Free Republic

A painful adjustment to last Tuesday's election. Last Tuesday evening I went to bed in denial, thinking that there must be some mistake. I declined to believe that a majority of the voters were stupid enough to re-elect a President whose incompetence makes Jimmy Carter seem Washingtonian by comparison, whose mendacity far surpasses that of a pathological liar like Bill Clinton, and whose administration is so corrupt that it actually evokes nostalgia for the Nixon era. I was sure that, when all the actual votes had been counted, they would reveal that the voters of Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado...

PM2.5 air pollution is generated by combustion © ShutterstockThe US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finds itself in an unusual position. Two prominent Republican politicians, who have repeatedly accused the EPA of killing jobs through overregulation, are condemning the agency for lax oversight of its ongoing human research studies involving concentrated airborne particles.Representative Paul Broun, who chairs the investigations and oversight subcommittee of the House of Representatives’ Science Space and Technology Committee, has asked the EPA Inspector General (IG) to investigate a series of EPA studies. Conducted in 2004, they involved exposing humans to fine particulate matter around or smaller than...

Australian scientists are expressing grave concerns over a new type of genetically engineered wheat that may cause major health problems for people that consume it. University of Canterbury Professor Jack Heinemann announced the results of his genetic research into the wheat, a type developed by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), at a press conference last month. "What we found is that the molecules created in this wheat, intended to silence wheat genes, can match human genes, and through ingestion, these molecules can enter human beings and potentially silence our genes," Heinemann stated. "The findings are absolutely assured....

Water is everywhere in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy – in basements, on the streets and in transit systems – but the one place that flood water is most dangerous is in your body. ABC News chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser collected floodwater and drinking water in some of the areas hit hardest by Sandy and had them tested at The Ambient Group lab. The floodwater collected in Lower Manhattan tested positive for gasoline and two types of bacteria found in sewage: E. coli and coliform. “Very dangerous,” Besser said. “Make sure you wear protective gear if...

TORONTO — A single junk-food meal rich in saturated fat is detrimental to the health of the arteries, researchers in Canada said. Dr. Anil Nigam and colleagues at the University of Montreal-affiliated EPIC Center of the Montreal Heart Institute compared the effects of a junk-food meal and a typical Mediterranean meal on the vascular endothelium, the inner lining of the blood vessels. Endothelial function is closely linked to the long-term risk of developing coronary artery disease.

Physicians Who Use Marijuana are 'Unsafe to Practice' MONTREAL, Canada — Physicians who legally use medical marijuana to treat their own debilitating conditions such as chronic pain or nausea are considered unsafe to practice medicine in the state of Colorado until such time that they no longer need the treatment, according to a policy from the Colorado Physician Health Program. "We took a conservative stance," Doris Gundersen, MD, Medical Director of the Colorado Physician Health Program, told Medscape Medical News after her presentation here at the International Conference on Physician Health (ICPH). "We don't want to deny them treatment...but until they no...

Students who appear to be middle schoolers witnessed a teacher blowing up a condom like a balloon as a part of a sex ed lesson in a health class somewhere, quite possibly in Canada. A video of the incident was posted on YouTube by a user October 21, 2012. The user listed her country as Canada but offered no hometown, and no clue about the identity of the school where this took place. SEE IT HERE. But it’s an odd occurrence, to say the least. At the risk of sounding like prudes, we have to ask if it’s appropriate for...

Annika Eriksson, a long-time Swedish chef revered for her school lunches, has been squelched. Has she made errors? Are her meals contaminated? Has the quality of her ingredients slipped? No, none of the above. The trouble stems purely from the fact that her meals are too good. Yes, you read that right. She’s exceeding expectations. She bakes fresh bread every day. She offers 15 different vegetables at lunchtime. She knows it pleases the students to have choices. This is her crime because, you see, other schools don’t have the same benefits in the Falun district in Sweden. (This is called...

BOCA RATON, FL, October 23, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Mitt Romney pledged to increase military spending by scrapping the health insurance reform known as ObamaCare last night in Boca Raton during a debate more marked by pointed answers and conflicting style than substantive disagreements. The third and final presidential debate, which focused on foreign policy, was held last night at Lynn University. When asked by moderator Bob Schieffer how he would increase military spending without raising taxes, Romney said he would begin “by reducing spending in a whole series of programs. By the way, number one I get rid of...

