Free Republic

A Wisconsin man who doctors say came perilously close to death after accidentally shooting a nail into his heart while working on his house calmly drove himself to the hospital and even parked his pickup truck in the lot before walking into the emergency room. Doug Bergeson is ready to get back to work this week after surviving a June 25 ordeal that others might not have taken in such stride. Bergeson told The Associated Press he was working on framing in a fireplace at his house near Peshtigo in northeast Wisconsin when his nail gun accidentally fired, sending a...

You want to denounce Nazis? Here you go, America. Don't tell me again about the moral imperative to denounce Nazis if you're going to let this slide. As Rob mentioned to me when we were discussing who would write this up, the essence of Hitler's eugenics program was to filter out children who didn't have the traits deemed optimal for the Aryan race. Horrifying? Obviously. You'd have a fit if they started aborting babies for having brown skin, or - if there was some way you could tell - for being gay. And you should have that fit. But you...

Meegan Hefford, a mother of two and bodybuilder, died after an overconsumption of protein shakes, supplements and protein-rich foods. Hefford was found unconscious in her apartment in West Australia and was quickly transported to the hospital, where she was declared brain-dead. She passed away two days later. Hefford, who had been competing as a bodybuilder since 2014, was also ramping up her gym routine in the weeks before her death. The 25-year-old mom and paramedic trainee had put herself on a special restricted diet while she was preparing for a bodybuilding competition in September.

On a sunny August Friday, people stream past the ornate, Art Deco US Post Office building in Manhattan's East Village, where its forlorn and faded "Fallout Shelter" plaque is an ominous reminder, however distant, of today's nuclear threat. The yellow and white metal sign on the Cooper Station Post Office is one of perhaps thousands that can be found scattered throughout the city -- largely forgotten relics of the days when the threat of annihilation via a Soviet nuclear attack seemed like a very real and terrifying proposition. But as the war of words between US President Donald Trump and...

The idea that violence is contagious doesn’t appear in the Obama administration’s gun control plan, nor in the National Rifle Association’s arguments. But some scientists believe that understanding the literally infectious nature of violence is essential to preventing it.

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest contrarian position could go over worse than the time he defended Lance Armstrong’s doping: McDonald’s fries suck, he declares on the latest episode of his Revisionist History podcast. Before you rush out and declare him un-American, though, realize he means well. Gladwell opens the podcast by telling listeners that “McDonald’s betrayed me so many years ago” when it stopped frying potatoes in beef tallow, so his ultimate goal is to help the fries return to their former glory. But his personal vendetta is woven into the far more interesting story of Phil Sokolof, the drywall magnate who...

You may want to rethink having that bowl of corn flakes for breakfast. New research by experts at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles show that cereal is making people obese. Published in the journal of Nature Communications, the paper states that chemical ingredients commonly used in breakfast cereals are having distressing effects on our bodies. Looking at the effects of three different chemicals commonly ingested or exposed to humans, they found that each one was damaging the hormones needed to communicate between our brains and our stomach. When all three were combined, the damage was worse. One of the...

We now take more pills than ever. Is that doing more harm than good? If you’re like most Americans, you probably start your day with a hot shower, a cup of coffee—and a handful of pills. More than half of us now regularly take a prescription medication—four, on average—according to a new nationally representative Consumer Reports survey of 1,947 adults. Many in that group also take over-the-counter drugs as well as vitamins and other dietary supplements. It turns out Americans take more pills today than at any other time in recent history (see “Pill Nation: The Rise of Rx Drug...

Big scandal brewing in the EU involving tainted eggs. Turns out that Belgium officials knew about this for 2 months but sat on the info, as typical of the socialist oligarchs who only want to help you.

Veganism in Britain has increased by 360 percent over the last ten years, as healthy eating takes a hold amid a widespread obesity epidemic. In order to cut the risk of health related diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and stroke, many are turning to a plant-based diet. This involves cutting out all animal products, including meat, eggs and milk. Just 150,000 people followed a vegan diet in 2006, but that number rose to 542,000 in 2016. As a result, veganism is now the fastest growing lifestyle movement ever. Vegan study - Verdict Even The World Health Organisation have...

