Free Republic

Consumers went away in March, and stayed away in April. Anyone looking for further validation that the economy is on the mend didn't find it in the April U.S. retail sales numbers out of the Commerce Department this morning. Sales fell 0.4% from the prior month, far exceeding the economist consensus expectation of 0.1%. This is the second month in a row of declining sales. Sales in March were revised down, decreasing 1.3% instead of 1.2%. That means the turn around from January and February, when sales rose, was far sharper than earlier reported. Sales had fallen for the last...

A Jacksonville physician caught traveling to meet a 15-year-old girl for sex told police his explicit online chats with teenage girls revealed their stupidity and America’s immorality. Irfan Nawaz, 32, said he chatted with who he thought were eight to 10 teenage girls and laughed to himself about how stupid and promiscuous they were, according to his 2008 confession played in court Friday...

Funeral honors Moorestown surgeon killed in Iraq by The Associated Press A funeral service will be held this morning for a prominent New Jersey surgeon from who was killed in Iraq.The funeral for Army Maj. John P. Pryor is scheduled for 10 a.m. in Philadelphia's Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. Pryor died Christmas Day when a mortar round hit near his living quarters in Iraq. John Pryor, center, at work at the University of Pennsylvania trauma center in Philadelphia in 2007. The 42-year-old married father of three was a trauma surgeon at the Hospital of the University of...

Lack of primary care physicians boosting health costs, hassles. There were days last fall when Gabrielle McGrew felt she must be the most popular physician in Oregon – and she hadn’t even begun practicing. McGrew is one of only three graduating residents who are choosing to practice primary care medicine, and the only one in Portland. Most of the other 31 internal medicine residents are taking fellowships that likely will lead to careers as specialists. the long-term implications of the growing shortage of primary care doctors could be a disaster, experts say, given the steadily growing number of senior citizens...

Federal prosecutors had what looked like a solid case against Joan Jaszczult, a Bloomfield doctor accused of writing Oxycontin and Percocet prescriptions for a ring that resold the drugs on the streets for huge profits. They had secret recordings by informants and undercover agents, a line of alleged co-conspirators waiting to testify against her, and even an eye-popping motive: she needed the cash, they said, to help pay $100,000 in plastic surgery bills. But four days after the trial opened, prosecutors suffered a devastating setback. The presiding judge, U.S. District Judge Stanley Chesler, ruled the government had improperly introduced a...

VERNON, British Columbia, May 18, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Canadian physician and writer, Dr. Ken Walker, has upset a BC family after he wrote in a column that their two conjoined baby girls ought to have been aborted to avoid being seen as “freaks of nature.”Walker, a syndicated columnist under the pen name Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, called the twins’ mother, Felicia Simms, “irrational” and suggested she should have had an abortion. Walker wrote, “Physically they are destined for ill health, lying on their backs forever. They will become obese and develop the myriad of diseases that accompany this problem. Their...

GLENVIEW, Illinois, March 8, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The leading US authority on palliative care has adopted a position of “studied neutrality” on the issue of physician-assisted suicide, following on the heels of a similar statement released by the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association in November. The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine released a policy statement following approval by the AAHPM board of directors on Feb.14, 2007. “The AAHPM recognizes that deep disagreement persists regarding the morality of PAD,” the document states. “Sincere, compassionate, morally conscientious individuals stand on either side of this debate. AAHPM takes a position...

MIAMI, Nov. 20 — When I was a new faculty physician, I worked with a resident doctor who was smart and energetic and took excellent care of her patients. There was just one problem. As she delivered her thoughtful patient presentations to me and the other attending doctors, it was hard not to notice her low-cut dress. “You two have to say something to her,” one of my male colleagues said to me and another female doctor one afternoon. But while none of us would have hesitated to intervene had she prescribed the wrong drug for a patient, we felt...

Conviction Of McLean Pain Doctor Overturned Appeals Court Says Judge Erred in Jury Instructions A federal appeals court threw out the conviction of William E. Hurwitz yesterday, granting the prominent former Northern Virginia pain-management doctor a new trial because jurors were not allowed to consider whether he prescribed drugs in good faith. The decision again galvanized the national debate that the Hurwitz case had come to symbolize: whether fully licensed doctors prescribing legal medication to patients in chronic pain should be subject to prosecution if their patients abuse or sell the drugs. Patient advocate groups strongly supported Hurwitz and expressed...

"A looming doctor shortage threatens to create a national healthcare crisis by further limiting access to physicians, jeopardizing quality and accelerating cost increases. Twelve states — including California, Texas and Florida — report some physician shortages now or expect them within a few years. Across the country, patients are experiencing or soon will face shortages in at least a dozen physician specialties, including cardiology and radiology and several pediatric and surgical subspecialties."

ARLINGTON, Va.(Army News Service, Jan. 26, 2006) – The Army is short about 100 physician assistants and is stepping up attempts to recruit both civilians and Soldiers to do the job. This marks the first time that the Army Medical Department, or AMEDD, has recruited civilians for the Interservice Physician Assistant Program, said Capt. James Jones, IPAP program manager. He said the Army’s modularity and high operations tempo contributed to this change. “The Army plans on filling the shortages by increasing the number of students in the IPAP - this year we are training 92 Army students versus 60,” he...

