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Common Sense Medicine: Restoring the Patient/Physician Relationship Common Sense Medicine, hot off the press, is a powerful, easy-to-read, and entertaining exposé of the root problems plaguing American medicine and the simple solutions to increase access to high-quality, low-cost medical care!We are offering bulk discounts on this POWERFUL new book.Buy copies to give to patients, friends, and family!...A Kindle version is available...Read PDF version: http://aapsonline.org/CommonSenseMedicine.pdfCommon Sense Medicine: Restoring the Patient/Physician Relationship by Association of American Physicians and Surgeons on Scribd ...Meet the Author: Jeff DanbyJeff received a Bachelor of Arts in History with Honors from DePaul University in 1985, and...

An Oklahoma mom has decided to give birth to her terminally ill daughter so that she can donate the newborn’s organs. Keri Young, from Oklahoma City, was devastated to discover that her baby, whom she named Eva, would be born without a portion of her brain and skull due to a condition known as anencephaly. Keri — who learned of the child’s fate during her 20-week ultrasound — is scheduled to give birth to her child May 7 and will likely only spend a few days with the newborn before she dies. Her husband, Royce, was in awe of his...

Caption -- New research suggests people with chronic pain would rather use cannabis over their recommended medicine. Chronic pain sufferers and those taking mental health meds would rather turn to cannabis instead of their prescribed opioid medication, according to a new study. "This study is one of the first to track medical cannabis use under the new system of licensed producers, meaning that all participants had physician authorization to access cannabis in addition to their prescription medicines," says UBC Assoc. Prof. Zach Walsh, co-author of the study. The study tracked more than 250 patients with prescribed medical cannabis--people treated for...

An irate man contacted me recently to complain he’d been turned down for back surgery because he’s a smoker. “It’s just not right,” said the Charlotte man, who suffers from chronic hip and leg pain. “I need this surgery. It’s to the point where I can’t walk around the block with my dogs.” He acknowledged smoking is a “bad habit,” but after 35 years, he’s not sure he can quit. And he doesn’t think he should have to. (snip) Spector said it’s part of a national trend for doctors to run down a checklist of behaviors in preparation for elective...

This criminalization of everyday life is not just insanely costly and insanely counter-productive--it's insanely punitive. The average person has little exposure to the criminalization of everyday enterprise in America via over-regulation and outsized penalties for even accidental violations of rules and regulations. One field that continues to be burdened with excessive/counter-productive regulations and outsized penalties is the practice of medicine. I received the following email from a physician correspondent: "As you will see, physicians have to deal with the federal government's increasingly crazy and copious rules (like which patients they can screen for disease and how often). The following is...

A cobra's deadly venom is being used to heal chronic aches and pains. Tom's handling a Southeast Asian Cobra he raised at his farm. Twice a month, he milks the venom that's used to help people and pets with chronic pain. (Photo Courtesy: NBC) It's a toxin turned treatment that can be used by both pets and people. They are not the friendliest creatures. And they can be intimidating... "Right now I'm removing a cobra from its cage," says herpetologist and venom supplier Tom Crutchfield. "This is the cobras' keep for the venom line for the pharmaceutical company Nutria Pharma."...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump's Cabinet confirmations (all times EST): 7:53 p.m. The Senate has confirmed physician David Shulkin to serve as secretary of Veterans Affairs in the Trump administration. The vote Monday was 100-0. Shulkin is a former Obama administration official who had served as the VA's top health official since 2015. He is the first non-veteran to lead the government's second-largest department....

The CNN healthcare debate between Senators Ted Cruz & Bernie Sanders on February 7 was dubbed a success by the network, ranking first in its cable time slot. With healthcare once again thrust into the headlines, and with two big personalities squaring off, this was certainly the marquee event, as was advertised. It turned out to be what one would have expected; a clash of ideologies, but a deeper look into what was said, and specifically what wasn’t, turned out to be most revealing. Senator Sanders’ positions contained very little substance as he clung to his talking points which reflected...

New research from Lund University in Sweden has shown that intestinal bacteria can accelerate the development of Alzheimer’s disease. According to the researchers behind the study, the results open up the door to new opportunities for preventing and treating the disease Because our gut bacteria have a major impact on how we feel through the interaction between the immune system, the intestinal mucosa and our diet, the composition of the gut microbiota is of great interest to research on diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Exactly how our gut microbiota composition is composed depends on which bacteria we receive at birth, our...

