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BBC News today reported that “two blind British men have had electronic retinas fitted”. Chris James, 54, and Robin Millar, 60, took part in a clinical trial coordinated by Oxford University and funded by the National Institute of Health Research. Both men have retinitis pigmentosa, a rare hereditary condition that causes gradual deterioration of the light-detecting cells in the retina, which can lead to blindness. The electronic retinas are implants containing light detectors designed to replace the lost light-detecting cells. Immediately following the procedures, when the implants were switched on, both men were able to detect light and are now...

Eighty-three percent of American physicians have considered leaving their practices over President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, according to a survey released by the Doctor Patient Medical Association. The DPMA, a non-partisan association of doctors and patients, surveyed a random selection of 699 doctors nationwide. The survey found that the majority have thought about bailing out of their careers over the legislation, which was upheld last month by the Supreme Court. Even if doctors do not quit their jobs over the ruling, America will face a shortage of at least 90,000 doctors by 2020. The newly passed health care...

We've seen promising moves towards developing a universal or near-universal influenza vaccine, but researchers at the Donald P. Shiley BioScience Center have taken a different tack to ward of the crafty virus. Although the flu virus actively keeps the immune system from detecting it for a few days, giving it time to gain a foothold, the researchers have found that a powerful synthetic protein, known as EP67, can kick start the immune system so that it reacts almost immediately to all strains of the virus. Previously, EP67 had primarily been used to help activate the immune response by being added...

Back at the at the dawn of ObamaCare in June 2009, speaking to the American Medical Association's annual meeting, President Obama said: "No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period." But will your doctor be able to keep you? Or will your doctor even want to keep you, rather than quit medicine? ... Have you noticed what got lost in this historic rumble? Doctors. Remember them? ObamaCare has been a war over the processing of insurance claims. It has been fought by...

The hospitals that perform child heart surgery are due to learn which will have to stop performing operations. There are 10 units in England, but an official consultation has proposed up to four should cease doing surgery. The NHS review was carried out amid fears expertise was spread too thinly, and has already concluded surgery should be concentrated on fewer sites. Centres in Leicester, Leeds, Newcastle, Southampton, Bristol and London are under threat.

As debate about whether ObamaCare is a good idea continues, rejecting four major misconceptions about healthcare is crucial to any chance of our eventually emerging with a better system. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ObamaCare decision, we must refocus. The Court’s decision was never about whether ObamaCare was a good idea, only about whether it was constitutional. The Court found a convoluted way to uphold the law.That’s done, but the debate on whether ObamaCare’s provisions are good ideas will continue. To date, this debate has been unable to shake off a lot of mythology—things believed about healthcare and...

I never will forget when I persuaded my husband to vote for Obama as I just knew he was THE man. Now, I feel guilty and cannot believe that I was so taken in by his smoothe personality and the moment. When I hear comments that our country is spiraling out of control I now connect the dots and think of it as a battle already lost to one that doesn’t deserve it. We’ve become a gullible people and are deceived by a selfish and materialistic world. We look over the rough spots because we cannot look upon the truth...

I've been thinking about this for years and want to get my fellow Freeper's opinions --> how little healthcare/medicare do we need as a nation?There are two extremes: government is not involved in any medicare at all, or the other extreme is ObamacareAs a young adult, I'm inclined to the zero government, zero tax-money going to healthcare/medicare. However, I also believe that we young have an obligation to take care of our parents and our other aged relatives. That being said, I look on it as a Christian duty, separate from gubmint. What do you freepers think? Where along the...

Surgeons have removed a tumor from the mouth of a fetus, in what has been described as a "world first" procedure. After a scan at 17 weeks, mother Tammy Gonzalez said she "could see a bubble" coming out of her baby's mouth. Doctors said it was a very rare tumor called an oral teratoma and there was little chance her daughter would survive. After the pioneering operation, baby Leyna was born five months later. Doctors at the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida, said this type of tumor was so rare it had been seen only once in 20 years at...

Leyna Gonzalez is now a happy, active 20-month-old. However, when she was in her mother's womb a rare tumor was rapidly growing in her mouth. But in the first case of its kind, UM/Jackson fetal surgeons were able to penetrate the amniotic sac with a small scope and successfully remove the tumor in utero. The tumor can easily be seen in a routine ultrasound taken at 17 weeks.

