Talking about death with patients near the end of life did not heighten their distress, a study of dying cancer patients found, but instead led to greater comfort for the patients and their loved ones.

Researchers led by Dr. Alexi Wright of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report in the Journal of the American Association on interviews with 332 terminally ill cancer patients recruited at seven outpatient clinics. Patients who said they did not have end-of-life conversations got significantly more aggressive care in their final week of life, which was linked to lower quality of life near death. Their caregivers also suffered, feeling regret, poor quality of life, and a higher risk of developing depression.

Patients who said they did have end-of-life discussions were more likely to have a better quality of life in their last days, less likely to get aggressive care, and more likely to receive hospice services. Their loved ones said they felt less regret, and better quality of life ,during their bereavement.

"Our results suggest that end-of-life discussions may have cascading benefits for patients and their caregivers," the authors write.

By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff

Harvard University announced today the largest gift in its history, a $125 million donation from entrepreneur Hansjorg Wyss to create a new institute dedicated to biological engineering.

"It's really wonderful," said Provost Steven E. Hyman of the gift, which will establish a new Hansjorg Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, to be located in the new science complex being built in Allston. "This is both an exciting cornerstone area for our new expanded efforts in biological engineering...[and] a way of tying together the Cambridge side of the river with the Boston side of the river -- the medical school, but also our affiliated hospitals."

By Patrica Wen, Globe Staff

More than 200 bags of White Rabbit Creamy Candies have been confiscated from five Asian food markets in Boston, in response to government reports that these imports from China may have been tainted with melamine.

In a telephone interview this morning, Thomas Goodfellow, assistant commissioner of the Boston Inspectional Services Department, said four of the five markets involved were located in Boston's Chinatown, and the other was in Dorchester. He said the candy bags were removed on Sept. 25th, and they are being shipped back to the distributor.

An unlikely bond forged years ago between Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, an icon of the left, and US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, a conservative former governor of Utah, was crucial in salvaging talks when the White House threatened to slash nearly $2 billion from the state's health financing package, key players familiar with the negotiations said in interviews last week.

Two French researchers who discovered the human AIDS virus and a German scientist who showed that human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine yesterday.

A prenatal blood test can be used to determine if an unborn baby has Down syndrome without the small risk to the fetus posed by invasive testing methods such as amniocentesis, US researchers said yesterday.

Using a fan to circulate air seemed to lower the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, in a study of nearly 500 babies, researchers reported yesterday.

Most people over 75 should stop getting routine colon cancer tests, according to a government task force that also rejected the latest X-ray screening technology.

Johnson & Johnson's Remicade fought the bowel disorder Crohn's disease better than the generic medicine prescribed by doctors, a result that may help J&J win thousands more patients for its second-best-selling drug.

"A teetering economy already hangs over the state's bold attempt to provide health insurance for almost all its residents," a Globe editorial says. "Now a new threat is forming: a spate of health-facility construction in Massachusetts that will inevitably add to the medical bills that employers and consumers must pay."

Internal medicine and family practice physicians are in critically short supply in Massachusetts, according to a poll of doctors in the state.

The Massachusetts Medical Society today reports in its seventh annual Physician Workforce Survey that the two primary care specialties join 10 other types of medical practice that are experiencing shortages. Oncologists, neurologists, and dermatologists are also on the list of doctors in high demand. The other seven specialties are anesthesiology, emergency medicine, general surgery, neurosurgery, psychiatry, urology, and vascular surgery.

Just days after federal regulators held hearings on how to evaluate over-the-counter cough and cold medications that have never been tested in children, the nation's largest research organization is reaching out to parents to explain how clinical trials for children work.

The National Institutes of Health is launching a web site today that invites parents to consider the importance of research to find out whether medications or treatments are safe and effective in children. Video interviews on the site spell out potential risks and benefits, address concerns of minority groups, and suggest questions to ask before participating.

The Food and Drug Administration last week took up the question of pediatric cough and cold remedies on sale for years based on data that was extrapolated from adults to children. The health officials decided against a ban while noting the lack of evidence to support use of the medicines in children.

Thousands of newly insured Massachusetts residents are relying on emergency rooms for routine medical care, an expensive habit that drives up healthcare costs and thwarts a major goal of the state's first-in-the-nation health insurance law.

In Health/Science:

A small but growing number of Massachusetts schools require a new kind of screening for its student athletes: It uses what look like video games to measure an athlete's baseline brain skills - memory, problem solving, reaction time - before the season. That way, after an injury, a retest can accurately reflect whether the brain is back to normal, allowing a safe return to competition.

"When it comes to sexuality and a myriad of other transitional health issues, developing teens must see their pediatrician as their personal doctor - not their mother's or father's," Dr. Victoria McEvoy writes.

Confusing times make for dangerous times, suggests new research. The possibility of an economic meltdown is bad enough. Worse might be a hasty response born of little more than the powerful human need to impose order - even false order - on a riotous world.

L. Mahadevan, a 43-year-old professor at Harvard, studies seemingly simple, everyday questions - such as, how does fabric drape? paper wrinkle? paint dry? -and hopes that they may lead to new places in science.

