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There are 40,000 clinical trials going on in the United States right now. Twenty million Americans are recruited into clinical trails annually by universities, medical centers and drug companies. Some have cancer or other illnesses that are threatening their lives, but did you know there is a hot competition for clinical trial recruits who aren?t even sick?

Benjamin tenOever, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, has been selected by the United States government for a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The White House announced the 100 honorees on July 9 and will host them at a reception with President Barack Obama. (Source: Immune System / Vaccines News From Medical News Today)

With that, let me introduce the next Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Regina Benjamin. DR. BENJAMIN: Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, Secretary Sebelius, for being here with me. I am honored and I am humbled to be nominated to serve as United States Surgeon General. This is a physician's dream. But for me, it's more than just a job. Public health issues are very personal to me. My father died with diabetes and hypertension. My older brother, and only sibling, died at age 44 of HIV-related illness. My mother died of lung cancer, because as a young girl, she wanted to smoke just like her twin brother could. My Uncle Buddy, my mother's twin, who's one of the few surviving black World War II prisoners of war, is at home right now, on oxygen, struggling for each breath because of the years of smoking. My family is not here with me today, at least not in person, because of preventable diseases. While I can't -- or I cannot change my family's past, I can be a voice in the

The World Health Organization has approved GlaxoSmithKline's human papillomavirus vaccine Cervarix, thus enabling United Nations agencies and partners to officially purchase millions of doses for use in low-income nations, the AP/San Diego Union-Tribune reports (AP/San Diego Union-Tribune, 7/9).

A study published recently on bmj.com concludes that an easy training program, based on a sequence of balancing movements, can be useful in cutting the risk of recurrent ankle sprains by 35 percent. This could reflect in huge savings in medical and lost productivity costs. In the United States, an estimated 23,000 ankle sprains occur every day. In the Netherlands, an estimated 234,000 ankle sprains occur every year, costing over ?84,000,000.