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Fellow Christians! In the pastoral letter of the German bishops of June 26, 1941, which was read out in all the Catholic churches in Germany on July 6, 1941, it states among other things: It is true that there are definite commandments in Catholic moral doctrine which are no longer applicable if their fulfillment involves too many difficulties. However, there are sacred obligations of conscience from which no one has the power to release us and which we must fulfil even if it costs us our lives. Never under any circumstances may a human being kill an innocent person apart...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration argued Monday that Guatemalans unknowingly exposed to sexually transmitted diseases by U.S. researchers in the 1940s cannot sue the United States, no matter how shameful and unethical the studies were.In its first response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the experiment's subjects, the Justice Department late Monday said sovereign immunity protects federal health officials from litigation stemming from the study. The experiment conducted in the 1940s exposed Guatemalan prostitutes, prisoners, mental patients and soldiers with STDs to test the effects of penicillin. The studies were conducted without the test subjects' consent.

A federal judge has blocked a California state budget cut that would have affected rural patients, the latest indication that courts will have the last word on Medi-Cal reductions. Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers cut reimbursement rates to a variety of Medi-Cal providers by 10 percent to save $623 million in their June budget. Physicians, pharmacists and hospitals, among others, have argued that the cut to California's already low payment rates would discourage providers from accepting Medi-Cal patients and reduce access. U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking the specific rate cut to nursing units...

(Reuters) - In 2010, President Dmitry Medvedev said heroin was a threat to Russia's national security. This year, Russia pledged to finance programmes to reduce the harm done by drug use, including an HIV crisis that is one of the most severe in the world. But even though the number of new HIV infections in Russia jumped 10 percent over 2011, health workers and global HIV authorities say Moscow has not honoured that promise. This is not due to a lack of cash - Russia is doubling its budget for HIV in 2012 from 2010 levels. At issue is how...

The husband and sons of terminally ill “At Last” and “Tell Mama” blues singer Etta James have reached a deal on managing her $1 million estate and medical care. ... Her adult sons Donto and Sametto had challenged the decisions of their stepfather Artis Mills, who married the singer in 1969 and is the estate’s conservator

The Obama administration issued a rule today that is sure to disappoint insurance agents: Fees paid to brokers and agents won’t count as medical care, under limits imposed on insurers in the 2010 federal health law. Photo by Thomas Hawk via Flickr That’s key because under the health law, insurers must spend at least 80 percent of their premium revenue on medical care and quality improvement – or issue rebates to consumers. The target is 85 percent for large-group issuers. Brokers had lobbied hard to have their fees exempted from the calculation of administrative costs, which also includes such expenses...

The new president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center said he expects a cure for cancer will be found on his watch. If not, he said, he'll consider his tenure a failure. “And I will not fail,” said Dr. Ronald DePinho, who moved to Houston in September from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston. SNIP The plain-spoken DePinho, who talks of “kicking cancer's butt,” said new technologies are the key to “putting cancer in the history books.” “The opportunity has never been greater to truly end this dreaded disease,” he said during a...

Please pray for my wife as she is having surgery today to repair a blocked ureter as a result of a botched c-section.

California plans to reduce payments to many Medi-Cal providers by 10%. The federal government's approval of the budget-cutting measure raises concerns from doctors and others. The Obama administration will allow California to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Medi-Cal, a move doctors and experts say will make it harder for the poor to get medical treatment. California plans to reduce rates by 10% to many providers, including physicians, dentists, clinics, pharmacies and most nursing homes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Thursday.

The initial survey work soon proved that the Litcham Cryptogram was by no means he only inscription to be found in the church. Within a matter of days the survey had identified over fifty individual images and inscriptions etched into the soft stone pillars of the church. "Almost every pillar was covered with inscriptions", continued Matthew, "and it was clear that there had once been many more. However, our attention kept coming back to the Litcham Cryptogram". The inscription was etched far deeper into the pillar than much of the surrounding graffiti and it is supposed that this is what...

An excise tax on medical devices, set to go into effect in 2013, could mean a nearly 11 percent cut for the U.S. medical technology sector and add $2.67 billion to the industry's annual tax bill, according to a study funded by the Advanced Medical Technology Assn. Medical device industry lobby AdvaMed says that the new 2.3 percent excise tax, slated to go into effect in 2013, will be "the last straw on the camel's back" for medical device companies trying to thrive in the struggling American economy. The tax puts more than 43,000 U.S. jobs at risk by all...

