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A New Zealand scientist who helped bust Asian factories making fake drugs warns the products could be lethal and continue to be made.

GNS Science scientist Dr Dallas Mildenhall, who has worked for Interpol for the past 18 months tracking down illegal factories, said they produced billions of counterfeit pills.

He has been working on the fakes in a laboratory determining their ingredients to pinpoint where they were made.

The fake drugs were causing thousands of deaths in South-east Asia each year.

"Some pills contain carcinogenic chemicals, solvents and other harmful substances, but most deaths occur because they lack the active ingredients needed for treating illnesses such as malaria," he said.

Mildenhall said forensic analysis of fake tablets had resulted in two operations in China being shut down and arrests made.

However, other operators had evaded the surveillance and the flow of fake drugs continued.

Most of the drugs were made in the border areas between China, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar...

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Viagra may ease blood pressure in the lungs of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

That's according to a small Dutch study presented in Salt Lake City at Chest 2006, held by the American College of Chest Physicians.

COPD is the No. 4 cause of death in the U.S. and worldwide, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

COPD is a lung disease in which breathing is difficult. It's usually caused by smoking cigarettes, but it can also be caused by other lung irritants...

Tags: health | health news | sexual health | men's health

Heavy use of mobile phones may damage men's fertility, a study has suggested.

Researchers found those men who used a phone for four hours or more a day had fewer sperm and those they had moved less well and were of poorer quality.

The Ohio study involving 364 men was presented to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in New Orleans.

But a UK expert said it was unlikely the phones were to blame, as they were in use and not near the testes, and it may be being sedentary was the cause...

Tags: health | health news | sexual health | men's health

One in eight women between the ages of 16 and 50 had no sex in the past year while the vast majority had only one partner, says a new report which paints Britain as a largely monogamous if not "sexless" society.

The portrait of Britain's attitude towards sex and relationships was revealed by compelling socio-cultural data from the Office for National Statistics.

Figures also showed that more than one in four women used the "morning-after" pill after forgetting to take the contraceptive pill, suggesting that the "morning-after" pill is increasingly used as a method of contraception despite medical concerns about women taking it frequently.

The fact that so many Britons have no sex is perhaps the most surprising detail, dispelling the widespread belief in record levels of infidelity and promiscuity.

According to the ONS survey, one in six men under 70 had no sexual partners in the past year, while 73 per cent had only one partner and 12 per cent had more than one. For women, seven per cent had more than one...

Tags: health | health news | sexual health | sex | britain

Some herbal supplements popular with South Korean tourists to the North seem to work in boosting men's sexual prowess but have alarmingly high levels of toxic additives, a South Korean MP warned on Monday.

Parliamentarian Chang Bok-sim, who is a certified pharmacist, said some health supplements sold widely at shops in Pyongyang, and in areas in the North frequently visited by South Koreans, contained sildenafil citrate, the same agent used in Pfizer's impotence drug Viagra.

But in a statement, quoting a study she commissioned from South Korea's Food and Drug Administration, Chang said there was a "big problem".

One product, advertised as made from all herb and natural extracts and one of five similar products available in North Korean stores, also contained traces of arsenic and lead...

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