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Ten Things that Probably Will Be in the Health-Care Bill (But Shouldn’t) 1. Removal of the Ability of Insurers to Deny Coverage 2. Coverage Mandates on Individuals and Employers 3. Government-Designed Insurance Plans 4. Threats to Medicare Advantage 5. New Taxes 6. A Stronger IRS 7. “Managed Competition” (a.k.a. “Government Control”) 8. Reckless Expansion of Medicaid 9. Welfare for the Middle Class 10. Government Rationing ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ten Things that Ought To Be in the Health-Care Bill (but Probably Won’t) 1. Insurance Choice 2. Real Competition: A National Market for Health Insurance 3. Price Transparency 4. High Ceilings for HSAs (and...

From X-Rays to MRI's you are exposed to radiation in many medical treatments. Certain forms of cancer and other tumors are specifically treated with radiation. What are the potential hazards, and short-term/long-term effects?

Myriad of Compounds Intended to Stop the Progression of Metabolic Diseases Moves Through the PipelineThe competition to develop new therapeutics targeting metabolic disease is heating up. Here’s why: the latest estimates from the American Diabetes Association state that there are nearly 24 million Americans with diabetes. In addition, approximately 32% of American adults are medically obese. Many companies have honed in on this large and growing market, and several of them presented their latest findings at IQPC’s “Groundbreaking Advances and Key Opinions in Metabolic Diseases Drug Discovery and Development� held recently in San Francisco. “When we founded the company, we...

Darwin’s bulldog—Thomas H. Huxley --snip-- Huxley, although an unbeliever, was thoroughly familiar with the gospel, and had little time for Christians who compromised their position by supporting the anti-biblical belief of evolutionary naturalism. He wrote: ...

Immorality Drives Medical Costs By Roger Fredinburg Watching the “Great Debate” over medical insurance, rising medical costs and ever broadening government control, I am reminded of some interesting facts, the details of which are not evident in the public or political discussion. I thought we ought to at least review them before the “rulers” of “Amerika” completely destroy the republic. Have you asked questions like; What is the cost of substance abuse on the medical system? What are the medical costs of sexual deviance and promiscuity? What’s the price of gluttony? How about laziness, slothfulness, sedentary lifestyles etc. what is...

Nov. 2, 2009 (Philadelphia) -- A newly discovered strain of drug-resistant staph bacteria is five times more deadly than other strains, a new study suggests. Adding insult to injury, the new superbug appears to have some resistance to the antibiotic commonly used to treat it, researchers report. Half of patients infected with the new strain of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) died within 30 days, says Carol Moore, PharmD, a research investigator in infectious diseases at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. That compares to only about 10% of patients infected with other MRSA strains, she tells WebMD. Moore and colleagues studied...

I don’t often write about alternative remedies for serious medical conditions. Most have little more than anecdotal support, and few have been found effective in well-designed clinical trials. Such trials randomly assign patients to one of two or more treatments and, wherever possible, assess the results without telling either the patients or evaluators who received which treatment. Now, however, in describing an alternative treatment for asthma that does not yet have top clinical ratings in this country (although it is taught in Russian medical schools and covered by insurance in Australia), I am going beyond my usually stringent research criteria...

Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., (Nasdaq: AMLN) and Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved an expanded indication for BYETTA(R) (exenatide) injection. BYETTA is now approved for use as a stand-alone medication (monotherapy) along with diet and exercise to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes. Previously, it was approved for use only in patients who were also taking other common diabetes medications and had not achieved adequate glycemic control. "The expanded indication gives physicians the option to prescribe BYETTA as a first-line treatment, increasing the number of patients...

The Congressional Budget Office is out with its analysis of the House Democrats' health care bill...in reality, the CBO says that the gross cost of the bill will be $1.055 trillion.....the CBO says the bill's gross spending will be $60 billion in the first four years, and $995 billion in the next six years (or 94 percent of the total).