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The process and decision behind transitioning into the opposite sex can often be a testing time in a person’s life. But what if you were not happy with how you felt in your new body? This is the dilemma faced by Ria Cooper, who is preparing to undergo gender reassignment for a third time, after she found that she wasn’t happy with her previous reassignments. She was the youngest person to undergo gender reassignment at just 15 years old when she was called Brad.

In a striking advance that helps open the door to organ transplants from animals, researchers have created gene-edited piglets cleansed of viruses that might cause disease in humans. The experiments, reported on Thursday in the journal Science, may make it possible one day to transplant livers, hearts and other organs from pigs into humans, a hope that experts had all but given up. If pig organs were shown to be safe and effective, “they could be a real game changer,” said Dr. David Klassen, chief medical officer at the United Network for Organ Sharing, a private, nonprofit organization that manages...

Despite what you might've seen in 1950s monster movies, it's difficult to raise mutant ants. For years biologists have altered the genetics of organisms as varied as mice and rice. Mutant fruit flies are a laboratory staple. But ants' complex life cycle hampered efforts to grow genetically engineered ants — until now. On Thursday, two independent research teams described their work deleting ant genes. Two papers chronicling the first mutant ants appeared in the journal Cell, along with a third study that altered ant behavior using an insect brain hormone. Claude Desplan, a New York University biologist and an author...

The British National Health Service will pay to have a seriously ill baby flown to the United States for medical treatment, not long after it denied the same service to Charlie Gard. The Telegraph reports 7-month-old infant Oliver Cameron suffers from a rare heart tumor called a cardiac fibroma. Medical experts in the U.S. have successfully performed surgeries on babies with the same condition, and the NHS says Oliver can be flown to the U.S. for the surgery. Initially, Oliver’s parents Tim and Lydia Cameron were raising money for his treatment themselves, but the NHS said this week that it...

After four hours of waiting in hospital, a pregnant woman in Bavaria was examined, only to find out that she had lost her baby. The 37-year-old woman who was three months pregnant had intended to go grocery shopping with her husband before she realized she was bleeding heavily about two weeks ago, the Münchner Merkur reported on Thursday. “We were so shocked that we drove to the emergency room without hesitation,” the pregnant woman’s husband told the Merkur. But the couple had no idea that it would be four hours until they’d even see a doctor at the hospital in...

FULL TITLE: Charlie Gard’s Parents on His Final Moments: “He Opened His Eyes and Looked at Us and Then Closed Them” For the first time, Charlie Gard’s parents shared details this week about their last moments with their son before he died. The British infant died on July 28 after his life support was removed, following a lengthy court battle between his parents and hospital. He would have turned 1 year old on Aug. 4. His mother, Connie Yates, said Charlie opened his eyes in the last few minutes of his life and looked at her and Chris Gard, his...

FULL TITLE: Staffer at Hospital That Denied Charlie Gard Transfer and Experimental Treatment Trashes His Supporters A health care worker who helped to treat Charlie Gard defended the hospital’s decisions about his life and death in a column for the Guardian this weekend. The medical worker, whose name remains anonymous, claimed the British infant suffered by being kept alive during a political soap opera about his treatment. The staffer slammed supporters of Charlie and his parents. The British infant died on July 28 after his life support was removed, following a lengthy court battle between his parents and hospital. He...

The damaged immune systems of diabetics can be ‘retrained’ to stop them destroying insulin, scientists believe, following successful trials of a pioneering new therapy. Researchers at King’s College London and Cardiff University showed that injecting patients with tiny protein fragments prevented immune cells from targeting vital insulin. Type 1 diabetes develops when a patient's immune system mistakenly attacks the insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas. Without treatment the number of beta cells will slowly decrease and the body will no longer be able to maintain normal blood sugar (blood glucose) levels, leading to patients needing daily injections. But a...

Vegetarians are almost twice as likely to suffer from depression as those who consume a conventional balanced diet, according to a new study. The new Bristol University study of almost 10,000 from southwestern England found that vegetarians were more likely to develop depression due to vitamin and mineral deficiencies that can negatively impact their mental health. The 350 committed vegetarians who participated in the study had a higher average depression score when compared to the meat-eaters, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The vegetarians’ diet tended to feature lower vitamin B12 consumption, as...