HAVANA (AP) — A top executive at Havana's Hotel Nacional says that Fidel Castro made a public appearance there, challenging rumors that he is in ailing health.

WEST HARTFORD —— The beef is there, but where's the pickle? That's the question students at Hall High School have been asking on hamburger day in the cafeteria since the food services department made menu changes to meet new school lunch rules from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Students are "outraged over the removal of pickles and salt from the cafeteria at Hall to meet nutrition guidelines," student representative Kendall Teare told the school board last week.

House Republicans say new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines aimed at forcing students to eat fruits and vegetables are a failure because students across the country are simply tossing the healthy fare into the trash. "[T]here remains great concern with the amount of food waste generated at school cafeterias, much of it brought on by requiring students to take fruits and vegetables rather than simply offer them," Reps. John Kline (R-Minn.), Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) and Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) told USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack in a letter sent Thursday. "This is a waste of federal, state and local funds and...

A large federal study of whether diet and weight loss can prevent heart attacks and strokes in overweight and obese people with Type 2 diabetes has ended two years ahead of schedule because the intensive program did not help. About 25 million Americans have Type 2 diabetes. Many are overweight or obese. On average, the disease increases heart disease risk by 2 to 2 1/2 times, said Dr. Ronald Kahn, chief academic officer at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. Dr. Nathan, though, said the results meant that people with diabetes might have a choice. The group assigned to diet...

(CNN) -- Would you be more likely to take the stairs if the elevator doors were slower to close? Would you be more likely to eat healthy foods if the unhealthy selections were harder to reach? You might -- and you might not even be aware of it. Humans, as well as other animals, are motivated to conserve energy and have a built-in preference for the shortest or easiest way of doing something over a longer or more difficult way. Our behavior is guided by two systems: a reflective system, in which we act in a conscious way, working toward...

During the debates, Romney brought up the fact that under obama, healthcare costs have not been cut in half, but in fact, doubled. Well, for me, that chicken has come home to roost. I am retired, and on Medicare, but my wife has us covered under her insurance. She is a manager for a major retail chain, which just announced the "changes" in healthcare coverage for the new year. We have always signed up for the top plan, the PPO, because I like to use doctors of my choice. For about five years we've been paying about $430 per month...

Was it some moldy ceiling tiles? The dusty shoes of a careless employee? Or did the contamination ride in on one of the ingredients? There are lots of ways fungus could have gotten inside the Massachusetts compounding pharmacy whose steroid medication has been linked to a lethal outbreak of a rare fungal form of meningitis. The outbreak has killed at least 15 people and sickened more than 200 others in 15 states. Nearly all the victims had received steroid injections for back pain. Federal and state investigators have been tight lipped about any problems they may have seen at the...

The recall of peanut butter and other nut products linked to an outbreak of salmonella from a New Mexico food company has now been expanded to include raw and roasted peanuts.

Another 19 people have been diagnosed with fungal meningitis linked to possibly tainted vials of a steroid medication, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday, bringing the total number of cases to 231. The CDC said there were two additional cases of infection in joints after a steroid injection but these were not confirmed as meningitis, bringing the total of infections nationwide to 233. The death toll from the unprecedented outbreak was unchanged at 15, the CDC said.

ORBE, Switzerland (Reuters) - Nestle SA and General Mills Inc will cut sugar and salt in the children's breakfast cereals they jointly market outside North America, the latest attempt by major food companies to respond to health concerns. The two have been in a joint venture since 1990 to sell Nestle-brand cereals such as Cheerios in more than 140 countries outside the United States and Canada, markets which account for about half total global cereal sales of some $25 billion. They say they will reformulate 20 cereal brands popular with children and teenagers by 2015, boosting wholegrains and calcium and...

Frail and vulnerable elderly people are being forced to rely on care in their homes from workers with convictions for theft and violence, an investigation has found.   Private care agencies, fulfilling contracts for councils across the country, have been employing convicted criminals to work in elderly people’s homes. In some cases, the criminals have been sent in without police checks or risk assessments being carried out, publicly available records show. One agency in Birmingham hired 23 people with criminal records, including assault and theft. Another in Sussex had five criminals on its books including a woman who was...