Antibacterial hand soaps containing a chemical flagged as potentially dangerous are not much better at killing germs than regular suds, researchers said Wednesday.

The chemical, triclosan, was long one of the commonest ingredients in antibacterial soaps, which are used by millions of people and generate $1 billion (880 million euros) in sales annually in the United States alone, experts say.

Covert videos released by an anti-abortion group have opened a window on a largely unknown corner of science: the middlemen who supply researchers with human fetal cells from elective abortions.

For decades, these typically small companies or nonprofits have been quietly processing human tissue and filling orders for fetal cells from scientists studying eye disease, HIV, autism and other conditions.

Health authorities in Sierra Leone said Tuesday they had quarantined almost 700 people as they battled to contain a new outbreak of Ebola which killed a 16-year-old girl.

The teenager died Sunday in a rural suburb of the city of Makeni, in a northern province that had not recorded a single case of the deadly virus in nearly six months.

An Italian-Chinese medical team plan to perform the world's first head transplant in China, one of the surgeons said Friday, amid concerns over medical ethics in the country.

Ren Xiaoping, who along with Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero, hope to attempt the procedure within two years, but only if the preparatory research and tests go according to plan, Ren said.

Aiming lower saves more lives when it comes to controlling high blood pressure, says a major new study that could spur doctors to more aggressively treat patients over 50.

Patients who got their blood pressure well below today's usually recommended level significantly cut their risk of heart disease and death, the National Institutes of Health announced Friday. The benefit was strong enough that NIH stopped the study about a year early.

A Dutch study aims to get a grip on violence in prisons by prescribing vitamins and minerals for inmates with anger management issues, justice officials said Wednesday.

Starting early next year prisoners at seven institutions who show violent tendencies will receive added vitamins, minerals and fish oil, the justice ministry said.

Gay men at high risk of contracting HIV should have access to a daily dose of a drug used to treat the AIDS-causing virus, but as a preventive measure, researchers recommended Thursday.

The medicine, sold under the brand name Truvada, proved almost 90 percent effective at protecting men taking part in a British study, they wrote in The Lancet medical journal. 

Boys with a low resting heart rate in their late teens run a higher risk of turning to a life of violent crime when grown, a study out Wednesday suggests.

The findings could lead to improved ways to stop certain people from indulging in crime before it is too late.

California is set to become the sixth American state to approve euthanasia, a controversial issue in the United States fueled by the recent suicide of a woman suffering from terminal cancer.

"This is a historic step forward for Californians with terminal illnesses who have been looking to the legislature for the option to determine the quality of their final days of life based on their own personal beliefs," said Senator Bill Monning, one of the backers of the bill approved by the state assembly on Wednesday.

The Philippines has suspended macaque exports after an Ebola virus strain that is non-fatal to humans struck 20 monkeys, killing 11, officials said Thursday.

Eleven captive Philippine macaques have died after contracting the bat-borne Ebola Reston virus while nine others are under treatment, they said.