Free Republic

A coalition of human rights groups is condemning a proposed amendment to Rwanda's criminal law that would criminalize homosexual behavior and advocacy. Meanwhile, Rwanda's northern neighbor, Uganda, is receiving heat for a "draconian" anti-gay bill being debated in its legislature. The coalition Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders says the draft language to criminalize homosexuality could be voted on in the Rwandan lower house of parliament by Friday.  The draft code would then pass to the Rwandan senate for approval. The amended language for Article 217 acquired by the group would give offenders - those who "practice," "encourage,"...

Around one million doses of Tamiflu have so far been given out, but according to the figures, hundreds of thousands of packets could have been wasted as most people with symptoms of flu did not have the H1N1 pandemic virus. Random swabs taken by the Health Protection Agency show that four out of five people calling the National Pandemic Flu Service with symptoms of the disease, did not test positive for it. At the end of the first wave of the pandemic in Britain, just one in twenty people calling the flu line with symptoms tested positive. It has led...

BOSTON (Reuters) – Bone marrow transplants, already used to treat some children with sickle cell disease, also may cure some adults with this deadly genetic defect that causes red blood cells to contort, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday. > Destroying a patient's bone marrow and replacing it with healthy marrow from a donor, often a sibling, is considered too risky for adults. > This approach leaves enough space inside the patient's bones for the donated marrow to find a home and produce enough healthy red blood cells to compensate for the defective ones. >

The claims have been sensational. Martin Mittelstaedt checks up on the research behind the hype ### In the summer of 1974, brothers Frank and Cedric Garland had a heretical brainwave. The young epidemiologists were watching a presentation on death rates from cancer county by county across the United States. As they sat in a lecture hall at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore looking at the colour-coded cancer maps, they noticed a striking pattern, with the map for colon cancer the most pronounced. Counties with high death rates were red; those with low rates were blue. Oddly, the nation was almost...

A friend of mine once called it Elvis Disease. Occasionally an individual will become so powerful, that he forgets he is mortal. (It’s what happened to Marlon Brando’s character in “Apocalypse Now.“) Because when a human becomes so important that people confuse him with a god, he might start believing it himself. When Elvis came out of the dressing room for the first time in that sequined white jumpsuit with elephant bells, high collar, and a matching cape, he asked the people he thought were friends, “Ahh , what d’yall think? Ahh picked it for my Hawaii show…” But everyone...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Researchers in the United States have found another good reason to go to the local espresso bar: several cups of coffee a day could halt the progression of liver disease, a study showed Wednesday. Sufferers of chronic hepatitis C and advanced liver disease who drank three or more cups of coffee per day slashed their risk of the disease progressing by 53 percent compared to patients who drank no coffee, the study led by Neal Freedman of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) showed. For the study, 766 participants enrolled in the Hepatitis C Antiviral Long-Term Treatment...

The Pentagon runs a massive medical research program, studying a broad range of problems from cancer to malaria to sleep disorders. The work is done at home and abroad. For instance, The Defense Department partners on AIDS prevention with African forces, and the Army worked on an experimental AIDs vaccine tested in Thailand, announcing a breakthrough in the vaccine on Thursday. Though military research has also benefited the civilian world, the main reason for the huge effort is to protect the U.S. armed forces as they are exposed to disease and injury while deployed around the world. "If half of...

New guidance for Britain’s 150,000 practising doctors could remove the right to confidentiality from patients with inherited diseases. When a patient is found to have a gentic disease, such as certain forms of cancer, doctors will be obliged to inform relatives about potential risks to their health, the General Medical Council (GMC) says. Updated guidance on confidentiality, seen by The Times before publication on Monday, suggests that most patients will readily share information about their health with their children and close relatives. However, in circumstances where family relationships have broken down, where children have been adopted — or patients refuse...

Despite the efforts restaurant chains from fast food to fine dining have made to add more-healthful items to the menu, consumers still aren’t buying. In a poll on chainleader.com, 82 percent of respondents say their better-for-you items are selling “lousy.” Recent research shows that customers cite economic factors as a reason for not purchasing healthful food—or as an excuse. Too Great a Cost Chicago-based foodservice consulting firm Technomic says its research shows the recession is hindering consumers’ healthy-eating behavior. Although more than half of consumers say they are more concerned about their eating habits than they were a year ago,...

