Michael Smith

WASHINGTON -- Computer giant Microsoft is surfing into the health-care information field with a free service that allows consumers to store their medical information online.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Afluria was approved today by the FDA as the sixth seasonal influenza vaccine on the U.S. market. Manufactured by Australia's CSL Limited, the company will produce about two million doses for this year's flu season.

ELIZABETH, N.J. -- Nearly two dozen illnesses from frozen hamburgers apparently tainted with Escherichia coli O157:H7 have prompted a meat company to recall more than 300,000 pounds of beef.

This MedPage Today video features senior staff writer Michael Smith sitting down with Larry Pickering, M.D., an infectious diseases specialist at the CDC, and Janet Englund, M.D., of the University of Washington in Seattle, to discuss America?s day-care centers and how new vaccines attribute to a safer environment.

NEW YORK -- In the wake of a recall in Europe of nelfinavir (Viracept) because of a potentially carcinogenic impurity, Pfizer has issued new guidelines for the anti-retroviral drug's use in the U.S., the FDA reported.

MINNEAPOLIS -- American military physicians at Guantanamo are acting in ways that seem reminiscent of those of doctors who fronted for the South African apartheid regime a generation ago, alleged 266 doctors and ethicists.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The FDA has approved lanreotide acetate (Somatuline) for the treatment of the rare endocrine disorder acromegaly.

HYATTSVILLE, Md. -- The U.S. death rate fell to a historic low in 2004 and the life expectancy at birth hit a record high, according to the National Center for Vital Statistics here.

DENVER -- Controversial TB patient Andrew Speaker is a free man -- declared non-contagious, released from the hospital, and given medical clearance to fly on commercial aircraft without posing any risk to fellow travelers.

DENVER -- In a surprising turn of events, the tuberculosis that turned Andrew Speaker into an international cause celebre was misdiagnosed, physicians said today.

DENVER -- Andrew Speaker, the focus of the storm over extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, will have surgery next month to remove part of his lung, doctors here announced.

ATLANTA -- The Georgia man with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) who sparked an international hunt for contacts is asymptomatic and feeling well, officials said today.

ATLANTA -- For the first time in four decades, the CDC has quarantined a man as a public health risk, the government announced today. The Georgia man is infected with extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB).

BETHESDA, Md. -- The bumpy road to an HIV vaccine is leading researchers to try non-traditional avenues and to consider vaccines that -- unlike the classic paradigm -- would offer only partial protection.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- Sixteen years after activist Erin Brockovich first suggested that hexavalent chromium in drinking might be a health hazard, a federal scientific panel has agreed with her.

ATLANTA -- If a flu pandemic materializes, Americans should avoid crowds and close contact, rather than relying on facemasks and respirators, the CDC said today.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- A vaccine against the H5N1 avian flu has been approved by the FDA.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The FDA has given a thumbs up to a topical antibiotic treatment for impetigo in children who are nine months or older.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The FDA has warned all hospitals about a possible unanticipated fallout from an act of Congress -- the three-week-early shift to daylight savings time. All medical events triggered by computer clocks could chime an hour out of whack on Sunday.

LOS ANGELES -- After more than 25 years of battling HIV and AIDS, the U.S. is lagging behind other industrialized nations, said researchers here.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The FDA announced today that concerns about toxicity had led it to rescind two indications for the antibiotic Ketek (telithromycin).

ATLANTA -- Much like the power of hurricanes, future influenza pandemics will be rated on a demonstrated case fatality rate as they spread to shore, with a scale of increasingly drastic recommended defenses, the CDC said today.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- For the second time, efforts to create a topical microbicide that would protect against HIV transmission during sex have ended in failure.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- All health-care workers should be required to get a flu shot every year, unless they formally refuse in writing, the Infectious Diseases Society of America said today.

PHILADELPHIA -- Asthma mortality rates are declining worldwide, largely due to increased use of inhaled corticosteroids to manage the disease. That was the conclusion of an international group of researchers, who presented data on world trends at a 2006 meeting here.

NEW YORK -- In front-page news articles on successive days, the New York Times accused Lilly of a campaign to promote off-label use of Zyprexa, its anti-psychotic medication, while systematically downplaying the drug's side effects. Lilly denied the allegations.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Federal investigators said today they are still not sure what's behind the outbreak of Escherichia coli-associated disease at Taco Bell restaurants, even though the chain suspects green onions and has pulled them off its menu.

ATLANTA -- Just because doctors may not have received supplies of flu vaccine yet does not mean there is a shortage, the CDC said today.

ATLANTA -- An HIV test should be a routine part of health care for all Americans between the ages of 13 and 64, not just those thought to be at high risk for the disease, the CDC said today.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The FDA has approved the first completely automatic test that both screens for the presence of hepatitis B and confirms it.