Your bad joke for today:

My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to .99 a can.
Thats $7.00 in dog money. - Joe Weinstein

Couples' compatibility is in the genes - LiveScience - MSNBC.com

Couples' compatibility is in the genes - LiveScience - MSNBC.com

Couples' compatibility is in the genes

Sexual chemistry, likelihood to cheat may be in your DNA, study says

LiveScience

Updated: 3:41 p.m. ET Feb 8, 2007

Relationship quizzes in magazines are fun, but a test for genetic compatibility might be the better way to go to see if your wife or girlfriend will cheat on you.

A new study reveals that a cluster of genes, involved in immune function among other things, could predict how sexually attracted a person is to a partner and how likely a woman is be faithful to her mate. Couples in which the individuals had dissimilar versions of so-called major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes had the greatest sexual compatibility.

“There’s this idea of romantic chemistry, but until now we haven’t been able to pinpoint anything that predicts it,” said lead researcher Christine Garver-Apgar, a psychologist at the University of New Mexico.

“These are some of the first findings that I know of that get at this idea of romantic chemistry and what it is exactly that makes two people just so compatible and attracted to each other,” said Garver-Apgar, whose husband is related to Virginia Apgar, who developed in 1952 the Apgar score used today in hospitals to rate a newborn’s health.

The MHC genes direct the production of certain protein receptors that coat the outer surfaces of cells. The protein receptors signal to the body’s immune system whether a cell is a native resident or a foreign invader. With more MHC variations, the immune system can recognize a broader range of foreign cells, making associated offspring more fit.

All you need is DNA ...
Garver-Apgar and her colleagues studied 48 romantically involved couples, ranging from 18 to 35 years old. For genetic material, they scraped cells from the inner cheeks of subjects.

The couples completed surveys at the start of the study, when the female partner was at the fertile part of her menstrual cycle and during her infertile period. Questions gauged a person’s overall satisfaction with the current romantic relationship, contentment with in-couple sex, number of sex partners and attitude toward sex in general.

A measure of female subjects’ luteinizing hormone, which regulates egg production, indicated the stage of menstrual cycle and level of fertility.

It turned out that opposites did attract, particularly when women were most fertile. “As the [MHC] similarity increases, women are more turned off toward the guy sexually and more likely to be fantasizing about other men, specifically when she’s at the fertile point in her cycle,” said study team member Randy Thornhill, a biologist at the University of New Mexico.

Not only did they fantasize, but women in similar-MHC relationships reported more sexual encounters outside with other men.

“This speaks to the possibility that women do seek sex outside of the relationship for a particular reason and it’s to possibly obtain genetic benefits, whether those are good genes or compatible genes,” Garver-Apgar told LiveScience.

Men showed no discrimination when it came to sexual desire toward their partners. That supports the idea that men don’t put as much energy into reproduction. They just copulate when the opportunity arises.

Sexual chemistry
Humans might be able to sniff out a mate’s genes to discern this immunological compatibility. Past studies have shown that some species of mice, birds, fish and lizards can identify a potential mate’s MHC type through smell.

Somehow MHC genes could set in motion the formation and release of scent molecules through a person’s glands on their skin, the researchers suggest in the October issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Whether an MHC test could truly be more predictive of mate compatibility than magazine quizzes is outside of scientists’ realm. But cheek-scraping for DNA material is simple.

“All you need is some DNA," Thornhill said, "because the DNA is going to contain the chemistry of that person’s genes.”

Wal-Mart: $4 generics now 38 pct of filled scripts - Yahoo! News

Wal-Mart: $4 generics now 38 pct of filled scripts - Yahoo! News

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said on Thursday that just six months after completing the roll-out of its $4 generic prescription drug program, 37.8 percent of all prescriptions it fills are $4 prescriptions.

Wal-Mart's U.S. chief operating officer, Bill Simon, made the comments at a media conference one day ahead of its annual shareholders' meeting amid ongoing criticism from labor groups that contend the world's largest retailer offers inadequate pay and health care benefits to its workers.

Wal-Mart began selling certain generic drugs for $4 per monthly prescription in September and by the end of November had extended the program to all its U.S. pharmacies -- far ahead of schedule. Other retailers, including close rival Target Corp., have rolled out similar programs.

