Free Republic

After hiding his face for 15 years, Richard Lee Norris has stepped into the spotlight for a book about the surgery that saved his life. Norris made headlines in 2012 when he received a full face transplant – the result of a 36-hour operation that swapped his scarred skin and shattered bones with tissue from a donor. Now he's sharing his story in "The Two Faces of Richard," a biography punctuated with never-before-seen black and white photos of his amazing transformation. "This book shows that it's possible to go through hell and come out on the other side," said Coos...

Stem cells have been used by scientists in Japan to create tiny but working human livers, with complex networks of blood vessels. The human "liver buds" were transplanted into mice, where they grew blood vessels and produced proteins such as albumin that are specific to humans. They also metabolized some drugs that human liver breaks down but a mouse liver cannot. The researchers further confirmed the livers were working by showing that transplanting a liver into a mouse whose liver was lethally damaged allowed the animal to live longer then expected. "It's a human liver, functioning in a mouse," said...

When Dr. Paul A. Offit published “Autism’s False Prophets” in 2008, he elected to skip the usual round of book signings. His defense of childhood vaccinations so enraged some people who consider them a cause of autism that he was getting credible death threats. Others might have chosen to flee the public arena after that, but not Dr. Offit, the chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, whose appetite for the good fight seems only to have grown. Over the last decade he has become a leading debunker of mass misconceptions surrounding infections and vaccines, and now he...

A newly published study shows that white blood cells and a cancer cells can fuse and initiate a tumor, providing the first proof in humans of a long proposed theory.Yale Cancer Center scientists, together with colleagues at the Denver Police Crime Lab and the University of Colorado, have found evidence that a human metastatic tumor can arise when a leukocyte (white blood cell) and a cancer cell fuse to form a genetic hybrid. Their study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, may answer the question of how cancer cells travel from the primary tumor’s site of origin to distant organs...

Doctors have been told to stop prescribing to patients with a heart condition or circulation problems one of the most commonly used anti-inflammatory drugs in the UK . Britain's drug watchdog said the painkiller diclofenac could significantly increase the risk of a heart attack or stroke for some patients. Millions of people take the drug for a range of conditions including arthritis, headaches, back pain and gout.

It may be possible to reverse type 1 diabetes by training a patient's own immune system to stop attacking their body, an early trial suggests. Their immune system destroys the cells that make insulin, the hormone needed to control blood sugar levels. A study in 80 patients, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, showed a vaccine could retrain their immune system. Experts described the results as a "significant step". Normally a vaccine teaches the immune system to attack bacteria or viruses that cause disease, such as the polio virus. Researchers at the Stanford University Medical Centre used a vaccine...

Few people realize that the HIPAA “privacy” form shoved under the nose of every individual visiting a hospital or doctor’s office has NOTHING whatever to do with the preservation of patient privacy. Nor does it mean that patient consent will be required before a provider may share their records. On the contrary, signing the form simply means the patient has been advised that his most private medical (and other) information may be legally accessed by some 2.2 million entities, many having nothing to do with either health or treatment. In 2009, the federal government modified the HIPAA “privacy rule” so...

Thirty-two-year old family physician Doug Nunamaker of Wichita, Kan., said after five years of dealing with the red tape of health insurance companies and the high overhead for the staff he hired just to deal with paperwork, he switched to a system of charging his patients a monthly fee plus the price of an office visit or test, CNN/Money reported. For example, under Nunamaker's membership plan -- also known as "concierge" medicine or "direct primary care" practices -- each patient pays a flat monthly fee to have unlimited access to the doctors and any medical service they can provide in...

The university's Stritch School of Medicine not only intends to waive legal residency as an admissions requirement for applicants but aims to offer a financing plan through a state agency

You may have heard that White House tours were cut due to across-the-board federal spending cuts known as the sequester. Or that Congress made sure to minimize disruptions to air travel. Or perhaps you know someone being furloughed as a result of the cuts. But did you know a major fight is being waged over sequester cuts to some cancer drugs? After Congress failed to pass a budget this spring, a 2 percent cut to Medicare chemotherapy drug reimbursements went into effect April 1 as part of the across-the-board federal spending cuts designed to save $85.4 billion this year. Many...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rebuffed an appeal from Rep. Lou Barletta on behalf of a girl who needs a lung transplant but can’t get one because of a federal regulation that prevents her from qualifying for a transplant. “Please, suspend the rules until we look at this policy,” Barletta, a Pennsylvania Republican, asked Sebelius during a House hearing Tuesday on behalf of Sarah Murnaghan, a 10-year-old girl who needs a lung transplant. She can’t qualify for an adult lung transplant until the age of 12, according to federal regulations, but Sebelius has the authority to waive that...

