Free Republic

The threat Donald Trump poses to President Obama’s legacy was well established from his earliest days on the campaign trail, when the businessman promised that he would abolish several of Obama's core policies. But the president is not the only Obama whose achievements President-elect Trump could roll back. The incoming president also could undo the substantial public health and nutrition changes accomplished with the urging of Michelle Obama. The first lady has spent the past eight years championing anti-obesity initiatives, pushing an aggressive policy and public-outreach agenda that has played a part in changing how millions of Americans, particularly schoolchildren,...

Smuggling illicit drugs across the U.S border is a lucrative business. From hiding hundreds of pounds of cocaine or marijuana in vehicles, funneling it through tunnels under fenced areas or shipping it across the Florida coastline, drug dealers based in countries like Mexico and Cuba are pretty inventive in finding ways to get their contraband past border agents and into the United States. So inventive, in fact, that U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that over the weekend, drug smugglers in Mexico used an air cannon to launch a pile of weed across the border into the U.S. According to...

I've noticed a lot of commercials about Hep C. The current one tells Baby Boomers to get tested and an earlier one was talking about a cure for Hep C. This is starting to sound like some government conspiracy. And, I'm not a doctor but I didn't think that a virus could be cured.

Please Pray for my Daughter Katie

The award-winning "Dear Future Mom" video featuring children with Down Syndrome making the case for the value of their lives was banned from TV by France's Conseil d'État (State Council). According to the Council, the video was deemed "too insensitive" since it was "likely to trouble the consciences of women who had made different personal life choices" (i.e., had aborted babies predicted to have Down Syndrome). Council spokesman Henri Abattage defended the ban, maintaining that "our decision is in keeping with public perceptions of what is right. There's a reason why 90% of the pregnancies afflicted with this syndrome end...

I believe that President-elect Donald Trump will succeed in bringing down health care costs, and tackling soaring drug prices will be at the forefront of his battle. This may have come as a shock to the industry, who likely believed that they’d be given a free pass under a Republican presidency and Republican-controlled Congress. It is likely that on Election Day the Big Pharma companies prematurely let out a collective sigh of relief believing that a Republican-led government would never allow for imported medicines or for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, but it appears that the well-deserved panic is starting...

The days of government dictating prices and limiting choices, appear to be coming to an end Conservatives who viewed the insurgent candidacy of New York businessman Donald Trump with suspicion have been relieved at the speed and quality of his selections to fill his cabinet. Perhaps most comforting was the recent choice of Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). A pillar of Trump’s campaign was his promise to repeal and replace Obamacare and Dr. Price has been Congress’ leader in this effort. Price drafted legislation in 2014 to replace the law. The...

Shares of a key biotech ETF plunged to their lowest point since the election, after President-elect Donald Trump pledged in an interview with Time Magazine to curb spiraling drug prices. In morning trading on the stock market today, the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology Index (IBB) exchange-traded fund was down more than 3%, near 266. The index had jumped 9% on Nov. 9, after Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House, on the belief that high drug prices would not be as big a focus for Trump as it would have been for Clinton. IBD's 421-company Medical-Biomed/Biotech industry...

Here’s an excerpt from the Wheat Belly Cookbook about modern high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat, what I call the “Frankengrain” because of the extensive and bizarre changes introduced into this grass by geneticists and agribusiness. (Even though a cookbook, I tried to make the Wheat Belly Cookbook a standalone book that discusses the background on why and how the Wheat Belly lifestyle yields such unexpected and extravagant health and weight loss successes. For this reason, the first 90 pages of the cookbook reiterate many of the Wheat Belly basic concepts.)From the Wheat Belly Cookbook: Wheat encapsulates a fundamental dilemma of our technological...

Imagine that I’m a mad scientist (or perhaps just a geneticist who doesn’t blink an eye while fiddling with nature’s design) and I want to see what happens when I introduce substantial genetic changes into a chimpanzee.In my experimentation, I double the chimp’s height, change it’s hair color to yellow, induce mutations to change eye color, give it the ability to see better at night, increase muscle strength in its lower body so that it can jump long distances, and several dozen other changes. The end result looks different, acts different, has changes in physiology, its capacity to tolerate heat,...

