Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Safe Vitamin D Use to Fight Colon Cancer May Have Been Found

Using the properties of vitamin D to fight colon cancer has long been a paradox wrapped in an enigma. Large doses of the vitamin, which is absorbed by humans primarily through exposure to sunlight, are needed to prevent colorectal cancer in its earliest stages.

But high doses of vitamin D also produce high amounts of calcium, which can cause toxicity in the blood. Now, scientists at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center offer research that indicates it might be possible to separate vitamin D’s cancer-fighting properties from its other functions.

The study, companies reported in the latest issue of the journal Molecular Cell, found that mutant forms of the protein that binds to vitamin D in the cell will allow vitamin D to regulate a cancer-causing protein called beta catenin without promoting the calcium for bone development.

“We found that we might be able to separate the two functions at the molecular level, and this raises the possibility that vitamin D can be chemically modified into a drug that will only have anticancer effects,” said Stephen Byers, an adjunct professor in Georgetown’s departments of oncology and cell biology and co-author of the study in a press release.

But Byers also warned that such a drug would not be a cure for colon cancer. “That’s because we know that by the time colon cancer is well advanced it fails to respond to vitamin D,” he said.

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Bush Officials Participate in Simulated Bioterror Attack Response

It was only a drill, but Saturday’s exercise on how to respond to a bioterror attack in Washington, D.C. was taken seriously enough to involve many of the Bush administration’s Cabinet secretaries.

The Associated Press reports that Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff were among the Cabinet members who were part of the drill, which simulated an attack using the smallpox virus.

Officially, smallpox is a disease that doesn’t exist any more, but its re-emergence as a bioterror agent has been a concern, especially since the still-unsolved 2001 anthrax attacks that killed 5 people in the United States.

The United States resumed smallpox vaccinations for some military personnel after the anthrax attacks.

The A.P. quotes White House spokeswoman Dana Perino as saying, “The purpose of this exercise, which was only a drill, was to address the federal government’s response to a potential smallpox attack… we do not have any concern that a smallpox attack is imminent.”

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Nonprofit Hospitals Get Renewed Congressional Scrutiny

Members of the U.S. Congress who have oversight into charitable institutions have begun to take a look at whether nonprofit hospitals are doing enough charity work.

The New York Times reports that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who heads the Senate Finance Committee, is expanding his committee’s oversight of tax exempt organizations such as the United Way and American Red Cross to the operations of nonprofit hospitals to determine whether those medical institutions’ tax exempt status is justified.

The goal would be for the government to adopt legislation that would clarify and enforce tax exempt standards for nonprofit hospitals, the Times reports. The newspaper quotes the U.S commissioner of internal revenue Mark Everson as saying that federal tax officials have often found little difference between nonprofit and for-profit hospitals “in their operations,