Hi-tech medical scanners could be used to probe causes of death, reducing the need for invasive autopsies that can upset bereaved families, a study published in The Lancet on Tuesday says. In Britain, post-mortems are ordered in about a fifth of deaths, notably where crime is suspected. The procedure has changed little over the past century, entailing evisceration and then dissection of the major organs.

Keen to find whether a non-invasive alternative could be used, researchers tested frequency magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computed tomography (CT) scanners in 182 adult deaths where the corpse was afterwards given an autopsy. Autopsy was not needed in a third of cases that had been imaged by fMRI and in half of the cases imaged by CT, according to the study.
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Pakistani authorities, already under pressure to help hundreds of thousands of flood victims, are struggling to contain dengue fever which has killed at least eight people, officials said on Wednesday. Around 4,400 cases of the mosquito-borne disease have been reported in the central Punjab province over the past two months, forcing the provincial government on Tuesday to close down schools for 10 days.

Most of the cases have been reported in Lahore, the provincial capital, where about 2,950 people tested positive.”So far, eight people have died of dengue. We are trying our best to control this epidemic,” Jehanzeb Khan, secretary of the provincial health department, told Reuters.
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Vaccines can cause certain side effects but serious ones appear very rare — and there’s no link with autism and Type 1 diabetes, the Institute of Medicine says in the first comprehensive safety review in 17 years. The report released Thursday isn’t aimed at nervous parents. And the side effects it lists as proven are some that doctors long have known about, such as fever-caused seizures and occasional brain inflammation.

Instead, the review comes at the request of the government’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which as the name implies, pays damages to people who are injured by vaccines. Federal law requires this type of independent review as officials update side effects on that list to be sure they agree with the latest science.
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