On Friday night, 25 November, 2016, the well known and successful yoga instructor Hari Nam Kaur Khalsa, was assaulted by two robbers in her bedroom. Her home and school are 20 miles north of Santiago, Chile.  The robbers were half of a gang of four that invaded her home and school. She, her partner, and two students were in the house when the night time invasion occurred. Khalsa was born in Texas. From dallasnews.com: Officials said a pair of the robbers found the yoga instructor in her bedroom. Despite them hitting her in the head with a gun and...

Complicated transitions I don’t like the sound of this, but I’m somewhat hopeful the worst possible interpretation of it is not accurate. Plus, it does come from the Worst Web Site in the World (at least until Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei complete the task of outdoing themselves), so maybe it’s all made up: Congressional Republicans are setting up their own, self-imposed deadline to make good on their vow to replace the Affordable Care Act. With buy-in from Donald Trump’s transition team, GOP leaders on both sides of the Capitol are coalescing around a plan to vote to repeal the...

Meat could be used in 3D printing to produce a soft food with specific nutrients and suitable for people who have problems with chewing or swallowing. By using a meat extract as ink, layer-by-layer, a food could be created that is as soft as butter and like meat, packed with nutrients. Meat and Livestock Australia was alerted to the possibility of red meat three-dimensional printing after seeing it done with chicken meat in Germany. The research, development and marketing body has investigated a way to turn every last bit of meat from the bone into a high value product and...

Antipsychotics and Maryland foster children In an attempt to ensure psychotropic medications are being appropriately prescribed to children, the Maryland Medicaid Pharmacy Program has established the Peer Review Program for Mental Health, in collaboration with the Behavioral Health Administration, the University of Maryland Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and School of Pharmacy, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Any prescription for antipsychotic medication to any child under 18 is automatically referred to the program.

The myth that a complete replacement package has to be in place the moment Obamacare is repealed refuses to die First congressional Republicans said they couldn’t repeal Obamacare because they didn’t have full control of Congress. Then when they gained control of both chambers of Congress congressional Republicans said they couldn’t repeal Obamacare because they didn’t control the White House.

I found out Donald Trump had won the Electoral College while midstream in providing a urine sample for the emergency psychiatric staff of a New York City public hospital. The unlockable bathroom door in this unescapable wing was ajar, and I could hear the victorious Mike Pence’s sinister Sunday-school baritone taunting me with the truth from the hallway television. For the preceding witching hours of election night, I had lain in a fetal position amidst a cast of anonymous men nursing their own crises, my hands clasped tightly over my ears. It wasn’t that I minded the howls of the...

Antipsychotics and Maryland foster children; Part 1 “It’s an evil drug.” So says Dam Le, who as a boy was prescribed Johnson & Johnson’s blockbuster drug Risperdal while in the custody of the Maryland foster care system.

NEW YORK – President-elect Donald Trump selected a second Indian American, Seema Verma, Nov. 28 for a high-level position in his administration, assigning her "to the dream team that will transform our healthcare system," a major campaign promise. Verma, who has worked closely on healthcare with Vice President-elect Mark Pence in Indiana, is to be the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, overseeing government health insurance programs....

Carotenoids are pigments synthesized by plants that give vegetables their yellow, orange, and red colors. Their antioxidant properties, as well as their benefits for visual health, are well known, but emerging research suggests these compounds may have a positive impact on cognition as well.

Obama’s “worst legacy, one that remains grotesquely underreported by the ‘watchdog’ mainstream media” is “by far the worst deficit record in U.S. history.” The election of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on November 8 was not only a rejection of Hillary Clinton, based on her trustworthiness and her legal and ethical problems, it was also clearly a repudiation of Democratic policymaking, with Trump promising to eliminate or revise a number of Barack Obama’s signature achievements. But, speaking to the press in his first press conference after the election, President Obama maintained that he is leaving the White House and America...