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EVEN IF YOU TRIED, as I did, to avoid this year's health-care debate, it was impossible to ignore some of its startling statistics. Take, for instance, the annual medical costs linked to obesity, as reported in July by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: $147 billion, more than 7 percent of the nation's health-care tab of more than $2 trillion. About a month after the CDC report, the processed-food industry, with support from the American Heart and Diabetes associations, unveiled its Smart Choices Program, which approves special labels for healthy foods. Among the products stamped better choice were Froot...

We've been discussing doctors presuming to advise patients on gun safety. We saw a standard form used by an HMO and a form we can give back to make them think twice about dispensing advice they are not qualified to provide. It's not surprising that the medical establishment reflects an anti-gun bias. Such sentiment has been expressed at the top levels for some time now. A Reason article from 13 years ago shows how strong the leadership bias has been. Case in point, it discusses, among many other things, Mark Rosenberg, once director of the National Center for Injury Prevention...

Man exposed to mustard agent at Umatilla chemical depot Posted: Mar 31, 2010 5:48 PM Updated: Mar 31, 2010 5:53 PM Video Gallery Man exposed to mustard agent at Umatilla chemical depot 0:57 KENNEWICK; Wash-- SNIPPET: "The depot is still waiting to hear back from independent lab results but early indications from the CDC are positive. About two weeks ago, a worker developed a blister on his skin, which is one of the symptoms." SNIPPET: "The man's name has not been released. He also hasn't missed any work as a result of the exposure."

SNIPPET: "Harare, March 30, 2010: The United States government officially handed over a new, upgraded bio-safety level 2+ laboratory to the Minister of Health, Dr. Henry Madzorera. The facility will enhance the capacity of the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare to offer clinical and diagnostic testing as well as research on indigenous/exotic agents which may cause serious disease after inhalation, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB),typhoid (Salmonella Typhi),anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) and the H1N1 virus. Speaking after a tour of the facilities with the Minister of Health and Child Welfare, U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray described the cooperation between the...

When Zoe Lehman talks about the newest version of the female condom, she's equal parts women's health care advocate (“It's an incredible prevention tool that empowers women”) and sex therapist (“we tell women the double rings are amazingly pleasurable”). ...Lehman, 23, is the support services coordinator at the Chicago Women's AIDS Project and a “sexpert.” ...“We see the introduction of this new female condom as a way to inform women about taking their health into their own hands,” said Lehman, a University of Chicago graduate who has worked with HIV/AIDS infected women in Africa. “We've been letting everyone know how...

WASHINGTON, March 9 (Reuters) - About 16 percent of Americans between the ages of 14 and 49 are infected with genital herpes, making it one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases, U.S. health officials said on Tuesday. Black women had the highest rate of infection at 48 percent and women were nearly twice likely as men to be infected, according to an analysis by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 21 percent of women were infected with genital herpes, compared to only 11.5 percent of men, while 39 percent of blacks were infected compared to about...

NEW LONDON, Conn. -- Sexually transmitted diseases is a topic that many people don't like to talk about, especially with teenagers. But, the director of the regional health department in New London is calling for the mandatory testing of teenagers from eighth-grade through 12th-grade students in New London and Groton. The hope is that other shoreline communities will follow suit and begin testing their teenagers as well. Vanessa Reed works for the school-based health clinic that operates inside New London High School. She said there's an epidemic of STDs infecting Connecticut teenagers, particularly teenage girls, and it's no surprise that...

BOSTON -- Gay men should be allowed to donate blood and laws banning them from doing so are discriminatory and outdated, according to Sen. John Kerry and several of his Senate colleagues. "Not a single piece of scientific evidence supports the ban,” Kerry said. “A law that was once considered medically justified is today simply outdated and needs to end." Kerry was one of 16 U.S. Senators who in a letter on Thursday asked the Food and Drug Administration to lift the ban on gay men donating blood. The ban was put in place in 1983, at the height of...

Overdose on almost any medicine, and it can go from balm to bomb in an instant. A couple glasses of wine each day? Liquid fix-it for your heart. A bottle before bed? You might end up like the folks in Fresno. Our statistical sobriety checkpoint shows that the inebriated people there have one of the highest death rates from alcoholic liver disease (per data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). In fact, Fresno was near the top in every measure of dangerous drinking, including the body count caused by booze-fueled car crashes (Fatality Analysis Reporting System), the number...

