A controversial Swiss clinic, which has helped 453 people die over seven years, has plans to open an office in Britain. According to British newspaper, The Independent, the company Dignitas has begun discussions about setting up a British branch.

The move comes as Britain's most senior church leaders are mounting a concerted campaign to stop politicians from legalizing assisted suicide. Up to 70 peers and Anglican bishops are set to speak in a major debate in the House of Lords tomorrow.

Legionnaires Disease is being named as the likely cause for at-least seventeen deaths at a Toronto, Canada nursing home which has also sickened 70 residents and 18 workers.

The illness is a rare form of pneumonia that can only be contracted by inhaling water droplets contaminated by legionella bacteria and can't be spread from person to person.

The White House pushes the "hurry up" button on what is becoming an alarming situation in the nation's capitol.

The Bush Administration presses domestic vaccine manufacturers to increase the nation's ability to fend off an avian influenza pandemic, a vaccine to prevent humans from being infected with a strain of bird flu now circulating in Asia.

The Perrigo Company announced that through a partnership with InvaGen Pharmaceuticals, it has received final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market Glimepiride Tablets.

Shipment of the product will begin immediately. The product is the generic equivalent to Aventis' Amaryl(R) Tablets, 1 mg, 2 mg and 4 mg, indicated for the treatment of diabetes.

Officials from 80 countries gathered in Washington on Friday to come up with plans to fight the threat of a global outbreak of avian influenza or bird flu. President Bush urged pharmaceutical executives to focus on influenza vaccines. It's the latest in a series of preparations for a possible pandemic after criticism of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. Experts have been warning since 2003 that bird flu is the biggest current health threat to the world but policy efforts to battle it have increased in recent weeks.

The virus has killed millions of birds across Asia and infected more than 100 people, killing more than 60 of them in four Asian countries. Manufacturing a vaccine for bird flu would involve the same methods used for a vaccine against regular flu. But experts say the country's flu vaccine system is now so weak that if there were a bird flu outbreak, a vaccine would not be an option. Following last year's flu vaccine shortage, Congress and health agencies are working to find ways to lure drug companies back into the business of making it.