Free Republic

Many people are getting the message loud and clear. That sunscreen helps protect you against skin cancer. But some experts say all that sunscreen is creating another problem. “That is the major cause for the vitamin D epidemic worldwide,” says Dr. Michael F. Holick, an endocrinologist at the BU School of Medicine. “Sunscreen absorbs ultraviolet light and ultraviolet light makes vitamin D in your skin, and if you put a sunscreen on with an SPF of 30 and it absorbs about 97-98% of the UV light, it will reduce the ability to make vitamin D in your skin by 97-98%,”...

Darcy Olsen, CEO and president of the Goldwater Institute, has written a must-read book for anyone facing a serious ailment, The Right to Try: How the Federal Government Prevents Americans from Getting the Life-Saving Treatments They Need.It is common knowledge there is a problem with the FDA delaying the approval of drugs. But until now, most Americans did not realize just how bad the situation is  — hundreds of thousands of people, including children, needlessly lose their lives every year because new, breakthrough drugs that have worked in clinical trials and are legal in other countries are not approved here....

<p>As the U.S. engages in a national debate over the militarization of the police, federal data shows that government agencies charged with largely administrative roles are spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to purchase SWAT and military-style equipment.</p> <p>Since FY 2006, 44 traditionally administrative agencies have spent over $71 million on items like body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition, according to federal spending data from watchdog group OpenTheBooks.com.</p>

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) nullified a 30-year ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men. The FDA ban, which went into effect during the 1980s AIDS crisis, prohibited blood from gay men as a way to stop transmission of HIV. Many early cases of AIDS and HIV resulted from blood transfusions, as was the case with tennis superstar Arthur Ashe. However, the new policy will not accept “donations from men who have had sex with another man in the previous year.” Australia and the United Kingdom also use the 12-month window. “Ultimately, the 12-month deferral window is...

The federal government said Friday it would ban minors from using indoor tanning beds, taking action on an issue that many states are already handling. The Food and Drug Administration said the proposed measure was in response to 1.6 million minors using indoor tanning beds each year, according to 2013 federal data. The problem is that indoor tanning is a "known contributor to skin cancer," the agency said. People who have been exposed to radiation from tanning beds are 59 percent more likely to develop melanoma, a dangerous form of skin cancer, than those who never have used the beds,...

Imagine if you were faced with this situation. Your doctor, after running a battery of tests on your six year-old daughter, tells you that she is suffering from a rare cancer that is almost invariably fatal. "But there must be something doctor," you blurt out. "Aren't there some new drugs available that work in at least some cases?" The doctor replies, "Yes, there are some drugs that do show promise in treating your daughter's cancer. The problem is that they have not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and therefore I can't get any of them. And...

Many of us remember at least this first line from Lydia Maria Child’s “The New-England Boy’s Song About Thanksgiving Day” (1844). Child was an ardent abolitionist, advocate of women’s rights, and spoke out about the mistreatment of Indians. Were she to return today, I suspect that Ms. Child would have a few things to say about our healthcare system. Here are two disturbing current events: 1. Duodenoscopes, AERs, and the FDA This one just seems to stay in the news. In fact, it gets worse and more convoluted as 2015 races into the history books. The latest wrinkle occurred on...

Obamacare's menu labeling regulation promises to be a disaster for the food and restaurant industries, as its implementation is both costly and extremely onerous. While its deleterious effects on the pizza, restaurant, and grocery industries have been most well known, it also has the potential to shutter an industry near and dear to Americans' hearts: craft beer. Since beer has a few too many calories for bureaucrats, the health law dictates that all brewers include a detailed calorie count on every type of beer produced. Failure to do so, according to Americans for Tax Reform, "means craft brewers will not be able...

The Food and Drug Administration has approved an easy-to-use version of the life-saving drug that reverses heroin and prescription painkiller overdoses, as communities across the country grapple with a wave of drug abuse. The reformulated drug, sold as Narcan, comes as a nasal spray and should help first responders, police and others deliver the antidote in emergency situations. Known generically as naloxone, the drug reverses the effects of opioids, drugs that include legal painkillers such as oxycodone and illegal narcotics such as heroin. ...

A new cancer treatment strategy is on the horizon that experts say could be a game-changer and spare patients the extreme side effects of existing options such as chemotherapy. Chemotherapy and other current cancer treatments are brutal, scorched-earth affairs that work because cancer cells are slightly - but not much - more susceptible to the havoc they wreak than the rest of the body. Their side effects are legion, and in many cases horrifying – from hair loss and internal bleeding to chronic nausea and even death. But last week the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the first time...