Scientists say they have identified a possible genetic link between diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. It has been known for some time that people with diabetes have a much higher risk of developing Alzheimer's, but not why this is so.Now US researchers writing in Genetics say a study of worms has indicated a known Alzheimer's gene also plays a role in the way insulin is processed. ..... < snip > ..... A key indication of Alzheimer's, which can only be seen after death, is the presence of sticky plaques of amyloid protein in decimated portions of patients' brains. Scientists have already...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — For as long as archivists at Rutgers University could remember, a small cardboard box marked with the letter W in black ink had sat unopened in a dusty corner of the special collections of the Alexander Library. Next to it were 60 sturdy archive boxes of papers, a legacy of the university’s most famous scientist: Selman A. Waksman, who won a Nobel Prize in 1952 for the discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic to cure tuberculosis. The 60 boxes contained details of how streptomycin was found — and also of the murky story behind it, a...

A critically ill eight-year-old child is alive today because a Windsor emergency room doctor refused to wait for provincial approval to send the child to a Detroit hospital, according to the patient’s mother and hospital doctor. “She needed emergency surgery and if you don’t operate she was going to die,” said Dr. David Adekoya, Windsor Regional Hospital’s chief of emergency surgery who was at the hospital when the girl was treated. “She needed to be at a facility within an hour. We needed to make a decision and not wait around.” .... After the transfer to Detroit was arranged, CritiCall...

Enlarge Image Root killer. Cancer-like stem cells treated with the antipsychotic drug thioridazine (right) are scarce compared with control cells. Credit: E. Sachlos et al., Cell, 149 (8 June), ©2012 Elsevier Inc. A well-known drug for treating schizophrenia may be a cancer killer, too. In lab studies, the drug wiped out a precursor to leukemia cells without harming normal cells. That means it could give doctors a long-sought way to eliminate every trace of leukemia in patients so that the cancer can never come back. Even though surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation can get rid of a tumor or leukemia...

Chagas, a tropical disease spread by insects, is causing some fresh concern following an editorial—published earlier this week in a medical journal—that called it "the new AIDS of the Americas." More than 8 million people have been infected by Chagas, most of them in Latin and Central America. But more than 300,000 live in the United States. The editorial, published by the Public Library of Science's Neglected Tropical Diseases, said the spread of the disease is reminiscent of the early years of HIV. "There are a number of striking similarities between people living with Chagas disease and people living with...

Enlarge Image Thick-skinned. Fragments of the anticancer drug endostatin can halt fibrosis in a slab of human skin. Credit: Feghali-Bostwick Laboratory Connective tissue holds our bodies together, but in a condition called fibrosis, an overabundance of the material devastates organs such as the liver, heart, and lungs. A new study suggests that fragments of a promising cancer drug can rein in fibrosis, which is currently untreatable. Fibrosis occurs when cells pump out excess collagen and other connective tissue proteins, which harm organs. Pulmonary fibrosis, for example, stiffens the lungs, eventually suffocating patients unless they receive a lung transplant. In...

Pharmacies in Greece were on strike earlier this week in protest at the government not paying them for medicines that should be free to customers. Many pharmacies now have huge debts to pharmaceutical companies for drugs they have handed out free of charge. Sky News spoke to one pharmacist who has not been paid by the state for over a year. Evaggelina Rousi, who runs a chemist in Athens, said: "The government owes us 30,000 euros but we have not been paid by them for a year and a half. Many people who rely on regular medication are at risk....

By the time Dr. Spencer Misner had carved away the dead and diseased flesh from Bobby Rice’s right foot last year, little remained other than bones and tendons. “I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t look real. It looked like something out of a movie,” recalled Rice, a Whitfield County resident. Today, the ankle has almost completely healed. It looks like Rice had simply scraped it. And Rice’s foot has largely healed, too. Misner credits cutting-edge stem cell treatments for saving Rice’s foot and leg.

He is only a freshman at North County High School in Anne Arundel County. However, 15-year-old Jack Andraka is being recognized for developing what may become an effective way to detect pancreatic cancer.

Drinking a daily cup of coffee -- or even several cups -- isn't likely to harm your health, and it may even lower your risk of dying from chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests. NIH followed 400,000 men and women for 13 years, during which 13% died. In the study, both regular and decaf were associated with a lower risk of dying Overall, coffee drinkers were less likely than their peers to die during the study, and the more coffee they drank, the lower their mortality risk...