Free Republic

For years, Alexis Beery, 15, relied on daily doses of an incredibly potent inhalant and injections of adrenaline just to stay alive. Now she and her similarly sick twin brother, Noah, have gone from racing to the ER on a regular basis to racing to high-school track and volleyball practice — thanks to treatment designed specifically for their unique genetic makeup. Gene-specific treatments have been used for years for a handful of diseases. Women with breast cancer who are found to carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genetic mutation, for instance, can undergo a regimen tailored for that specific gene mutation....

Malik Sarsa Khan had lost five children before. So when his daughter Samreen Fatma (3), who was born seven years after the death of his last child, was diagnosed with liver cancer, Khan, a Pakistani driver, decided to "beg, borrow or steal" to fund her liver transplant surgery in India. Though the government of Punjab in Pakistan stepped in to help him financially, he was robbed off at gunpoint in the Pakistani border city of Lahore while on his way to India. A determined Khan, somehow, managed to reach Apollo Hospital in Delhi. When finding a liver donor became difficult,...

Recently, however, there have been rumblings within the medical profession that suggest that the enthusiasm for early diagnosis may be waning. Most prominent are recommendations against prostate cancer screening for healthy men and for reducing the frequency of breast and cervical cancer screening. Some experts even cautioned against the recent colonoscopy results, pointing out that the study participants were probably much healthier than the general population, which would make them less likely to die of colon cancer. In addition there is a concern about too much detection and treatment of early diabetes, a growing appreciation that autism has been too...

Nithin Tumma, whose research could lead to less toxic and more effective breast cancer treatments, received the top award of $100,000 at the Intel Science Talent Search 2012, a program of Society for Science & the Public. From medical treatments to alternative energy solutions, innovation has been top of mind in our nation's capital this week. Honoring high school seniors with exceptional promise in math and science, Intel Corporation and Society for Science & the Public (SSP) recognized the winners of the nation's most elite and demanding high school research competition, the Intel Science Talent Search. Nithin Tumma, 17, of...

Australian researchers have been astonished to discover a cure-all right under their noses — a honey sold in health food shops as a natural medicine. Far from being an obscure health food with dubious healing qualities, new research has shown the honey kills every type of bacteria scientists have thrown at it, including the antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” plaguing hospitals and killing patients around the world. Some bacteria have become resistant to every commonly prescribed antibacterial drug. But scientists found that Manuka honey, as it is known in New Zealand, or jelly bush honey, as it is known in Australia, killed every...

Two years ago, I started reading about vitamin D deficiency. In articles by Dr. Frank Lipkin and on Natural News, they explained the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency. Guess what? To my surprise and curiosity, a lot of the symptoms were like fibromyalgia. I went back through my paperwork and saw that the nurse had indeed told me to take vitamin D.

Ever since Sarah Palin’s end-of-life counseling “death panel” remarks exploded into national consciousness in 2009, I have researched the real power ObamaCare will have to overrule your doctor’s decisions about what’s best for your health care. Forget death panels. Starting in July 2014, if Barack Obama is still president, a 15-member board that he selects with Senate confirmation — the Independent Payment Advisory Board — will be in charge of deciding when to reduce government spending per capita (for each person) on health care. Opponents such as Congressman Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., who is also a doctor and the co-chairman of...

We’re overdosing on cholesterol-lowering statins, and the consequence could be a sharp increase in the incidence of Type 2 diabetes. This past week, the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the side effects of these drugs and developed new labels for these medications that will now warn of the risk of diabetes and memory loss. The announcement said the risk was “small” and should not materially affect the use of these medications. The data are somewhat ambiguous for memory loss. But the magnitude of the problem for diabetes becomes much more apparent with careful examination of the data from...

NEW YORK) -- There’s new hope for people with Trimethylaminuria, a rare disorder that causes its sufferers to smell like dead fish. Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia recently won a $36,000 grant to study the genes behind the disorder—work scientists believe could lead to new developments in helping control the symptoms of Trimethylaminuria, also known as TMAU. ABC News introduced TV viewers to a TMAU sufferer in 2006: Former model and teacher Camille said TMAU endangered her career. “I was so focused on ‘Do I smell? Do I smell? Are they saying things? Are they whispering?...

Life-end Clinic will send teams to the homes of patients' whose doctors refuse to carry out the procedure A mobile euthanasia clinic will begin operating in the Netherlands on Thursday, to assist patients' whose own doctor refuse to carry out the procedure. According to the AFP news agency, the the Levenseindekliniek (Life-end clinic) has prepared several teams made up of a specially-trained doctor and nurse to attend to patients in their homes. "People who think they comply with the criteria for euthanasia can register," the Right To Die Netherlands (NVVE) spokeswoman Walburg de Jong is quoted as saying. "If they...