UCLA-Harvard study highlights 3 types of confusing outcome measures Studies about medications published in the most influential medical journals are frequently designed in a way that yields misleading or confusing results, new research suggests. Investigators from the medical schools at UCLA and Harvard analyzed all the randomized medication trials published in the six highest-impact general medicine journals between June 1, 2008, and Sept. 30, 2010, to determine the prevalence of three types of outcome measures that make data interpretation difficult. In addition, they reviewed each study's abstract to determine the percentage that reported results using relative rather than absolute numbers,...

There is a lot of talk, during these pre-presidential election days, of whether Republicans should stick to fiscal policy issues or include social issues as well in their platforms. Liberals are attacking fiscal/social conservatives, and some “establishment” Republicans are also criticizing their socially conservative colleagues, fearful that Independents will be turned off by the thought that Republicans are appearing rigid, strict, and hard. Political strategy aside, however, what often strikes me about these debates, which always seem centered on how conservative Republicans are trying to force their social views on the nation, is that liberals do it all the time...

A woman fighting a terminal form of bone cancer is trying to raise money to help pay bills with a few weekend garage sales, but the city of Salem says she’s breaking the law and is shutting her down. Jan Cline had no idea, but the city of Salem has a clear law that states a person can only have three yard sales a year. Cline has been selling her stuff in the backyard for a few weekends and said she thought she’d be fine by keeping the sale out of everyone’s way. “It’s a struggle,” Cline says. “It’s a...

Health Ministry to launch new unit to oversee production in 2012; imports would be tenfold more expensi Dr. Ronni Gamzi, director-general of the Health Ministry, decided on Thursday to establish a unit within the ministry to manage the supervision and supply of medical marijuana and to serve as an agency for this purpose according to the demands of an international agreement on the subject. The unit will begin operating in January, 2012. It was also decided that medical cannabis will continue to be grown in Israel for at least two years, because imports would be tenfold more expensive.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican and former U.S. attorney, has never been keen on his state's Compassionate Use of Medical Marijuana Act, which his predecessor, Jon Corzine, signed into law on the last day of his administration. But last week, Christie announced that New Jersey will proceed with plans to let six nonprofit organizations distribute marijuana to patients with "debilitating medical conditions" such as cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis, despite the risk of federal prosecution. In Arizona, meanwhile, the Medical Marijuana Act approved by voters last November remains on hold thanks to Gov. Jan Brewer, who worries that...

Liberal governor's request for Medicaid cuts puts Democrats in tough spotBy Julian Pecquet - 07/20/11 06:00 AM ET President Obama and congressional Democrats have been put in a tough spot by California Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) request to cut Medicaid spending by 10 percent. Brown says he needs to make the cuts to the state Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, to ease his state’s severe budget woes. But advocates say cuts of that size would be devastating to California’s most vulnerable residents. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) — and, by extension, the White House — must...

Two truck rental services have informed medical waste disposal companies that their vehicles can no longer be used at abortion clinics sites.

(snip) Now, I don’t pretend to know how many employers will drop coverage if some workers are offered subsidies to help them buy private coverage on their own. In Massachusetts, not many employers have dropped; (snip) But if these issues won’t be settled for a few years, one thing is certain right now: It would be a fantastic thing — not some calamity — if more people got coverage from the exchanges instead of from their employers. Yet both parties act as if it would be a disaster. (snip) What’s more, the whole GOP line about Democrats “dumping” people into...

COAL GROVE, OH (WSAZ) -- Mass radiation poisoning is the overwhelming concern after a state and federal raid today on a local doctor and imaging center. We’re talking about suspected medical insurance fraud on a grand scale - linked to maybe thousands of unneeded cat scans. The raid Wednesday morning involved numerous agencies, everybody from the local sheriff - to the department of defense, because patients connected to the military are involved. Click here to find out more! We’re told the raid on a Coal Grove, Ohio medical center involves multi-millions in suspected Medicaid and Medicare fraud. And agents say...

A local business is currently being raided for what the Department of Defense tells WSAZ.com is a multi-million dollar billing fraud investigation. COAL GROVE, Ohio (WSAZ) -- Two local business are currently being raided for what the investigators on the scene tell WSAZ.com is a multi-million dollar billing fraud investigation. 40 local, state and federal agencies are involved in a raid at Dr. Peter Tsai's Medical Office and the Watkins-Tsai Imaging Center in Coal Grove. Click here to find out more! The two businesses are located just off US 52 at the Coal Grove exit on Marion Pike. Investigators tell...

