Week in Review...

Some stories that have caught our interest over the past week:

NYTimes: The Search for the Female Equivalent of Viagra -- Even in the most sexually liberated and self-satisfied of nations, many people still yearn to burn more, to feel ready for bedding no matter what the clock says and to desire their partner of 23 years as much as they did when their love was brand new...

NYTimes - Vital Signs - Referrals: Few Breast Surgeons Steer Patients to Reconstruction

A large proportion of breast surgeons never refer their patients to a plastic surgeon for reconstruction, a new study reports.

Researchers surveyed 365 surgeons with 1,844 patients in Detroit and Los Angeles in 2002. Only 24 percent of surgeons referred more than three-quarters of their patients for plastic surgery, and 44 percent referred fewer than one-quarter.

Over all, fewer than 20 percent of breast cancer patients undergo breast reconstruction, according to background information in the article, which appeared online March 26 in the journal Cancer. To read on, click here.

Washington Post - Women Under-Treated for Ovarian Cancer: Ovarian cancer is one of the most lethal cancers women can get, yet one out of three U.S. patients diagnosed with the disease doesn't get the full, recommended surgical treatment, a new study finds.

"It's very concerning that we see such a large proportion of women with ovarian cancer not being treated up to what we would consider a minimal standard for surgery," said the study's lead author, Dr. Barbara A. Goff, director of the division of gynecologic oncology at the University of Washington, Seattle. For the rest of the article, click here.

Sex is the future for growing bodily tissues on scaffolding -- Stem cells, which have the ability to grow into different kinds of tissue, are being investigated for their potential to help sufferers of diseases and conditions such as diabetes and Parkinson's.

Now experts from the University of Pittsburgh in the US have found that female stem cells manage to regenerate skeletal muscle more effectively than male cells.

They believe their findings could also provide clues on the differences between men and women with regards to ageing and disease.

A Study published in the Journal of Cell Biology, is the first to report a difference between the sexes on the regenerative capabilities of muscle stem cells. To continue reading, click here.

Euronews: UK woman loses appeal over embryos -- A British woman has lost a legal battle to have children using frozen embryos fertilised by her former partner, who no longer wants her to have his baby.

The European Court of Human Rights' final court of appeal, the Grand Chamber, upheld an earlier rejection of Natallie Evans' submission that her human rights were infringed by British court rulings which said her former fiance Howard Johnston was entitled to block her use of the embryos.

The European court said there had been no violation of the right to life, the right to respect for private and family life enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, or of the prohibition of discrimination. To read on.

LA Times: Potential organ donor was wrongly declared brain-dead --The error raises concerns about the medical care of those who have promised their organs for transplants.

A man whose family agreed to donate his organs for transplant upon his death was wrongly declared brain-dead by two doctors at a Fresno hospital, records and interviews show.

Only after the man's 26-year-old daughter and a nurse became suspicious was a third doctor, a neurosurgeon, brought in. He determined that John Foster, 47, was not brain-dead, a condition that would have cleared the way for his organs to be removed, records of the Feb. 21 incident show.

"It kind of blew my mind," said the daughter, Melanie Sanchez, "like they were waiting like vultures, waiting for someone to die so they could scoop them up." Rest of the story here.

NYTimes:
2007: A Face Odyssey -- An article about phobic attitudes towards aging and dying and how women are striving for an immortal-cyborg-android beauty.

Aging: Disease or Business Opportunity? For four days last December, America’s pleasure dome in the desert, Las Vegas, played host to a convention dedicated to the proposition that growing old is “a treatable medical condition.”