See Video Here (she' pretty, maybe that we'll get you to watch it?) The Documents are HERE ...

The document on the WHO website linked below states that it is common procedure to release pandemic viruses into the population in order to get a jump ahead of the real pandemic, so as to fast track the vaccine for when it is needed. In Europe, some manufacturers have conducted advance studies using a so-called "mock-up" vaccine. Mock-up vaccines contain an active ingredient for an influenza virus that has not circulated recently in human populations and thus mimics the novelty of a pandemic virus. According to the website, “Such advance studies can greatly expedite

A new study at the Centres for Disease Expansion revealed that only 70 percent of the population has an illness or medical disorder of some kind. Team leader Dr. Pran Feesberg said investigators were "shocked" by the results. "It means that nearly a third of North Americans have no trace of disease - nothing they can take drugs for, no condition they can complain about to friends - just a bleak, empty life, devoid of infirmity."

Some of my best friends are gay. Suspiciously large numbers, it has sometimes been suggested to me. But that’s OK, I’m cool with that. What my friends get up to in the privacy of their own homes - or, indeed, the scary back room of their local boite - is very much their own affair. And if they want to get married (Hell-ooo! Why sacrifice the single greatest benefit of being gay?), well I’m probably OK with that too. I don’t believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice so I guess it’s only fair that gay men and women too...

Parasitic infections and other diseases usually associated with the developing world are cropping up with alarming frequency among U.S. poor, especially in states along the U.S.-Mexico border, the rural South and in Appalachia, according to researchers. Government and private researchers are just beginning to assess the toll of the infections, which are a significant cause of heart disease, seizures and congenital birth defects among black and Hispanic populations. Click on the image to see diseases associated with developing countries that are becoming common in the U.S. . One obstacle is that the diseases, long thought to be an overseas problem,...

A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter. The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health, has been leaked to The Mail on Sunday, leading to demands to know why the information has not been given to the public before the vaccination of millions of people, including children, begins. It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by...

Hundreds of thousands of Americans could die over the next two years if the vaccine and other control measures for the new H1N1 influenza are not effective, and, at the pandemic's peak, as much as 40% of the workforce could be affected, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is admittedly a worst-case scenario that the federal agency says it doesn't expect to occur. But the broad range of potential deaths highlights the unpredictability of flu viruses in general and this swine flu virus in particular because it hasn't behaved the way researchers have...

Contaminated needles and scalpels, bloodied bandages, body parts, unused prescription drugs, soiled hospital garments, radioactive waste and refuse tainted with infectious disease: These are only a few items that may be discarded on a curbside, abandoned in a nearby lake or piled in a dumpster headed for the local landfill. Some say Americans are simply oblivious to the imminent risk of major hazards and contagions spreading throughout their communities at any given time. Former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., grew concerned about medical waste hauling after Sept. 11. He told WND that 15 years ago, the nation's hospitals incinerated much of...

Contrary to the popular assumption that the new swine flu pandemic arose on factory farms in Mexico, federal agriculture officials now believe that it most likely emerged in pigs in Asia, but then traveled to North America in a human. But they emphasized that there was no way to prove their theory and only sketchy data underpinning it. There is no evidence that this new virus, which combines Eurasian and North American genes, has ever circulated in North American pigs, while there is tantalizing evidence that a closely related “sister virus” has circulated in Asia. American breeding pigs, possibly carrying...

The World Health Organization this morning formally declared that swine flu had reached the level of a full-blown pandemic, moving the viral outbreaks to phase 6 on the pandemic alert scale. WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan met with flu experts at 6 a.m. ET today in Geneva to discuss the spread of the novel virus, and since Wednesday the escalation to the highest level of pandemic alert had been widely anticipated. The move reflects the continued spread of the virus around the globe, despite quarantines, school closings and other measures designed to keep it in check. Swine flu is the...

The world must be ready for H1N1 swine flu to become more severe and kill more people, World Health Organization chief Dr. Margaret Chan said on Friday. A genetic analysis of the new virus showed it must have been circulating undetected for some time, in pigs or perhaps in other animals. The WHO is poised to declare a full pandemic of the virus, which has infected more than 11,000 people in 42 countries and killed 86. And U.S. health officials released $1 billion for companies to get started on a vaccine in case it is needed. The virus must be...

