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NATURE TO THE RESCUE - AGAINThe deadly sea snail venom that will take away your pain By Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor Times Online A NEW painkiller based on the venom of a sea snail will be available in Britain from today. Prialt, or ziconotide, is the result of more than 20 years’ research by a scientist born in the Philippines, Baldomera Olivera, who is a professor at the University of Utah. It is 1,000 times more potent than morphine but, unlike that drug, is not addictive. It is aimed at people suffering from severe, chronic pain who would normally...

Video news story about a young woman who faces a 25 year mandatory minimum sentence for drug trafficking. The drugs were prescription drugs (the prescription was for her mother, who had recently passed away) and none were sold. Note: I couldn't get the video to play in a Firefox tab, but it played fine using the IE Tab extension.

THURSDAY, June 22 (HealthDay News) -- A magnetic device that seems to help depression and seizures may also short-circuit migraine headaches in their earliest stages, a new study finds. The transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) device, about the size of a hair dryer, was able to interrupt the development of migraines, according to data to be presented Thursday at the American Headache Society's annual meeting, in Los Angeles. The study was funded by the device's maker, NeuraLieve, of Sunnyvale, Calif. About 28 million Americans suffer migraine headaches and about 20 percent experience migraine with aura, characterized by changes in vision before...

NEW YORK -- On Friday, the Royals were on the verge of ending both their recent 13-game losing streak and their 14-game losing streak at Yankee Stadium. Then, they had to wait ... and wait ... and wait. After they had played eight and a half innings, a downpour added to the Royals' anxiety. They waited one hour, 59 minutes in a rain delay and then, at 11:59 p.m. ET, when the game resumed, they had to put up with the Yankees staging a mini-comeback. In the end, though, Royals reliever Andrew Sisco got Jason Giambi to ground into a...

AP MEDICAL WRITER WASHINGTON -- Anyone who's ever taken a preschooler to the doctor knows they often cry more before the shot than afterward. Now researchers using brain scans to unravel the biology of dread have an explanation: For some people, anticipating pain is truly as bad as experiencing it. How bad? Among people who volunteered to receive electric shocks, almost a third opted for a stronger zap if they could just get it over with, instead of having to wait. More importantly, the research found that how much attention the brain pays to expected pain determines whether someone is...

Premature babies experience real pain rather than just displaying reflex reactions, scientists said yesterday.Brain scans carried out on premature babies during blood tests showed surges of blood and oxygen in the sensory areas of their brains - demonstrating that pain was being processed. Previous research had shown that even the youngest newborns are capable of showing the behavioural signs of pain but it had been unclear whether these were simply bodily reflexes. Prof Maria Fitzgerald, from the department of anatomy and developmental biology at University College London, who led the team, said: "We have shown for the first time that...

O Lord, why does life have to be so hard? I cry out but I hear no answer. I pray to you and ask you to help me be a better person. I work towards that goal thinking that I'm in partnership but persist in making mistakes. I do 10 things and 9 of them will turn out perfectly but it's the 10th thing -- the one that I mess up -- that gets all the attention. Why am I not appreciated for the things that I do right? Why does the one thing that I mess up have to be the most...

<p>LONDON — Six men who became ill during a drug trial remained in serious condition in a London hospital Thursday.</p> <p>Two of the men were listed in critical condition, Northwick Park Hospital said in a statement.</p> <p>Raste Khan — one of two men given a placebo in the trial — said the six had been stricken within a few minutes of receiving the drug.</p>

Stacy at Christian Persecution Blog has an excellent article today called If your outlook is bad, then look up. It especially speaks to me because my life has been full of turmoil and upheaval lately. My wife and I sat down last week, counted things up, and found that between the two of us, we had had 5 surgeries, 4 emergency room visits, and a number of most unpleasant and painful office procedures within the past 2 years. She has also lost 2 immediate family members in the past 2-1/2 years and I have had 2 job changes. Life seems...

