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excerpt- For several years, scientists have tried and failed to determine the cause of the illness, which locals say has killed hundreds of youngsters. What they do know is that the disease affects only children and gradually devastates its victims through debilitating seizures, stunted growth, wasted limbs, mental disabilities and sometimes starvation.

In the workplace lunchroom, dominated by a Formica table stocked with a condiment cradle that holds four kinds of hot sauce, Nikki furrows her brow as she fishes into her purse and retrieves her driver's license. A resident of Riverside, Nikki is filling out some paperwork for her new job. "There's a lot of stuff they want to know," she says. It's been a busy day for the former administrative assistant. "I flew in and saw the doctor before I even got here," she says. Dressed in "business casual," Nikki is an attractive 24-year-old African-American woman with a retro hairstyle...

Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia? No one would accuse Jaroslav Flegr of being a conformist. A self-described “sloppy dresser,” the 63-year-old Czech scientist has the contemplative air of someone habitually lost in thought, and his still-youthful, square-jawed face is framed by frizzy red hair...

Yaws, a disease that penicillin nearly eradicated 40 years ago, has been re-emerging in rural tropical Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands — but a new study has shown that a modern drug is as effective against the disease as penicillin was. Yaws is a close relative of syphilis — both are caused by a spirochete bacterium, though syphilis is usually transmitted by sex and starts as a genital sore, while yaws is passed by skin contact with its usually painless skin sores. They resemble raspberries, and one name for the disease is “framboise,” French for raspberry. It is...

A mysterious epidemic is devastating the Pacific coast of Central America, killing more than 24,000 people in El Salvador and Nicaragua since 2000 and striking thousands of others with chronic kidney disease at rates unseen virtually anywhere else. Scientists say they have received reports of the phenomenon as far north as southern Mexico and as far south as Panama. Jesus Ignacio Flores started working when he was 16, laboring long hours on construction sites and in the fields of his country's biggest sugar plantation. Three years ago his kidneys started to fail and flooded his body with toxins. He became...

Time was when healthcare prevention was associated with smoke-cessation, dieting and exercise to avoid preventable diseases such as heart attacks, cancer and strokes. With the HHS mandate requiring contraception coverage under all insurance programs, including religious organizations, pregnancy has now moved into the realm of preventable disease.

If you suffer from Morgellons disease, you have been waiting for a CDC study to be completed. The study was for the purpose of finding out what causes the heinous disease. The report says there is no reason for Morgellon symptoms, unless you want to blame it on patients' mental health. Once again, a disease is said to be a mental disease because there are no other answers for it.

This Ancient, Deadly Disease Is Still Killing In Europe John Donnelly, GlobalPost Dec. 30, 2011, 12:53 PM GENEVA, Switzerland – On the sidelines of a conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, just three months ago, a senior health official from Belarus met privately with Mario Raviglione, whose job here at the World Health Organization’s headquarters is to control the spread of tuberculosis around the world. Belarus needed help. It had just confirmed a study that found 35 percent of all TB cases in the capital of Minsk were multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) – the highest rate in the world ever recorded for...

Newt Gingrich Says He'd Defy Supreme Court Rulings He Opposed By David G. Savage December 17 Newt Gingrich says as president he would ignore Supreme Court decisions that conflicted with his powers as commander in chief, and he would press for impeaching judges or even abolishing certain courts if he disagreed with their rulings. "I'm fed up with elitist judges" who seek to impose their "radically un-American" views, Gingrich said Saturday in a conference call with reporters. In recent weeks, the Republican presidential contender has been telling conservative audiences he is determined to expose the myth of "judicial supremacy" and...

Occupy Crime and DiseaseBy John Hull | Yahoo! Contributor Network Sun, Nov 20, 2011 The Occupy Wall Street protests started by Canadian malcontents has made a difference. Many are dead or injured, others have third world diseases, while still others have been raped. Hatred has been spewed and unsanitary conditions prevail as these people defecate where they sleep. The protests have been joined by like-minded left wing organizations such as the Communist Party USA and the American Nazi Party, as reported in the article Sexual Assault, Thefts and Hate Plague Occupy Movement. A man was murdered at the scene of...