London is suffering a startling rise in diseases associated with Victorian times, official figures reveal today. Rare infectious illnesses including typhoid, whooping cough and scarlet fever have soared by 166 per cent in the past two years, with the number of cases of mumps - a disease easily prevented with vaccine - rising from 125 in 2007 to 393 last year - an increase of 214 per cent.

The Obama White House said Tuesday that it wants $63 billion to be set aside in the fiscal 2010 budget to fight global diseases over the next six years. The initiative, announced by Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew, continues an effort begun under former President George W. Bush to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Obama's budget request, he said, also will specify more money for prenatal and postnatal care, children's health and fighting tropical diseases. "We cannot fix every problem," President Barack Obama said in a written statement. "But we have a responsibility to protect the health of our...

My Aunt Violet Alexander passed away Friday. She was a giver, a good Christian, mother of three boys (all adults now) grandmother, and a long-time babysitter in her community. She even provided daycare to the members of the famous rock group "Slipknot" when they were tikes. A very good country cook, a warm, "diamond in the rough" type person, she was really there for me when my dad passed away in 2002. Our family and Des Moines has lost a good woman. We will miss her.

News to Note, May 2, 2009A weekly feature examining news from the biblical viewpoint (Read the following stories, and much more by clicking excerpt link at the bottom) 1. LiveScience: “Swine Flu Is Evolution in Action”Swine flu—both the virus itself and the associated paranoia—seems to be sweeping the world. Is it evolution in action? 2. LiveScience: “Some Dinosaurs Survived the Asteroid Impact”The widely taught model of dinosaur extinction doesn’t line up with the latest fossil findings. 3. National Geographic News: “Baby Mammoth CT Scan Reveals Internal Organs”The preserved baby woolly mammoth shows that it died in an “oxygen-deprived environment” that...

The flu epidemic has finally reached America and already we have our first casualty, a toddler in Texas. The flu epidemic will no doubt have an effect on these and other vulnerable groups with weak immune systems including the elderly and Aids patients. I decided to write about this after listening to Michael Savage discuss it. His take was as you can very well imagine controversial as is some of his other remarks. Savage noted also that the government has done nothing useful to prevent the spread of this new influenza strain despite the fact that it may have as...

Foolish medical generosity encourages clever Illegal Aliens to exploit free medical care that EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, provides.[1] Foolish medical graciousness encourages cynical Illegal Aliens to take and take and take again.[2] Only a foolish guest will refuse what a foolish host offers. Our wide-open Golden Door guarantees that Illegal Aliens in their own self-interest will use and abuse our medical system. Our Golden Door also is propped open thanks to advocacy and legal aid of Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Foundation, National Immigration Law Center, Southern Poverty Law Center, and similar open border...

Pigs Fly. You Die.Evan Whiles calmly covers his body in saran wrap and tucks a surgical mask on his nose before he goes ten steps beyond his porch to fetch the mail."Germs are everywhere," said Whiles as he dashes to the mailbox, waving his hand like a lunatic. "We're all going to die. Woooo!!!! Ahhhhh!!!"Whiles is just another American and member of the Most Panicked Generation who is facing down another emergency with the cool, steely resolve to over-react to the situation and, hopefully, make things worse.When the stock market crashed late last year, Whiles dug a large hole in...

Army criminal investigators are looking into the possibility that disease samples are missing from biolabs at Fort Detrick. As first reported in today's edition of The Frederick News-Post by columnist Katherine Heerbrandt, the investigators are from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division unit at Fort Meade. Chad Jones, spokesman for Fort Meade, said CID is investigating the possibility of missing virus samples from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. He said the only other detail he could provide is that the investigation is ongoing. Fort Detrick does not have its own CID office, Jones said, which is...

Nations around the world are reporting new cases of a swine flu virus that is believed to have killed 152 people in Mexico. With more than 1,600 others believed ill in Mexico, authorities Tuesday said the number of cases confirmed in the United States also had risen - to 64. Some of the U.S. cases have been identified in states bordering Mexico, with other cases found elsewhere in people who recently traveled there. Cases of swine flu also have been confirmed in Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Spain and Israel, while other countries, like Australia, France, Denmark and South Korea are...

go to the link

In 2019, we may look a decade into our past and laugh about today's panic regarding the recent outbreak of swine flu-bird flu hybrid. While I earnestly hope that fears of a flu pandemic are overreactions, it seems to be more likely than not that the swine flu will spread to epidemic proportions. Amid confessions from the Centers for Disease Control that containment of the virus is "highly unlikely", many families are scrambling to do whatever possible to prevent the infection from spreading to them and their loved ones. I am an herbalist and nutritionist, and my pantry is stockpiled...

