Medicine

With hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles operating in violation of a moratorium, the City Council will start the process of shutting some down Tuesday by voting on exemption requests filed by 16 dispensaries. Most, if not all, of the requests probably will be denied because the dispensaries did not register with the city by the moratorium's deadline in 2007. A denial would allow the city to take legal steps to force them to close.

The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research. The nation's largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD. In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.

For thousands of years, humans have sipped, swallowed and chewed endless remedies to soothe frayed nerves: fermented ales in medieval Europe, coca tea and tobacco in the ancient Americas, and kava kava concoctions in the South Pacific, to name a few. For the last century or so, with varied success, researchers have tried to perfect the packaging of anxiety relief into a simple little pill. In the 1800s in the U.S.

For busy people, time is money. And when you've got more money than time, the cost of an executive physical examination is kind of like the price of a yacht. If you have to ask, you can't afford it. Tom Gilmore arrived at L.A.'s Good Samaritan Hospital on a bright Friday morning, sporting a dark blue Nike warmup suit the hospital had sent.

Whether it's jazz, blues or a bracing Finnish folk song, music may do more than soothe nerves and inspire a little air guitar. It may help stroke victims recover specific verbal and cognitive functions. In a six-month study of 60 recent victims of stroke ages 35 to 75, researchers in Finland found that exposure to music for at least one hour a day improved verbal memory by 60%, compared with an 18% improvement among participants listening to audiobooks.

At Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, the announcement Friday that construction would soon begin on a $43-million research and nursing school building did more than lift spirits around the campus. It gave the medical school an opportunity to boast about a number of firsts. The building represents the largest investment in South Los Angeles in decades.

When a relative discovered Sharon Waldorf's 64-year-old mother dead in her Paramount home, Waldorf asked her mom's physician about an autopsy. "The doctor didn't want us to do it," she recalls. Waldorf's mother had been in and out of the hospital that year with a series of strokes and seizures, and the doctor was confident that a stroke had killed her. Besides, the doctor said, an autopsy would cost several thousand dollars and insurance wouldn't pay. Waldorf and her two sisters insisted.

The owner of six Los Angeles-area medical marijuana dispensaries was arrested by federal agents Tuesday after an investigation sparked by a traffic accident in which a motorist allegedly high on one of the dispensaries' products plowed into a parked SUV, killing the driver and paralyzing a California Highway Patrol officer. In the aftermath of the Dec.

Weight loss surgery works, but is so invasive and has such unpleasant long-term side effects that it's recommended for only a fraction of the obese population, and even many in that group are reluctant to undergo the surgery. In hunting for a simpler and safer alternative, researchers have zeroed in on a nerve that carries much of the communication between brain and gut.

When the Fort Collins police arrested James and Lisa Masters and carted away their 39 marijuana plants, they put the plants where they normally put confiscated property involved in alleged crimes: the evidence room. And there they sat, without a grow lamp, water or pruning. A year later, the case against the Masterses -- who claimed they used the drug for medical purposes -- fell apart, and a judge ordered the police to return their property.