polio. (more)

Lakewood Regional Medical Center last week joined a small but growing number of Southern California hospitals that allow patients to make emergency room appointments online. In exchange for a fee, instead of sitting in a waiting room wondering how long they’ll have to wait, users can show up at the assigned time with the assurance they will be seen within 15 minutes or get their money back. (more)

If it wasn’t so sad, it would be funny. The brain trust at the Consumers Union doesn’t seem to be able to see the consequences of their actions. (more)

Reporting from Washington — (more)

Teenage deaths caused by drug and alcohol abuse are bound to be covered by local papers, and usually ignored by the national media, unless that notoriously fruity beverage Four Loko is somehow involved. (more)