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Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Boston Begins Bid to Buy Canadian Drugs

Boston has become the largest U.S. city to permit its employees to buy less expensive prescription drugs from Canada, the Boston Globe says.

Mayor Thomas Menino officially launched the program on Wednesday, permitting as many as 14,000 city workers and retirees to buy imported medicines from Canadian pharmacies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has declared the practice illegal, insisting that it can't control whether the imports are accurately labeled and contain the correct ingredients.

While other governments that have begun similar programs have cited millions of dollars in potential savings, Boston's move is seen as largely political, the newspaper reported. The city expects a relatively small number of its workers to participate, since the only incentive is the elimination of a $10 co-pay for those who buy their drugs from Canada. As a result, the city projects it will shave $1 million off its $60 million annual drug bill, the Globe reported.

Thanks to government price controls, Canadian drugs are 20 percent to 80 percent cheaper than their American equivalents, the newspaper said. This has lured smaller, often cash-strapped cities like Springfield, Mass., to sanction the purchase of Canadian drugs for their employees.

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Spike Seen in Job-Related Amphetamine Use

Job-related use of a powerful stimulant called methamphetamine surged 68 percent in 2003, according to Quest Diagnostics, a testing company that says it administered an industry-leading 7.1 million drug tests last year to workers and job applicants.

Often referred to as "meth," the synthetically produced amphetamine is on its way to becoming the illegal stimulant of choice, soon to surpass cocaine, according to a report by USA Today. The drug fights fatigue and offers a feeling of self-confidence without producing an aggressive high, the newspaper said.

According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration figures cited by the newspaper, DEA meth lab seizures rose from fewer than 8,000 in 1999 to 10,000 last year.

A recent UCLA study found that regular meth users lose about 1 percent of their brain cells annually -- a loss comparable to that of an Alzheimer's patient, the USA Today account said.

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Calif. Clinic Charged in 'Rent-a-Patient' Scam

The three operators of a California medical clinic have been charged with what the Los Angeles Times is calling a "rent-a-patient" scheme that may have bilked insurance companies of more than $14 million.

From August 2002 to April 2003, prosecutors allege, as many as 5,000 people willingly had unnecessary procedures performed at the Unity Outpatient Surgery Center in Buena Park. Insurers were billed $97 million for the surgeries, of which they paid $14.2 million. The unneeded procedures allegedly included surgeries for hemorrhoids, pain management, and sweaty palms, the Times reported.

"It is hard to imagine anything more reprehensible than deliberately operating on healthy people solely to gain illegal profits," said District Attorney Tony Rackauckas in announcing the arrests of the three clinic owners, who range in age from 38 to 48.

The newspaper said Southern California has become an epicenter of such "rent-a-patient" scams, in which healthy people undergo expensive medical procedures in exchange for incentives like cash, vacations, and cosmetic surgery. This type of racket has cost insurers at least $500 million in recent years, the Times said.

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Bush Signs Law to Fight Bioterrorism

President Bush on Wednesday signed a law that commits $5.6 billion to strengthen the nation's defenses against biological, nuclear, and chemical terrorism.

The law will allow the U.S. government to purchase and stockpile vaccines, speed up research on medicines to guard against bioterrorism, and, in a worst-case scenario, distribute new drugs that have not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Washington Post reported.

The law, called the Project Bioshield Act of 2004, "will help America purchase, develop and deploy cutting-edge defenses against catastrophic attack," Bush said during a Rose Garden ceremony marking the bill's enactment. In light of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, he said if that terrorists "acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, we have no doubt they will use them to cause even greater harm," according to the Post.

Some drug companies were initially hesitant about the move, worried about lawsuits and the costs of developing drugs that may never be used. But the bill offers some protection by guaranteeing a market, the newspaper said.

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Scientists Accuse U.S. of Blocking Marijuana Research

Researchers were expected to file several lawsuits Wednesday accusing the U.S. government of breaking federal law by blocking research into medicinal marijuana.

The scientists allege that Washington is refusing to act on legitimate research projects and delaying studies that could lead to marijuana's use as a prescription drug, the Associated Press reports.

"There is an urgent need for an alternative supply of marijuana for medical research," the AP quotes Lyle Craker, director of the Medicinal Plant Program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, as saying. The program is the chief force behind the lawsuits.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) "maintains a monopoly on research marijuana," the scientists allege. "Many researchers believe that NIDA's monopoly is an obstacle to getting needed studies done on a timely basis," Craker said in a statement.

The scientists say that the NIDA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services created an unreasonable delay in acting on a three-year-old application by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to grow marijuana for federally approved researchers, the AP reported.

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Researchers Say Syphilis Killed Lenin

Researchers say they have proof of what had been quietly suspected for decades: that Vladimir Lenin, the Communist leader who first led the Soviet Union, died of syphilis.

The Telegraph of London reports that Lenin's death certificate says he died of arteriosclerosis in 1924, when Joseph Stalin was planning to take over as leader. However, only eight of 27 doctors who treated him were willing to sign the certificate, including his two personal doctors.

Israeli doctors, writing in the European Journal of Neurology, say they used medical records pieced together from archives released after the fall of communism to reconstruct the first Soviet leader's illness and death, according to the Telegraph.

The basis of the disclosures are medical charts, results of a post-mortem examination, and memoirs from physicians who treated Lenin, the newspaper said.

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