A critical shortage of generic drugs in the United States, particularly in cancer care, could be curbed with legislation now being hammered out by the US House and Senate, doctors said on Monday.

Similar versions have passed each chamber and may be reconciled in time for President Barack Obama to sign them this month or next, said a panel of experts at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting.

French health authorities said Monday that nearly 8,000 French women had followed a government recommendation to have faulty breast implants that sparked a global health scare removed.

The ANSM health product and drug safety agency said that, as of the end of April, 7,868 women had the implants produced by Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) removed, after French authorities warned they were more prone to rupture.

European researchers said that offering reading materials with wider spacing between the letters can help dyslexic children read faster and better.

In a sample of dyslexic children age eight to 14, extra-wide letter spacing doubled accuracy and increased reading speed by more than 20 percent, according to the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published on Monday.

About half of New Yorkers say Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed ban of sugary drinks over 16 ounces (480 milliliters) from the city's eateries is an example of government going too far, while 42 percent say it would be good health policy, according to a poll released Monday.

Of the 500 adults surveyed Sunday for the NY1-Marist poll, 53 percent said the proposal is a bad idea, while 42 percent praised the concept — which would make New York the first American city to so directly attempt to limit portion sizes in an attempt to fight obesity.

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Istanbul Sunday to protest the government's plan to reduce the time limit for abortions.

Women chanted slogans and unfurled banners reading "Abortion is a right" and "It is our body" during the rally in the city's Kadikoy district, which was also attended by men.

An experimental drug treatment may help keep a certain kind of aggressive breast cancer at bay, offering new hope for individual therapies against difficult tumors, said research released Sunday.

The phase III trial comparing trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) to standard therapy for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2 positive) breast cancer was presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago.

Greece is not feeling well.

One in four men, and one in three women, has endured recent bouts of depression. As the grinding economic crisis continues to batter people's nerves, suicides and psychosomatic illness are both on the increase.

Two new experimental treatments against advanced melanoma have shown promise in keeping the deadly skin cancer at bay, according to research presented in the United States on Monday.

The agents, known as Dabrafenib and Trametinib, are being developed by the British pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, and were tested in clinical trials against standard chemotherapy treatments.

A drug cocktail that combines chemotherapy with Avastin was shown to double the amount of time patients lived without progression of ovarian cancer, according to research released Saturday.

Also known as bevacizumab and marketed as Avastin by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, the drug could help women who have a resistant form of the cancer, researchers said.

A drug that is already approved for prostate cancer has been shown to slow the spread of advanced forms of the disease for the first time, according to research released Saturday.

Zytiga, made by Johnson and Johnson, is being tested in a randomized phase III trial involving 1,088 men with prostate cancer at 151 cancer facilities in North America, Europe and Australia.