The small clinic at Kaival Hospital in India matches infertile couples with local women, cares for the women during pregnancy and delivery, and counsels them afterward. These surrogate mothers, pioneers in the growing field of outsourced pregnancies, have given birth to roughly 40 babies. Now more than 50 women in this city are pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Taiwan, Britain and beyond.
New York has one of the most far-reaching mental health statutes in the country. It gives great latitude to doctors, social workers and relatives to force mentally ill people into treatment, and it provides money for clinical services. Just how far states can go to get mentally ill people into treatment is a key issue in Virginia, which is struggling with changing its mental health system after a mentally ill gunman shot and killed 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech in April before killing himself.
In a place where doctors are delivering some of the world's most advanced medicine, art plays an important role in the healing process. At Children's Hospital in Washington, DC, art therapists involve kids in everything from puppet shows to dance, to exhibits of the works they create.
Children and teens diagnosed with type 2 diabetes are five times more likely to develop kidney disease later in life than those who develop diabetes as adults, a recent study found. The findings underscore the importance of preventing the onset of type 2 diabetes, doctors say.
Three female neurosurgeons who currently or formerly worked at Brigham and Women's Hospital have filed discrimination complaints against the new chairman of the department, Arthur Day, MD. Sagun Tuli, MD, a spine neurosurgeon at the hospital since 2000, filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination last month and a gender, color, and national origin discrimination lawsuit in federal court this month, asserting that Day asked her at a hospital dinner in 2004 if she would "get up on the table and dance for us to show the female residents how to behave?"
Plastic surgery has become mainstream--almost 11 million procedures were performed in the U.S. in 2006, up 7 percent from the previous year. The vast majority were performed on women, with breast augmentation and nose reshaping leading in popularity. Doctors say that anxiety about the response is common among patients and that they can expect comments that are not of the you-look-fabulous variety.