EVERY year about 120,000 organs, mostly kidneys, are transplanted from one human being to another. Sometimes the donor is a living volunteer. Usually, though, he or she is the victim of an accident, stroke, heart attack or similar sudden event that has terminated the life of an otherwise healthy individual. But a lack of suitable donors, particularly as cars get safer and first-aid becomes more effective, means the supply of such organs is limited. Many people therefore die waiting for a transplant. That has led researchers to study the question of how to build organs from scratch. One promising approach...

They are the city’s new pot-smoking professionals — ganja-puffing teachers... ...A Brooklyn teacher told The Post that it’s a good thing city education officials don’t randomly test school workers for the drug. “If they did . . . they’d probably have to fire about 85 percent of their staff,” she said. Today’s pot puffers say they’re no head cases...

As renal ailments appear as one of the world's worst health issue, an intensive research project led by a Bangladeshi born US bioengineer suggests, artificial kidney at an affordable cost is expected to put an end to worries of millions by 2020. Talking to media on the sidelines of an international renal conference in India's Chennai, 48-year-old Dr Shuvo Roy today said the artificial kidneys were expected to complete a three-year clinical trial on human in 2020 after experiments on large animals yielded "very positive results". Roy said for the past 15 years his team comprising doctors spearheaded a rigorous...

A tiny self-propelled drug-delivery device might someday make taking antibiotics safer and more efficient. Think of it as a tiny submarine scooting around inside your stomach, fueled by the acid there. Oral antibiotics are commonly prescribed life-saving drugs. Once an antibiotic is swallowed, it takes a trip to the stomach, where there's lots of acid. That stomach acid can break chemical bonds in the antibiotic and deactivate it.

Today we can print human skin. Soon we may be able to print human organs. A new item has just been added to the list of things that can be 3D printed: human skin. This is what researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) in Spain have recently demonstrated. With a 3D printer that uses special ink composed of human cells, they were able to create human skin that looks and behaves like real skin — with a dermis and an epidermis, able to produce collagen and react like real skin does to tests done. This artificially created...

Freepers, let’s put our heads together and figure out how to fix healthcare in the US. I’ll never forget watching Bill Bradley give a speech many years ago where he spoke with great outrage, saying something like this: “I was at the doctor’s office the other day and there was a woman who brought in her young child. And the child had to have a shot of penicillin. And I watched that poor mother as she was leaving have to pull out her checkbook and write the doctor a check for $60!” he said with trembling voice. I believe that...

President-elect Donald Trump surprised many when he chose one of President Obama’s appointees to run the Department of Veterans Affairs after pledging to overhaul the department during the campaign. But the nominee, current under secretary of health David Shulkin, has a long history in the private sector turning around struggling hospitals. Veterans groups called the choice a pleasant surprise, as they say Shulkin has overseen a turnaround in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and resisted calls for privatizing the federal system. “While our membership has been clear in its preference to have a veteran leading the VA, I am heartened...

Dutch scientists and engineers have taken a big step towards developing a bionic kidney that could one day potentially replace the need for dialysis or transplantation. They have tested a "living membrane" made with human cells that would be at the heart of a functional artificial kidney implant. The Device Filtered Out Waste, The Same Way As A Real Kidney The team presented the advancement at at ASN Kidney Week 2016 November 15-20 at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL. They demonstrated this activity by attaching human renal proximal tubular epithelial cells on the surfaces of artificial hollow structures. These cultured...

The number of NHS patients in England who had urgent operations cancelled hit record numbers in November, soaring to almost double the level a year ago, according to government data.

I believe that President-elect Donald Trump will succeed in bringing down health care costs, and tackling soaring drug prices will be at the forefront of his battle. This may have come as a shock to the industry, who likely believed that they’d be given a free pass under a Republican presidency and Republican-controlled Congress. It is likely that on Election Day the Big Pharma companies prematurely let out a collective sigh of relief believing that a Republican-led government would never allow for imported medicines or for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, but it appears that the well-deserved panic is starting...

Shares of a key biotech ETF plunged to their lowest point since the election, after President-elect Donald Trump pledged in an interview with Time Magazine to curb spiraling drug prices. In morning trading on the stock market today, the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology Index (IBB) exchange-traded fund was down more than 3%, near 266. The index had jumped 9% on Nov. 9, after Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House, on the belief that high drug prices would not be as big a focus for Trump as it would have been for Clinton. IBD's 421-company Medical-Biomed/Biotech industry...