Health

Michael Jackson spent his final night alive in his favorite spot on Earth: the stage. At Staples Center on Wednesday night, the performer did a full run-through of his planned comeback concert. He and his company -- dancers, musicians, singers, aerial performers, choreographers and costumers -- planned to fly to England early next week for dress rehearsals at London's O2 Arena, the site of the superstar's 50-night sold-out run. By lunchtime Thursday, Jackson was in cardiac arrest.

For a country in which roughly 200 million people are overweight or obese, scientists today have discouraging news: Even those who maintain a healthy weight probably should be eating less. Evidence has been mounting for years that the practice of caloric restriction -- essentially, going on a permanent diet -- greatly reduces the risk of age-related diseases and even postpones death. It has been shown to significantly extend the lives of yeast, worms, flies, spiders, fish, mice and rats.

More than 200 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center were inappropriately exposed to high doses of radiation from CT brain scans used to diagnose strokes, hospital officials told The Times on Friday. About 40% of the patients lost patches of hair as a result of the overdoses, a hospital spokesman said. Even so, the overdoses went undetected for 18 months as patients received eight times the dose normally delivered in the procedure, raising questions about why it took Cedars-Sinai so long to notice that something was wrong.

An old childhood disease reared its head in Minnesota last year, infecting five young children and killing one of them, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The outbreak, of a disease known as "Hib" for short, is the latest of several contagious diseases making encore appearances after having been all but vanquished through immunization.

When Ruth Burns had surgery to relieve a pinched nerve in her back, the operation was supposed to be an "in-and-out thing," recalled her daughter, Kacia Warren. But Burns developed pneumonia and was put on a ventilator. Five days later, she was discharged -- only to be rushed by her daughter to the hospital hours later, disoriented and in alarming pain. Seventeen days after the surgery, the 67-year-old nurse was dead.

With the death toll climbing, Mexican authorities at the center of an international swine flu epidemic struggled Monday to piece together its lethal march, with attention focusing on a 4-year-old boy and a pig farm. The boy, who survived the illness, has emerged as Mexico's earliest known case of the never-before-seen virus, Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said Monday. It provides an important clue to the unique strain's path. The boy lived near a pig farm run by a U.S.

Even as the birth of octuplets at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center drew attention and applause from around the country, questions arose Tuesday about whether the mother's doctors did enough to prevent such a risky pregnancy. The chances that the eight babies born Monday were conceived naturally are infinitesimal, infertility specialists and doctors in maternal-fetal medicine say.

In recent days, U.S. security officials have been urged, vehemently at times, to close the border with Mexico. Cruise lines have canceled stops along that country's coast. France asked the European Union to halt flights there. And one European health official even suggested that travel to the United States be avoided. But here's the problem with such attempts to stop, or slow, the spread of the new H1N1 flu strain: Viruses don't grasp the concept of borders.

It was Easter weekend when people in Oaxaca noticed strange happenings at the state-run Dr. Aurelio Valdivieso General Hospital. Sections were suddenly off-limits. Security guards were added. The cop reporter at the local newspaper, El Diario Despertar, got a tip from a source at the hospital. Not above dressing its journalists up as paramedics, the paper sent two people to investigate. They quickly realized that the hospital was seized by alarm.

Influenza is widespread in most of the United States, with the incidence continuing to increase in some states and to decline very slightly in others, the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. The infections are "overwhelmingly" pandemic H1N1 influenza, commonly known as swine flu. The flu season generally lasts well into May, so many months of uncertainties lie ahead, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, speaking at a morning news conference. Shipments of intranasal swine flu vaccines to providers have begun, and vaccinations began Monday in several states, with a priority for healthcare providers and young children.