Free Republic

If you need a reason to become a dog lover, how about their ability to help protect kids from allergies and obesity? A new University of Alberta study showed that babies from families with pets -- 70 per cent of which were dogs -- showed higher levels of two types of microbes associated with lower risks of allergic disease and obesity. But don't rush out to adopt a furry friend just yet. "There's definitely a critical window of time when gut immunity and microbes co-develop, and when disruptions to the process result in changes to gut immunity," said Anita Kozyrskyj,...

The left loves to muster the armies of official "science" to discount conservative values and principles. Man-made global warming, of course, is one example. Natural cycles of warming and cooling are indisputable. When Europe was cooler, 10,000 years ago, Britain was not an island, and what would become the English Channel has been called Doggerland, a land bridge between Britain and mainland Europe. Doggerland vanished about 6,500 years ago as natural global warming melted the oceans enough to cause the sea to rise. Later, in the Little Ice Age, Britain endured a natural cooling which caused many crops to fail...

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is vastly over-diagnosed with many cases simply immature children who are the youngest in their class. […] Around three to seven percent of British children are believed to have ADHD, about 400,000, with many being prescribed drugs to try and improve their concentration at school. […] Now a study of nearly 400,000 children between four and 17 years old in Taiwan has shown that the percentage of youngsters diagnosed with ADHD significantly changes depending on month of birth. Where just 2.8 percent of boys born in September have the condition, the figure jumps to 4.5...

Pretty big news comes from the island nation known for the quality of its cigars.This news is already making big noise in the western medical world. Xinhua reports that Cuban medical authorities have released the first therapeutic vaccine for lung cancer. In Cuba, 20,000 people die each year of lung cancer.It is the leading cause of death in 12 of the 15 Cuban provinces. CimaVax-EGF is the result of a 25-year research project at Havana's Center for Molecular Immunology, and it could make a life or death difference for those facing late-stage lung cancers, researchers there say. CimaVax-EGF isn't a...

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, you know, as sure as I called it, I'm telling you, remember the story we had yesterday on the Wi-Fi? A supposed doctor -- he's a doctor of environmental science -- has released his results from surveys or research or whatever that 5% of the population is susceptible to Wi-Fi sickness. And if you were here yesterday I spent a little bit of time on this 'cause I saw it was a lead item on Drudge, and I said, "I know what that means. Here we go." A totally manufactured new illness to create panic and...

They sure know how to "bury the lead" at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Thursday, the CDC issued its annual National Youth Tobacco Survey; the headline in the accompanying news release read: "E-cigarette use triples among middle and high school students in just one year." This was, indeed, true. In 2014, according to the survey results, 13.4 percent of high school students had used an electronic cigarette at least once during the month the survey was taken. That was up from 4.5 percent in 2013. In a conference call with reporters, Tom Frieden, the director of the...

What do you think of this? Despicable and outrageous, or just the school and police doing their duty?: "On March 24, cannabis oil activist Shona Banda‘s life was flipped upside-down after her son was taken from her by the State of Kansas. The ordeal started when counselors at her 11-year-old son’s school conducted a drug education class. Her son, who had previously lived in Colorado for a period of time, disagreed with some of the anti-pot points that were being made by school officials." The school called the police. Coppers showed up at Shona’s home, searched everything, and ended up...

A medical-device company lost out on a hefty Minnesota subsidy on Wednesday after the firm and its leader were criminally charged. The Department of Employment and Economic Development scrapped a potential $800,000 package tied to an expansion and hiring proposal put forth by Vascular Solutions. The decision came Wednesday, a day after The Associated Press reported the deal was cast into doubt by last week’s federal indictment. A hearing to consider approval of the Minnesota Job Creation Fund award had been set for Friday. […] Vascular Solutions and CEO Howard Root were federally indicted last week on charges of conspiring...

Fortune has a puff piece out on Whole Foods Market (WFM, a stock in which I have no interest and no intended interest), the up-scale purveyor of excellent prepared food, overpriced groceries with multiple claimed but unsubstantiated benefits, phony health remedies, and the oxymoronic concept of “healthy indulgence.” It made its reputation by pushing healthier living and selling food that doesn’t contain the pesticides and additives that are often staples of “regular” food.The Whole Foods approach has worked in that its share price is up about 12-fold since its November 2008 recession-era low versus 130 percent for the S&P 500...

