Free Republic

Vice President Joe Biden seems to have taken a liking to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's grandson. Bloomberg's daughter, Georgina Bloomberg, posted a Facebook photo on Wednesday of Biden and a young child. In the photo, Biden appears to have a pacifier in his mouth.

The team at Oxon Epidemiology and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analysed medical records from 1,958,191 people aged 55, on average, for up to two decades. Their most conservative analysis showed underweight people had a 39% greater risk of dementia compared with being a healthy weight. But those who were overweight had an 18% reduction in dementia - and the figure was 24% for the obese. "Yes, it is a surprise," said lead researcher Dr Nawab Qizilbash. He told the BBC News website: "The controversial side is the observation that overweight and obese people have a lower...

In an Iowa courtroom, an astonishing case of sex and Alzheimer’s After a four-year battle with Alzheimer’s, Donna Lou Rayhons died in a nursing home in August, just four days shy of her 79th birthday. A week later, Henry Rayhons was arrested and charged with sexual abuse. State prosecutors accused him of having sex with his wife while she was incapacitated by dementia.

Dr. Berg discusses his theory of what may be one cause of dementia, high blood pressure and stroke and how to avoid it.

Earlier this week we were all treated to an incredibly creepy photo of Vice President Joe Biden laying hands on Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s wife, while whispering sweet nothings in her ear. To say she looked a bit uncomfortable would be an understatement of biblical proportions.As we noted in the previous story, Biden has a long history of having roaming hands, and the good people over at The Washington Free Beacon have complied a hilarious video featuring every cringe-worthy, uncomfortable grope fest Biden’s participated in for your viewing enjoyment.Happy Friday! Was anyone else getting the willies while simultaneously laughing...

Jeb Bush made a series of astonishing remarks about immigration Wednesday. Actually, his comments were not so much about immigration as they were about illegal aliens. First he said he wanted to repopulate Detroit with illegal aliens. It just seems to me that maybe if you open up our doors in a fair way and unleashed the spirit of peoples' hard work, Detroit could become in really short order, one of the great American cities again," Bush said then. "Now it would look different, it wouldn't be Polish...But it would be just as powerful, just as exciting, just as dynamic....

The longtime king of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, passed away on Friday. But the death of the 90-year-old monarch didn’t seem to come as much of a shock to the Saudi establishment. When royal officials acknowledged Abdullah’s death, it was also revealed that Crown Prince Salman would succeed his brother. For the time being, the succession process seemed to have preserved stability in the Saudi Kingdom. Within hours, traders who speculated that the new king may take a critical look at Saudi policies, which have allowed crude prices to collapse in recent months, created a rally in the oil...

The longtime king of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, passed away on Friday. But the death of the 90-year-old monarch didnÂ’t seem to come as much of a shock to the Saudi establishment. When royal officials acknowledged AbdullahÂ’s death, it was also revealed that Crown Prince Salman would succeed his brother. For the time being, the succession process seemed to have preserved stability in the Saudi Kingdom. Within hours, traders who speculated that the new king may take a critical look at Saudi policies, which have allowed crude prices to collapse in recent months, created a rally in the...

Immoral bioethical policies and practices advance toward implementation through discourse–first in professional journals, and then in elite popular media columns.That process is now gearing up regarding what I call “VSED-by-Proxy.”VSED stands for “voluntary stopping eating and drinking”–suicide by self-starvation–pushed for the elderly and others by those compaaaaa–ssssss–ionate death zealots at the Hemlock Society Compassion and Choices.But what about mentally incompetent residents of nursing homes who willingly eat, but who years previously stated in an advance medical directive that they wanted to be made dead by starvation under such circumstances?We see increasing advocacy in bioethics that nursing homes be required to...

One of the most promising new treatments for Alzheimer's disease may already be in your kitchen. Curcumin, a natural product found in the spice turmeric, has been used by many Asian cultures for centuries, and a new study indicates a close chemical analog of curcumin has properties that may make it useful as a treatment for the brain disease. "Curcumin has demonstrated ability to enter the brain, bind and destroy the beta-amyloid plaques present in Alzheimer's with reduced toxicity," said Wellington Pham, Ph.D., assistant professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt and senior author of the...

