Free Republic

The NBC Investigative Unit has raised questions about two grants totaling nearly $1.5 million dollars distributed to the University of California San Francisco. The money was part of the federal stimulus program and went to studies into the erectile dysfunction of overweight middle aged men and the accurate reporting of someone's sexual history. This is part of our ongoing series of investigations by the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit into who got federal stimulus dollars, and why some projects did not break ground more than two years after receiving the grant. The Investigative Unit looked closely at the federal government's...

Men who take non- steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs three times a day for more than three months are 2.4 times more likely to have erectile dysfunction compared to men who do not take those drugs regularly, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published online in The Journal of Urology. While previous research showed a trend toward this same finding, this observational study used electronic health records, an automated pharmacy database and self- reported questionnaire data to examine NSAID use and ED in an ethnically diverse population of 80,966 men aged 45 to 69 years throughout California. 80,966 men aged 45 to...

n a case of do-it-yourself male enhancement gone awry, a local man had to be hospitalized after a metal dumbbell ring became stuck on his penis and caused the organ to swell to five times its normal size, authorities report. The incident, first reported by the Daily Pilot, began with the man’s ill-conceived attempt to enlarge his penis and ended Tuesday in a Newport Beach hospital room, where rescuers sawed the ring away and spared the man’s member. Keith Jones, deputy fire chief in Costa Mesa, said the ring had been stuck below the belt for as many as three...

Instead of popping pills, men with erectile dysfunction may be able to improve their performance through weight loss and getting in shape, but long-term cigarette smokers may be out of luck. Action Points * Explain to patients who ask that weight loss may improve symptoms of erectile dysfunction, while smoking doubles the risk that erectile dysfunction will progress in severity. Other common risk factors for erectile dysfunction include aging, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. That's the conclusion of investigators in the ongoing Massachusetts Male Aging Study, who found that changing some modifiable risk factors may reverse or prevent the progression of...

As the parents of Daniel Pearl, The Wall Street Journal's reporter who was kidnapped and brutally murdered in Pakistan in 2002, we share the anguish of the families of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, and their frustration with the international community for failing to secure the release of their loved ones. For more than six weeks now, these soldiers and their families live each day tortured by unimaginable fears and shattered hopes, praying desperately for the nightmare to end; we relive this nightmare each time an innocent person falls victim to the inhumanity of terrorist abduction. Whatever success the U.N. Security...

TONY BLAIR’S peace mission to the Middle East appeared in jeopardy last night after Hezbollah declared that the Prime Minister would not be welcome in Lebanon because of his support for Israel during the war. A senior member of Hezbollah’s politburo has told The Times that Mr Blair should stay away from the country because he was “up to his ears in the blood of Lebanese women and children”. British officials are confident that Mr Blair would be welcomed by the government of Fouad Siniora, the Prime Minister. But Hezbollah, which has emerged as the real force in the country,...

This just in from our N. Korean Correspondent : N. Korean Taepodong 2 Missile Suffers From " Projectile Misfunction " : Fails 45 seconds into Flight Kim Jong II mutters: " This never happened to me before !" July 4 , Pyongyang : In an early morning gesture of friendship toward the United States , Kim Jong II , Fearless Leader of the Extremely Democratic and Nice People's Republic of North Korea launched no less than three "celebratory fireworks displays" , including one that employed the much-heralded Taepodong 2 multi stage rocket. The display started out rather well. Alerted by...

As the weather heats up in Sacramento, so does the legislating. This month dozens of bills are moving from committees to the floor, across the rotunda and back again. This week Capitol Weekly is taking a look at some of the less-noticed measures up for consideration. And we start with everyone's favorites: sex, drugs and alcohol. Newly elected Assembly Republican leader George Plescia, R-San Diego, is pushing a measure to take popular erectile-dysfunction (ED) drugs like Viagra off the list of medications covered by state's Medi-Cal laws. The bill, A.B. 2885, would make it so Medi-Cal can only cover those...

Paris — French President Jacques Chirac, intervening after six nights of rioting in suburban Paris, called Wednesday for calm and said authorities will use a firm hand to curtail what may become a “dangerous situation.” The violence, sparked initially by the deaths of two teenagers, has exposed the despair, anger and deep-rooted criminality in the poor suburbs, where police hesitate to venture and which have proved fertile terrain for Islamic extremists. “The law must be applied firmly and in a spirit of dialogue and respect,” Mr. Chirac said at a cabinet meeting. “The absence of dialogue and an escalation of...