"'Cindy', 41, has just had a scary brain operation - and it shows. For one thing, the stubble now returning to the top of her fine-looking head doesn't yet hide the two holes where probes were inserted to burn part of her brain. For another, her movements are slow, and her answers to the doctor's questions are close to monosyllabic. But the medicos at the 999 Brain Hospital are adamant she will be back to normal in a month or two. Actually better than normal, they say, because she will be without the crippling urge for heroin which has ruled her life for the past 11 years." A Chinese hospital treats heroin addiction with neurosurgery. See "Brain surgery 'cure' for heroin addicts" in The Australian.

"US scientists are preparing to perform the world's first full-face transplant. The 24-hour operation involves lifting an entire face from a dead donor - including nose cartilage, nerves and muscles - and transferring them to someone hideously disfigured by burns or other injuries. A team at the University of Louisville in Kentucky has submitted a 30-page request to the university's ethics committee." See "Scientists prepare to turn fiction into fact with first full-face transplant" in The Guardian.

"They were meant to show that gender was determined by nurture, not nature - one identical twin raised as a boy and the other brought up as a girl after a botched circumcision. But two years ago Brian Reimer killed himself, and last week David - formerly Brenda - took his life too." See "Being Brenda" in The Guardian.

"'Where you stand depends on where you sit.' This saying usually applies to political issues, but it is also relevant to medicine. Consider the current controversy over the prescription of antidepressants to children, and the different reactions of British and American regulators and physicians." Sally Satel says British doctors are much less likely than Americans to treat children with psychoactive drugs in "Two Countries, Two Views on Antidepressants."

"The city of New York has sued drug maker GlaxoSmithKline, claiming that the company engaged in "anticompetitive, fraudulent, and inequitable conduct," when it acquired patents for its anti-depressant Paxil." See "New York City Sues Glaxo" in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

"David Brooks says he wants to rescue American civilization from the charge that it is shallow, and his main argument against that charge is that seemingly shallow behavior like shopping for the perfect barbecue or marketing the perfect French fry is actually a deeply spiritual quest, on a continuum with those of the Pilgrims arriving from the east and the pioneers heading west." Read Michael Kinsley's review of On Paradise Drive in the New York Times.

"Sales of behavioral drugs are growing faster than any other type of medicine taken by children, pulling ahead of the previous leaders, antibiotics and asthma treatments, he said. Most of the drugs were treatments for depression and attention deficit disorder, including prescriptions combining both treatments for the same patient." See "Behavior Drugs Lead in Children" in The New York Times.

"Super Size Me smacks viewers early on with a money shot. Morgan Spurlock, the star and director of the documentary, is jawing through a Super Size meal with naughty elation. It's his first Super Size ever! Five minutes later, and the grin is fading. Some minutes more, and the director is complaining of a McStomachache. Then McGas. And then before we know it, he's got his head out the car window. Whoop, there it is. The McVomit." Noy Thrupkaew reviews Morgan Spurlock's new documentary in The American Prospect.

"A book that begins with the cautionary tale of the wrecked nose ends, perhaps inadvertently, by suggesting that it is not so much the democratisation of plastic surgery that requires an explanation, as the fact that so many people who could afford a surgical transformation stubbornly preserve their wonky noses and crumpled skin." Catherine Bennett reviews Virginia L Blum's Flesh Wounds in The Guardian.

Pfizer is angry that the New Zealand's state drug funding agency has replaced Lipitor with a less expensive cholesterol-lowering drug. So they have pulled $66 million in funding to the University of Auckland's cancer research center. See "Drug Company Pulls Research Money."

"Plenty of experts have tried to convince me that I need mood medication. In the last 10 years my primary care physician, my gynecologist, and even my allergist’s assistant have offered to get me prescriptions. I’m also being targeted by pharmaceutical companies with magazine and TV ads that describe me exactly and tell me that I can greet the dawn with gusto, romp with my children, smile at myself in the mirror, and be productive, cheerful, and optimistic ("like myself again") if I take their drugs. Why am I resisting taking mood medications, an option that millions of my fellow citizens have already chosen?" Joli Jensen writes that the "story you choose to believe about antidepressants reveals a deeper truth about who you are" in her article "Emotional Choices" in Reason.

"I am lying in bed, reading Dr. Gerald Imber's ''Youth Corridor,'' a friendly and sagacious book with helpful drawings and a clearly laid-out text, about the whys and wherefores of plastic surgery." Daphne Merkin turns 50 and contemplates a face lift. See "Keeping the Forces of Decrepitude at Bay" in the New York Times Magazine.