Free Republic

Former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli refused to answer any questions during a congressional hearing on Thursday, drawing the ire of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawmakers.Shkreli was arrested in December 2015 on securities fraud charges.Shkreli, 32, is the founder and former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG. He has been widely criticized for raising the price of the lifesaving drug Daraprim more than 5,000 percent."Shkreli essentially ran his company like a Ponzi scheme where he used each subsequent company to pay off defrauded investors from the prior company," Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said at a press conference in December.According...

In the aftermath of an E. coli outbreak at Chipotle that sickened dozens of people across the United States last fall and led to an overhaul of the company's food safety practices, Americans reacted by avoiding the beloved fast-food chain. Restaurants that once sported long lines were suddenly empty, a phenomenon that was almost surely happening nationwide. The risks, in other words, were simply too great in people's minds for them to continue frequenting the Mexican-inspired favorite, because Chipotle had a food safety problem. But the outrage was at least partly misplaced, according to Bill Marler, a lawyer specializing in...

New research from the Virginia-based Mercatus Center indicates that schemes to ration health care services through certificate-of-need requirements — such as those imposed in Michigan — increase the difficulty of getting access to health care services while doing nothing to reduce their costs. A CON law restricts the ability of health care providers to expand or open new facilities, or to acquire powerful diagnostic tools. Providers must first get permission from a government commission. Some members of that commission may represent the incumbent facilities against which the new entrant would like to compete. CON laws supposedly help keep medical costs...

Russia is working on a vaccine to combat the Zika virus, even though the country is not at risk of contamination, Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova has told state news agency RIA Novosti. The Zika virus is transmitted by mosquitoes across the Americas and in areas in Africa near the equator. Symptoms are mild and infections can be sometimes difficult to detect, however it can have severe effects on pregnant women and their babies. The World Health Organization (WHO) expressed concern on Thursday, claiming the virus was “spreading explosively” after cases were reported in South America and the U.S.. Russian...

Calories consumed minus calories burned: it's the simple formula for weight loss or gain. But dieters often find that it doesn't work. Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley of Gastropod investigate. "For me, a calorie is a unit of measurement that's a real pain in the rear." Bo Nash is 38. He lives in Arlington, Texas, where he's a technology director for a textbook publisher. He has a wife and child. And he's 5'10" and 245 lbs -- which means he is classed as obese. In an effort to lose weight, Nash uses an app to record the calories he consumes...

Sunday is the deadline to sign up for health insurance, or else pay a fine. That fine has gone up, causing even more financial stress on the uninsured and those who choose to opt out of health insurance. "I just cannot afford it in any way, shape, or form right now," 27-year-old Seth Valkonen said when talking about health insurance. Valkonen chooses to be uninsured by paying a one time fine for not having coverage instead of a monthly premium. "The penalty is cheaper than the overall total for the entire year," he said, Already on a tight budget, this...

Brazil has sent more than 200,000 troops to go 'house to house' in the battle against Zika-carrying mosquitoes, blamed for causing a birth defect epidemic that is spreading rapidly across the world. Soldiers will visit homes across Brazil, distributing leaflets and dispensing advice, according to Health Minister Marcelo Castro, signalling a major ramping up of efforts against the Zika virus. The government, under growing pressure to deal with the crisis, will also...

All adults, including pregnant women and new mothers, should be screened for depression as a routine part of health care, a government advisory group recommended Tuesday. Depression is a common public health problem, and screening simply involves health workers asking about certain symptoms even if patients don't mention them. The second part of the recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is more difficult — ensuring systems are in place to properly diagnose and treat people identified through screening. And the guideline, published by the Journal for the American Medical Association, couldn't determine how often adults should be screened....

A friend told me a co-worker and her family lost TriCare Coverage without notice in early January. When she investigated, she was told a “glitch” in the interface between DEERS and TriCare caused the problem and a quarter-million families were affected. There was no projected date for the problem to be resolved. I have heard squat about this in the media.Looking to my FreeRepublic family to report if you know of anyone caught up in this latest guberment snafu. It is being pursued through Congressional and American Legion contacts.

Is Hillary Clinton fit to be president of the United States? Is she physically up to the job of commander in chief? How’s her health? Those questions may sound as if they’re coming from one of Hillary’s political opponents. But you don’t have to be a dyed-in-the-wool conservative to inquire into the state of Hillary’s health. Everyone—liberals and independents alike—should be interested in uncovering the truth.

