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MIAMI, - Authorities in Florida said they are investigating the alleged illegal importing of giant African snails for use in a religious healing ritual. A search warrant filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court said state and federal investigators raided the home of Charles Stewart, 48, in January after receiving information that he was keeping a large box full of the snails, which are only allowed in the United States with special permits for scientific research, the Miami Herald reported Thursday. Federal authorities said they began investigating Stewart in November after receiving complaints that he was feeding the juices from the snails...

Acknowledging the public health impact of racism and deep disparities in the quality and accessibility of medical care for patients of color, a national organization, White Coats for Black Lives, says it’s launching a new effort today, in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dorothy Charles, one of the group’s organizers and a first year medical student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, offers some context in an email: Racism profoundly impacts people of color: the black-white mortality gap in 2002, for example, accounted for 83,570 excess deaths. As future physicians, we are responsible for addressing the...

CHICAGO — “Some folks might think that I’m just a paranoid old guy who feels that the world is coming to an end and we had a great ride…but there are major disruptive changes in health care on the horizon, and unless we understand them and respond, I think, personally, the future of our profession is in jeopardy,” Paul Berger, MD, chairman, Partners in the Imaging Enterprise, and past founder and former chairman of NightHawk Radiology, said at RSNA 2014. The disruption Berger was referring to specifically is the trend of population health. Population health is an idea with varying...

West Palm Beach police busted a juvenile who was posing as a doctor — with a white lab coat and all — for a month at St. Mary's Medical Center. Police said they got a call on Jan. 13 about a juvenile walking around in a white doctor's lab coat and carrying a stethoscope who was telling people he was a doctor

[I really think it is important to highlight all the great advances in technology and medicine, to show what is good in society and what we can accomplish if we put our minds to it! Even if you don’t have diabetes you should appreciate the advances that can be made—if government regulators and Obama don’t destroy the medical industry first.] This Temporary Tattoo Can Monitor Diabetics' Glucose Levels as Accurately as a Finger Prick “A flexible and easy-to-wear temporary tattoo could help diabetics manage their condition without daily finger pricks.” By FIONA MACDONALD January 15, 2015 Engineers from the University...

The recent successes of the Affordable Care Act pose a challenge for the right, at least in theory. The more “Obamacare” works effectively, and the more Republican predictions are discredited, the more difficult it should be for conservatives to deny what is plainly true. And yet, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) doesn’t seem to mind. The Texas Republican delivered some predictable red meat at the Heritage Action Conservative Policy Summit yesterday, taking aim at the health care law he loves to hate. Obamacare, he asserted, has wrought “devastation.” He called it a “train wreck” that has cost millions of Americans their...

My Kingdom Economics are derived through "Thanksgiving"for it was in this manner the waters parted for Moses and the snakebites were of no consequence(I will lift my eyes to the hills) for as The Son Of God is lifted up doors open and miracles begin ! My endowment to Him( Jesus) is you( My children of Light ) and so it is as your love for Us is poured out ," Truly " it is returned flowing down upon your heads pressed down shaken together and flowing over into My very Will. So enter My Courts with Thanksgiving "YES" but...

[For me, these kinds of stories are inspirational and show what human beings are capable of!] Paralysed patients have been given new hope of recovery after rats with severe spinal injuries walked again through a ‘groundbreaking’ new cyborg-style implant. In technology which could have come straight out of a science fiction novel or Hollwood movie, French scientists have created a thin prosthetic ribbon, embedded with electrodes, which lies along the spinal cord and delivers electrical impulses and drugs. The prosthetic, described by British experts as ‘quite remarkable’, is soft enough to bend with tissue surrounding the backbone to avoid discomfort....

Lauren F Friedman and Reuters January 7, 2015Scientists have discovered a new antibiotic, teixobactin, that can kill serious infections in mice without encountering any detectable resistance, offering a potential new way to get ahead of dangerous evolving superbugs. The new antibiotic was discovered in a sample of soil. The research is "ingenious," Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, told The New York Times. Researchers said the antibiotic, which has yet to be tested in humans, could one day be used to treat drug-resistant infections caused by the superbug MSRA, as well as tuberculosis, which normally requires...

Ever since scientists grew a human bladder in a laboratory in 1996, researchers have continued to develop more complex organs. Beating human hearts have also been grown in the lab and infected with disease to test various drugs. As a result of these medical advancements, people have had their lives changed for the better. For example, there have been multiple windpipe replacements, tear duct replacements, artery transplants, bladder transplants and more. The development of lab-built body parts is on the rise as a result of a shortage of organ donors, and many of these organs are built with the recipients...