The Galveston County Medical Society, the professional association for Galveston County physicians, will install new officers Jan. 26. Congressman Ron Paul will be the keynote speaker for the event, which will be held at Gaido’s Seafood Restaurant in Galveston. Robin Armstrong will be installed as president. He grew up in this area and is a 1987 graduate of La Marque High School. He currently works at Mainland Medical Center as a hospitalist. Armstrong serves on the Board of Directors of the Texas Medical Association’s Political Action Committee and is on the Council of Constitution and Bylaws for the TMA. He...

New Hampshire Doctor Outraged By Complaint ROCHESTER, N.H. -- The New Hampshire attorney general is investigating a Rochester doctor because a patient complained that he bluntly told her she needed to lose weight. Dr. Terry Bennett said that he's outraged by what he calls a baseless complaint. A patient was apparently insulted when Bennett told her that she was obese and could only get healthier by losing weight. "It's an epidemic in the United States, and it's croaking us," Bennett said. Bennett said that it's a lecture he gives to many of his overweight patients. "It's your weight, ... and...

A 78-year-old doctor from West Pittston who earned up to $4,000 a day by illegally prescribing and selling controlled substances to drug dependent patients was sentenced to two years' probation Wednesday. Dr. Harry Alexanderian, Susquehanna Avenue, will be required to stay at home for the first six months while wearing an ankle bracelet. The sentence imposed by Luzerne County Senior Judge Gifford S. Cappellini angered at least one mother who said Dr. Alexanderian was treating her son. "My son was one of his victims," the mother said. "My sentence for him would be scrubbing toilets in a treatment facility." His...

NEW YORK -- A doctor who once cared for sick children at Don Imus' New Mexico ranch has sued the tart-tongued radio personality for slander, claiming he made false derogatory comments about him on his "Imus in the Morning" show. Dr. Howard Allen Pearson says in court papers that on at least four days last year, Imus said Pearson "was one of the worst doctors in the world and did not care if children suffered." Pearson's lawsuit says Imus apparently misunderstood the physician's response to a morning call to treat a child for pain in July 2004. Pearson left the...

Years before he categorized Terri Schindler Schiavo in the persistent vegetative state, which led to her death by dehydration, neurologist Dr. Ronald Cranford was building the case for removing feeding tubes from society’s vulnerable. "…The United States has thousands or tens of thousands of patients in vegetative states; nobody knows for sure exactly how many," Cranford wrote in a 1997 Minneapolis Star Tribune opinion piece titled: When a feeding tube borders on the barbaric. (WorldNetDaily. Com, March 23, 2005). "But before long, this country will have several million patients with Alzheimer’s dementia. The challenges and costs of maintaining vegetative state...

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS - Democrats and Republicans shouted at each other into an early shutdown of the Senate Thursday in Springfield over State Sen. Dave Luechtefeld's medical malpractice bill. Now, Luechtefeld, R-Okawville, fears the measure will be hopelessly lost in a committee backlog. Senate Bill 150 was postponed in a judiciary committee hearing Tuesday. The measure was never called for discussion, even though several physicians came to Springfield to testify on it. Luechtefeld said he suspected the committee, headed by State Sen. John Cullerton, D-Chicago, was stalling and trying to keep the bill from getting to the Senate floor. When Senate...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Legislators delivered Gov. Matt Blunt the two pillars of his pro-business agenda Wednesday -- passing bills limiting injury claims in the state's courts and workers' compensation system. Business groups reveled in the victory -- the culmination of a three-year effort frustrated in the past by Democratic Gov. Bob Holden but embraced enthusiastically by Missouri's new Republican governor. "At long last!" declared a broadly smiling Dan Mehan, president of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "It truly means that Missouri is open for business again." But labor unions, plaintiffs attorneys and many Democrats predicted injured...

The "tort reform" bill approved by the Georgia Legislature and signed into law this week by Gov. Sonny Perdue may prove to be one of the most destructive pieces of legislation enacted in the state in years. Senate Bill 3 cripples the legal system, not accidentally as a wayward scalpel might, but intentionally. It is designed to prevent juries from delivering the justice that they are charged to produce, even in the worst cases of malpractice by doctors and hospitals. Even in the most egregious cases of incompetence or negligence, such as those that end in the unnecessary death or...

Hi! For those that don't know me, I met some Freepers on the side of Penn ave. during the inaugeral parade. They were very nice and were in sharp contrast to the unwashed protestors. A brief bio: Enlisted in the USMC as a 0311 back in 1986. Was a rifleman for a year then got an appointment to the Naval Academy. B.S. in English Lit. Naval Flight Officer (re: "Goose") for 5 years then a military scholarship to U. of Michigan in Ann Arbor for medical school. Now a staff anesthesiologist and pain management fellow at NNMC Bethesda and WRAMC...