Free Republic

For nicotine enthusiasts, 2015 will be remembered as part of a golden era. Less than 10 years after they were introduced in the United States, e-cigarettes have gone relatively unregulated by health agencies, with companies and users making their own rules in a nicotine-laced Wild West. E-cigarette companies have been advertising their products to adults and children alike, claiming to help smokers quit while simultaneously promoting lollipop-flavored liquids. But now health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and even city-based public health departments are starting to fight back—not in the form of regulations, but with their own...

Apparently, parents should visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website to find out how to teach their children good eating habits.The agency in charge of the country’s agricultural sector is now in the nanny business, thanks to First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative to fight childhood obesity, which links to choosemyplate.gov on its website.In the kids’ section of My Plate, advice is dished out on how parents can help pre-schoolers “develop healthy eating habits,” including a warning about praising an empty plate.“Avoid praising a clean plate,” the website states. “Your child should stop eating when he or she...

Complete Headline: EXCLUSIVE: Illegal Immigrant with Drug-Resistant TB to Be Released into US, say Congressional Leaders On Friday, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, along with Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) and Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), sent a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and ICE Deputy Assistant Secretary Saldaña warning them not to release an illegal immigrant with drug-resistant tuberculosis into the general public.

Illinois lawmakers are close to banning — or partially banning — new versions of some of the most popular products on any convenience store shelf. The Illinois state Senate is poised to vote on two proposed laws outlawing powdered alcohol, often called Palcohol, and powdered caffeine. Chicago Democrat Ira Silverstein is pushing the powdered alcohol ban, and the proposal cleared a legislative committee last week. Illinois Watchdog reached out to Silverstein, but he did not immediately return our calls. Silverstein has said, however, that he's afraid for young people. "It's the type of item that can be sprinkled on food...

In 2013, then-15-year-old Anthony Stokes was dying and desperately needed a heart transplant that he couldn’t get because, according to doctors, he had “a history of noncompliance.” Stokes’s family suspected that his low grades and a history of trouble with the law gave doctors reason to believe that he would not be willing to take his medicine or show up at subsequent doctor’s visits. The Georgia teen’s story story sparked outrage, and the hospital quickly reversed its decision, giving him priority on the transplant list. But two years later, after he received a transplant, Stokes’s “second chance” has come to...

A thousand-year-old medieval remedy for eye infections which was discovered in a manuscript in the British Library has been found to kill the superbug MRSA. Anglo-Saxon expert Dr Christina Lee, from the School of English, at Nottingham University, recreated the 10th century potion to see if it really worked as an antibacterial remedy. The 'eyesalve' recipe calls for two species of Allium (garlic and onion or leek), wine and oxgall (bile from a cow’s stomach). It describes a very specific method of making the topical solution including the use of a brass vessel to brew it, a strainer to purify...

he federal government spent a whopping $4.5 billion on costly new drugs to cure hepatitis C among Medicare patients last year, a steep price that is likely to keep growing, federal records show. Spending on the super-selling drugs – which can cost $1,000 a day – increased more than 15 times compared to the previous year, according to a report Monday by ProPublica.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is promoting a giant full-body exhibit for kids to walk through to promote healthy eating habits.While encouraging schools to apply for nearly $6 million in grants to help them comply with the First Lady Michelle Obama-promoted Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act new lunch standards, the USDA highlighted efforts by the Kansas State Department of Education.“Body Venture, a traveling health education exhibit sponsored by Kansas State Department of Education travels to schools to teach students about nutrition and physical activity,” the USDA said in a blog post Friday.Body Venture is a 45-foot by 50-foot exhibit that starts...

Newswise — SAN DIEGO, CA (March 16, 2015) - Researchers at UC San Diego and Creighton University have challenged the intake of vitamin D recommended by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Institute of Medicine (IOM), stating that their Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D underestimates the need by a factor of ten. In a letter1 published last week in the journal Nutrients the scientists confirmed a calculation error noted by other investigators, by using a data set from a different population. Dr. Cedric F. Garland, Dr.P.H., adjunct professor at UC San Diego’s Department of Family Medicine and Public...

Law enforcement officials and medical personnel are warning people about the risks of a dangerous new synthetic drug that is growing in popularity in the streets of South Florida. Just last month, a man was caught on surveillance camera attempting to kick in the hurricane glass doors of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department headquarters. It was later determined that that man, 50-year-old James West, was high off of Flakka, a synthetic street drug mix with a base of bath salts that can result in paranoia, anxiety, psychosis and hallucinations. According to police, West was hallucinating and believed that 25 cars...