New research in the FASEB Journal opens the door for new drugs that could prevent severe flu-related lung damage As the nation copes with a shortage of vaccines for H1N1 influenza, a team of Alabama researchers have raised hopes that they have found an Achilles' heel for all strains of the flu—antioxidants. In an article appearing in the November 2009 print issue of the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) they show that antioxidants—the same substances found in plant-based foods—might hold the key in preventing the flu virus from wreaking havoc on our lungs. "The recent outbreak of H1N1 influenza and the rapid...

See Movie Trialer HEREAlso Article HERE

Many of the world's favourite ingredients have more to offer than just flavour, says Ned Stafford. Many also show health benefitsGarlicTo stink or not to stink, that's often the question when deciding how much garlic to pep up your dinner with. A few years ago, health-conscious cooks might also have wondered whether eating garlic would improve their health, or if such claims were just hype. Any such doubts have now been laid to rest by hundreds of scientific studies confirming garlic's powerful medicinal properties.'Garlic is one of the most researched medicinal plants ever - its health benefits are not anecdotal,...

The skin of that pumpkin you carve into a Jack-o'-Lantern to scare away ghosts and goblins on Halloween contains a substance that could put a scare into microbes that cause millions of cases of yeast infections in adults and infants each year. That's the conclusion of a new study in the current issue of ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication. In the study, Kyung-Soo Hahm, Yoonkyung Park and colleagues note that some disease-causing microbes are becoming resistant to existing antibiotics. As a result, scientists worldwide are searching for new antibiotics. Past studies hinted that pumpkin, long...

Does HIV mean certain death? In the quarter century since the world was introduced to the idea that a new sexually transmitted virus was the cause of Aids, HIV has been generally regarded as one of the biggest killers of our time. HIV/Aids has not been the mass disease in Britain that people were led to believe in the 1980s, but the death toll from immune deficiency diseases ascribed to HIV in Africa has been staggering. The scale of death there is an ongoing tragedy that tests the moral resolve of the rich world. How much do we care? Enough...

Drugs that alleviate severe mental disorders can also result in troubling metabolic changes. Many young children and adolescents taking drugs for severe psychiatric problems gain substantial weight and, in some cases, show increased levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides in their blood, researchers report in the Oct. 28 Journal of the American Medical Association. Although the data from this study need to be replicated over a longer time frame, the findings nonetheless raise worrisome questions about anti-psychotic drugs that often benefit children who have schizophrenia, autism, tics, severe bipolar disorder or aggressive behavior. “We are between a rock and a...

Supplements of the sunshine vitamin may improve insulin resistance and sensitivity, both of which are risk factors for diabetes, says a new study from New Zealand. Insulin resistance, whereby insufficient insulin is released to produce a normal glucose response from fat, muscle and liver cells, was significantly lower in women following high-dose vitamin D supplementation, according to results of a randomised, controlled, double-blind trial published in the British Journal of Nutrition. The optimal effects were observed when blood vitamin D levels were in the range 80 to 119 nanomoles per litre, said the researchers, “providing further evidence for an increase...

TennCare in Tennessee has been hitting the news more today than at anytime since its conception. As a resident of Tennessee I believe the nation as a whole should listen to what people with experience in these government run programs have to say before they accept the proposed government option at face value. Trust but verify should not only apply to your enemies it should apply to all politicians. Read full article...http://healthmad.com/healthcare-industry/obama-health-plan-another-tenncare-fiasco/

TRENTON, N.J. — Johnson & Johnson executives said Tuesday a proposed tax on medical device makers, part of the health care reform package moving in the Senate, is too high and could cost jobs in the industry. "We think that the $4 billion tax that they're referring to is unreasonable," J&J Chief Financial Officer Dominic Caruso told The Associated Press in an interview. "We believe it's at least twice what it ought to be." Caruso spoke after New Brunswick, N.J.-based J&J reported its third-quarter earnings, which included a tiny profit increase and sales declines in every division except medical devices,...

A Japanese man misdiagnosed as having rectal cancer is suing the hospital that he says unnecessarily gave him an artificial rectum. The man, who has not been identified, underwent surgery to remove a tumor in March at a university hospital in Miyzaki prefecture, western Japan. Following the surgery, his doctor informed him that no cancerous cells had been found in the removed tissue. The complainant is seeking 35 million yen (USD $385,000) in damages.