Dead man in Salt Lake City... Tuberculosis in Atlanta... 'Zuccotti Lung' on Wall Street... Suicide in Vermont... Murder in Oakland...

With wintry weather poised to swoop into the cramped outdoor quarters of Occupy Wall Street protesters, it may not be long before more campers catch what's being called "Zuccotti lung." That's what demonstrators have dubbed the sickness that seems to be spreading among them at an unpleasantly high rate these days: "It's a real thing," Willie Carey, 28, told the New York Times. With little sleep in cold conditions, cigarettes and drinks being passed from mouth to mouth, and few opportunities to wash hands, Zuccotti Park may now just be the best place to catch respiratory viruses, norovirus (also known...

Some 5 to 20 million tons of debris--furniture, fishing boats, refrigerators--sucked into the Pacific Ocean in the wake of Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami are moving rapidly across the Pacific. Researchers from the University of Hawaii tracking the wreckage estimate it could approach the U.S. West Coast in the next three years, the UK Daily Mail reports. "We have a rough estimate of 5 to 20 million tons of debris coming from Japan,"

SUBJECT: Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces References: (a) DoD Directive 1344.10, “Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces on Active Duty,” August 2, 2004 (hereby canceled) (b) Sections 973, 888, 101, and Chapter 47 of title 10, United States Code (c) DoD Instruction 1334.1, “Wearing of the Uniform,” October 26, 2005 (d) Section 441a of title 2, United States Code (e) through (i), see Enclosure 1

Some California schools are turning away middle and high school students who have not received a required whooping cough vaccine while others are defying a law passed last year after a historic spike in cases of the potentially fatal disease. The law approved last September initially required all students entering grades seven through 12 to get vaccinated by the start of the 2011-2012 school year. Lawmakers passed a 30-day extension this summer as districts worried many students wouldn't meet the deadline.

A breakthrough in Parkinson's disease research came to light this week when researchers reported successfully growing stem cells from the skin of a patient with a rapidly progressing form of the disease. The researchers took skin samples from a patient diagnosed with one of the most progressive forms of Parkinson's disease. "As this type of Parkinson's progresses rapidly it will also make it easier to pick up the effects of drugs tested to prevent nerve cells targeted by the disease from dying," said Devine.

A revolutionary biodegradable pellet which slowly releases antibiotics into the middle ear could transform the lives of thousands of children who suffer from glue ear. Scientists at The University of Nottingham have developed the tiny controlled-release antibiotic pellet which can be implanted in the middle ear during surgery to fit grommets, or small ventilation tubes. Over a period of three weeks it will release effective quantities of antibiotics to target any infection which can, in up to 20 per cent of cases, result in children having to return for a second and sometimes a third operation. The team has been...

People with rare, inherited forms of the neurological disease have early markers—which researchers can use to test preventive treatments. For the first time, scientists have been able to detect signs of Alzheimer's disease 10 to 20 years before the onset of dementia. The study, presented Wednesday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Paris, focused on people with rare, inherited forms of the disease who develop it relatively young, with symptoms beginning in the patients' 30s, 40s, and 50s. Researchers say the results will help them test drugs that could prevent or slow the progression of the disease, not only...

MISSOULA- The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation filed a note it plans to appeal any decision that adversely affects a state's right to manage fully recovered wolf populations. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy is expected to decide whether Congress acted within Constitutional bounds when it delisted wolves in parts of the West. "We are protecting our right to appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals any decision that results in another setback for conservation and science-based wildlife management," said RMEF President and CEO David Allen. An unfavorable ruling may stop wolf hunts planned for this fall in both Montana...

A new study by the Center for Work-Life Policy think tank has found that 48 percent of college-educated lesbian and gay Americans hide their sexual orientation at work. About a third of them are leading "double lives," the report says--staying in the closet at the office while being "out" in their personal lives

Since the HIV virus was discovered 30 years ago this week, 30 million people have died from the disease, and it continues to spread at the rate of 7,000 people per day globally, the UN says. There's not much good news when it comes to this devastating disease. But that is perhaps why the story of the man scientists call the "Berlin patient" is so remarkable and has generated so much excitement among the HIV advocacy community. Timothy Ray Brown suffered from both leukemia and HIV when he received a bone marrow stem cell transplant in Berlin, Germany in 2007....

