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Parents who do not have their children fully immunised will be stripped of family tax benefits under a scheme announced by the Federal Government. The Government says 11 per cent of five-year-olds are not immunised and has announced a shake-up of the system which will take effect from July 1 next year. Under the changes, families who refuse vaccinations face losing up to $2,100 per child in benefits. Families will need to have their children fully immunised to receive the Family Tax Benefit (FTB) Part A end-of-year supplement. A new immunisation check will be introduced for one-year-olds to supplement the...

A Maryland health advocate who fought successfully this year for an increase in the state’s alcohol sales tax is pushing for a tax increase on cigarettes. Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative, says the group will start a campaign next week asking the General Assembly to increase the state’s $2-a-pack tax on cigarettes to $3 and raise taxes on other tobacco products, including cigars and smokeless tobacco. Mr. DeMarco — a health lobbyist who has long championed so-called “sin taxes” on tobacco and alcohol — hopes to build on momentum from this year’s assembly, in which legislators...

After hearing from more than 30 speakers during hours of debate, the Virginia Board of Health on Thursday approved sweeping changes to abortion-clinic regulations that abortion-rights groups say will close many of the state's 22 clinics. Acting under a mandate from the Legislature, the board passed the new rules on a 12-1 vote. The emergency regulations, favored by pro-life advocates, give the state more control over facilities that provide five or more first-trimester abortions per month and requires those facilities to abide by regulations normally reserved for hospitals. By the start of 2012, clinics would be required to renovate their...

In reaching to remain relevant, the environmental movement has had to change tactics.  Back in the seventies, when America looked like China does today, environmental issues needed attention. But then we cleaned up the air and water. The skies and rivers went from brown to blue. As Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore explains, in order to stay relevant, environmentalists had to find new issues.For most of the last decade global warming has been their cause, and carbon—or burning fossil fuels—was vilified as the cause. This gave way to a whole new industry: green. Green energy would replace fossil fuels. Wind and...

A Florida man was arrested for popping zits on his back at a McDonald's restaurant, according to a report. Owen Lemire Kato of Port Charlotte stood in front of one of the entrances and repulsed customers by squeezing the pimples for more than 10 minutes, the police report cited by news-press.com said. Kato, 23, gave a fake name to an off-duty officer who tried to intervene, then gave his real name before bolting out of the restaurant, news-press.com reported. Another officer in the area heard the call go out, spotted Kato and tackled him after a brief chase on foot,...

(English-language translation) A septuagenarian missionary became the first person to import the dangerous cholera bacterium to Puerto Rico in over a century. Confirmation was done by the Department of Health, following protocol which requires that confirmed cholera cases be reported within 24 hours. The man, whom the Department of Health only identified as a missionary who lives in the northern part of the island, traveled to the Dominican Republic two weeks ago to do work in an area where hygienic conditions were not the best. "He is a person who travels to the Dominican Republic frequently," State Epidemiologist Carmen Deseda...

Gemeinnutzgeht vor Eigennutz. (The common good supersedes the private good.) ~ Nazi slogan Prologue Fanatical environmentalism, vegetarianism, animal rights and public health are four progressive policy initiatives that most people would not readily associate with Hitler and the Nazis. "Unlike Marxism, which declared much of culture and humanity irrelevant to the revolution, National Socialism was holistic," wrote Jonah Goldberg. Indeed, "organic" and "holistic" were the Nazi terms of art for totalitarianism. The Mussolinian vision of everything inside the state, nothing outside the state, was organic-ized by the Nazis. In this sense, the Bavarian cabinet minister Hans Schemm was deadly serious...

A new campaign seeks to eliminate disclosure laws which require HIV positive individuals to inform their sex partners of their potentially deadly infection. The campaign is led by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and UNAIDS, an umbrella group of UN agencies. Notably absent from this campaign is any recognition of the danger posed for the possible victims of a willful refusal to disclose HIV status. As part of the campaign, IPPF released a collection of interviews entitled “Behind Bars”, which implies that such criminal laws fuel stigma against HIV persons. Proponents of criminal laws assert, however, they are designed...