Federal health officials on Tuesday added new safety alerts to the prescribing information for statins, the cholesterol-reducing medications that are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, citing rare risks of memory loss, diabetes and muscle pain. It is the first time that the Food and Drug Administration has officially linked statin use with cognitive problems like forgetfulness and confusion, although some patients have reported such problems for years. Among the drugs affected are huge sellers like Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor and Vytorin. But federal officials and some medical experts said the new alerts should not scare people away...

The common practice of inserting a stent to repair a narrowed artery has no benefit over standard medical care in treating stable coronary artery disease, according to a new review of randomized controlled trials published on Monday. Stable coronary artery disease is the type of heart ailment that causes angina, or chest pain, after physical exercise or emotional stress but generally not at other times. The review did not include studies of the emergency use of stents for heart attacks. Stent implantation involves a procedure called percutaneous coronary intervention, or P.C.I., in which a surgeon inserts a mesh tube made...

Researchers from the University of East Anglia found that flavonoid-rich foods, like oranges and grapefruit, can help protect against strokes in women. This study was published in the journal, Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. In this study, the researchers followed 69,622 women for 14 years. The researchers monitored the protective nature of flavonoids, an antioxidant found in fruits, vegetables, dark chocolate and red wine. During the study, every four years, the women reported their fruit and vegetable intake. As a result, the researchers were able to look for relationships between flavonoid intake and the risk of ischemic, hemorrhagic...

Innovative technology getting serious consideration from nation’s military The U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command is giving serious consideration to bioelectric bandages to provide pain relief, kill dangerous bacteria, and heal wounds more quickly out on the battlefield.Procellera bandage by Vomaris. The bandage, dubbed “Procellera,” purportedly creates a healing bioelectrical pathway over the wound surface to enhance the body’s natural healing process. It has already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and is now being used to treat difficult-to-heal wounds. Background on the bandage Procellera is the world’s first self-contained, conformable, cut-to-fit, electrically active bandage. It...

(CBS News) Do antidepressants work? Since the introduction of Prozac in the 1980s, prescriptions for antidepressants have soared 400 percent, with 17 million Americans currently taking some form of the drug. But how much good is the medication itself doing? "The difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people," says Harvard scientist Irving Kirsch. Will Kirsch's research, and the work of others, change the $11.3 billion antidepressant industry? Lesley Stahl investigates.

excerpt- For several years, scientists have tried and failed to determine the cause of the illness, which locals say has killed hundreds of youngsters. What they do know is that the disease affects only children and gradually devastates its victims through debilitating seizures, stunted growth, wasted limbs, mental disabilities and sometimes starvation.

Aliskiren has been sold under the brand name Rasilez in Europe and Tekturna in the U.S. since 2007. EMA said it has ruled that aliskiren be "contraindicated," or not prescribed, to diabetic patients or to people with kidney problems who are also taking older hypertension drugs known as ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers. Data suggest a risk of adverse outcomes in such patients, including hypotension, stroke and changes in renal function, including acute renal failure, the EMA said. Novartis wrote to physicians world-wide then recommending that patients with Type 2 diabetes shouldn't be treated with aliskiren, or combination products...

A leading group of U.S. doctors is trying to tackle the costly problem of excessive medical testing, hoping to avoid more government intervention in how they practice. The American College of Physicians (ACP), the largest U.S. medical specialty group, is rolling out guidelines to help doctors better identify when patients should screen for specific diseases and when they can be spared the cost, and potentially invasive procedures that follow. Many individual U.S. medical centers have launched their own efforts to build a protocol of patient care in fields such as diabetes or obstetrics, but the ACP effort has the potential...

Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia? No one would accuse Jaroslav Flegr of being a conformist. A self-described “sloppy dresser,” the 63-year-old Czech scientist has the contemplative air of someone habitually lost in thought, and his still-youthful, square-jawed face is framed by frizzy red hair...

Yaws, a disease that penicillin nearly eradicated 40 years ago, has been re-emerging in rural tropical Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands — but a new study has shown that a modern drug is as effective against the disease as penicillin was. Yaws is a close relative of syphilis — both are caused by a spirochete bacterium, though syphilis is usually transmitted by sex and starts as a genital sore, while yaws is passed by skin contact with its usually painless skin sores. They resemble raspberries, and one name for the disease is “framboise,” French for raspberry. It is...