European Food Outbreak Soars; Mystery Deepens David Rising And Maria Cheng Associated PressJune 1, 2011 BERLIN – The number of people hit by a massive European outbreak of foodborne bacterial infections is one third higher than previously known and a stunningly high number of patients suffer from a potentially deadly complication than can shut down their kidneys, officials said Wednesday. The death toll rose to 17, with German authorities reporting that an 84-year-old woman with the complication had died on Sunday. Medical authorities appeared no closer to discovering either the source of the infection or the mystery at the heart...

A growing shortage of medications for a host of illnesses — from cancer to cystic fibrosis to cardiac arrest — has hospitals scrambling for substitutes to avoid patient harm, and sometimes even delaying treatment. SNIP The problem of scarce supplies or even completely unavailable medications isn't a new one but it's getting markedly worse. The number listed in short supply has tripled over the past five years, to a record 211 medications last year. While some of those have been resolved, another 89 drug shortages have occurred in the first three months of this year, according to the University of...

If inherited genes are not to blame for our most common illnesses, how can we find out what is? Since the human genome was sequenced, over 10 years ago, hardly a week has gone by without some new genetic "breakthrough" being reported. Last week five new "genes for Alzheimer's disease" generated sometimes front-page coverage across the globe. But take a closer look and the reality is very different. Among all the genetic findings for common illnesses, such as heart disease, cancer and mental illnesses, only a handful are of genuine significance for human health. Faulty genes rarely cause, or even...

LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles County health officials say the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease was found in a hot tub at the Playboy Mansion where scores of people became ill after attending a fundraiser in February. The Los Angeles Times says health officials presented their findings Friday at an annual conference at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

"I went to the teacher to get her approval and she wanted to ask the administration to see if it was okay," Jessica explained; "She said that I could do it as long as I called this treat 'spring spheres.' I couldn't call them Easter eggs.....

Highly Contagious AIDS-Like Disease Spreading in China By Chen Yilian Epoch Times Staff In a small hotel across from the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a reporter from New Express Daily, dressed in an isolation suit, interviewed a dozen “unusual” patients from different areas of China. Their symptoms are painful and debilitating, and AIDS-like, but repeated tests for HIV have come up negative. Lin Jun, one of the patients interviewed in the March 24 New Express Daily report, said he used to be chubby, but now he is skin and bones, and his joints have become all deformed....

A new breed of biodegradable nanoparticles can glom on to drug-resistant bacteria, breaching their cell walls and leaking out their contents, selectively killing them. The polymer particles could someday be used in anything from injectable treatments for drug-resistant bacteria, to new antibacterial soaps and deodorants, according to inventors at IBM. After their work is done, the particles break apart, flushing away with the invaders they destroyed. The nanoparticles, which IBM says are relatively inexpensive, were effective against bugs that have been evolving to resist antibiotics, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Preliminary results suggest the particles could also be effective against...

Reporting from Sacramento -- As the battle over same-sex marriage makes its way through California's courts, another gay rights fight is smoldering in the Legislature. Democratic lawmakers have revived a plan to require state schools to teach about the contributions of gay, lesbian and transgender Americans. They are reigniting a movement that halted five years ago when legislators approved such a requirement only to run into opposition from then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, with a Democrat in the governor's office, the lawmakers and gay rights activists are more hopeful that school curricula will be revised.

"In fact, babesiosis is one of a raft of under-the-radar tick diseases spreading across the United States. "We've seen pretty dramatic increases," says Jennifer McQuiston, an epidemiology team leader in the vector-borne disease division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta." Disease ridden illegals will only serve to EXACERBATE the problem.