Obesity affects many aspects of our society, and the military is no exception. But the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has a solution to slimming down potential recruits: promote vegetarianism. The committee recently wrote a letter to Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offering free copies of its "Vegetarian Starter Kit." The group supports "compassionate and effective medical practice, research and health promotion," according to its website, and is against animal research and testing. A news release included part of the letter from the group's nutrition education director Susan Levin: "It is not too late for...

California is in the midst of its worst outbreak of whooping cough in a half-century. More than 2,700 cases have been reported so far this year — eight times last year's number at this point. Seven of the victims, all infants, have died. And here's what really worries pediatricians like UCLA's Harvey Karp: Doctors thought they wiped out whooping cough when they developed vaccines decades ago. The disease hits young children hardest, especially ones who are not vaccinated or who have not yet built up full immunity. The prescribed vaccination regimen begins with a shot at two months and continues...

Every five years, the federal Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services revise their Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a publication that sets the direction for federal nutrition-education programs. In an age when aggressive government agencies in places like New York City seek a greater hand in shaping Americans’ diets, the next set of guidelines, published later this year, could prove more controversial than usual because increasing scientific evidence suggests that some current federal recommendations have simply been wrong. Will a public-health establishment that has been slow to admit its mistakes over the years acknowledge the new research...

Los Angeles County public health and U.S. Forest Service officials have closed the Los Alamos Campground in the Angeles National Forest after a California ground squirrel captured two weeks ago tested positive for plague. The camp, between Gorman and Pyramid Lake, was closed Saturday afternoon and will remain closed for at least 10 days, said Jonathan Fielding, the county's public health director. Squirrel burrows in the area will be dusted for fleas, and further testing will be conducted before the campground is reopened. "We're fortunate to have caught this," Fielding said. "This case now is about prevention." Plague is a...

Even before the doors opened on the $1.02-billion Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center many observers warned that the new hospital was too small. Now, more than a year and a half of experience appears to confirm it. The overcrowding has become so intense that health officials asked county Supervisor Gloria Molina eight months ago what she would think if the hospital began placing patients in the hallways, the supervisor recalled in an interview. "I said, 'Absolutely not. We will not have patients in the hallway,' " Molina said. Instead, County- USC officials have increased patient transfers to other hospitals. Despite...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-establishing-national-prevention-health-promotion-and-public-health Home • Briefing Room • Presidential Actions • Executive Orders The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 10, 2010 Executive Order-- Establishing the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council EXECUTIVE ORDER ESTABLISHING THE NATIONAL PREVENTION, HEALTH PROMOTION, AND PUBLIC HEALTH COUNCIL By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 4001 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148), it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Establishment. There...

Following two days of testimony, a federal panel Friday voted against recommending changes to ease the current blood donation restrictions for gay men, saying more research was needed to help “create a road map forward” for future change. By a 9-6 vote, members of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability agreed to continue the current donor policy which rejects blood donations from any man who has had sex with another man — a category know as "MSM" — even once in the past 33 years. Gay rights groups and others...

During past recessions, the financial stability of hospitals seemed to be nearly indestructible. But researchers at the University of Michigan Health System and St. Joseph Mercy Health System say the current national economic crisis may be an exception. Hospitals are reporting declining profits, likely as a result of Americans losing health insurance as they lose jobs. As a result, hospital plans for renovation and new construction are being scrapped, and hospitals are being forced to reduce hospital staff, according to an analysis in the just-released May/June issue of the Journal of Hospital Medicine. The researchers speculate hospital cutbacks may risk...

Groups urge government to lift lifetime restriction Should gay men be allowed to donate blood? A government health committee is re-examining that question today. A regulation created at the height of the 1980s' AIDS epidemic banned men who have had sex with another man since 1977 from ever giving blood. Advocacy groups, blood-collection organizations and some members of Congress are calling for the Food and Drug Administration to revise the lifetime ban, which has been reviewed twice in the past 10 years, but left unchanged.

More than two dozen cases of locally-acquired dengue fever have hit the resort town of Key West , Fla., in the past nine months, officials from the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Lesbians, gays and bisexuals in California are almost twice as likely to experience intimate partner violence as heterosexuals, researchers said. Elaine Zahnd, a sociologist at the Public Health Institute, partnered with the University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Health Policy Research in conducting the California Health Interview Survey, which found almost 4 million adults in California reported being a victim of physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner. One-quarter of the 4 million report being forced by their intimate partner to have sex, the researchers said. Almost 28 percent of lesbian or gay adults in California report intimate...

