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Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick
WICHITA, Kansas (CNN)

She found her husband on their bed in a pool of his own vomit, dead from an accidental overdose of drugs he received from an online pharmacy.

Every night before her husband went to bed, he would open a prescription bottle of the muscle relaxant Soma and swallow the eight or nine pills it took for him to fall asleep, said the woman. She spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because she wants to protect her husband’s identity and not embarrass his family.

The drugs arrived at their doorstep every week. She thought they were being prescribed by a treating physician. Her husband had been in a car accident and suffered back pain, and Soma was the one drug that could relieve the aches. She was wrong. Read more

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Posted by markw, filed under Health. Date: May 22, 2008, 3:33 pm | No Comments »

DNA paternity tests
After two decades, Sean Reid of Surrey, British Columbia, discovered that he had a son. Fred Turley of Des Plaines, Ill., learned he didn’t have a daughter. And Wendy Lieb of Lewis Center, Ohio, made certain she wasn’t going to be a grandmother quite yet. In all three situations, crucial genetic information altered the lives of the people involved. And in each case, it came not from a doctor or other medical source, but from a $29.99 kit on a drugstore shelf. Reid, Turley and Lieb are among more than 800 customers who responded to the first wave of marketing for do-it-yourself DNA paternity tests sold as Identigene by Sorenson Genomics of Salt Lake City. More

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Posted by markw, filed under Science. Date: May 10, 2008, 5:10 am | No Comments »