As reports of a unique form of swine flu erupt around the world, the inevitable question arises: Is this the big one? Is this the next big global flu epidemic that public health experts have long anticipated and worried about? Is this the novel virus that will kill millions around the world, as pandemics did in 1918, 1957 and 1968? The short answer is it's too soon to tell. "What makes this so difficult is we may be somewhere between an important but yet still uneventful public health occurrence here — with something that could literally die out over the...

Mayor Bloomberg announced in a news conference Sunday morning that the Centers for Disease Control confirmed cases of swine flu in a Queens school. The mayor said St. Francis Preparatory School will be closed on Monday, and asked students, faculty and staff at the school who are feeling flu-like symptoms to stay home for at least 48 hours. Those who are sick are also advised to cover their mouths, wash their hands regularly, and limit their contact with other people in order to limit spreading the illness. Bloomberg also said health officials are looking for cases of swine flu outbreak...

Mexico City - The death toll from a spreading wave of influenza in Mexico has climbed to 81, Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos said Saturday evening. Twenty of the lethal infections have been definitively linked to the newly emerging strain of swine flu, he said. All told, 1,324 people have been admitted to hospital for examination. In the United States, 11 non-lethal cases of a similar strain of influenza have been identified by the Centres for Disease Control, with tests pending on another 10 cases. The Geneva-based World Health Organization declared the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico and...

Gov. Rick Perry Saturday asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 37,430 courses of antiviral medications from the Strategic National Stockpile as a precaution after three cases of swine flu were confirmed in Texas. The medication will be available for treatment of those with confirmed or suspected cases of swine flu as well as for healthcare providers who may come into contact with the patients, Perry said. All three of the Texas cases involved high school students from the same school in Guadalupe County. The first two became ill in early April and on Thursday test results...

Remember recently how the Smelly One who was caught LYING again about revising the horrible NAFTA=SHAFTA for the citizens of the United States Treaty forced upon the citizens of American by the SWINE clinton? Another horrible reality of the SHAFTA is the meats being sold to you in the big chains across America. Next time you go to pick up some ribs for a BBQ take a look at the what can only be described as the UNTRUTH being told in the so call Truth in Packaging you will note product of USA,CANADA,MEXICO. Do you really want to feed that...

<p>US medical authorities expressed strong concern Friday about an unprecedented multi-strain swine flu outbreak that has killed at least 60 people in Mexico and infected seven people in the United States. "It's very obvious that we are very concerned. We've stood up emergency operation centers," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokesman Dave Daigle told AFP.</p>

Dozens of people have died and hundreds of others have been infected in a viral outbreak in Mexico suspected to have been caused by a strain of swine flu. The World Health Organization thinks the virus may be behind 60 deaths in Mexico since mid-March. Mexican authorities have closed schools in affected areas and a vaccination campaign is being launched. Seven non-fatal cases of a new form of swine flu have also been confirmed in the southern United States.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico closed its schools across its capital Friday after at least 16 otherwise healthy people died and more than 900 others fell ill from what could be a new strain of swine flu. The World Health Organization worried that it could mark the start of a flu pandemic. Scientists in the U.S. and Mexico were trying to determine if the deaths were due to the same new strain of swine flu that sickened seven people in Texas and California. The World Health Organization counted at least 57 deaths in Mexico, although it wasn't yet clear if this...

Travel advisory warns of severe respiratory illness in Mexico 20 die from severe respiratory illness in Mexico Canadians who have recently returned from Mexico should be on alert for flu-like symptoms that could be connected to a severe respiratory illness, federal health officials said Thursday in issuing a travel advisory. A severe respiratory illness appears to have infected 137 people in south and central areas of Mexico, with cases concentrated in Mexico City and three other areas, including 20 deaths, the Public Health Agency of Canada said. In the United States, health officials in Texas and California were scrambling this...

London suffering from shocking rise in rare 'Victorian' diseasesJoe Murphy, Political Editor 15.04.09   London is in the grip of a startling rise in diseases associated with Victorian times, figures disclose today.Rare infectious illnesses including typhoid, whooping cough and scarlet fever have soared by 166 per cent in the past two years.Infection rates in the capital are markedly higher than the national averages, warned Justine Greening, the shadow minister for London who assembled the figures.They include a staggering 214 per cent increase in cases of mumps - up from 125 in 2007 to 393 last year. The disease is...