I would like to get information on the best possible courses to take. I also wanted to know if I indeed needed to take Medical Terminology to get a degree in Virology. If there are any virologists who would like to tutor me, that would be good too

Having read the history of Smallpox and the types of vaccine used in experimentation, I would like to debate on whether or not cowpox would be a better alternative than using the vaccine procedures that use live vaccine. Cowpox was after all the first vaccine used against Smallpox and wouldn't it be easier to gather and use, with a lower risk of failure or accidential infection with a fully active virus that would result in a full blown infection?

Can the Playboy Mansion make you ill? Hugh Hefner's iconic bachelor pad is under investigation after more than 80 guests at a conference and party there became sick with a suspected strain of Legionnaires' disease. Scores of attendees at the Domainfest conference in Santa Monica, held Feb. 1 to 3, came down with symptoms including fever, respiratory infections and violent headaches. Four Swedish guests were diagnosed with Legionellosis or pontiac fever -- a milder form of Legionnaires' caused by bacteria that thrives in warm air-conditioning systems.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Losing weight is often touted as a way to improve health, but many weight-loss programs may not help stave off disease since people tend to gain the weight back, Australian researchers say. In a report in the International Journal of Obesity, they note the focus of such programs may need to change if they're really going to have a lasting effect. To test the potential impact of different diets, the researchers ran two computer simulations: One included a low-fat diet, the other a diet rich in whole grains and vegetables plus 180 minutes of exercise...

Dear Abby, My husband has a long record of money problems. He runs up huge credit-card bills and at the end of the month, if I try to pay them off, he shouts at me, saying I am stealing his money. He says pay the minimum and let the kids worry about the rest, but already we can hardly keep up with the interest. Also he has been so arrogant and abusive toward our neighbors that most of them no longer speak to us. The few that do are an odd bunch, to whom he has been giving a lot...

Which do you think is less expensive, not to mention preferable: a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, or caring for people with these diseases? Wouldn't it be better medical and public policy to direct more resources toward finding a cure for diseases that cost a lot to treat than to rely on a government insurance program, such as Obamacare, which seeks mainly to help pay the bills for people after they become ill? Isn't the answer obvious? Apparently not to many politicians trapped in an old paradigm that focuses too much on hospitals, doctors and medicines and too...

Hunting rope squirrels for food could be fuelling cases of monkeypox in the Congo basinResearchers probing risk factors for human cases of monkeypox in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a ‘hotspot’ of the disease, found that people living near dense forests favoured by rope squirrels are more likely to contract the virus. “Our finding... is consistent with the fact that rope squirrels are the only natural host that have been demonstrated to transmit the monkeypox virus directly to humans in Africa,” write Trevon Fuller and colleagues this month in EcoHealth. The study suggests that the scant resources available for...

THIRTEEN people have been reported dead in Abim and Agago districts, following an outbreak of a strange disease in Abim. Twenty cases have been reported in Abim district, out of whom eight have already died. In neighouring Agago district, five cases have been reported in the sub counties of Omiya P’Chua and Paimol, which border Abim district. Emmanuel Okech, an official from Abim district health Office said out of the twenty cases, eight have died, two quarantined and another ten have been discharged after their conditions improved. According to Okech, the affected persons have high fever, vomit blood, pass bloody...

Sluthood wasn't always considered a virtue. Most normal, rational people look at sleeping around as something sad and wrong. It's not healthy, physically or mentally, it can be damaging to a young girl's reputation, and it can also be incredibly dangerous. Women that sleep around oftentimes end up feeling used and regret their choices when they get older and decide to settle down. Other women end up contracting STDs, which may or may not be treatable. For these reasons and more, being a slut is understandably looked down upon -- it can be genuinely harmful. Today's pseudo-feminists, however, have...

A disease whose progression and symptoms seem straight out of a horror movie but which can be treated has killed at least 20 Ugandans and sickened more than 20,000 in just two months. Jiggers, small insects which look like fleas, are the culprits in the epidemic which causes parts of the body to rot. They often enter through the feet. Once inside a person's body, they suck the blood, grow and breed, multiplying by the hundreds. Affected body parts - buttocks, lips, even eyelids - rot away. James Kakooza, Uganda's minister of state for primary health care, said jiggers can...