Associated Press WASHINGTON — The dog hopped on three legs, pain from bone cancer so bad that he wouldn't let his afflicted fourth paw touch the floor. His owner was bracing for euthanasia when scientists offered a novel experiment: They injected a fiery sap from a Moroccan plant into Scooter's spinal column — and the dog frolicked on all fours again for several months. The chemical destroyed nerve cells that sensed pain from Scooter's cancer, not helping the tumor but apparently making him no longer really feel it. The dramatic effect in dogs has researchers from the National Institutes of...

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves; we are pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not unto despair;   pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.   II Corinthians 4: 7-10 that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death;. Phillipians 3:10 Whosoever doth...

WASHINGTON -- People who suffer from a spinal problem that can cause back and leg pain have an alternative to difficult surgery with a newly approved device that requires a much less invasive procedure to implant. The Food and Drug Administration authorized use of the "X-stop" - a thumb of titanium on a mount that fits to a vertebra in the lower back - to reduces pain from lumbar spinal stenosis. The FDA's approval was announced Tuesday by the St. Mary's Spine Center in San Francisco, which developed the device. The condition is the most common cause of back surgery...

On Tuesday, the House Subcommittee on the Constitution began hearings on the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (UCPAA). The legislation would require abortion providers to tell women who come to them for late-term abortions that the fetus might feel pain and that the woman has a right to ask that the fetus be anaesthetized for the procedure. Although evidence suggests that the unborn child feels pain by the age of 20 weeks (if not sooner), abortionists are not required to provide women with the information that the fetus might suffer pain during an abortion procedure, pain which could be eliminated...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him." (John 9:1-3 Listen) The problem of pain and suffering has vexed humanity since the beginning. If there is a God, and if he is a good and loving God, then why does he allow his creation to suffer? If God is all-powerful, then why didn't he stop...

Context: Proposed federal legislation would require physicians to inform women seeking abortions at 20 or more weeks after fertilization that the fetus feels pain and to offer anesthesia administered directly to the fetus. This article examines whether a fetus feels pain and if so, whether safe and effective techniques exist for providing direct fetal anesthesia or analgesia in the context of therapeutic procedures or abortion. Evidence Acquisition: Systematic search of PubMed for English-language articles focusing on human studies related to fetal pain, anesthesia, and analgesia. Included articles studied fetuses of less than 30 weeks’ gestational age or specifically addressed fetal...

he left spent much of the week feeling Hugo Chavez's pain. But it was in no mood to feel the pain of unborn children. A bogus study's claim that unborn children don't feel any pain at all generated a flurry of tendentiously hopeful media reports. "Researchers: Fetal Pain Not An Abortion Issue; Review of 2,000 Studies Concludes Fetus Feels Nothing Up to 29 Weeks," read one headline. Who are these "researchers"? Abortion activists, it has come out. A San Francisco abortion clinic doctor and a former NARAL employee spearheaded the article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA),...

Taking on one of the most highly charged questions in the abortion debate, a team of doctors has concluded that fetuses probably cannot feel pain in the first six months of gestation and therefore do not need anesthesia during abortions. Their report, being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on a review of several hundred scientific papers, and it says that nerve connections in the brain are unlikely to have developed enough for the fetus to feel pain before 29 weeks. The finding poses a direct challenge to proposed federal and state laws that...

A review of medical evidence has found that fetuses likely don't feel pain until the final months of pregnancy, a powerful challenge to abortion opponents who hope that discussions about fetal pain will make women think twice about ending pregnancies. Critics angrily disputed the findings and claimed the report is biased. "They have literally stuck their hands into a hornet's nest," said Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, a fetal pain (search) researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, who believes fetuses as young as 20 weeks old feel pain. "This is going to inflame a lot of scientists who are...

Exploring fibromyalgia's mysteries, researchers look to the central nervous system, gaining deeper insight into why we suffer. ...A groundswell of research has begun to expose the underpinnings of the baffling disorder that affects an estimated 6 million to 10 million Americans, most of them women. Not only do the findings have the potential to ease the condition's stigma, they also may provide clues to other illnesses for which there is no clear clause. Fibromyalgia, experts now believe, is a pain-processing disorder — arising in the brain and spinal cord — that disrupts the ways the body perceives and communicates...