Free Republic

Paradoxical maybe, but it's what often happens in the health services: When you ask for an MRI to be on the safe side, your uncertainty increases, says Bjørn Hoffman, a professor at the Department of Health Sciences at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik. Imagine that you contact your GP because you have back pain. You want to have your back examined and so you request an MRI. The GP knows that if the pain has lasted less than four to six weeks and you are not experiencing certain warning symptoms, then sending you for an MRI will...

Rapidly Mutating Ebola Renders Diagnostic Tests Inaccurate - AKA: You May Have a New Strain of Ebola and Test Negative An international team of scientists — some of whom succumbed to the virus during the course of their research — has sequenced 99 Ebola virus genomes from 78 patients in Sierra Leone, creating a valuable trove of genetic data for scientists and health care workers struggling to bring the growing outbreak under control. ... "We were able to sequence and analyze our samples with about a 10-day turnaround. This is unprecedented, as earlier studies have usually taken many months with...

ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON -- In a public health emergency, suspected victims would no longer have to give permission before experimental tests could be run to determine why they're sick, under a federal rule published Wednesday. Privacy experts called the exception unnecessary, ripe for abuse and an override of state informed-consent laws. Health care workers will be free to run experimental tests on blood and other samples taken from people who have fallen sick as a result of a bioterrorist attack, bird flu outbreak, detonation of a dirty bomb or any other life-threatening public health emergency, according to the rule issued...