Free Republic

Conservatism is all about preserving traditions and resisting sudden change. Yet several high-profile right-wing figures sported radically different looks at this year's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jnr's fiancee, was hit with plastic surgery allegations after looking unrecognizable from her days as a liberal when she was married to democratic Governor Gavin Newsom. Firebrand Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz was also accused of getting Botox and other cosmetic adjustments after sporting a radical facial transformation. One of Gaetz's rival Republicans likened him to a 'blow up doll.' And Donald Trump himself is also rumored to have had...

In the US, hysterectomy is the second most commonly performed surgery among women after cesarean section; around 1 in 3 will undergo the procedure by the age of 60. But according to a new study, 1 in 5 women in the US may not need to. Around 68% of hysterectomies for benign conditions are done to treat abnormal uterine bleeding, uterine fibroids and endometriosis. Rates of hysterectomy in the US are falling, with one study reporting a 36.4% reduction in the number of hysterectomies carried out between 2003 and 2010. Still, more than 400,000 hysterectomies are carried out in the...

A group of transgender and nonbinary state legislators sent a letter to the Biden administration criticizing its decision to oppose gender-affirming surgery for minors. In the letter, the lawmakers said transgender youth in America have been under relentless legislative assault by right-wing politicians over the last several years. The biggest thing Republicans have done is placing bans on “evidence-based, mentally necessary healthcare” for transgender kids, they argued. “One bulwark against this wave of demonization and denial of care has been the clear, consisted messaging of President Joe Biden,” the group wrote. Their response comes after the White House said earlier...

If so, pros/cons? My eyes are getting bad as I get older. Oh, and approximate cost? I know it's a very quick procedure with a 24 hr healing period. Thank you in advance......

Of all the Left's revolutionary movements seeking to transform traditional American liberties and culture, none is as senseless and barbaric as that of transgenderism. It's the "T" in the "LGBTQ++++Etc..." formulation. Transgenderism is simple to understand but difficult to contemplate why anybody in their right mind would adopt it as their fundamental worldview. But they do, and here's the rationale: Think you were born in the "wrong" body? Don't worry, we've got the drugs and surgical procedures to fix that! Through its deadening control of most precincts in public education and public health, as well as a mainstream media that...

The extremism of the Biden administration apparently knows no bounds. Today the NY Times reports that the administration pushed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to remove age limits for transgender surgery.The draft guidelines, released in late 2021, recommended lowering the age minimums to 14 for hormonal treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgeries, and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies.The proposed age limits were eliminated in the final guidelines outlining standards of care, spurring concerns within the international group and with outside experts as to why the age proposals had vanished. A minor...

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the man faces up to 10 years in federal prison if convicted. HOUSTON — The U.S. Attorney's Office Southern District of Texas announced that 34-year-old Dr. Eithan Haim of Rockwall, Texas, has been indicted for obtaining protected health information for patients who were not under his care. According to the attorney's office, the four-count indictment alleges that Haim accessed patient names, treatment codes and the attending physicians from the Texas Children's Hospital (TCH) in Houston without authorization. The attorney's office says Haim allegedly accessed this information with the intent of causing harm to the...

It’s the melting pot of all scams. Russian gangsters, MS-13 members, and a cadre of corrupt surgeons, lawyers and lenders are pulling off the latest big con in the city: bogus personal-injury lawsuits where immigrants go under the knife to help their twisted ruse. Migrants and other desperate New Yorkers are pressured into getting unneeded spinal fusion surgery and other operations to boost the value of their fake-accident claims, according to court records, insurance investigators and law-enforcement sources. Doctors cash in on the sick swindle by performing back and neck fusions, allowing fraudsters to swipe billions through bogus insurance filings,...

Trans-identifying adults who underwent body-mutilating surgeries as part of an effort to look like the opposite sex had an elevated suicide attempt risk, according to a recent study.The study, titled “Risk of Suicide and Self-Harm Following Gender-Affirmation Surgery,” was published in April in the medical science journal Cureus. Researchers conducted the study by assessing over 90 million adults aged 18 to 60. According to the study, individuals who underwent “gender-affirming surgery” had a 12-fold higher suicide attempt risk than those who did not. The researchers found that 3.5% of people who had an elective trans surgery were treated for attempting...

Gee, this isn't what we have been told. At least not what the MSM, the medical establishment, the President of the United States, every civil rights organization, or anybody in the Establishment has told us. You here at HotAir already knew that something like this was true, but that is because we don't shape our reporting to fit the prevailing narrative. We actually tell you the truth as best we can. Latest NIH study: kids have a 12x HIGHER rate of suicide after surgical transition.This is a scandal. We were lied to. Children died as a result. People need to...

