Daily Rounds: Elizabeth Edwards' Cancer Spreads; No Takers For Insurance; Gay Teens Punished More; The Supremes And The Health Law; Early Puberty For Boys

Elizabeth Edwards's Cancer Spreads - NYTimes.com "Elizabeth Edwards’s long battle with cancer has intensified, with the disease spreading to her liver and doctors advising against additional medical treatment, two family friends said Monday." She is 61. (The Caucus)

No takers for health insurance program - The Boston Globe "Three years after the state flung open the doors for municipalities to join its less costly health insurance program, not a single city or town now wants to come in. The deadline for signing up for the Group Insurance Commission for 2011 passed this week with no takers — a disappointment for those who in 2007 believed state government had hit on a plan to save municipalities millions of dollars annually." (Boston Globe)

Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian Adolescents More Likely to Be Arrested, Expelled - Bloomberg "Bisexual, gay, and lesbian youth are more likely than their straight peers to be punished by their school or the criminal justice system for the same transgressions. In an analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, teenagers attracted to people of the same sex were 41 percent more likely to be expelled from school, and 42 percent more likely to be convicted of a crime as an adult, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics. "(bloomberg.com)

Health Care Lawsuits and Party-Line Judging - Kaiser Health News What happens if challenges to the new health care law reach the Supreme Court? "With no clear guidance from the precedents, the outcome is likely to turn less on legalities than on the justices’ views of whether the new law is good or bad for the country and whether – even if they think it’s bad, as I suspect Roberts does – they should second-guess the elected branches on the most important new legislation in decades." (kaiserhealthnews.org)

Boys today may be hitting puberty earlier | Reuters "Studies done several decades ago in the same population reported that a leap forward in sexual development occurs at ages 13 through 16," researcher Dr. Fnu Deepinder of Cedars Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles, told Reuters Health. "However, our study indicated that this spurt takes place between 12 and 15 years old." (Reuters)