Evolution is what got us here today, if you accept the scientific approach to our creation. It was processes such as ‘survival of the fittest’ which led us, as well as other earthly creatures, to develop some of the traits, senses, and abilities that we possess today. For superhero fans, especially those who love the X-Men, you know that these superhuman characters acquired their powers through the process of evolution. Little mutations in genes led to them become the recipient of more than simple human-like abilities. Wouldn’t we all like to have the ability to see through objects, climb walls,...

Red Tape: With businesses' one-year reprieve from financial penalties under ObamaCare ending, the horror stories of complying with the costly health care law already are trickling in. The worst is yet to come. ObamaCare Hits Small Business Hard in '15 Starting Jan. 1, employers with 100 or more full-time workers face hefty increases in their health insurance costs as they comply for the first time with the mandate. They must now offer the government's comprehensive coverage — including "free" preventive care — for all employees working 30 or more hours a week, or risk being fined $2,000 per employee per...

The discovery of a new virus implicated in the death of a Kansas farmer this past June raises many questions about its host, prevalence, spectrum of disease, and ultimately its treatment and prevention, according to an infectious disease expert who treated the patient. Yesterday, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced the first known case of the so-called Bourbon virus, named after the Kansas county where the unidentified patient had lived. His symptoms — fever, low red and white blood cell counts, elevated liver enzymes, and loss of appetite — suggested a tick-borne illness such as ehrlichiosis or the...

GPs will be asked to identify patients who are putting on weight under a new national programme to help fight obesity. Simon Stevens, the head of the NHS, said it was time for Britain to "get back in shape" in order to protect millions of people from a host of obesity-related diseases. Under the scheme, family doctors will be asked to identify anyone who has gained weight and is at risk of diabetes – particularly those aged below 40. They will then be offered tests for pre-diabetes, followed by healthy lifestyle advice and close monitoring to ensure they are eating...

New implant improves vision for older people struggling with cataracts, astigmatism, or long and short-sightedness. For many people getting older brings a catalogue of vision problems which make everyday tasks like reading and driving a major challenge. But a new lens implant which mimics the working of a youthful eye is giving sight back to people struggling with cataracts, astigmatism, or long and short-sightedness. It is the first lens that corrects for all types of vision problems at once and can be inserted in just a simple operation. It works at any distance and in any light condition, acting more...

Testing has become to the United States’ medical system what liquor is to the hospitality industry: a profit center with large and often arbitrary markups. From a medical perspective, blood work, tests and scans are tools to help physicians diagnose and monitor disease. But from a business perspective, they are opportunities to bring in revenue — especially because the equipment to perform them has generally become far cheaper, smaller and more highly mechanized in the past two decades. And echocardiograms, ultrasound pictures of the heart, are enticing because they are painless and have no side effects — unlike CT scans,...

They cited the example of the asthma drug albuterol sulfate. The average cost for a bottle of 100 pills was $11 last October, the pair said. The average charge by this April was up to $434. The antibiotic doxycycline hyclate cost $20 last October for a bottle of 500 tablets, the congressmen observed. By April, the price was $1,849. Experts say generics are growing more expensive because of reduced competition among manufacturers and shortages of raw materials. However, that might not explain triple-digit price hikes for some drugs. "Most generics are increasing in price by an average 10% a year,"...

Kate Kelland, Reuters December 10, 2014LONDON, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Drug-resistant superbugs could kill an extra 10 million people a year and cost up to $100 trillion by 2050 if their rampant global spread is not halted, according to a British government-commissioned review. Such infections already kill hundreds of thousands of people a year and the trend is growing, the review said, adding: "The importance of effective antimicrobial drugs cannot be overplayed." Former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill, who led the work, noted that in Europe and the United States alone around 50,000 people currently die each year from...

...Yet a very small study out of UCLA is offering a glimmer of hope for those with what is often a hopeless diagnosis. Nine out of the 10 patients involved in the study, who were in various stages of dementia, say their symptoms were reversed after they participated in a rigorous program. The program included things like optimizing Vitamin D levels in the blood, using DHA supplements to bridge broken connections in the brain, optimizing gut health, and strategic fasting to normalize insulin levels. A few months after starting the extreme program, patients in the study, aged 55 to 75,...

Tom Telford ’s stomach ached. The New York City teacher had been drinking cup after cup of coffee as he labored to finish year-end grading and coach his high-school baseball team through the playoffs. He worried he might have an ulcer. When school let out, though, Mr. Telford looked forward to relaxing on a 25th anniversary cruise with his wife. But once in the Caribbean, he struggled to swim and climbing from one deck to another exhausted him. Back at home, he collapsed while running a TV cable in his bedroom. His family doctor told him he had lost two...