The city of Las Vegas has set up vending machines to dispense clean hypodermics to IV drug users, the first such effort in the country.

The program is intended to reduce the spread of infections like HIV and hepatitis C through shared needles. It's a collaboration of public health groups and AIDS researchers. Individuals who want to use the machines register through a sign-up process that does not require identifying information, and then get a card that allows them to receive up to two kits each week containing clean syringes and disposal containers.

Local officials estimate 9 percent of new HIV cases in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, are IV drug users.

Body of Knowledge

Your ears secrete more earwax — cerumen — when you are afraid. In an average lifetime, you generate about three pounds' worth, which serves to protect the skin of ear canal, assist in cleaning and lubrication and provide some protection against bacteria, fungi, insects and water.

Get Me That, Stat!

A driving analytics company reports that 3 million drivers traveling 5.6 billion miles used their cell phones 88 percent of the time. According to Wired magazine, that works out to drivers spending 3.5 minutes on their phones per one-hour trip. Not so bad until you realize a 2-second distraction increases risk of crashing by 20 percent.

Life in Big Macs

One hour of grocery shopping (with or without a cart) burns 156 calories (based on a 150-pound person or the equivalent of 0.2 Big Macs.

Counts

30: Number of Americans, in millions, with hearing loss who don't wear hearing aids

Source: STAT

Stories for the Waiting Room

Hand air dryers are often touted as a more hygienic approach than using paper towels, but at least some research suggests otherwise. In one experiment, participants slathered gloved hands with a non-pathogenic virus, then use paper towels, a standard warm hand dryer or a jet dryer — the kind with streams of forced air that can make your skin ripple.

The researchers then used a technique to measure how much bacteria is sent airborne through these three hand-drying approaches. The jet dryer produced spread 20 times more viruses than warm air dryer and 190 times more than paper towels. It also spread them further, 10 feet or more, where they lingered in the air longer.

Bottom line: After washing your hands thoroughly, maybe shake gently and let drip dry. And don't stand too close to folks using hand air dryers.

Doc Talk

Crump: When a patient tries to die on the medical practitioner, as in "My patient tried to crump on me repeatedly throughout the night."

Phobia of the Week

Epistaxiophobia: fear of nosebleeds

Never Say Diet

The Major League Eating record for pancakes is 50 3.25-ounce flapjacks in 10 minutes, held by Patrick Bertoletti. Note: Bertoletti is a professional eater, so the odds of winning weren't really stacked against him.

Best Medicine

A doctor is asked to give a speech at his local medical society's annual dinner. On the morning of the event, he jots down some notes. That night, standing at the lectern, he pulls out his notes and realizes, to his chagrin, that he can't read his own writing.

And so he begins his talk with a question: "Is there a pharmacist in the house?"

Observation

"Old people have fewer diseases than the young, but their diseases never leave them."

—Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (460 BC-370 BC)

Medical History

This week in 1886, the soft drink Coca-Cola was first sold to the public at the soda fountain in Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. It was invented by pharmacist, John Stith Pemberton, who mixed it in a 30-gallon brass kettle hung over a backyard fire. Until 1905, the drink was marketed as a "brain and nerve tonic," in part because it contained extracts of cocaine and caffeine-rich kola nut. It still contains caffeine, but the cocaine is gone.

Medical Myths

There's some truth to the popular notion that a big cup of strong, black coffee can help after imbibing too much alcohol, but it has nothing to do with reversing the effects of drink. Coffee does not get rid of alcohol in the system. That's a product of time and your kidneys. The "sobering" effect appears to be coffee's ability (or rather, caffeine's) to partly reverse the sedating effect of alcohol.

Med School

Q: The fetal human heart evolves through different stages in the womb, first resembling those of other animals. What are the stages and animals?

A: In the first stage, when the fetal heart consists of a single chamber, it resembles a fish's heart, then a frog's which has two chambers, then a snake's with three and finally, a human heart with four chambers.

Last Words

"Now why did I do that?"

—British Major-General William Erskine (1770-1813). Erskine attained high commands in the British Army, serving under the Duke of Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars. Later, however, he was cashiered from the army due to charges of insanity, and finally jumped from a window in Lisbon, Portugal, mortally injuring himself.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.