Simon estimated that Wal-Mart's $4 program has removed $350 million in costs from the U.S. healthcare system, with that number projected to rise to $1 billion in a year.

Simon also said the retailer still expects to open as many as 2,000 in-store health clinics in the next five to seven years if current demand persists.

Wal-Mart began testing in-store health clinics in September 2005, and said earlier this year it would expand the program. The clinics provide basic preventative and health services -- such as cholesterol screenings or treatment for sore throats -- and a routine visit costs $40 to $65, excluding insurance.

Simon said the retailer does not see the clinics as a means to bring new customers into its stores, but as a way to meet customer demand and cut costs from the health care system.

Linda Dillman, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, risk management and sustainability, said 90.4 percent of Wal-Mart employees reported having some sort of health coverage, either through the retailer or a separate source like a parent or spouse.

She said about 47.4 percent of Wal-Mart workers are covered under the Wal-Mart health plan.

Dept. of Yes This Society is Going to Hell

Detroit hospital closing part of pattern - Yahoo! New

Her legs crippled by diabetes, Mary Lewis is grateful it's a short distance between her doctor's office at Riverview Hospital and the adjacent apartment tower where she lives.

It will become a painful struggle next year when the hospital closes and physicians' offices are forced to move. The hospital last week said it was losing too much money and already stopped accepting inpatients, though the emergency room will remain open for now.

Because roughly 90 percent of its 11,000 annual inpatients are covered under the Medicare or Medicaid public assistance programs, Riverview has struggled economically, said Bob Hoban, a senior vice president for St. John Health, Riverview's parent company.

Experts say Riverview's decision to close fits a distressing, decades-long pattern of hospital closures in older cities across the nation. The trend has left large swaths of predominantly poor, black neighborhoods in cities such as St. Louis, Philadelphia and Cleveland underserved.

Many say the loss of medical facilities for low-income patients is increasingly leaving overcrowded emergency rooms to double as primary-care centers.

"This hasn't been happening in the suburbs and it isn't happening in Phoenix, Arizona, where they can't build hospitals fast enough," said Bruce Siegel, a research professor at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. "This is occurring in older, urban inner-city areas."

New York City, Philadelphia and parts of New Jersey have seen waves of hospital closings in inner-city neighborhoods, said Siegel, who directed a 2004 report examining the phenomenon for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

But few cities have been hit as hard as Detroit.

The number of hospitals in the city has dwindled to seven or eight from 42 in 1960, said Alan Sager, director of the Health Reform Program at Boston University's School of Public Health. Hospitals that are larger, have major medical school-affiliated teaching programs and more money in the bank tend to survive.

Siegel's report warned that Detroit's safety net was already in a "fragile" state and could collapse entirely with further hospital closures. It said Detroit had lost more than 1,200 hospital beds with the closure of four hospitals since 1998.

"Some of it is population shifts and declines," Siegel said. "There's (also) more and more people without health insurance and Medicaid payments that don't keep up with the cost of providing care."

Riverview, a community hospital with 285 beds, specializes in general medical and surgical services, such as treatment of congestive heart failure, diabetes and obstetrics.

The hospital finished its last fiscal year with a nearly $9.5 million deficit and expects to end this fiscal year $23 million in the red.

Medicare payments to hospitals averaged 92 cents for every dollar spent providing care in 2005, the most recent figures available, according to the American Hospital Association. Medicaid's reimbursement rate was lower, at 87 cents per dollar.

Officials at other area hospitals have complained that Riverview's closing will burden them.

"We're 90 percent full on average and there are many days where we're 100 percent full," said Nancy Schlichting, president and chief executive of Henry Ford Health System, which has a trauma center hospital in Detroit.

Karmanos Cancer Institute plans to spend $20 million to renovate the 20-year-old Riverview and reopen it as a clinical center next year.

But Lewis is concerned her doctor's office will be forced to move too far from her home. "I'll have to find another doctor," the senior citizen said.

While waiting for a bus after a physical therapy appointment, Mary Sanders said Riverview is the closest hospital for residents of the east side, including many disabled senior citizens.

The 54-year resident of the neighborhood said she doesn't know where she'll go once the clinic closes.

"Point blank, we need this hospital," she said.