The FDA denies approval to cures for diseases because of decades-old research standards that don’t make sense for today’s science. America has always been a pioneering place. It has spurred innovation and offered hope and opportunity to millions of people from around the world. Many of our greatest innovators have been doctors and researchers who have risked everything to save lives. Yet now scientists and patients are too frequently being denied the opportunity to advance medical cures. We continue to lose far too many of our loved ones to the “invisible graveyard,” as economist Alex Tabarrok has described: lives that...

Later this year, the federal government is expected to remove dietary cholesterol from its list of bad foods. The expert panel that advises the government on these guidelines concluded there's no reason to be concerned about "overconsumption." In other words, all those federal warnings stretching over the past four decades about how eating eggs and other cholesterol-rich food would clog your arteries were wrong. Now the federal government could be making the same mistake with trans-fat.

A coupon is a menu New federal guidance meant to help businesses comply with the Obamacare calorie posting regulation has not made the rule any less “complex and burdensome,” a group critical of the regulation says. The 53-page document released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week says a coupon can be a menu and offers a 109-word definition of “restaurant-type food.” “FDA’s recent disclosure of guidelines regarding the menu labeling rule does not change the fact that the regulation remains expensive, ineffective, and unworkable,” the American Pizza Community, which represents Domino’s, Papa John’s, and Little Caesars, said...

Teens are increasingly turning to electronic cigarettes not to get their tobacco fix, but instead to inhale pot. A new study published in the medical journal Pediatrics found that teens have devised ways to turn e-cigarettes into devices for hashish oil, marijuana, wax and other cannabis products. Researchers surveyed 3,847 Connecticut high school students about their drug and e-cigarette use and found that students using e-cigarettes to vaporize cannabis was 27 times higher than the adult rate. According to the study, 5.5 percent of the students surveyed had used an e-cigarette to vaporize cannabis. In total, nearly 30 percent of...

Despite evidence that electronic cigarettes are both safer for users than tobacco and also help smokers kick the habit, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has launched a campaign against them. According to FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Ostroff, the FDA is looking to enact a “deeming rule” that would expand the agency’s regulation of tobacco to include e-cigarettes, which do not use tobacco. Critics contend that such an illogical decision underscores that the FDA is at the behest of lobbyists that benefit financially from tobacco and nicotine addiction.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued its proposal earlier this year for...

The infamously untrustworthy Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has furthered its reputation as one of America’s most beloved hypocrites with its latest motion. It was reported on Thursday that the FDA has just approved OxyContin prescriptions for children between the ages of 11 and 16 years-old. For those unfamiliar, OxyContin is an opiate-based pharmaceutical painkiller used to ease severe pain. Aside from being known for its powerful effects on users, it is also notorious for its widespread abuse. Its effects on the mind and body are strikingly similar to heroin, making it dangerously addictive. It typically contains anywhere between 40-160...

Canadian doctor who kept thalidomide out of U.S. dies Frances Kelsey, the Canadian doctor who spared the United States from one of the worst drug disasters in history, died on Friday morning. She was 101. As Ingrid Peritz reports, Dr. Kelsey is regarded as a heroine for her role in the early 1960s opposing thalidomide, a drug then generally promoted as a safe sedative for pregnant women, but which caused an epidemic of birth defects around the world, including Canada. Dr. Kelsey died less than 24 hours after receiving the Order of Canada for her role in stopping thalidomide.

(CNSNews.com) – During a “voters first presidential forum” in New Hampshire on Monday, GOP presidential candidate Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized President Barack Obama’s deal with Iran, saying he “declared war on trans fats and a ceasefire with the largest state-sanctioned sponsor of terrorism.” “This is a bad deal. He’s declared war on trans fats and a ceasefire with the largest state-sanctioned sponsor of terrorism,” said Jindal regarding the nuclear deal with Iran. As CNSNews.com previously reported, the Food and Drug Administration ruled in June that trans fat is not “generally recognized as safe” for use in food and gave...

Planned Parenthood still claims they provide access to life-saving mammograms. In 2012, they issued a press release that read, “Planned Parenthood helps women nationwide get access to mammograms, as part of the range of health care Planned Parenthood health centers provide to nearly three million people a year.” Obama echoed their rhetoric during his second presidential campaign. He said, “There are millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings.” Then, earlier this week, the Secretary of Obama’s Health and Human Services department defended federal funding for the abortion giant by...

One of the companies identified as a fetal tissue supplier in sting videos of Planned Parenthood counts two federal health agencies among its customers, earning at least $300,000 for material used in research of treatments for HIV and eye disease, officials confirmed to POLITICO. It’s unknown whether the nonprofit, Advanced Bioscience Resources, got any of that fetal tissue from abortions performed at Planned Parenthood clinics. But the firm’s relationship with the women’s health organization, and its contracts since 2009 with the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, have shed light on the government’s involvement in the...