U.S. drug giant Pfizer said Friday it will appeal against an Indian ruling overturning a patent for a cancer drug, saying the decision raises questions about intellectual property protection in India.

Indian generics heavyweight Cipla opposed the granting of the domestic patent for Prizer's Sutent, which is used to combat liver and kidney cancer.

The potential scope of the meningitis outbreak that has killed at least five people widened dramatically Thursday ashealth officials warned that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of patients who got steroid back injections in 23 states could be at risk.

Clinics and medical centers rushed to contact patients who may have received the apparently fungus-contaminated shots. And the Food and Drug Administration urged doctors not to use any products at all from the Massachusetts pharmacy that supplied the suspect steroid solution.

More Americans than ever are taking generic drugs, as blockbuster medicines like Plavix and Lipitor become available in low-cost versions. But the government's revelation this week that it mistakenly approved a defective generic antidepressant could stoke longtime concerns about the quality of knockoff drugs.

Hopes of a cure for infertility in humans were raised Friday after Japanese stem cell researchers announced they had created viable eggs using normal cells from adult mice.

The breakthrough raises the possibility that women who are unable to produce eggs naturally could have them created in a test tube from their own cells and then planted back into their body.

Providing free birth control to women and teens in Missouri at high risk of unplanned pregnancies led to a drastic drop in abortion rates and teenage mothers, a study published Thursday found.

If the same results were replicated across the United States, free birth control could prevent 1,060,370 unplanned pregnancies and 873,250 abortions a year.

A federal inspector found two strains of salmonella and unclean conditions at an Indiana cantaloupe farm's fruit-packing plant during inspections prompted by a deadly outbreak linked to the farm's melons.

The Food and Drug Administration's report on the mid-August inspections at Chamberlain Farm Produce Inc. shows an inspector found improperly cleaned and apparently rusted and corroded equipment. The inspector also found what appeared to be algae growing in standing water beneath conveyer belts at the Owensville, Ind., plant, the report said.

Teva Pharmaceuticals has stopped shipping its generic version of a popular antidepressant after a federal analysis showed the pill does not work properly.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it asked Teva to withdraw Budeprion XL 300 after new testing showed the drug releases its key ingredient faster than the original drug Wellbutrin XL 300, made by GlaxoSmithKline.

An outbreak of a rare and deadly form of meningitis has now sickened 26 people in five states who received steroid injections mostly for back pain, health officials said Wednesday. Four people have died, and more cases are expected.

Eighteen cases of fungal meningitis are in Tennessee where a Nashville clinic received the largest shipment of the steroid suspected in the outbreak. The drug was made by a specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts that issued a recall last week. Investigators, though, say they are still trying to confirm the source of the infections.

Too often, newborns die of genetic diseases before doctors even know what's to blame. Now scientists have found a way to decode those babies' DNA in just days instead of weeks, moving gene-mapping closer to routine medical care.

The idea: Combine faster gene-analyzing machinery with new computer software that, at the push of a few buttons, uses a baby's symptoms to zero in on the most suspicious mutations. The hope would be to start treatment earlier, or avoid futile care for lethal illnesses.

U.S. births fell for the fourth year in a row, the government reported Wednesday, with experts calling it more proof that the weak economy has continued to dampen enthusiasm for having children.

But there may be a silver lining: The decline in 2011 was just 1 percent — not as sharp a fall-off as the 2 to 3 percent drop seen in other recent years.