VFW OUTRAGED BY SEXUAL ASSAULTS AT VA 'It is inexcusable for security equipment and incident reporting procedures to be so broken...' June 08, 2011 The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. is outraged by news that America's disabled veterans could become a victim of sexual assault when they visit a Department of Veterans Affairs facility. According to a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office, 284 alleged assaults occurred at the VA between January 2007 and July 2010. Included were 67 rapes, 185 cases of inappropriate touching, and other assaults between patients against patients, patients against staff, and...

A team of researchers at Lund University in southern Sweden have managed to develop nerve cells from human skin cells without using stem cells - a development described as an ethical and medical breakthrough. "This fundamentally changes how we look at mature cells and their capacity. Previously a skin cell was thought to always remain a skin cell, but we have shown that it can be any cell," said Malin Parmar, the Lund University researcher leading the study, to The Local on Tuesday. The new technique works by reprogramming connective tissue cells, so-called human fibroblasts, directly into nerve cells, opening...

FDA announces review of birth control pills over serious blood clot risks by Peter J. Smith Wed Jun 01 5:32 PM EST WASHINGTON, D.C., June 1, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Federal drug regulators are now reviewing studies that say some modern birth control pills may pose a serious risk of clots to women who take them. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Tuesday that they were conducting a safety review of birth control products containing drospirenone, a synthetic female sex hormone or progestin. German pharmaceutical maker Bayer’s oral contraceptives Yaz, Yasmine, Safyral, Beyaz, and their generics are part...

BERLIN/LONDON (Reuters) – Racing to curb the spread of a killer food bug, Germany set up a national task force on Friday to hunt down the source of a highly toxic strain of E.coli that killed 17 people and sounded alarms around the world. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, engaged in a trade row with the European Union after Moscow banned imports of raw fruit and vegetables from the bloc, heightened the drama, saying he would not "poison" Russians by lifting the embargo. Repeating warnings to Germans not eat salad vegetables -- rattling farmers and stores just as they hit...

The number of E. coli cases has risen dramatically in northern Germany, authorities announced Wednesday, with at least 180 new cases emerging in the past 24 hours in Hamburg and Lower Saxony alone. The new figures came as doctors in Schleswig-Holstein reported that the bacterial illness was also causing unusual neurological effects including epilepsy. Seventeen people – one in Sweden and the rest in Germany – have now died from the virulent form of enterohamorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), which can cause bloody diarrhoea and kidney failure known as haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS). In the past day, the number of cases...

California authorities deny state's first medical parole caseA quadriplegic inmate serving a 150-year term for kidnapping, beating and raping a San Diego woman in 1998 will not be released to the care of family members under a new law, parole board rules. By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times May 30, 2011 Reporting from San Diego— The reasoning seemed disarmingly simple: In a time of fiscal crisis and over-crowded prisons, why should California spend hundreds of millions of dollars retaining prisoners so sick, aged, paralyzed or otherwise infirm that they are no longer a threat to the public? And so the...

Tricare’s new “closed network” for Tricare Sub-Standard Philippines; What we know and how it will accelerate the death of U.S. Military retirees By Kenneth J. Fournier (Kennyfour09@yahoo.com.ph) In an effort to cause more pain and suffering upon the U.S. Military retirees living in the Philippines, Tricare is now poised to implement, a new, extremely restrictive “closed network” for Tricare Sub-Standard in the Philippines. On top of tricare’s current inability to provide the promised, and legally mandated, medical care to retirees including the slow payment of claims, a requirement to use only Tricare certified providers listed on a provider list that...

More gay men reported being cancer survivors than straight men in a new study from California. That suggests they may need targeted interventions to prevent cancer, the researchers said, but more studies are needed to answer lingering questions. For example, are gay men more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than straight men? Or, are they just more likely to survive if they do get cancer? "A lack of hard data" on how sexual orientation affects the risk of cancer is "one of the biggest problems we have," said Liz Margolies, executive director of The National LGBT Cancer Network. Margolies,...

....“This is another safeguard to ensure that we are providing the proper care to the correct person and that the person receiving the care is the correct person,” says Dr. Robert Trenschel, senior vice president and administrator, Ambulatory Care Services, Harris County Hospital District. To illustrate the need to positively identify patients and ensure that each has their corresponding electronic medical records, consider these facts: * Number of patients in the Harris County Hospital District’s database: 3,428,925 * Number of times when two or more patients share the same last and first names: 249,213 * Number of times when five...

