Today's Globe: icy enemy, Tufts-Blue Cross breakdown, COBRA help, wrong body, 'brain pacemaker,' obesity drug, Gardasil in males, Lipitor patent

On Monday a barely visible sheen of ice unexpectedly froze to roads, stairways, and walkways, making for what Dr. Alasdair Conn, chief of emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, called "the busiest day I've ever seen in 20 years." And today could bring more.

The breakdown in contract talks between Tufts Medical Center physicians and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts has thousands of patients fretting they may not be able to see trusted doctors, and scrambling to come up with alternate caregivers.

The economic stimulus package now being assembled on Capitol Hill will include significant subsidies to help the newly unemployed keep their health insurance after they lose their jobs, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said yesterday.

The state medical examiner's office released the wrong body to a Worcester funeral home the day after Christmas, then discovered the mistake at a cemetery three days later, shortly before the man's remains were to be cremated, state officials said.

Parkinson's sufferers who had electrodes implanted in their brains improved substantially more than those who took only medicine, according to the biggest test yet of deep brain stimulation.

Leptin, the appetite-suppressing drug that flunked tests for weight loss in people, is resurrecting hope with a study showing it worked better in mice when combined with other medicines.

Drug maker Merck & Co. has asked federal regulators to approve use in males for its vaccine against the human papillomavirus, which causes cervical and other sexually transmitted cancers.

Pfizer Inc. won new protection on the cholesterol pill Lipitor, the world's best-selling drug, after the United States agreed to reissue a patent on the drug's key ingredient that had been invalidated by an appeals court.