The wines named in the lawsuit are primarily inexpensive white or blush varietals including moscato, pinot grigio and sauvignon blanc.Many popular, inexpensive brands of wine made and distributed in California, including Trader Joe's famed "Two Buck Chuck," contain illegal and dangerously high levels of poisonous inorganic arsenic, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles. Plaintiffs Doris Charles, Alvin Jones, Jason Peltier and Jennifer Peltier allege in their complaint that dozens of wineries are violating state law by knowingly producing, marketing and selling arsenic contaminated wine and failing to warn consumers about the potential danger. The suit, filed in...

ORIGINAL TITLE: Ido Bachelet DNA nanobots summary with a couple of extra videos In a brief talk, Bachelet said DNA nanobots will soon be tried in a critically ill leukemia patient. The patient, who has been given roughly six months to live, will receive an injection of DNA nanobots designed to interact with and destroy leukemia cells—while causing virtually zero collateral damage in healthy tissue. According to Bachelet, his team have successfully tested their method in cell cultures and animals and written two papers on the subject, one in Science and one in Nature. Contemporary cancer therapies involving invasive surgery...

After a chance observation in the lab, researchers found a method that can force dangerous leukemia cells in the lab to mature into harmless immune cells called macrophages. Mar 16 2015 Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that when a certain aggressive leukemia is causing havoc in the body, the solution may be to force the cancer cells to grow up and behave. After a chance observation in the lab, the researchers found a method that can cause dangerous leukemia cells to mature into harmless immune cells known as macrophages. The findings are described in a...

With the Supreme Court potentially dealing a blow to Obamacare, why isn't the Congress considering a Plan B to make health care more affordable, and health insurance less expensive?

The Affordable Care Act is failing to deliver on its promises to provide health care access and affordability. While some people now have new coverage, it has come at the expense of families who lost the health care coverage and doctor that they liked, or are now without insurance because they can no longer afford it. Here are four things to know about Obamacare in Michigan: 1. Contrary to popular belief, Obamacare was never designed to dramatically expand private health care coverage; it has always been a massive Medicaid expansion scheme. In Michigan, federal figures show 303,000 residents were added...

Passengers on the South West Train service from Basingstoke to London Waterloo were left in shock after an announcer took to the tannoy to say that fat people should remain standing because of lack of space, the Daily Mail reports. On the packed commuter service, a member of staff reportedly said: “We are going to be like sardines on this train, so can I ask that only slim people sit on the three-seaters. If you are fat then it is simply not going to work.” One passenger was left furious by the announcement, saying: “I am not necessarily a big...

Schematic of a real-time in vitro fecal fermentation gas-sensing system. Credit: Nam Ha Microbes in the human body are estimated to outnumber human cells by 10 to 1, yet research on how they affect health is still in its infancy. A perspective article published by Cell Press on March 12th in Trends in Biotechnology presents evidence that gut microbes produce gases that may contribute to gastrointestinal diseases and could be used as biomarkers for one's state of health. As means to measure these potential biomarkers, the authors suggest two novel gas-sensing systems, one of which is an electronic gas sensor...

The federal government helped finance the creation of a so-called “diet choker” that monitors the eating habits of the wearer.WearSens, created by engineers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), is a necklace that can automatically detect when a person is eating or smoking, and can send alerts to a smart phone telling the user to stop.The invention received a $148,379 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2013 to create a sensory necklace to “fill the need of automatically detecting swallows and eating patterns.”Researchers at UCLA, led by Majid Sarrafzadeh, the director of the Embedded and Reconfigurable...

Bill Maris, head of Google's investment arm, says humans will live to be 500-years-old in the future, while today's cancer treatments will soon seem "primitive" as scientists continue to hunt for cure. Humans will live to be 500-years-old, according to a top Google executive, who said the company was investing millions of dollars in life sciences to ensure this vision became a reality. Bill Maris, a venture capitalist and the managing partner of Google Ventures, the internet giant's investment fund, said it had hired scientists as partners in order to identify start-ups that could cure cancer and make chemotherapy "seem...

TRONDHEIM, Norway, March 8 (UPI) — A new study from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has found there is no connection between psychedelic drugs and mental health issues. The researchers analyzed data from the U.S. National Health Survey (2008-2011). The data includes over 130,000 randomly selected adults, including nearly 20,000 psychedelic drug users. The analysis showed people who use LSD or psilocybin mushrooms do not have an increased risk of mental health problems.