Darcy Olsen, CEO and president of the Goldwater Institute, has written a must-read book for anyone facing a serious ailment, The Right to Try: How the Federal Government Prevents Americans from Getting the Life-Saving Treatments They Need.It is common knowledge there is a problem with the FDA delaying the approval of drugs. But until now, most Americans did not realize just how bad the situation is  — hundreds of thousands of people, including children, needlessly lose their lives every year because new, breakthrough drugs that have worked in clinical trials and are legal in other countries are not approved here....

New federal dietary guidelines, which were released early Thursday morning, tell Americans to follow a healthy eating pattern that includes a variety of vegetables, fruit, grains, fat-free dairy, oils and a variety of proteins, including lean meats. The recommendations for what Americans should and shouldn't be eating, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) update together every five years, created unprecedented controversy in 2015 when the federally appointed panel of nutritionists that helps draft them considered environmental concerns in recommending that people should eat less meat. The USDA and HHS relented...

But last month, police in Italy nabbed 7,000 tons of phony olive oil. Much of it was bound for American stores. The oil was from North Africa, deodorized with chemicals...The scam was cooked-up by organized crime. Mafia copies of fine olive oil, wine and cheese have fueled an explosion of food crime in Italy. It's estimated to be a $16 billion-a-year enterprise. The Italians call it "Agromafia"...what would it be in the U.S.? Tom Mueller: Up around 75% to 80%, easily.

Several sources have raised serious questions about Hillary Clinton’s fitness to serve at president of the United States based on her physical health.  Some of these individuals are people who observed her in various settings that called her mental and physical status into question.  Others are physicians who reviewed the 2012 ABC News report after Clinton’s fall and subsequent concussion. Non-medical observers Breitbart News reports that John Cardillo, a former NYPD officer who provided VIP security details, knows two sources (a federal agent and an NYPD officer who worked a security detail) who observed Clinton’s health-related behaviors over the...

Epidemiologists — people who track diseases — use an expression: Seek and ye shall find. It's a reminder that sometimes when you see a phenomenon, it may not be entirely new. It may be that you've only just noticed it. Well, the world seems to be having a major seek-and-ye-shall-find moment right now with a worrisome new superbug. In late December, reports emerged that the mcr-1 gene, which confers resistance to an important antibiotic of last-resort, has been found in bacteria previously collected in the Netherlands, Laos, Algeria, Thailand, and France. There is reason to believe it may also be...

For the past several weeks Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been suggesting that Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has impairments. In a December 3, 2015 column, Business Insider columnist Colin Campbell noted: "Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says the same two things about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in almost every campaign speech these days. "His favorite zinger is that Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, doesn't have the 'strength or the stamina' for the Oval Office.

OF COURSE 2015 was a miserable year; all years are miserable. It was a year of rampage killings and police brutality, of natural disasters and government corruption. There were ghastly terror attacks and devastating civil wars, floods of refugees and acts of unspeakable cruelty. Airliners were blown out of the sky. Priceless antiquities were destroyed. Politics seethed with incivility. Too many innocents died young, too many officials lied, too many victims suffered.You don't have to look far for proof that this has been an annus horribilis, and that things are getting worse. You never do. The conviction of decline routinely...

Nutrition science is bad for your health! Not really, of course, but if you worried about every single study that linked a certain food to a negative health outcome, you'd probably go insane.Red meat? Cancer. Grapefruit? Cancer. Cheese? Cancer. Artificial sweeteners? Obesity. Sugar? Obesity. Milk? Bone fracture. The list could go on and on, but let's get to the meat of the article. I'm fed up with nutrition science, and you should be, too.It was not a single study that evoked my distaste, but a nauseating status quo that's become too much to bear.The problems with nutrition science begin with...

Have you heard? The GOP is declaring war on science again. In February, a government-appointed nutrition advisory panel said Americans should eat less sugar and red meat. It also suggested that environmental considerations should factor into a healthy diet, which livestock producers understood as an attack on their industry. Republicans in Congress think the guideline process is out of control and are now trying to rein in the panel. By their lights, nutrition scientists should concern themselves with nutrition -- not sustainability. Critics say they're pandering to special interests. The funny thing is: Both sides may be right. For decades,...

The federal government said Friday it would ban minors from using indoor tanning beds, taking action on an issue that many states are already handling. The Food and Drug Administration said the proposed measure was in response to 1.6 million minors using indoor tanning beds each year, according to 2013 federal data. The problem is that indoor tanning is a "known contributor to skin cancer," the agency said. People who have been exposed to radiation from tanning beds are 59 percent more likely to develop melanoma, a dangerous form of skin cancer, than those who never have used the beds,...