California will spend $2 billion more per year on Medi-Cal when federal health care reform goes into full effect in 2016 and $4 billion more annually by 2020, according to a Rand Corp. study released this week.

A former supervisor in the Dayton VA Medical Center’s dental clinic blamed intervention by the NAACP for foiling his efforts in the early 1990s to remove a dentist whose lax infection control practices put patients’ safety at risk. Dr. Dwight M. Pemberton continued to practice dentistry at the Dayton VA, often failing to change latex gloves and sterilize dental instruments between patients...Between 1992 and July 2010, 535 patients who had invasive dental work by Pemberton may have been exposed to bloodborne pathogens, the VA said. Nine have preliminary positive results for hepatitis B or hepatitis C. In the early 1990s,...

Scientists are reporting the first evidence that consumption of a healthful antioxidant substance in apples extends the average lifespan of test animals, and does so by 10 percent. The new results, obtained with fruit flies -- stand-ins for humans in hundreds of research projects each year -- bolster similar findings on apple antioxidants in other animal tests. The study appears in ACS's of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Zhen-Yu Chen and colleagues note that damaging substances generated in the body, termed free radicals, cause undesirable changes believed to be involved in the aging process and some diseases. Substances known as antioxidants...

An individual mandate has done little to stem the rate of medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts, boding poorly for the federal healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago, according to a new liberal study. The number of medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts increased from 7,504 in 2007 to 10,093 in 2009, while the state’s rate of medical bankruptcies experienced a “non-significant” decrease from 59.3 percent to 52.9, said researchers Dr. David Himmelstein and Dr. Steffie Woolhandler in the American Journal of Medicine. The authors, both affiliated with single-payer advocate Physicians for a National Health Program, said medical bankruptcies continue to plague...

Gordon Duffy was a freshman assemblyman from the San Joaquin Valley in 1966 when then-Gov. Pat Brown and the Legislature fashioned a health care program for the poor named "Medi-Cal." Medi-Cal would take advantage of a newly minted, obscure provision of the federal Medicare program for the elderly, leveraging the promise of federal money to extend care to poor Californians who hitherto had been dependent on medical charity. Duffy, an optometrist who later chaired the Assembly Health Committee, recalls that the Medi-Cal program was launched on assurances from Brown that it was affordable and workable. "No one in the world...

Establish smart spending habits. Live like you're poor. How do you do that? Drive your cars into the ground, don't eat out very much, avoid expensive and potentially unhealthy processed foods, buy food in bulk, buy just enough clothes to fit your needs, and use public transportation. ... Use credit cards only as a convenience to avoid carrying cash; limit your credit card spending so that you can easily pay off the balance each month. Make every dollar count with your spending, so you can free up money to invest in the future. Get healthy. One of the best things...

The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is investigating whether some of its doctors wrote fake sick notes to people protesting the governor's plan to strip public union employees of the right to collectively bargain. Over the weekend, FOX News reported that doctors from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine were manning a doctor station to write medical notes excusing those protesting at the Wisconsin State Capitol from work. Physicians were seen standing on a street corner wearing lab coats and giving out medical notes.

Obama Admin Weakens Protections for Pro-Life Medical Workers Washington, DC -- The long-awaited decision by President Barack Obama to overturn conscience protections the Bush administration put in place to protect pro-life medical workers who don't want to be involved in certain medical procedures has finally occurred. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/02/18/obama-admin-weakens-protections-for-pro-life-medical-workers/

(CNSNews.com) - U.S. health care providers and health plans have two years left to adopt a new federally mandated system of medical coding--the shorthand used to list what's wrong with a patient and how much that patient should be charged. The new, vastly expanded coding system is intended to improve disease management, disease monitoring, and health care reimbursement. This will be the first major overhaul of the medical coding system in 30 years, and it is separate from the government’s push to have health care providers switch from paper records to electronic health records.

The woman who authorities say killed her teenage daughter and son because she was fed up with them talking back and being mouthy will not appear in court Saturday because she's being treated at a hospital for an unknown condition. Authorities say Julie Powers Schenecker was taken to Tampa General Hospital shortly after midnight Saturday to be treated for a medical condition that existed before she was taken to jail. Hillsborough Sheriff's deputies — who oversee jail inmates — said they could not reveal Schenecker's medical condition, citing health care privacy laws. An arrest affidavit said Schenecker shot her son...

