Steven Gerrard's slip cost Liverpool the Premier League – he's wrong to have any faith in lady luck making amends

The Liverpool captain thinks moments of bad luck even itself out over the course of a season. If only human existence was as fundamentally fair as that

      Steven Gerrard says his slip against Chelsea was something that could happen to anyone

The new season of what continues ever more satirically to style itself “the best league in the world” begins on Aug 16, and before dusk settles on that opening Saturday there is every chance that a commentator will have given voice to one of the imbecilities of the trade.
Be it Jonathan Pearce, Alan Green or another refugee from the All Souls’ high table, somebody will seek to place in perspective a piece of rank observation: “What you have to remember is that these things balance out over the course of the season”.

Some contraceptive pills double risk of breast cancer

Women taking the contraceptive pill are 50 per cent more likely to develop breast cancer with high dose tablets increasing the risk even further, a study has found

 Conctraceptive pills containing a high dose of hormone oestrogen are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer

Women taking the contraceptive pill are 50 per cent more likely to develop breast cancer with those containing high hormone doses more than doubling the risk, a study has found.
Researchers found women who took pills containing a high dose of hormone oestrogen were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer while other forms of the contraceptive containing low levels of the hormone did not increase cancer risk at all.

The study compared at 1,102 women who were diagnosed with breast cancer between the ages of 20 and 49 with a group of similar unaffected women and looked at their contraceptive history.
Women who had taken the combined Pill in the last year were 50 per cent more likely to have developed cancer compared with those who had never used it or stopped taking it more than a year earlier.
The study looked at the type of combined Pill used and found that the higher the dose of oestrogen it contained, the greater the risk of cancer.

Patients being harmed by drug shortages, doctors warn

One in three GPs say their patients have suffered as a result of shortages of common prescription drugs

         Medicines currently subject to shortages include Naproxen for arthritis and Tamoxifen for breast cancer

Patients are being harmed and put at risk because of national shortages of some prescription drugs, doctors have warned.
Medicines currently subject to shortages include Tamoxifen for breast cancer, Naproxen for arthritis and Amiloride, used to treat heart failure and high blood pressure.
A poll of GPs has revealed that more than nine in 10 family doctors have been forced to write prescriptions for “second choice” medicines because the drug they wished to provide was out of stock.
In recent years, scores of medicines, including those for breast cancer, arthritis and schizophrenia have run low because drugs intended for British use are being diverted abroad for profit, while others have been subject to production problems.

Discovery made that could prevent sudden cardiac death that nearly killed Fabrice Muamba

Scientists have discovered how a genetic fault causes sudden cardiac death leading to hopes for a screening test to identify those at risk and eventually a drug to prevent it

 17 March 2012: The medical team tending to Bolton Wanderers' Fabrice Muamba as manager Owen Coyle and Tottenham Hotspur's Benoit Assou-Ekotto and William Gallas look on

A test to identify those at risk of sudden cardiac death syndrome – the condition that nearly killed footballer Fabrice Muamba – could be developed after scientists discovered how the genetic fault causes the heart to stop.
Researchers at Cardiff University who discovered the cause of the fault now hope their discovery will lead to new drugs that can prevent the condition, which often hits young and seemingly healthy victims.
Most people have no idea they are at risk until their heart suddenly stops which is fatal in most cases.

Mr Muamba, the former Arsenel midfielder, nearly died on the pitch two years ago while playing for Bolton Wanderers when he suddenly collapsed and his heart stopped. He was rushed to hospital and recovered.

Genomics are not overhyped: they really can change medicine

As the Government announces a huge, pioneering project to sequence 100,000 genomes, Mark  Henderson looks at what needs to happen to make the technique live up to its promise

                           A pioneering project to map 100,000 genomes will revolutionise medicine in Britain

A few years ago, I spat into three test tubes and dispatched them special delivery to companies that will now, for a few hundred pounds, test your genes for clues to your future health. Though each service examined the same DNA, and evaluated the same diseases, each set of results was dramatically different. My lifetime risk of glaucoma, an eye condition, was as low as 2 per cent or as high as 36 per cent, depending on which service I chose to believe. One company thought my chances of a heart attack were twice as high as another.
Mine was the sort of experience that has fed a growing sense that the sequencing of the human genome, heralded by Bill Clinton in 2000 as the future of medicine, has failed to deliver on its promise. While DNA has since become much cheaper and simpler to read – the cost of a human genome is dipping below the magical figure of $1,000 a time – its meaning remains devilishly difficult to interpret. As my results demonstrate, this is especially true of the conditions that are the greatest causes of morbidity and mortality – diabetes and heart disease, stroke and mental illness.