When an assisted living home in California shut down last fall, many of its residents were left behind, with nowhere to go. The staff at the Valley Springs Manor left when they stopped getting paid — except for cook Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez, the janitor. "There was about 16 residents left behind, and we had a conversation in the kitchen, 'What are we going to do?' " Rowland says. "If we left, they wouldn't have nobody," the 34-year-old Alvarez says. Their roles quickly transformed for the elderly residents, who needed round-the-clock care. "I would only go home for one...

Sarasota scientists have made a discovery that may pave the way for more effective drug therapies to treat Alzheimer’s patients in the future. In a study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the Roskamp Institute’s scientists say they have isolated a single enzyme connected to all three key factors in Alzheimer’s disease – accumulation of amyloid protein, inflammation and modulation of the “tau” protein. All three damage nerve cells in the brain. “These studies suggest there is a single drug target to inhibit all three key pathologies of Alzheimer’s disease,” stated the study’s lead researcher, neurobiologist Daniel Paris, in...

Increasingly even many Democrats are recognizing that the American ship of state is foundering. It's Captain seems out of touch with reality. The Captain may be stressed out or the problem may be more serious. The American people are losing confidence in President Barack Obama's leadership. Movie Director Michael Moore says Obama has only one accomplishment. "100 years from now: 'He was the first black American that got elected president.' And that's it." Republican voters are increasingly vocal in their calls for impeachment. There is a less divisive way of dealing with a situation in which a president is out...

A fire station was quarantined and a police station evacuated Friday evening after a man claiming to be from Africa showed up at the Baton Rouge Police precinct on Highland Road ill. Police said, given the current situation with Ebola across the globe and the events in Texas, they decided to take precautionary measures. The measures included calling medical responders, HAZMAT and evacuating the police station between downtown and LSU. Officers said they were concerned because the man was obviously ill, a spokesperson said. The fire station near the North Gates of LSU was closed Friday night and fire fighters...

Vice president Joe Biden declared China a North American country in a speech at Boston's John F. Kennedy Forum at the Harvard Kennedy School on Thursday. Biden claimed that North America - "meaning Mexico, China and Canada" - will contribute two-thirds of the world's energy growth over the next two decades:

The NFL believes that nearly three in 10 former players will develop debilitating brain conditions, and that they will be stricken earlier and twice as often as the general population. The disclosure Friday comes in data the league prepared for its proposed $765 million settlement of thousands of concussion lawsuits. Both the league and players' lawyers estimate that 28 percent of the retirees will develop Alzheimer's disease, moderate dementia or more serious neurological problems. That would represent nearly 6,000 of the 19,000 living former players. Dozens of them could develop Lou Gehrig's or Parkinson's disease.

Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) is back with his colleagues in Washington, D.C., after winning his hard-fought primary runoff — but he had a bit of trouble finding Senate Republicans' weekly luncheon on Tuesday. Cochran, while talking with The Hill, made a few wrong turns before accidentally ending up at Senate Democrats' luncheon. After exiting a Senate elevator on the wrong floor, Cochran and The Hill reboarded. He then found the right floor but turned away from the Senate GOP luncheon, a few yards from the elevator, to stroll in the opposite direction, arriving at the Democrats' weekly gathering a few...

Many Baby Boomers already dread “the talk” –- suggesting their aging parents surrender car keys –- but now two geriatric experts say another thorny, family question must be asked of some elderly folks. Is it time to give up your gun? In a recently published paper, the two physicians offer a five-point checklist meant to help caregivers assess whether firearms remain safe in the hands and homes of older Americans, particularly if the gun owners are exhibiting unclear thinking or depression. “Just like with some (older) people, it’s not if you should stop driving, but when,” said Dr. Ellen M....

At this stage, 84-year-old U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., understands that he can pretty much get away with saying or doing anything. If the lawmaker cheated on his taxes with little consequence, what harm can possibly come from comparing the tea party to the terrorist group Hamas. Which is precisely what Rangel did in an interview taped on Thursday, as he discussed the three Israeli teenagers recently kidnapped. “We know that these victims, these kids are being held by people that have no moral standards… the question is how do we handle these types of people who don’t mind dying,”...

INTERVIEWER: What happened in Virginia the other day, does that concern you for your chances here in this run-off? COCHRAN: I don't know what you're talking about. What happened in Virginia? INTERVIEWER: With Eric Cantor losing his seat. COCHRAN: Well, I haven't followed that campaign very closely at all. INTERVIEWER: Really? Later, the interviewer says, "Well, Eric Cantor lost his seat as the Majority Leader." To which Cochran replies, "Well, it happens. Some win, some lose."