Health

Snakes are able to convert their venom back into harmless molecules, according to new research published Wednesday that scientists said could have important implications for diseases like cancer.

The joint British-Australian study of venom and tissue gene sequences in snakes showed that venom not only evolved from regular cells but could be turned back into harmless proteins.

Suicide rates can rise by between eight and 15 per cent in times of economic hardship, according to studies that separately probed the effects of Europe's economic crisis and of droughts in Australia.

Writing in the BMJ medical journal, researchers estimated the recession may have been to blame for some 1,000 people taking their own lives in Britain between 2008 and 2010.

Before the financial crisis, the suicide rate in Britain had been on the decline, reaching a 20-year low of 4,006 deaths in 2007, the team wrote.

Gay sex in a conservative Catholic society where the influential church forbids the use of condoms is fuelling an alarming rise of HIV infections in the Philippines, experts warn.

The Southeast Asian country is facing a HIV epidemic, with sex between men making up nearly 90 percent of all new cases, according to the health department and the United Nations' Development Programme (UNDP).

Ten new infections are being detected every day, three times the rate of just a few years ago, the UNDP said.

Three decades into the AIDS pandemic an end to new infections is in sight, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"We don't even know if a cure is possible. What we know is it is possible that we can end this pandemic even without a cure," Fauci said in an interview ahead of the International AIDS conference July 22-27 in the US capital.