A potentially deadly strain of fungus is spreading among animals and people in the northwestern United States and the Canadian province of British Columbia, researchers reported on Thursday. The airborne fungus, called Cryptococcus gattii, usually only infects transplant and AIDS patients and people with otherwise compromised immune systems, but the new strain is genetically different, the researchers said. "This novel fungus is worrisome because it appears to be a threat to otherwise healthy people," said Edmond Byrnes of Duke University in North Carolina, who led the study. "The findings presented here document that the outbreak of C. gattii in Western...

The UK Department of Health recently announced that it would loosen hygiene rules for Muslim and Sikh doctors and nurses. From now on, Muslim female staff will not need to wash their hands before procedures as it compromises their modesty. Instead, they will have the admittedly less sanitary option of wearing disposable plastic over-sleeves. Acknowledging the danger of microbes and death, a Department of Health spokesman said, “The guidance is intended to . . . balance infection control measures with cultural beliefs.” But, believe it or not, from a culturist perspective, the death of some patients is not the main...

While the Obama Administration and its "progressive" supporters in Congress insist they want a federal health care bill to protect people from deadly diseases, liberal senators led by John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) have pressured the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) into considering lifting the ban on male homosexuals donating blood. It's a decision that could mean disease and death for many Americans, and billions of dollars in additional health care costs. "John Kerry Supports Gay Blood" declared a column on a pro-homosexual website. Kerry, Franken and 16 other liberal senators insist they want the blood supply...

CDC Analysis Provides New Look at Disproportionate Impact of HIV and Syphilis Among U.S. Gay and Bisexual Men A data analysis released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention underscores the disproportionate impact of HIV and syphilis among gay and bisexual men in the United States. The data, presented at CDC's 2010 National STD Prevention Conference, finds that the rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) is more than 44 times that of other men and more than 40 times that of women. While CDC data have shown for several years that...

"It speaks of regular and reserve Officers, scholarships, loans, obligated service, individual contracts, training centers, the traditional income redistribution scheme of grants and grant proposals, etc. The debt repayment provisions are especially attractive to certain sectors of our population. It appears to be an indentured servitude gig. You sign up, do your part for nationalizing health care and the Corps will get the American taxpayer to foot the bill for your training and educational costs and retire your debts. Of course, if pinned down, I'm sure this will be characterized as a draft, a proposal, need to modify, hasn't been...

Sen. John Kerry is slamming the Food and Drug Administration with letters, demanding that it justify and reconsider its "outdated" ban on blood donation by men who have sex with men. According to the FDA policy, homosexual men are banned from donating blood if they have had sexual intercourse with a male since 1977. Kerry, D-Mass., and 17 other Democratic lawmakers asked FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to reverse the policy in a March 4 letter. "Not a single piece of scientific evidence supports the ban." Kerry wrote. "A law that was once considered medically justified is today simply outdated and...

This has been a flu season like few others. Normally at this time of year, influenza is rampant in the U.S., prompting hundreds of thousands of people to stay home in the dead of winter with fever, aches and pains. Now, after raging through college campuses and communities last summer and fall, cases of the new H1N1 swine flu virus have dwindled to a trickle, and run-of-the-mill seasonal flu has barely made an appearance. Not one state reported widespread flu illness to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the week ended Feb. 20, the latest data available. The...

VANCOUVER -- Health officials confirmed Friday a crew member has a case of leprosy aboard a cruise ship anchored in the city's harbour that houses police and Canadian Forces personnel providing security for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, is curable and is not considered highly contagious, said provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall. He said the young crew member worked in the engine room and did not have contact with police or military. The crew member, who is not a Canadian citizen, was diagnosed Thursday and has received treatment, he said. "I think he's gone...

United States' Largest Outbreak In Years Ransacks Hasidic Jewish Communities In Rockland County NEW YORK (CBS) ― More than 300 people have been diagnosed with the mumps in suburban New York as the nation's largest outbreak of the disease in years continues to spread. A health official says a total of 303 people in the Rockland County towns of Monsey and New Square have been diagnosed with the highly infectious disease. Almost all the cases are among Orthodox or Hasidic Jews. Investigators say the outbreak started in August 2009 at a Jewish summer camp in Sullivan County with an 11-year-old...