Starting at 10AM we will present a special edition of the Jim Vicevich Show. Sandra Raymond, from the Lupus Foundation of America will be joining us, as well as Lisa Sartorius, the President of the Connecticut Lupus Foundation, as we take some time to raise money for Lupus research. Click here to contribute. Look for the “DONATE NOW” on the left hand side of the donate page. Read more about Lupus below the fold. As many of you may know I have Lupus. Lupus (SLE, CLE, SCLE) is a debilitating autoimmune disease, and while it’s affects on each individual can...

I recall in the 80's there being alot of hub-bub about DMSO (Dimethylsulfoxide) being used as a pain reliever for arthritis and general snake-oil for what ails ya. Well, in the 80's I was in my 20's and early 30's, so I never paid much attention. Plus, these were the very early days of the internet so info was basically what you saw on the local news, and not much else. Now, however, being in my 40's (just kidding... do the math!!) I have some minor aches and pains and perhaps early arthritis. Not much, but enuff to make me...

In Texas, a Catholic bishop made two hospitals cease doing tube-tying operations for women who are not going to have more babies. In Oregon, another bishop cast a medical center out of his diocese for refusing to discontinue the same procedure. In Arizona, a nun was excommunicated and the hospital where she works was expelled from the church after 116 years for allowing doctors to terminate a pregnancy to save a woman's life. Such disputes between hospitals and church authorities appear to be arising because of a confluence of factors: Economic pressures are spurring greater consolidation in the hospital industry,...

(Reuters) - Once a year, every year, Professor Thomas Borody receives a single-stem rose from one of his most grateful patients. She is, he says, thanking him for restoring her bowel flora. It's a distasteful cure for a problem that's increasingly widespread: the Clostridium difficile bug, typically caught by patients in hospitals and nursing homes, can be hard to treat with antibiotics. But Borody is one of a group of scientists who believe the answer is a faecal transplant. Some jokily call it a "transpoosion." Others have more sciencey names like "bacteriotherapy" or "stool infusion therapy." But the process involves,...

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to review California's controversial proposals to cut Medicaid reimbursements to physicians, dentists, pharmacies, health clinics and other medical providers. The court's decision to hear three combined California legal challenges is good news for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who wants to enact budget cuts similar to those that courts have previously struck down. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. "The fact that the court agreed to hear these cases is a big and important step for California," Elizabeth Ashford, a spokeswoman for Brown, said Tuesday night. The court's decision also could please...

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Dr. Andrew Wakefield's 1998 report in the journal Lancet purporting to show a link between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella "was based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud," says Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal, in an editorial published Tuesday. The editorial accompanies the first of three reports by British investigative journalist Brian Deer that document how Wakefield manipulated data in his attempts to prove something that he "knew" before he started his research. Most of the information in the reports has been published previously, but...

Doctors at a Berlin hospital have made a medical breakthrough after capturing live MRI images of the miracle of birth. The pictures, taken after a German mother agreed to give birth inside a magnetic-resonance imaging machine, could provide valuable new insights into the birthing process and allow future lives to be saved. Gynaecologist Ernst Beinder at Berlin's Charité Hospital said the birth proceeded normally and the machine filmed all the movements and processes that went on inside the womb.

WEST BURLINGTON - God sometimes just has to show off. That is the only way Penny Link and Shirley Martinez can explain the fact that their father, 84-year-old Gene Stotts, is alive and lucid. "It had to be a miracle," Link said during an interview Thursday. Only three days earlier, Stotts' family and friends believed him to be brain dead and had begun thinking about funeral arrangements. The daughters and their father live only blocks from each other in Oquawka, Ill. But rather than spending Thanksgiving eating turkey at home, Stotts' family spent the day in the waiting room for...

A man apparently was robbed Thursday night while trying to sell his medical marijuana to two teenagers... The suspects asked if he had any marijuana and the victim, who is a medical marijuana patient, offered to sell them some. The three went behind a business where one of the boys pulled out a gun, demanding all the marijuana. The victim pulled out his knife and stabbed one of the suspects in the leg. They attacked him, took the pot and ran. “I think he got his justice,” said Colorado Springs police spokesman Lt. Kirk Wilson, noting that the victim had...