A professor of surgery says students have spent so much time in front of screens and so little time using their hands that they have lost the dexterity for stitching or sewing up patients. Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College, London, says young people have so little experience of craft skills that they struggle with anything practical.
Abbot Laboratiories AbbVie Inc will pay a total of US$25 million to resolve allegations that Abbott paid kickbacks to doctors in exchange for prescribing the cholesterol drug TriCor and promoted the medication for unapproved purposes.
Microplastics have been found in human stools for the first time, suggesting the tiny particles may be widespread in food. The study by researchers in Austria examined eight participants (from the UK, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, Japan and Russia). All of their stool samples were found to contain microplastic particles.
The Scottish government has confirmed a case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) on a farm in Aberdeenshire. Movement restrictions have been put in place at the farm, while further investigations are carried out, the government said in a statement.
Eleven heads of the world’s leading health and development organizations signed in Berlin a landmark commitment to find new ways of working together to accelerate progress towards achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Coordinated by the World Health Organization, the initiative unites the work of 11 organizations, with others set to join in the next phase.
A Chinese vaccination firm has been fined US$ 1.3bn after it was found to have illegally produced the human rabies vaccine. Changchun Changsheng had blended different batches of vaccine fluid and used expired fluid to produce some of the batches, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Australian Wildlife officials are investigating a suspected dog attack in Tasmania, after 58 penguins were found mauled to death. A member of the public alerted rangers to the dozens of penguin bodies strewn across a beach on the north coast of Australia's island state.
Women whose left index and ring fingers are different lengths are more likely to be lesbians, a study suggests. Scientists measured the fingers of 18 pairs of female identical twins, where one was straight and the other gay.
The United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) is delighted to reveal details of the quintet who will live and work at Port Lockroy on a remote island off the Antarctic Peninsula during the 2018/19 Austral Antarctic summer (November – March).
Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft, has died aged 65 from complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He had revealed the disease's return only two weeks ago, after previously being treated for it in 2009. Allen had said he and his doctors were optimistic about treatment.