NY finally gets the picture that the idea of shoving a vaccine on nurses and doctors is a violation of their liberties! First two body paragraphs: ALBANY, N.Y. New York state health officials have suspended a ruling that would have forced health care workers across the state to get vaccinated against the swine flu by the end of November or risk losing their jobs, saying in a decision issued Thursday that they did so because the vaccine is in short supply. New York will be getting only about 23 percent of its anticipated supply of the vaccine for the swine...

A word search of the 1,502-page Senate health care bill (S. 1796) reveals that the term "tax" is used 124 times, "taxable" is used 158 times, and "excise tax" is used 12 times.

The Human Methylome: What Do These Patterns Mean? by Brian Thomas, M.S.* For decades, researchers have noticed that tiny chemicals called “methyl groups� piggyback on DNA molecules, and that they occur in certain patterns. Intrigued by the meaning and function of methylation patterns, especially as they relate to medicine, a five-year, $ 190-million-dollar research effort funded by the National Institutes of Health began in 2008. In one of its studies, researchers have stumbled upon a new intricacy of cell function.Joseph Ecker of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies led a collaboration to generate the world’s first complete map of human...

Introduction: Surgery is the established treatment for early stage primary lung cancers (cancer that started in lung) or limited secondary cancers (cancer that started outside and spread to lung, also known as metastases or metastatic cancer). External beam radiation is an alternative local therapy to surgery, particularly for patients who are not candidates for surgery due to other medical conditions. Thermal ablation, using either heat or cold, is a newer treatment to destroy cells in lung tumors. Heat is most commonly used, and is referred to as Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA). RFA of tumors has gained significant interest and acceptance in...

Senate Finance Committee members have been notified that the committee's health reform bill was filed today. S. 1796 weighs in at 1,502 pages, according to a Senate Republican leadership source. It's still not up yet on the Finance Committee website or Thomas.gov. We'll post a link as soon as we get one.

It is seldom recognized, commented historian René Dubos, that each society and every civilization creates its own diseases.1 Is the peanut allergy epidemic man-made? And if so, how has it been created in millions of children in just 20 years and who or what are its architects? The features of the epidemic continue to puzzle doctors. In the US alone, 5.6 million people – 2% of the population – are allergic topeanuts and nuts almost all having experienced onset as toddlers. This epidemic tipped into critical mass around 1998 when the first flood of allergic children entered kindergarten sending a...

A number of my friends have children with disabilities. Their problems range from cerebral palsy to Turner's syndrome to Trisomy 18, which is extremely serious. But I want to focus on one fairly common genetic disability to make my point. I'm referring to Trisomy 21, or Down syndrome.   You may already know that Down is not a disease. It's a genetic disorder with a variety of symptoms. Therapy can ease the burden of those symptoms, but Down syndrome is permanent. There's no cure. People with Down syndrome have mild to moderate developmental delays. They have low to middling...

Complex machines often have lots of knobs provided for adjustment: think of a jumbo jet, a television set or a DVD player. With a radio set you can twiddle the knobs to tune a different station or increase the volume or adjust the tone. But you can twiddle the controls on your radio as much as you like, it won’t change into a TV set. The natural changes we see in living things are like twiddling the knobs on a complex machine: they can fine-tune the settings, but cannot create something completely new. For example, an enzyme in a bacterium...

Health insurance premiums for most residents are going up. Many middle-class people who had insurance before the overhaul see little change -- except that they're spending more on health care. "What we did was health insurance reform, not health care reform," said Massachusetts state Sen. James Eldridge, a former proponent who now regrets having voted for the bill.

News to Note, October 17, 2009: A weekly feature examining news from the biblical viewpoint (fascinating STEM CELL piece in story #5!)...

Introducing three genes corrects motor defects in monkeys.A potential gene therapy for Parkinson's disease can correct motor deficits in monkeys without causing the jerky, involuntary movements that often accompany long-term treatments for the disease. The approach is undergoing preliminary testing in a handful of human patients, who have all shown promising signs of improvement.At present, the most common remedy for Parkinson's disease involves replacing dopamine — the neurotransmitter that is depleted in patients with the disease — by administering the dopamine precursor levodopa, or L-DOPA. Most patients initially regain near-normal motor control, but after several years on L-DOPA the majority...