Also, why is there no vaccine against infectious mononucleosis and where do math symbols such as + and - come from?

Plus, the sweet smell of science and not-all-bad ulcer-causing bacteria (second item).

Children who receive free samples of prescription drugs from their doctors may be risking safety problems, a new study says.

Four of the 15 medications most frequently given out as free samples to more than 10,000 children in a 2004 national survey later had black-box warnings placed on them or significant changes made to these safety warnings, researchers from Cambridge Health Alliance and Hasbro Children's Hospital report in Pediatrics. Black-box warnings --- named for their appearance on drug information given to prescribers -- are the strongest cautions the Food and Drug Administration gives.

"I think the safety of free drug samples must be further examined," Dr. Sarah L. Cutrona, lead author and an internal medicine specialist at Cambridge Health Alliance, said in an interview. "Giving free samples to children in nonurgent situations is really an unproven medical practice that should be undertaken very cautiously or perhaps needs to stop."

Cambridge Health Alliance has named a Harvard dean to head its board of trustees.

Mary Cassesso, dean for administration and finance at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, will become chairwoman of its 19-member board of trustees. She is both the first woman and the first Somerville resident to hold the position. The health system serves Cambridge, Somerville, and towns north of Boston.

Before coming to Harvard 15 years ago, Cassesso had been assistant cabinet secretary for the Massachusetts affordable housing program, the deputy director of the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, and auditor for the city of Somerville.

A consortium of Boston-area hospitals and universities has added a new member and won a grant to improve inhalation therapy.

The VA Boston Healthcare System is the 12th member of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology. The Veterans Affairs system cares for about 65,000 patients in the Boston area.

Air Liquide, a French supplier of gases and equipment to hospitals and inhalation therapy to patients at home, has given CIMIT a $1.5 million seed grant to create new technologies to deliver treatments for respiratory medical conditions.

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff

Mosquitoes infected with eastern equine encephalitis have been found in New Bedford and Raynham, the eighth time this year insects carrying the highly lethal virus have been discovered in southeastern Massachusetts, state health authorities reported this afternoon.

No human cases of eastern equine encephalitis have been reported in Massachusetts since 2006.

Heavy rains in recent weeks have contributed to a flourishing mosquito population, state disease trackers said.

To avoid being bitten, public health authorities recommend that people avoid being outside from dusk to dawn, peak time for mosquito activity. If outdoor activity is necessary during those hours, long-sleeved shirts, long pants, and socks can provide protection. Repellants can help, too, including DEET, permethrin, picaridin, or oil of lemon eucalyptus. DEET should not be used on babies younger than 2 months and should be used in concentrations of 30 percent or less on older children. Oil of lemon eucalyptus should not be used on children under the age of 3 years.

Draining standing water from gutters, unused flower pots, and wading pools can deprive mosquitoes of necessary breeding grounds. And having secure window screens can prevent the bugs from getting inside homes.

The Ig Nobel winners are in: The chemistry prize goes to scientists who researched Coca-Cola's potential to kill sperm. The biology award is for research proving that fleas on dogs jump higher than fleas on cats; and the prize for medicine goes to the enterprising economist who found that expensive fake pills work better than cheap ones.

A top government health official yesterday rejected pediatricians' calls for an immediate ban on over-the-counter cough and cold medicines for young children, saying it might cause unintended harm.

Two specialists will examine a window at a Springfield hospital that some people say contains an image of the Virgin Mary, hospital officials said yesterday.

Public health officials in Canada announced yesterday that they are looking for 27 people who may have been exposed to tuberculosis from an infectious passenger during a bus trip from Toronto to Windsor, Ontario, in late August (second item).

Short White Coat is a blog about learning to be a doctor. Posts appear here as part of White Coat Notes. Ishani Ganguli is a third-year Harvard medical student. E-mail her at shortwhitecoat@gmail.com.

The headache occupies a unique place in our society, as both an over-worn excuse to avoid marital sex and a rare but often feared portent of brain cancer. We've all had one (mine tend to be of the caffeine-withdrawal variety), and they’re easy to write off. But for some, headaches represent a debilitating lifelong condition or a sign of an underlying disease process originating far from the head itself.

I chose to spend a morning in a headache clinic during my neurology rotation, in large part because the symptom carries such a fascinating range of implications. Plus, as medical students, the most bread-and-butter complaints are often the ones we feel least qualified to address, both in patients and in advice-seeking friends.

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff

Responding to complaints about the timing of an earlier hearing, a blue-ribbon panel advising the federal government on Boston University's controversial research laboratory will conduct a nighttime public hearing.

The public will have its say from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Oct. 14 at the Roxbury Center for Arts at Hibernian Hall, 182-186 Dudley St.

The panel is advising the National Institutes of Health on how to improve its environmental review of the lab project, being built in the South End on BU's medical school campus.

The Patrick administration said yesterday it will restart slowly relocating residents of the Fernald Development Center in Waltham after winning a key victory in the federal courts.