Many people, victims of the public education system, still believe that anything they buy or the doctor gives to them is safe, or that the Government is out there keeping them safe. Here's one of many examples of the FDA acting only after people are sickened or die. Perhaps people should learn how they get sick to begin with, and how to naturally prevent it, then they wouldn't need gallons of drugs a year. From Green Barbarians by Ellen Sandbeck: Some members of the American College of Chest Physicians reviewed decades' worth of studies and concluded that there is no...

Beware of Gonorrhea Lectim The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior, especially in areas high in polling places. The disease is called “Gonorrhea Lectim”. And pronounced "gonna re-elect ‘em." Many victims showed symptoms of it in 2008. Yet after having been screwed repeatedly during the past year or so Naturalists and Epidemiologists are amazed at how destructive this disease has become since it is readily apparent to most of the general public but not reported in the liberal media. However,...

New CDC Estimates Also Show 61 Million in U.S. Have Been Vaccinated Jan. 15, 2010 -- The CDC estimates that 55 million Americans became sick with H1N1 swine flu between April and mid-December 2009 and roughly 11,000 people died of the disease. These numbers represent a middle range in CDC estimates. The actual number of swine flu cases could be as low as 39 million and as high as 80 million cases during this time period, government officials say. In addition: * Between 173,000 and 362,000 Americans were hospitalized with H1N1 flu between April and mid-December. * Between 7,880 and...

According to data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control, the five happiest states in the nation are Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee, and Arizona. Analyzing the data in the December 17, 2009 issue of Science, Professors Andrew J. Oswald and Stephen Wu concluded that these states offer a higher level of "life satisfaction." This is scientist-talk for saying that people are happier in places with abundant sunshine, less congestion, and lower taxes and living costs. Those of us who reside in one of the aforementioned states know this to be true, but I believe that another factor plays a crucial role....

New York’s Department of Health has spent $32,000 for 70,000 leaflets depicting how to shoot up.

You've heard it before, how the pharmaceutical industry has a giant "revolving door" through which corporations and government agencies frequently exchange key employees. That reality was driven home in a huge way today when news broke that Dr. Julie Gerberding, who headed the CDC from 2002 through 2009, landed a top job with Merck, one of the largest drug companies in the world. Her job there? She's the new president of the vaccine division. How convenient. That means the former head of the CDC was very likely cultivating a relationship with Merck all these years, and now comes the big...

ATLANTA — The government's top public health agency frequently failed to police its outside experts for conflicts of interest, according to a new government report released Friday. The report looked at how well the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked for and dealt with conflicts among about 250 scientific experts who served on 17 advisory panels in 2007. Panel members are supposed to disclose whether they have been paid by — or own stock in — drug companies or other entities that might have an interest in the panel's decisions. The panels provide advice to the CDC on topics...

As I have been stating all along on this website, the CDC was lying about there being no mutation of the H1N1 virus. Utah woman died of mutated H1N1 strain"...A 28-year-old Utah woman who died this summer of H1N1 swine flu had a mutated form of the novel virus." (...) "...It was so minor, she said, that the CDC didn't notify the state of the mutation. The health department instead asked about the case after learning of it from a blog." The headlines in the summer: August 21, 2009 H1N1 flu virus hasn't mutated, CDC officials reportSeptember 25, 2009 Swine...

For sometime, the CDC and WHO have denied evidence that the H1N1 virus was mutating and it has been pointed out on this site numerous times. However, scientist in Norway have found along with scientist from Brazil and Japan, that the H1N1 virus has mutated. And adding to that list of scientists, Russian scientists back in August, discarded a H1N1 seed strain for the H1N1 vaccine because the strain mutated. Interestingly, that story was never picked up by the mainstream media. That event was pointed out on this site here.In Pune India, scientists were also concerned on the virus mutating...

Abstaining from Accuracy Malcolm A. Kline, November 19, 2009 In a classic case of missing the point, public health officials and their stenographers in the media are blaming the spread of sexually transmitted diseases on sex education that promotes abstinence. “American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday,” Maggie Fox wrote in an article that Reuters distributed on November 16, 2009. “Latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show the three highly treatable infections continue to spread in the United States.” Outside of activities...

November 19, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Cobbling Together a CrisisEven as the swine-flu epidemic has peaked. By Michael Fumento ‘Swine flu has killed 540 kids, sickened 22 million Americans,” screams USA Today’s page-one headline, with a sub-head proclaiming, “CDC: Cases, Deaths are Unprecedented.” “Swine flu cases in the U.S. are rising at the fastest pace for influenza in four decades,” breathlessly declares the lede of a Bloomberg News article. Another article’s title refers to a “national swine flu spike.” Scary stuff — but it’s phony. It’s actually a desperate effort to distract from an alarmist media world’s greatest nightmare: that...