Implant false memories by 'seizing control of circuits. Posted in Biology, 16th October 2009 13:43 GMT An alliance of boffins from Oxford University and Virginia, America say they have developed a technique for "writing directly to memory" in a living brain, "seizing control of brain circuits" to create a memory of an experience which had never actually happened. Thus far, according to the research, the technique works reliably only on flies. "Flies have the ability to learn, but the circuits that instruct memory formation were unknown," says Oxford insect-brain expert Gero Miesenböck. "We were able to pin the essential component...

Hippocratic Out Sarah Carlsruh, October 16, 2009 While he did not equate the current ethics of modern medicine to that of Nazi Germany, at a recent forum, an M.D. did imply that there is an “amoral component” headed in that direction. “One of the first acts of the Nazi government was to legalize voluntary euthanasia,” stated Dr. John Patrick. Reuters reported on September 21st that “assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland and physician-assisted suicide—where a doctor prescribes a lethal dose the patient may choose to drink—is legal in the State of Washington, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Oregon.” BBC News reported...

ASHBURN, Va. -- Desiree Jennings thought it would be a good idea to get the seasonal flu shot. Her job offered incentives for it, and she didn't want to get sick. Ten days after she got the shot at a Reston Safeway, she did get sick. "I got flu-like symptoms -- nausea, vomiting, body aches, fever -- then was lethargic for a week and started blacking out," said Jennings, an AOL employee and Washington Redskins ambassador hoping to one day be a cheerleader for the team, the Loudoun Times-Mirror reported. Doctors couldn't figure out why her ability to speak and...

University of California, Davis, researchers studying the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, formerly referred to as "swine flu," have identified a group of immunologically important sites on the virus that are also present in seasonal flu viruses that have been circulating for years. These molecular sites appear to result in some level of immunity to the new virus in people who were exposed to the earlier influenza viruses. More than a dozen structural sites, or epitopes, in the virus may explain why many people over the age of 60, who were likely exposed to similar viruses earlier in life, carry antibodies...

HEALTH - Blood oxygenation appears to be the key to surviving swine flu for patients suffering respiratory failure, new research shows. The observational study, carried out by New Zealand and Australian flu investigators between June 1 and August 31 this year, showed most patients who experienced respiratory failure after contracting swine flu survived if they were treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a type of life support that adds oxygen to the blood. The study focused on 68 patients with severe swine flu associated acute respiratory distress, who received ECMO in 15 intensive care units across New Zealand and Australia....

Shamans can tie strings around a neck and wrist. A red string around the neck helps in healing, and a white string around a wrist maintains a soul during hospitalization. A shaman, or "txiv neeb" in Hmong, can ask the Mercy hospital staff for permission to do ceremonies that go beyond chanting. An example would be a request to sprinkle water over incisions. According to Mercy's policy, hospital staff are to try to make accommodations. The ceremonies can occur in patient rooms, in the emergency department or in surgery preparation areas. The hospital ceremonies are brief -- 10 to 15...

Emergency departments are distilleries that boil complex blends of trauma, stress and emotion down to the essence of immediacy: What needs to be done, right now, to fix the problem. Working the past 20 years in such environments has shown me with great clarity what is wrong (and right) with our nation's medical system. It's obvious to me that despite all the furor and rancor, what is being debated in Washington currently is not health-care reform. It's only health-care insurance reform. It addresses the undeniably important issues of who is going to pay and how, but completely misses the point...

"(Romney's)The state’s ambitious plan to shake up(shake down) how providers are paid could(will) have a hidden price for(from) patients: Controlling Massachusetts’ soaring medical costs, many health care leaders believe, may(will) require residents to give up their nearly unlimited freedom to go to any hospital and specialist they want..."

