Today's Globe: the marshmallow test, ERs and the uninsured, biological-drug safety, suicide rise, healthcare waste

From church sermons to parenting manuals, "the marshmallow test" has entered popular culture as a potent lesson on the rewards of self-control. Now neuroscientists, using high-tech brain scans, are examining what goes on in the brain when a person aces or flunks marshmallow-type tasks.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, hospital emergency departments in the United States are not overrun by uninsured people with minor ailments who want free treatment, US researchers said yesterday.

Nearly a fourth of widely used new-generation biological drugs for several common diseases produce serious side effects that lead to safety warnings soon after they go on the market, the first major study of its kind found. Included in the report released yesterday were the arthritis drugs Humira and Remicade, cancer drugs Rituxan and Erbitux, and the heart failure drug Natrecor.

The suicide rate in the United States rose from 1999 to 2005, the first increase after a decline of more than a decade, fueled by a 17 percent rise among middle-age whites, researchers reported yesterday.

"A staggering $760 billion -- more than the $700 billion bailout of the US banking system and a full third of the $2.3 trillion in annual healthcare spending - is wasted on things like medical mistakes, hospital-acquired infections, medication errors, overuse of emergency departments, and unnecessary lab tests and medical imaging," James Roosevelt Jr., president and CEO of Tufts Health Plan, writes on the op-ed page. "A recent set of reports from the New England Healthcare Institute has done much to quantify specific, actionable examples of healthcare waste in systemwide clinical care."