Today's Globe: Kennedy ties, medicine Nobels, Down syndrome test, fans and SIDS, colon-cancer screening, generic test, healthcare construction

An unlikely bond forged years ago between Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, an icon of the left, and US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, a conservative former governor of Utah, was crucial in salvaging talks when the White House threatened to slash nearly $2 billion from the state's health financing package, key players familiar with the negotiations said in interviews last week.

Two French researchers who discovered the human AIDS virus and a German scientist who showed that human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine yesterday.

A prenatal blood test can be used to determine if an unborn baby has Down syndrome without the small risk to the fetus posed by invasive testing methods such as amniocentesis, US researchers said yesterday.

Using a fan to circulate air seemed to lower the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, in a study of nearly 500 babies, researchers reported yesterday.

Most people over 75 should stop getting routine colon cancer tests, according to a government task force that also rejected the latest X-ray screening technology.

Johnson & Johnson's Remicade fought the bowel disorder Crohn's disease better than the generic medicine prescribed by doctors, a result that may help J&J win thousands more patients for its second-best-selling drug.

"A teetering economy already hangs over the state's bold attempt to provide health insurance for almost all its residents," a Globe editorial says. "Now a new threat is forming: a spate of health-facility construction in Massachusetts that will inevitably add to the medical bills that employers and consumers must pay."