... The machine produces 10 to 15 see-saw motions a minute to induce an exact imitation of natural breathing. It works automatically once the patient is balanced on the light metal frame.

Charlie Rogers maintained her innocence even as a Lancaster County judge found her guilty Monday of faking the anti-gay hate crime that shocked Lincoln and made headlines across the country. Rogers, 34, pleaded no contest in Lancaster County Court early Monday afternoon, a reversal of the not guilty plea she made in September. Judge Gale Pokorny found her guilty and set her sentencing for Feb. 14.

A new study released this past week has once again linked the consumption of processed foods to health complications, giving food safety advocates even more cause for concern. The April 10th publication of the Clinical Epigenetics Journal reported a link between high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and autism in the United States. According to the study, the rise in autism rates "is not related to mercury exposure from fish, coal-fired power plants, thimerosal, or dental amalgam but instead to the consumption of HFCS.” The study, led by former FDA toxicologist and whistleblower Renee Dufault, found that a deficiency of zinc,...

California Becomes First State In Nation To Ban ‘Gay Cure’ Therapy For Teens California state Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, sponsored the bill to ban a controversial form of psychotherapy aimed at making gay youth straight. By James Eng, NBC News California has become the first state in the nation to ban therapy that tries to turn gay teens straight. Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed Senate Bill 1172, which prohibits children under age 18 from undergoing “sexual orientation change efforts.” The law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, prohibits state-licensed therapists from engaging in these practices with...

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - Governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill barring a controversial therapy that aims to reverse homosexuality in minors, the measure's sponsor said on Sunday, making California the first state to ban a practice many say is psychologically damaging. The move marked a major victory for gay rights advocates who say so-called conversion therapy, also called reparative therapy, has no medical basis because homosexuality is not a disorder. The bill's sponsor, state Senator Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Torrance, said in a statement that Brown had signed the bill. An announcement from the governor's office was expected on...

A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer—a high proportion of them from university labs—are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future. During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 "landmark" publications—papers in top journals, from reputable labs—for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development. Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. "It...

The devotion of right-thinking persons to the Kyoto Protocol is not just puzzling. It is proof they are not serious. If they were, they would be even more fed up than we so-called "deniers" over the failure of Kyoto, and its 17 fancy follow-up conferences, to do anything important to stop climate change. Obviously supporters such as Jean Chretien and Bill Clinton were cynics, signing the accord for domestic political gain without having or wanting a plan to meet its targets. Indeed, Clinton never even asked for U.S. Senate ratification, let alone pushed for it. But what can explain the...

Bleak Economy Prompts Men To Seek More Sex Partners? Written by: Eurasia Review October 13, 2011 Grim economic times could cause men to seek more sexual partners, giving them more chances to reproduce, according to research by Omri Gillath, a social psychology professor at the University of Kansas. Men are likely to pursue short-term mating strategies when faced with a threatening environment, according to sexual selection theory based on evolutionary psychology. When made to think about their own death, which mimics conditions of “low survivability,” Gillath and his colleagues found that men responded more vigorously to sexual pictures and had...

Howard Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard, made the claim that we are alone in the universe after an analysis of the 500 planets discovered so far showed all were hostile to life. Dr Smith said the extreme conditions found so far on planets discovered outside out Solar System are likely to be the norm, and that the hospitable conditions on Earth could be unique. “We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different from our own. They are very hostile to life as we know it,” he said. He pointed to stars such as HD10180,...

Men with a long ring finger could be three times more likely to develop prostate cancer, research shows. Doctors found that the risk increases if the ring finger on the right hand is significantly longer than the index finger next to the thumb. But men whose ring fingers are only slightly longer, or are about the same length, are much less likely to get the disease. The findings open up the possibility of screening men with longer fingers at an early age for signs of cancer. In the study, blood tests showed that men with longer ring fingers on their...

The Great Rift Valley extends some 4,000 miles southward from Syria north of Israel, through the Gulf of Aqaba, through Ethiopia, and all the way to Mozambique in southeast Africa. It harbors a giant fault, which has been under investigation as a model for sea floor spreading. A recent geologic event rent a gaping crack through the desert of Ethiopia, causing safety concerns for locals. These crustal plate motions may foreshadow rifting events further north in the Great Rift Valley...