LANTANA, Fla. – It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away. Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood. I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad." It was really bad, and not just for him....

LANTANA, Fla. (Dec. 27) - It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away. Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood. I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad." It was really bad, and not just...

LANTANA, Florida — It started with a cough, a cool-season hack that refused to go away. Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood. I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad." It was really bad, and not just for him....

French rock icon Johnny Hallyday is in a medically induced coma at a U.S. hospital as a result of an operation gone bad in France, according to the singer's handlers.

San Francisco health officials reported an alarming increase in new syphilis cases last year after years of declines. New syphilis cases rose 55.8 percent in 2008 over the previous year, San Francisco public health officials reported. The increase was significantly lower than the dramatic spikes reported early in the decade, when new infections increased 167 percent from 2001 to 2002. But last year's rise would seem to indicate an increase in unsafe sexual practices, which could lead to a rise in HIV infection rates.

Washington, D.C., had the dubious distinction of beating all 50 states to post the highest rates in the nation for the sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, according to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. The District of Columbia had a Chlamydia rate of 1,177 cases per 100,000 people--almost three times the rate of its neighbors, Virginia (405) and Maryland (439). Mississippi was a distant second, at 728 cases per 100,000 people. By comparison, California’s rate was 407 cases per 100,000; New York came in at 458; New Mexico...

Swine Flu Forces Changes In Church TraditionsNov 11, 2009 11:26 pm US/Eastern SACRAMENTO (CBS) - The swine flu outbreak has forced local Catholic churches to revamp some rituals in hopes of slowing the spread of the disease, CBS station KOVR-TV reported. The bishop of Sacramento ordered Catholic churches to make changes during mass, so parishioners will no longer drink from the cup, hold hands during the Lord's Prayer or shake hands as a sign of peace. The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament is also changing the holy water regularly and wiping down the bowl, and is asking sick church members...

Dallas County's first mass distribution of the swine flu vaccine Wednesday tested the patience of thousands of adults and children, who stood outdoors for hours to snag a scarce shot. SONYA N. HEBERT/DMN Rony Velazquez, 4, waited while his mother, Blanca Medrano (left), and his sister Diana Velazquez were screened before getting their H1N1 shots at the Dallas County Health and Human Services building on Wednesday.But in the end, there was a lot of praise for how well the county dispensed the vaccine. Despite chilly weather before dawn and intense sun by late morning, almost no one in the line...

President Obama called the 22-year ban on travel and immigration by HIV-positive individuals a decision "rooted in fear rather than fact" and announced the end of the rule-making process overturning the ban. The president signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009 at the White House Friday and also spoke of the new rules, which have been under development more more than a year. "We are finishing the job," the president said. The regulations are the final procedural step in ending the ban, and will be published Monday in the Federal Register, to be followed by the standard...

Does HIV mean certain death? In the quarter century since the world was introduced to the idea that a new sexually transmitted virus was the cause of Aids, HIV has been generally regarded as one of the biggest killers of our time. HIV/Aids has not been the mass disease in Britain that people were led to believe in the 1980s, but the death toll from immune deficiency diseases ascribed to HIV in Africa has been staggering. The scale of death there is an ongoing tragedy that tests the moral resolve of the rich world. How much do we care? Enough...

Many people have said or thought this since Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, invented the term ‘eugenics’ in 1883.[1] Since then, the cheerleaders for this offspring of evolution have included racists of many different nationalities, such as Hitler’s Nazis, as well as enthusiasts for the ‘right’ to abortion, euthanasia, and now in the 21st century, human destruction for embryonic stem-cell research. This is of course consistent with the belief they all share, namely that people are all just evolved animals. The many violations of human rights, and the killings and genocides which are the result of eugenicist beliefs are well documented...

Obama declares swine flu emergency 9 mins ago WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama has declared swine flu a "national emergency," the White House said Saturday, as the United States reels from millions of cases of infection and over 1,000 deaths.