Just wanted to touch base with anyone that has had open heart surgery and what I can expect post surgery. I understand they want to replace my aortic valve, have had a heart murmur for many years and I guess it has gotten worse. Bless the VA because there is no way I could afford this any other way.

Despite assurances from President Joe Biden’s administration, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) new rule for healthcare providers could end up forcing religious hospitals and doctors to perform child sex-change procedures, legal experts told the DCNF. The rule, which HHS issued on April 26 under the Affordable Care Act, bars healthcare and insurance providers who receive federal funding from denying care due to a patient’s gender identity or sexual orientation. While HHS claimed that the rule “respects” federal protections for religious freedom, legal experts told the DCNF that the rule will likely force religious healthcare providers to choose...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled against two state-level health policies that exclude so-called “gender-affirming” treatments, teeing up potential review by the U.S. Supreme Court...Judge Roger Gregory, an appointee of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, wrote in his majority opinion that the policies’ exclusion of surgeries such as vaginoplasties for certain diagnoses violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.“The coverage exclusions facially discriminate on the basis of sex and gender identity, and are not substantially related to an important government interest,” he said.The 8–6 decision affirmed lower court decisions against West Virginia’s...

Eight Democrat-nominated judges shoved transgender surgery closer to becoming a constitutional right via their decision Monday in a federal appeals court. No Democrat-nominated judges voted with the six Republican-nominated judges who strenuously denounced the court’s decision, further demonstrating how transgenderism has quickly become a litmus test for ambitious progressives in the Democratic Party. The majority decision in the Fourth Circuit federal appeals court said existing constitutional rules forbidding sexual discrimination also forbid denials of transgender surgeries in state-run healthcare programs. Any denial of the surgeries cannot be enforced without first deciding if the patient is male or female by checking...

A common practice of shoulder surgeons may be impairing the success of rotator cuff surgery, a study from orthopedic scientists and biomedical engineers suggests. During the surgery, surgeons often remove a tissue called the bursa while repairing torn tendons in the shoulder joint, but the study suggests that the small tissue plays a role in helping the shoulder heal. The bursa is a thin, fluid-filled sac originally thought to protect the tendons by providing a cushion between the tendons and adjacent bones. The bursa often becomes inflamed, sometimes concurrently, when underlying tendons are injured, and surgeons often remove the tissue...

A married woman with kids thanked Dr. Ben Carson at a Texas A&M university event last night for saving her life decades earlier. Dr. Carson, a former pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center who later served in the Trump administration as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, spoke at the Turning Point USA event. “God truly had his hands in this miracle,” Sara Bowker said. She was born with craniosynostosis, a condition where the skull improperly fuses together, according to Bowker. “You gave me the opportunity to graduate high school, college, and start graduate school, play competitive sports,...

A study shows that a non-invasive imaging test can help identify patients with coronary artery blockage or narrowing who need a revascularization procedure. Doctors use coronary CT angiography (CTA) to diagnose narrowed or blocked arteries in the heart. A CTA exam receives a score from mild (0–1) to severe (4–5). Patients with scores above 3 typically require medical treatments. Doctors have traditionally relied on invasive coronary angiography to image vessels and more recently have added fractional flow reserve (FFR) to identify and assess significant blockages. To assess CT-FFR, Dr. Randhawa conducted a retrospective study of patients who underwent coronary CTA...

SNIP “I had to make some changes because when COVID hit, in the words of Richard Pryor, ‘I went in the House,'” he continued. He explained that he “had a lot of the dangerous” high-risk conditions, telling Live, “When they made that list of, you know, ‘overweight, Type 2 diabetes, smoker, asthma,’ I’m like check, check, bingo.” After Consuelos deemed it a “wake-up call,” Gardell added, “I said to my wife, I said, ‘If they just find some medicine where this thing won’t kill us, I’m going to change everything.'” “And as soon as they did, I went and got...

The average pain trajectories after shoulder surgery vary with different analgesic interventions, according to research. Sheila Gokul, M.D. and colleagues examined average pain trajectories with different analgesic interventions for 48 hours after shoulder surgery in a systematic review of randomized controlled trials and cohort studies assessing pain scores according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Data were included from 74 studies, with 4,676 patients. The researchers identified three main treatment groups: continuous nerve block (CNB), single shot nerve block (SSNB), and conventional analgesia (CA). At 12 hours postoperatively after all shoulder surgeries, pain scores differed...

A New York ballot initiative, the Equal Rights Amendment, is facing fierce backlash over its vague language that would reportedly prevent parents from signing off on their child undergoing gender reassignment surgery. "Any decent lawyer will take one look at the Proposition One language and say, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me," Greg Garvey, the executive director of the Coalition to Protect Kids - New York, a group "dedicated to defeating the so-called Equal Rights Amendment," said in a press statement provided to Fox News Digital. "This ballot initiative is written so broadly and so poorly that it could cause...