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The oral microbiome is the community of bacteria that live in the mouth. It helps us digest our food and keep our mouth healthy. Changes to the composition of the oral microbiome have been linked to periodontal diseases and some cancers. New research is a follow-up to a larger study investigating the use of mouthwash. Researchers wanted to explore further and investigate whether the mouthwash used had an impact on the oral microbiome of the patients. Researchers found that two species of opportunistic bacteria were significantly more abundant in the mouth after three months of daily use of the alcohol-based...

Members of Chicago's Trinity United Church (the house of worship attended by Democrat presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama for 20 years) already had their Christmas trees up when members of the Chicago press circulated through the city, interviewing many of them as they mourned Donald Young, their 47-year-old choir master who has been found shot dead in his South Side Chicago home on December 3, 2007. Young, known for having a flamboyant persona, was an openly gay man. The choir director's murder and the execution-style murders of two other gay Trinity United congregants within 60 days of each other had...

This Father’s Day, one of most popular pastors in America will open his megachurch to homosexual dads, an event that would usually signal an extreme weather alert from old guard Republican evangelical leaders. Rick Warren. (Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images for Meet the Press)But by welcoming gay fathers into his Southern California flock, Rick Warren, author of the “The Purpose Driven Life,” is not just living up to the highest standards of Christian fellowship, he’s turning the page on a particularly embarrassing part of our politics. Just to refresh: it was televangelist Pat Robertson who predicted “earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly even...

The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis came into existence as a group of signatories of an open letter to the scientific community. The letter (dated June 6, 1991) has been submitted to the editors of Nature, Science, The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. All have refused to publish it. In 1995 The Group was able to get a letter published in Science. You can also sign the statement below online. To the editor: It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV causes the group diseases called AIDS. Many...