The rise of 'superbugs' is causing tens of thousands of deaths a year in the United States alone. A problem as complex as antibiotic resistance will require several solutions. Increasing antibiotic resistance is of great concern — the health of millions is dependent on our ability to defeat the threat of infectious diseases. The World Health Organization estimates that multi-drug resistance accounts for more than 150,000 deaths each year from tuberculosis alone.Without effective antibiotics in health care, humanity would be thrown back to the time when urinary tract infections and pneumonia were lethal. Infant and maternal mortality would rise and...

The cheapest Obamacare health insurance plan will cost a family $20,000 per year. Americans will be forced to purchase the plan or face the Obama IRS. CNS News reported: In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year. Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. The IRS’s assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives...

After several years of spinning for the Democrats and Barack Obama the liberal media has decided to come clean and tell you what you can expect from Obamacare. And your’re not going to like it. Many Americans are going to lose their plans after all. Of course, Barack Obama repeatedly promised this would not happen. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) And the media let him get away with these lies until now. The AP reported: State insurance regulators say many people who buy their own health insurance could get surprises this fall: cancellation notices because their policies aren’t up to the basic standards of...

Nancy Pelosi warned us we’d have to pass Obamacare to find out what’s in it. And what we’re finding we don’t like at all. Higher insurance premiums are hitting families hard. Medicare Advantage has been decimated. Millions will be forced into government-run Medicaid where long lines and rationing await. If we like our insurance -- too bad. Beginning January 1, 2011, more than 15,000 over-the-counter (OTC) health care items will require a prescription (and that means a doctor’s visit) for tax-free reimbursement. Under Obamacare, OTC drugs cannot be reimbursed tax-free from Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) or Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)...

“ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease.” These were the words of Leon Eisenberg, the “scientific father of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder),” in his last interview before his death. Leon Eisenberg made a luxurious living off of his “fictitious disease,” thanks to pharmaceutical sales. Coincidentally, he received the “Ruane Prize for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Research. He has been a leader in child psychiatry for more than 40 years through his work in pharmacological trials, research, teaching, and social policy and for his theories of autism and social medicine,” according to Psychiatric News.

On the morning of Aug. 18, 2004, Dinesh Thakur hurried to a hastily arranged meeting with his boss at the gleaming offices of Ranbaxy Laboratories in Gurgaon, India, 20 miles south of New Delhi. (snip) His boss, Dr. Rajinder Kumar, Ranbaxy's head of research and development, had joined the generic-drug company just two months earlier from GlaxoSmithKline, where he had served as global head of psychiatry for clinical research and development. (snip) Like Kumar, Thakur had left a brand-name pharmaceutical company for Ranbaxy. Thakur, then 35, an American-trained engineer and a naturalized U.S. citizen, had worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY)...

In writing about the ACA and our health-care problems, I started to think more and more about supply restrictions. In every other industry, costs come down when new suppliers come in and compete. Yet our health-care system is full of restrictions and protections to keep new suppliers out, and competition down. Then we wonder why hospitals won't tell you how much care will cost, and send you bills with $100 band aids on them. In that context, I was interested to learn this week about the ACA's limits on expansion of doctor-owned hospitals. The Wall Street Journal article is here,...

The Wall Street Journal reports on what National Review Online’s Veronique de Rugy calls one more in the law of ”unintended consequences” to the implementation of our President’s “signature law” – ObamaCare (via Memeorandum -bolded emphasis added by me): "Employers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage. Benefits advisers and insurance brokers—bucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefits—are pitching these low-benefit plans around the country. They cover minimal requirements such as preventive...

Salamanders can regrow entire limbs and regenerate parts of major organs, an ability that relies on their immune systems, research now shows. A study of the axolotl, an aquatic salamander, reveals that immune cells called macrophages are critical in the early stages of regenerating lost limbs. Wiping out these cells permanently prevented regeneration and led to tissue scarring. The findings hint at possible strategies for tissue repair in humans.