A mother says her son has emerged from what doctors thought was a vegetative state to say he was fully conscious for 23 years but could not respond because he was paralyzed.

Parents who thought their preschoolers were spending time in home-based day cares, taking naps, eating healthy snacks and learning to play nicely with others may be surprised to discover they are sitting as many as two hours a day in front of a TV, according to a study published Monday.

Lawmakers broke along party lines on a new aspect of the health care debate Sunday as a former National Institutes of Health chief urged women to ignore guidelines that delay the start of breast cancer screenings.

A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun.

The former director of the National Institutes of Health is advising women to ignore new guidelines that delay the start of routine mammogram testing for breast cancer.

Republicans are seizing on this week's recommendations for fewer Pap smears and mammograms to fuel concern about government-rationed medical care -- and to try to chip away support by women for President Barack Obama's proposed health care overhaul.

Marines treated at Camp Lejeune for post-traumatic stress had to undergo therapy for months in temporary trailers where they could hear bomb blasts, machine-gun fire and war cries through the thin walls, according to servicemen and their former psychiatrist.

Four North Carolina patients at a single hospital tested positive for a type of swine flu that is resistant to Tamiflu, health officials said Friday.

A Pennsylvania university's requirement that overweight undergraduates take a fitness course to receive their degrees has raised the hackles of students and the eyebrows of health and legal experts.

The White House is on a collision course with Catholic bishops in an intractable dispute over abortion that could blow up the fragile political coalition behind President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

Several doctors groups and advocacy groups set guidelines for cancer screening, and they update that advice periodically as new information emerges. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they don't. Last year, a number of groups got together and issued consensus guidelines for colon cancer.

Two days before shipping off to war, Marine Pfc. Jesse Sheets sat inside a trailer in the Mojave Desert, his gaze fixed on a computer that flashed a rhythmic pulse of contrasting images.

First mammograms. Now -- in an apparent coincidence -- Pap smears.

In a Nov. 17 story about drug interactions between heartburn medications and the blood thinner Plavix, The Associated Press misidentified Johnson & Johnson's Mylanta as part of the H-2 blocker drug family. Mylanta is an antacid.

Babies squirmed and wailed as needles plunged into their chubby thighs at a public health clinic on the outskirts of Hanoi on Friday. Like little ones everywhere, the reaction to the sting was never pretty.

When the nation's swine flu vaccination program began in early October, health officials predicted it was going to be "messy." They were right.

China's health ministry said it will punish officials who underreport cases of swine flu after a doctor famous for exposing the extent of the 2003 SARS epidemic said he believes the true number of swine flu deaths is being covered up.

The first county-by-county survey of obesity reflects past studies that show the rate of obesity is highest in the Southeast and Appalachia. High rates of obesity and diabetes were reported in more than 80 percent of counties in the Appalachian region that includes Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to the new research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Federal health experts on Thursday brushed off lingering safety questions about a popular inhaler drug and suggested it carry bolder benefit claims.