United States Health

In Room 4-180 of the University of Minnesota's Weaver-Densford lecture hall, a student is prone on a padded table with four long needles protruding from her right calf. Welcome to a medical school that has decided it's time to teach students that Western medicine isn't the only way to heal. The guest lecturer--registered nurse and acupuncturist Colet Lahoz--examines the heart and small intestines by pressing her fingers on the left wrist of the student, who has complained of chronic leg pain.

It is the fastest-growing "alternative" in a nation increasingly enchanted with unconventional and unproven treatments. A million or more Americans have lately tried St. John's wort, an herbal remedy for depression with 1998 retail sales estimated at $400 million--up 3,900% since 1995.

At a public hospital in Minneapolis, a physician leads a half-dozen medical students in a discussion on spirituality and health. Posing a question that might have been unthinkable in this secular setting only a few years ago, a student asks, "Is it OK to pray with a patient?" At a strip mall in Sedona, Ariz., a mecca of the New Age, an Illinois woman who underwent surgery and radiation therapy for a brain tumor visits a naturopath.

In tall, stainless-steel vats that look like they belong in a microbrewery, Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks is brewing up batches of what could be a new anti-obesity drug--a naturally occurring human protein now being tested in patients. At a plant in Nutley, N.J., Hoffmann-La Roche hopes to begin mass-producing a new diet pill called Xenical, the first chemical of a class that blocks the uptake of fats from the gut--cutting calories even without a change in diet.

Even the poorest and least educated members of society can be taught to eliminate or reduce the behaviors that lead to the spread of HIV, according to the first large examination of such efforts in the United States. The federally sponsored team studied 3,706 men and women clients of 37 sexually transmitted disease clinics, including several in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties.

An estimated 160,300 people in the United States will die of lung cancer in 1998. That's more than from breast, colorectal and prostate cancer combined. Here are the estimated number of deaths resulting from lung cancer by state. Alabama: 2,800 Alaska: 200 Arizona: 2,600 Arkansas: 2,200 California: 13,700 Colorado: 1,500 Connecticut: 1,900 Delaware: 600 Dist.

Obesity experts predicted Thursday that new government guidelines on weight--millions of Americans had awakened to the grim news that they had been transformed overnight from fit to fat--could backfire.

A survey published in the Annals of Internal Medicine finds that 87% of surgeons and 94% of internists across the country believe that it's time to consider gunshot wounds a public health epidemic--akin to AIDS, alcoholism and tobacco use. Doctors should play a more active role in trying to prevent the injuries, an accompanying position paper says, whether it's supporting more stringent gun-control legislation or simply taking time to counsel patients.

Strokes hit about 200,000 more Americans a year than commonly believed, according to a new study that tried to correct previous research by looking at black neighborhoods instead of just well-to-do white communities. The study suggests that about 700,000 Americans a year suffer strokes--or about 40% more than the usually accepted estimate. The study's authors said it more accurately reflects the nation's ethnic diversity as well as the frequency of second and third strokes among survivors.

The number of AIDS deaths in the United States dropped 44% in the first half of 1997 compared to the same period in 1996, with Los Angeles and New York City showing even greater declines. According to the figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Monday, the number of new AIDS cases dropped 12% during the same period, although the number of people living with AIDS rose 12% to 259,000.