Officials at a Springfield hospital say they have no immediate plans to replace a window at a doctor's office building where some people say they have seen the image of the Virgin Mary.

Two Massachusetts labor groups say they have launched a website to monitor treatment of patients and employees at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (third item).

A computer is as good as a second pair of eyes for helping a radiologist spot breast cancer on a mammogram, one of the largest and most rigorous tests of computer-aided detection found.

The AIDS virus has been circulating among people for about 100 years, decades longer than scientists had thought, a new study suggests.

Boston University ethicist George J. Annas takes his New England Journal of Medicine readers through a thicket of ethical issues entangling lethal-injection executions, constitutional law, and physician participation.

The Supreme Court has often considered whether the death penalty carried out in any form fits the Eighth Amendment definition of cruel and unusual punishment, but lately its task has been to weigh the thorny issue of whether the cocktail of drugs used to induce death also inflicts inordinate suffering. Annas asks whether doctors can be involved in ensuring that lethal injection is "more humane."

If an international news organization is on the money, three Bay State scientists and one economist might get middle-of-the-night calls from Sweden over the next two weeks.

Thomson Reuters is going out on a Nobel laureate limb again, predicting three potential winners for each of the prestigious prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics, and economics.

Gary Ruvkun of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and Victor Ambros of the University of Massachusetts Medical School are on the short list for the medicine and physiology prize for their discovery of gene-regulating microRNAs. They and David Baulcombe of the University of Cambridge have received the Lasker Prize and other honors for their work.

Another Massachusetts contender among three possible chemistry winners picked by Thomson Reuters is Charles M. Lieber of Harvard University for his research on nanowires and nanomaterials.

And in the dismal science, Thomson Reuters likes Martin S. Feldstein of Harvard for his research on public economics, including taxation, social security, and health economics. He is among three potential prize winners.

Thomson Reuters correlates citations in the scientific literature as well as high-impact discoveries with prizes. Its track record? Since 2002, 12 of their picks have won Nobels. In baseball terms, that's batting below .200. But maybe reading the Swedish Academy's mind is harder than hitting a major league fastball.

Stay tuned: The medicine prize is announced Monday, physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday, and economics a week from Monday, Oct. 13.

Don't hold your breath for an American Nobelist in literature this year, though, according to The Associated Press. Americans are too insular in their writing, the AP quoted a Nobel juror as saying.

Federal regulators tomorrow will explore setting new standards for over-the-counter cough and cold remedies intended for children.

A year after manufacturers voluntarily pulled the medicines for children under 2 off store shelves, the Food and Drug Administration is holding a hearing in Washington to guide testing for safety and effectiveness that has never been done. Like many drugs for children, the cough and cold medicines were approved based on trials in adults, a practice now discredited by research that shows children are more complicated than "miniature adults."

Dr. Michael Shannon, a pharmacologist and chief of emergency medicine at Children's Hospital Boston, will testify at the hearing, which will consider what types of studies need to be done to evaluate the drugs, whether the drugs should require a prescription, and how dosages should be calculated. The process could lead to removing the drugs from the market, making them available by prescription only, or restricting combinations of different ingredients, among other possibilities.

"The FDA gave a clear message that they don't feel they can give carte blanche in reference to cough and cold medicines as safe and effective in the absence of data," Shannon said in an interview this week. "I interpret this as a strong and clear message from the FDA that these products need to be examined more closely than they were when they were first approved."

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff

Boston health authorities have added a second time when the public can have its say on the city's effort to eliminate cigarette sales at drug stores and on college campuses, a measure that would also extend smoking bans in restaurants and bars to their outdoor patios.

A public hearing is now planned from 10 to 11 a.m. Oct. 8, in addition to the originally scheduled hearing from 5 to 7 that evening. The morning session was scheduled to accommodate people who will observe the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur starting at sundown that evening.

Both hearings will be in the city's Carter Auditorium at the Northampton Square complex, 35 Northampton St.

The Boston Public Health Commission is also soliciting written comments on the rules, which received preliminary approval last week. They may be sent by e-mail to boardofhealth@bphc.org or by postal mail to Boston Public Health Commission, Board Office, Attention: Julie Webster, 1010 Massachusetts Ave., Sixth Floor, Boston, 02118. The comments are due by Nov. 3.

The regulations would be some of the strictest in the nation and would also significantly increase fines for selling tobacco to children and eliminate cigar bars within five years.

The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT is one of four centers chosen to map the epigenome, the collection of processes that control genetic activity in human cells.

The National Institutes of Health will invest more than $190 million over the next five years to better understand how epigenetic mechanisms affect health. The Broad's five-year, $15 million grant will support the study of at least 100 types of human cells, including human embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells, and others. The project will be led by Dr. Bradley E. Bernstein of the Broad and MIT and Alexander Meissner of the Broad and Harvard.

The other three Reference Epigenome Mapping Centers are at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in San Diego, the University of Washington in Seattle, and the University of California, San Francisco.

Other parts of the NIH epigenomics initiative will concentrate on data analysis and coordination, technology development, and creating chemical tags to mark the epigenomes of mammalian cells.