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Gene Variant That Increases Ovarian Cancer Risk Discovered
By searching millions of DNA variations in the genomes of thousands of women with and without ovarian cancer, scientists have discovered a
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Labs Are Vital™ Announces Winners Of 2009 National Video Contest To Highlight Careers In Lab Sciences
Labs Are Vital™ announced that a 2009 high school graduate from northern California, Kelly Peterson, is the grand prize winner of its national video contest. High school students around the country submitted their views on video about why careers in the clinical lab sciences are vital.
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London Health Service Begins Offering Rapid HIV Tests
Barts and the London NHS Trust has become the first National Health Service provider in the United Kingdom to offer rapid, oral HIV tests, BBC News reports. Officials hope that the service will increase the number of people who seek testing because requirements of giving blood and waiting for test results are eliminated with the rapid tests. Barts will offer the rapid, oral tests in non-health care settings such as outreach centers. In addition, sexual health workers hope to be able to offer the test in night clubs in the future. About 200 people in Barts clinics have received rapid tests since March, and officials hope to test 250 people monthly. Merle Symonds, the sexual health adviser at the trust, said the message that HIV is a treatable disease has not "filtered through and stigma does remain around HIV, even if it is waning." Lisa Power of the Terrence Higgins Trust -- an HIV/AIDS organization that also offers rapid, oral tests -- said that a major problem surrounding HIV/AIDS in the United Kingdom is that many people are not aware of their status. She added, "Anything we can do to increase the take-up of testing is welcome, and we think what Barts is doing is fantastic."According to BBC News, the United Kingdom has the largest number of people living with HIV in Western Europe, with men who have sex with men accounting for 41% of new cases. BBC News reports that approximately one-third of HIV-positive people in the country are not aware of their status (BBC News, 5/20).
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Some Governors Oppose Medicaid Expansion Proposals

"Some governors are pushing to scale back or kill proposals to expand Medicaid to provide health-care coverage to the uninsured, raising a new challenge to President Barack Obama"s effort to overhaul the system," The Wall Street Journal reports. Health care proposals in the House and Senate "would expand the program to cover at least a third of the nation"s 46 million uninsured, but states are worried they would get stuck with a big part of the tab." Medicaid is "expected to be a primary topic" when a group of governors -- "including Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington and Republican Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi" -- head to Washington, D.C., this week "to discuss health care with White House and congressional officials." "In private meetings, Senate Democrats working on health care have assured the governors that the federal government will assume all the costs for the expansion at first, followed by a transition to shared responsibility. House Democrats are pressing to have the federal government take on the full cost permanently. The governors say their states aren"t likely to ever return to the tax receipts they saw before the recession, much less the higher receipts they would eventually need to cover the cost of expanding Medicaid to people with incomes as high as 150% of the poverty line." The Journal reports that on CNN"s "State of the Union," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said changing the Medicaid rate would cost California between $1 billion and $5 billion a year at a time when the state is already in fiscal crisis. "Now how could I support that? ... It would take down the state" (Weisman, 6/23). This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org. © Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.


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