Virtual airplanes, balconies, bridges and even a virtual Vietnam War are helping patients deal with their phobias more quickly and more cheaply than conventional methods, psychologists said on Friday. The psychologists said the novelty of virtual-reality tools, possibly known to most people as arcade games, might lure some of the most phobic into therapy.

The United States will hold on to its samples of smallpox virus just in case someone decides to use smallpox as a biological weapon, according to Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Researchers warn that restricting the spread of biotechnology research to prevent biological terrorism would do more harm than good.

The U.S. government said this week it is rolling out an early warning system to detect any biological attack against big cities, but experts questioned how well it would actually protect people because of a high false positive rate.

The United States and the rest of the world need to do a lot more to protect people against microbes like the one causing a mysterious and deadly form of pneumonia, as well as more traditional foes like influenza and tuberculosis, according to a panel of experts from the U.S. Institute of Medicine.

Citing the ongoing outbreak of a deadly respiratory illness, U.S. senators proposed spending $150 million to strengthen the world's radar system for detecting disease outbreaks.

Old people may hold the key to human civilization according to new research. They found evidence that, around 30,000 years ago, many more people started living into old age, in turn fueling a population explosion.