Amid all the debate over health-care reform, I find myself conflicted. I'm pleased because reform is vital; the U.S. health-care system does a disservice to many. Yet my experiences in medical school and residency have opened my eyes to the abuse that hospitals endure from patients taking advantage of the system. Both patients and hospitals need help. Even if everyone in the United States had access to health care, health benefits would be optimized only if basic needs such as food and shelter are also met. I thought about this a lot last winter while working at medical centers on...

According to the preliminary analysis just released by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Senate Finance Committee’s health bill will cost American taxpayers $829 billion over ten years.How much confidence should we have in that forecast of $829 billion? Not too much, based on a July 2009 study from the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) “Are Healthcare Reform Cost Estimates Reliable?” which provides historical evidence that: Since the end of World War II, major healthcare reform proposals have generally always cost more—sometimes significantly more—than the highest cost estimates published while the legislation was pending.A certain level...

A strange disease only affecting the joints of women and making them fail to stand on their own has been found in Zambia's Luapula Province, the Times of Zambia reported on Thursday. The strange disease dubbed Dwarf has broken out in the Chembe area of the province and is only affecting women and girls, making them fail to stand on their own, Times said. Teleshi Lwando, an employee at the local Lwela Health Center, told the visiting lawmaker from the area, Mwansa Mbulakulima, that the disease was not "very serious" and that patients were healing after three days. He said...

Can the scientist who denied the cause of AIDS be trusted to cure cancer? --snip-- ...In the past three decades, Duesberg has been described as a genius, a martyr, and a genocidal lunatic—often by the same person, usually amid the fierce debates and international headlines that come with major scientific breakthroughs. In 1971, at the age of 33, he became the first scientist to identify a cancer-causing gene—a biological holy grail that secured his place among an elite group of the country's top researchers. Tenure at Berkeley and a coveted spot in the National Academy of Sciences followed. So did...

New York City Kidnaps and Force-Drugs Kids...

October 7, 2009 Evidence Offered with Respect to Historical Events Concerning Consensus and Dissent on the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis Darin Brown Ph.D. Introduction For many people, doubt of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis is associated with one individual, a German-American biochemist, Peter Duesberg, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. However, Duesberg is not alone in his dissent from AIDS orthodoxy. Many prominent and distinguished scientists and academics either agree with his position on HIV or support dissent from the HIV-AIDS hypothesis in some fashion. Several of these have either conducted research on retroviruses (the class of...

Nature has recently published an interesting paper which places severe limits on Darwinian evolution...

Seattle – Richard Dawkins, the world’s leading public spokesman for Darwinian evolution and an advocate of the “new atheism,” has refused to debate Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, a prominent advocate of intelligent design and the author of the acclaimed Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. “Richard Dawkins claims that the appearance of design in biology is an illusion and claims to have refuted the case for intelligent design,” says Dr. Meyer who received his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge in England. “But Dawkins assiduously avoids addressing the key evidence...

Oct 5, 2009 — Three stories touching on philosophy of science were reported recently.  They show that simplistic ideas, and even terms deployed, can be misleading.  That’s why philosophers still have a role in curbing the pretensions of scientists, and clarifying scientific issues and terms lest policy-makers and the public get wrong ideas. Are all invasive species bad?:  We are taught to think that “alien” animals or plants introduced into another country pose a threat.  Often they do, but Mark Davis at New Scientist reminded readers that the honeybee was introduced into the Americas.  He said, “you may be surprised...

A parody PSA about Big Government and its plans to take over health care. A spoof of Will Ferrell's ad for MoveOn.org ( click here or at YouTube source link)

Weekend Roundup --snip-- Picture Highlight: the new Herschel Space Telescope, is seeing first light and creating dramatic images of gas clouds in the Milky Way...

FORT LAUDERDALE - The Broward General Medical Center is urging patients to get tested for Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B and the HIV virus after it was revealed that a nurse re-used supplies when administering IV fluids during stress tests. (Snip) 1,800 patients treated by the nurse may have been exposed to HIV and hepatitis (/snip) The nurse, identified as Qui Lan, was suspended pending the outcome of a full investigation. Lan, who is out of the country, has resigned and been reported to the Florida Board of Nursing. Ft. Lauderdale police have said no charges will be filed against Lan...