Minnesota's epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases climbed to a new high in 2008 with a total of 17,650 new cases. That's 3.5 percent more than the 16,428 new cases reported in 2007, according to the Minnesota Health Department's annual report on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. The number went up despite a significant drop in gonorrhea. The vast majority of new cases were chlamydia, 14,350 in all, said Peter Carr, director of the department's STD section. The number climbed 7 percent from the previous year, the continuation of a 13-year trend of ever higher rates of infection. Chlamydia cases have more...

'Holy Mary, Help Us in Our Hour of Need!' A mysterious illness is causing calves to bleed to death on German farms. Veterinarians are stumped over what is causing the deaths: vaccines, genetically modified feed or perhaps even the first mother's milk? What can a cattle farmer do when he sees blood running from his calves like water, when they become lethargic and febrile and, by the next morning, are lying dead on the floor, their coats covered in blood? "Our calves from last summer looked like they had been beaten," says farmer Robert Meyboom, who is still shocked and...

It's been a dream for a decade: a single daily pill combining aspirin, cholesterol medicine and blood pressure drugs — everything people need to prevent heart attacks and strokes in a cheap, generic form. Skeptics said five medicines rolled into a single pill would mean five times more side effects. Some people would get drugs they don't need, while others would get too little. One-size-fits-all would turn out to fit very few, they warned. Now the first big test of the "polypill" has proved them wrong. The experimental combo pill was as effective as nearly all of its components taken...

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Given the new Presidential order allowing federal funds for research using human embryonic stem cells, it might be helpful for readers to become more familiar with the terminology used in any discussion of controversies surrounding embryonic stem cell research. What is a Stem Cell? A stem cell, whether of the adult or embryonic type, is an undifferentiated cell (i.e., a cell that has not yet specialized into a particular cell type, e.g., liver cell, pancreatic cell, or cardiac cell) with two unique capacities: the first, for rapid and prolonged self-multiplication into daughter cells identical...

The cases at the school and bars triggered fear and hundreds of screenings, and public health officials say it's a trend they're closely watching, particularly because San Francisco continues to have the highest rate of TB of any metro area in the country.

This is an actual sweepstakes and, if you are the grand prize winner, we will fly you and a companion to New York where you will receive a free colonoscopy. You will also be given three nights' accommodation in a suite at the luxurious Loews Regency Hotel, which will include the night before you are "awarded" the colonoscopy. What should you expect if you are the lucky winner? The hardest part is the preparation the night before when you drink a laxative. This laxative is well known for declaring itself at the very moment you have called a relative or...

For the first time in more than a decade, the rate at which residents in Singapore are contracting tuberculosis is on the rise. And more younger people aged below 30 are being hit - a worrying trend that hints at greater spread of the infectious respiratory disease in the community. Last year, 39.8 in every 100,000 Singaporeans and permanent residents contracted it, up from 35.1 in 2007. The number of TB patients grew by 15 per cent to 1,451 last year, up from 1,256 in the previous year. The last time the tuberculosis rate grew was in 1998, when it...

Symptoms of Parkinson's disease in mice disappeared when their brains were stimulated via spinal electrodes A ground-breaking medical device that eliminates the symptoms of Parkinson's disease by electrically stimulating the brain could be tested in humans as early as next year, according to scientists working on the project.The device has produced dramatic improvements in mice with a Parkinson's-like disease, raising hopes that it could transform the lives of the four million people worldwide who have the devastating condition.In tests, mice that suffered constant tremors and were barely able to walk because of the disease started moving around, groomed themselves and...

A pediatrician in northern British Columbia wants liquor and beer makers to help pay for the damage caused when pregnant women drink. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FASD, refers to a range of disabilities that are seen in people whose mothers drank alcohol while they were pregnant. Dr. Marie Hay of Prince George has diagnosed thousands of children harmed by fetal alcohol consumption. Hay's patient files document thousands of children hurt by exposure to alcohol. She said many now face: * Anxiety. * Depression. * Autism. * Schizophrenia. * Mental retardation. * Learning disabilities. * Conduct disorders. * Trouble with...