Free Republic

How activist misinformation wastes time, money, and harms AmericansDavulcuHealth activists, nutrition nannies, medical paternalists, and just plain old quacks regularly conjure up a variety of menaces that are supposedly damaging the health of Americans. Their scares ranging from the decades-long campaign against fluoridation to worries that saccharin causes cancer to the ongoing hysteria over biotech crops to fears of lead in lipstick. The campaigners’ usual “solution” is to demand that regulators ban the offending substance or practice. Here are five especially egregious examples.5. Americans should consume no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day, in order to reduce everybody's...

You are a homeless person. You are sick and you know it is bad. You stagger into the ER of St. Ipsidipsy Catholic Hospital in Tall Tree Circle. You have no insurance, health coverage, or money. You are seen by a doctor and treated.The Obama Administration then punishes the hospital for treating you, a person without government-approved obligatory Obamacare.From the Daily Caller: Obamacare installs new scrutiny, fines for charitable hospitals that treat uninsured peopleCharitable hospitals that treat uninsured Americans will be subjected to new levels of scrutiny of their nonprofit status and could face sizable new fines under Obamacare. A...

"From previous studies, it is estimated that 40% to 70% of a person's BMI is inherited," Batterham says, but it's complex and not as simple as just giving a percent. Overall, the role of any single gene [in obesity] is not big, Qi says. However, if all the obesity-related genes are considered, “the effect would be sizable."

In the new study, the team from Harvard randomly assigned 60 elderly people to drink two cups of flavanol-rich or flavanol-poor cocoa every day for a month. There weren't any overall differences between the high- and low-flavanol groups in terms of cognitive abilities, so the researchers looked a little deeper. They found that people who had compromised blood flow to the brain and white matter damage at the beginning of the study did show a difference after drinking the cocoa for a month: Blood flow in their brains improved by about 8%, and the time it took them to complete...

(CNSNews.com) – As part of his ongoing campaign to transform New York City into what he calls “Fit City,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg is promoting “active design” for low-income housing developments being built there, including plans to prompt residents to use the stairs and rooftop gardens for growing “healthy” foods. In 2010, the Bloomberg Administration and other public and private sector groups issued the “Active Design Guidelines,” which promotes car-free neighborhoods, encourages “physical movement” inside buildings and “improves access to nutritious food.”The Center for Action Design was launched next as a resource for architects and developers who sign on to the...

Fourteen people in need of kidney and liver transplants, along with family and friends, have been on a weeklong hunger strike, demanding a spot on a transplant waiting list, which they say they've been denied. The men and women protested Monday outside Northwestern Memorial Hospital, some taking long breaks for dialysis. They said they've been denied a spot on the list because of their illegal residency in the country.

Women taking drugs known as calcium channel blockers (CCBs) for high blood pressure and other health conditions may be at higher risk for breast cancer if the drug is used long-term, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The finding is particularly important because so many people take drugs to lower blood pressure. It’s also important because studies about risk of breast cancer from the drugs that are the most commonly prescribed medication in the U.S. have yielded inconsistent results. Christopher I. Li, M.D., Ph.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle...

Exercise promotes health, reducing most people’s risks of developing diabetes and growing obese. But just how, at a cellular level, exercise performs this beneficial magic — what physiological steps are involved and in what order — remains mysterious to a surprising degree. Several striking new studies, however, provide some clarity by showing that exercise seems able to drastically alter how genes operate. Genes are, of course, not static. They turn on or off, depending on what biochemical signals they receive from elsewhere in the body. When they are turned on, genes express various proteins that, in turn, prompt a range...

Iowa law is preventing state health officials from releasing the name or names of salad brand mixtures implicated in a widespread cyclospora case that has sickened dozens across Iowa. The law states officials can only release the identity of businesses if the problem persists, which officials don't believe is happening because of a drop in cases, officials said in a release on Wednesday.

A leading neurosurgeon has revealed a project to carry out the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage within the next two years. The project is code-named HEAVEN/GEMINI. Published in the June issue of Surgical Neurology International, the project has been outlined by Italian neuroscientist and functional neurosurgeon, Dr. Sergio Canavero. He says the procedure would take 100 surgeons 36 hours to complete, and would cost around £8.5 million ($12.6 million). In 1970, US neurosurgeon Robert Joseph White performed an operation to transplant a monkey's head onto another monkey's body. However, the inability to repair the severed spinal cord due...