How a new report on HIV infection in the Big Apple scared a health reporter into getting tested and having a frank discussion with her "boo." By Tomika Anderson My longtime lover and I were driving through Harlem when we passed a billboard that made me want to slam on the brakes and pull the car over. On it were two women -- one black and one Latina -- their pretty, youthful faces in lights. But under their pictures was a statistic that sucker-punched me: 93.4 percent. As in, 93.4 of all new HIV cases among women in NYC occur...

Legislation addressing the developing veterinarian shortage in rural America that was introduced by Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb, was approved last week by the House of Representatives. The legislation authorizes the secretary of agriculture to award competitive grants to help develop, implement and sustain veterinary services. The bill will now go to the Senate. Smith said America's food animal veterinary work force is facing a critical shortage in the public, private, industrial and academic sectors. Large-animal veterinarians, in particular, Smith said, are integral to small, rural communities. However the number of vets per animal - especially in rural areas - is...

The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center is a post-9/11 fortress. If you don’t have proper clearance to get into the structure’s federal offices, you’ll get stopped and turned away. Bedbugs apparently get a pass.bA band of juvenile bedbugs has taken roost in an office suite in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) tower of the Reagan Building, according to an e-mail obtained by TBD. USAID employees were told in the e-mail that they hadn’t received reports of bedbugs in other locations in the building.“Nevertheless, on Friday, October 1st, at 10:00, GSA will be utilizing a professional pest...

Dr Richard Weiler and Dr Emmanuel Stamatakis have put forward the idea because they say the the link between inactivity and poor health is so strong. Writing in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, they explained: "Given the significant associated mortality and morbidity, we propose that perhaps physical inactivity should also be considered for recognition as a disease in its own right." Obesity is already classed as a disease by the World Health Organisation, noted Dr Richard Weiler, a specialist registrar in sports and exercise at Imperial College Healthcare and a GP. But he said obesity was often at least...

Researchers say that rising rates of syphilis along HIV among young gay men suggests risky sexual behaviour was to blame.. Public messages and campaigns about the dangers of unsafe sex do not appear to be getting through to men who have sex with men, the researchers say – particularly the young ones.

Geneticists have found the culprit causing a common form of muscular dystrophy—zombie DNA. Sort of. They've discovered that long-inactive genes—so-called junk DNA lying dormant in the human genome for thousands of years—"can rise from the dead like zombies" and cause trouble, explains Gina Kolata in the New York Times. This is the first time they've witnessed the feat, which they spell out in the journal Science. Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/science/20gene.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

Just 65 years ago, David Livermore's paternal grandmother died following an operation to remove her appendix. It didn't go well, but it was not the surgery that killed her. She succumbed to a series of infections that the pre-penicillin world had no drugs to treat. Welcome to the future. The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight....

When Kenneth Watson was 16, he thought nothing of the gnat that flew into his eye: "I don't think you can afford to be afraid of bugs in the Bible Belt," he said. But two weeks later when the Hardy, Ark., teen was getting ready for school, he knew something was terribly wrong when he couldn't see. When he told his mother, she thought he was faking. "I had slept late and my mom thought I was skipping school," he said. "Sometimes I would come up with crazy stories, and she told me to get up and get ready." As...

The recent cases of Dengue Fever reported in South Florida earlier this month can only be traced by conjecture because our government officials are very reluctant to admit just how this odd third world disease could take hold. So, allowing that we must be our own scientists and in the absence of reliable data draw our own perceptions may we suggest that the many Haitian School Age Children taken into South Florida public schools after the January Haitian earthquake just could be a factor? Were the millions of government dollars given to the school districts who took in the Haitian...

<p>MEXICO CITY — Mexico is facing a sort of perfect storm of floods that breed mosquitoes, prompting a big increase in the number of hemorrhagic dengue cases, the country's top epidemiological official said Wednesday.</p> <p>The disease's Type 2 strain, which makes people who have already had the Type 1 variant more vulnerable to developing the hemorrhagic form, is now in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz and moving north toward the region on the U.S. border.</p>