MEMPHIS, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan told an audience in Memphis he believes the H1N1 flu vaccine was developed to kill people, a witness said. Farrakhan, 76, spoke for nearly three hours Sunday at a gathering to observe the religious group's Holy Day of Atonement, which also marked the 14th anniversary of the Million Man March in Washington, the (Memphis) Commercial Appeal reported, citing a source who attended the speech. "The Earth can't take 6.5 billion people. We just can't feed that many. So what are you going to do? Kill as many as...

The fight against mandatory flu vaccines has just gotten a shot in the arm. An Albany judge has just issued a temporary restraining order preventing the state Department of Health from mandating flu vaccinations for health care workers in New York, according to lawyers in the case. Terry Kindlon, the lawyer representing nurses who filed a lawsuit this week, said Judge Thomas McNamara issued the order at a hearing Friday morning. The nurses argue the policy violates their civil rights. State Health Commissioner Richard Daines had imposed a regulation that required certain health care workers to be vaccinated by Nov....

Can the scientist who denied the cause of AIDS be trusted to cure cancer? --snip-- ...In the past three decades, Duesberg has been described as a genius, a martyr, and a genocidal lunatic—often by the same person, usually amid the fierce debates and international headlines that come with major scientific breakthroughs. In 1971, at the age of 33, he became the first scientist to identify a cancer-causing gene—a biological holy grail that secured his place among an elite group of the country's top researchers. Tenure at Berkeley and a coveted spot in the National Academy of Sciences followed. So did...

WASHINGTON (RNS) The White House and federal health officials have released guidelines recommending that worshippers take precautions against spreading germs to reduce the risk of contracting swine flu. Marilyn Meyers, a 67-year-old member of Washington National Cathedral, already had thought about the health risks involved in her church’s services. On Sunday (Oct. 4), as she has for the past several months, she rubbed sanitizer on her hands before getting in line for Holy Communion. “You shake hands, you touch the prayer books we all share, you break off a piece of the same bread—who knows what might be on...

As Montana bars dealt with their first smoke-free weekend since the state’s indoor smoking ban went into effect, ingenuity ruled. In Missoula, according to a great piece by Michael Moore in the Missoulian, the Rhino Bar gave smokers their very own place to light up: a Butt Hutt, created by Dave Golden of Well Done Welding and Jim Bell, a general contractor. Moore describes the hut as a 4-by-8-foot “metal smoking dugout” in the alley behind the Rhino in Missoula. The no-smoking laws spark the type of debate that never seems to get extinguished. Pro-smokers argue that the bans hurt...

The State of New Jersey is now mandating every school child be vaccinated, otherwise they will be kicked out of class. This ABC news report covers the story

Bethea said federal officials tested the river and found the E. coli bacteria level was 42 times greater than the highest safe level. “There is no way you want to get in or even touch water [this dirty],” Bethea said. “I’ve never seen the water so filthy. It was just filthy, and it didn’t smell very good in some places.” The river tour also found massive shoreline damage, including collapsed banks and fallen trees. --snip-- The U.S. Park Service on Wednesday shut down use of portions of the Chattahoochee, citing the dumping of raw sewage from broken sewage lines in...

With scant public input, state and federal officials are pushing ahead with plans that -- during a severe flu outbreak -- would deny use of scarce ventilators by some patients to assure they would be available for patients judged to benefit the most from them. The plans have been drawn up to give doctors specific guidelines for extreme circumstances, and they include procedures under which patients who weren’t improving would be removed from life support with or without permission of their families. The plans are designed to go into effect if the U.S. were struck by a severe flu pandemic...

This is the first I've heard about this..I was wondering if anyone else out there has more info.. If this is in fact true, it's amazingly scary..

Rewarding (to some) A-H1N1 flu hysteria grips globe --snip-- Global panic seems to have taken hold on the flu front, as media sensationalism magnifies medical warnings into worldwide alarm. A key soccer match plays to empty stands in Mexico, gates locked against ticketholders; Mexican City restaurants, bars, movies, discos, theaters, gyms and swimming pools are closed for five days at a cost of $100 million a day; tourist ships are veering away from Mexican ports; one child dies and 433 schools are closed in the US; “swine flu” tops the Twitter meter; Egypt orders all pigs slaughtered; Britain with five...