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Assisted suicide or euthanasia is legalized in many countries. It is legal for people suffering from unbearable and untreatable illnesses. A study was performed to examine most of deaths of psychiatric patients caused by euthanasia from 2011 to mid-2014 in the Netherlands, in which doctors participated to help people die. There were 37 in 66 cases where patients refused to adopt treatments that would have helped and instead went for assisted death.

Presently, countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Canada and a few US states- Oregon, Vermont, Montana, Washington and California- have legalized the euthanasia.

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the US plans to become the first hospital in the country to perform organ transplant between HIV positive patients, implying that the donor and the recipient both are infected with HIV virus. This first transplant of its kind is just awaiting the right match. If successful, this move will be instrumental in paving the way for boosting the transplantation rate in the country, along with reducing the waiting list for receiving organs.

Psychologists at Sussex University carried out a research on the horses capabilities to understand emotions. The outcome revealed that horses very much possess the ability to differentiate between the positive and negative expressions displayed by humans. The equine specie is extremely well versed with reading human facial expressions. Last year the researchers gathered a list of facial expressions, which are likely to explain horse’s emotions. This time they simply turned the experiment on horse’s head.

On Wednesday, Grail, a healthcare firm that is developing a blood test for early detection of cancer, has named ex Google X Senior Vice President Jeff Huber as its CEO.

Huber said he is willing to apply his experience building large-scale data systems in improving the gene sequencing technology that Grail uses in the detection of cancerous material in patients, showing no symptoms of the disease.

Gene sequencing company Illumina Inc formed the San Francisco-based Grail and it received over $100 million in Series A financing. The majority owner of the firm is Illumina.

The main investors are some technology giants, including the founder of Microsoft Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, and ARCH Venture Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures.

In an announcement, drug store chain Walgreens said that it is going to make heroin overdose antidote naloxone accessible without a prescription.

The company is going to launch a strategy program to fight prescription drug abuse by selling the antidote without requiring a prescription in its pharmacies across 35 states in over 5,800 stores.

These days, deaths related to heroin overdose have gone up at a quite fast pace due to the opioid epidemic growth. Though some people might know about the existence of an antidote that could reverse the addicting drug’s effects, they would require prescriptions to get it in pharmacies throughout the United States.

A latest study authored by Vanderbilt University researchers has disclosed that heart disease is the most common non-cancer death cause in prostate cancer survivors.

Knowing this, the cardio-oncology program of the university has decided to shift its focus on toning down the heart disease risk factors in patients, mainly the ones receiving the prostate cancer treatment known as androgen deprivation therapy (ADT).

Dr. Eric Shinohara, a radiation oncologist and a medical director at the university said that though ADT therapy is quite beneficial for a lot of patients with prostate cancer, it could also raise the vulnerability of developing diabetes or suffering a heart attack or stroke.