For some people the first puff of smoke they tried felt repulsive while for others those puffs came with a rush of pleasure. Researchers have identified a gene variant that may help explain why some smokers get addicted from their first cigarette while others seem immune to the addictive properties of tobacco. The paper published online in the journal Addiction reports an association between a variant in the nicotine receptor gene CHRNA5, initial smoking experiences and current smoking patterns. This gene is far more common among smokers than in those who have the occasional cigarette.

A six-year-old Texas girl whose brain had been partly removed through surgery to save her life from a rare neurological disease returned home for good Thursday. Jessie Hall walked out of Cook's Children's Medical Center, where she had been undergoing therapy after her operation at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland in June. She will continue her therapy at her family's house in Aledo.

A man lying amongst corpses in a morgue startled medical examiners when he sat up and asked for a drink of water. Mange Ram, 19, was picked up along with the dead after a stampede at a religious pilgrimage claimed over 100 lives. He told reporters that he awoke surrounded by "a row of bodies," after being crushed under the weight of those involved in the stampede and losing consciousness.

The future of an infant born of an Indian surrogate mother is uncertain as her biological parents, a Japanese couple, divorced after conception. Abandoned by her Japanese and the Indian mother, the baby is now under her grandmother's care in a hospital in Jaipur, in western Rajasthan state.

A California Department of Public Health report released Monday said 127 UCLA Medical Center workers went through the medical files of celebrities from January 2004 to June 2006. Despite a crackdown in April the report said three hospital staff members continued to look at the records of an unidentified celebrity, the report said. State regulators blamed UCLA management of UCLA for not implementing proper measures to stop the practice and keep medical records confidential.