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With the current third-party payment structure, you doctor does not practice as much medicine on you as insurance executives and federal bureaucrats do. Americans, who practices medicine on you? The answer may seem self-evident, but it is not. In our current health-care system, millions of nameless, faceless government or private insurance bureaucrats practice medicine on you without a license for medicine.You may think your life is in your doctor’s hands, but it is not. The bureaucrats, not you or your doctor, make your medical and financial decisions. Consider these health-care decisions: DiagnosisTreatment: what, when, where, by whomMedicationsPaying for care Your...

The career path of Dr. Mehmet Oz is most puzzling. Boasting a fine education (Tower Hill prep; Harvard undergrad; Penn med school; and Wharton), Oz did his residency at New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, and is now an attending surgeon at the same hospital. He also holds various academic appointments at Columbia’s med school. His name appears on more than 150 research papers, and he has published over 20 books—most of which have “You” in the title. Oprah called him “America’s doctor” in 2004, and following more appearances on her program, the TV Queen gave him his own show on...

18 Ukrainian servicemen have returned home after undergoing medical treatment at hospitals in the Russian southern city of Rostov-on-Don, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vasyl Zvarych told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday, July 24.

Greetings! I know there are freepers who have knowledge and experience in just about any area of interest, so I figured we could gather some info/input from you on various treatments/ success stories for Crohn's. I did a search and various interesting articles have been posted, perhaps some of you have other useful links you could share. Over a year ago our youngest was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. Not that there is ever a good time to become ill, but this has impacted her studies and immediate University plans. She has been under the care of a physician who has...

China, with lower regulatory hurdles, is racing to a lead in gene therapy. Once a week, Hashmukh Patel, a 62-year-old retired semiconductor engineer from Silicon Valley, travels with his wife, Bena, from their Beijing hotel to Beijing-Haidian Hospital. They ride the crowded elevator to the ninth floor, enter a pleasant, sun-filled ward with private rooms, and Patel gets an injection that he hopes will save his life. Suffering from late-stage cancer of the esophagus, he has come to Beijing for a Chinese gene-therapy drug called Gendicine that's supposed to kill tumor cells. Patel tried just about everything before coming to...

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's health problems were more serious than doctors let on after he suffered a minor stroke in December, including a large aneurysm in the septum between the chambers of his heart, the Haaretz newspaper reported Tuesday. Sharon, comatose since suffering a massive second stroke on Jan. 4, also suffered from a shunt that causes blood to flow in the wrong direction through a tiny hole in the septum that he was born with, the newspaper said. The aneurysm is a known source of cerebral blood clots, the newspaper said. The prime minister also had other conditions in...