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Argentine President Cristina Fernandez never had cancer despite being diagnosed with the disease last month and having her thyroid gland removed on January 4, her spokesman said on Saturday. The government announced just after Christmas that the recently re-elected leader had thyroid cancer. The operation to remove the gland went well, but when it was later analyzed it turned out to have never contained cancerous cells, said spokesman Alfredo Scoccimaro. "The original diagnosis has been modified," he told a news conference. "The presence of cancer cells was discarded." Fernandez was originally diagnosed with papillary carcinoma. …

Doctors from numerous hospitals set up a station near the Capitol to provide notes to explain public employees' absences from work. Family physician Lou Sanner, 59, of Madison, said he had given out hundreds of notes. Many of the people he spoke with seemed to be suffering from stress, he said. "What employers have a right to know is if the patient was assessed by a duly licensed physician about time off of work," Sanner said. "Employers don't have a right to know the nature of that conversation or the nature of that illness. So it's as valid as every...

PARIS (AFP) – Men whose index fingers are longer than their ring, or fourth, fingers run a significantly lower risk of prostate cancer, according to a study published Wednesday in the British Journal of Cancer. The chances of developing the disease drop by a third, and even more in younger men, the study found. "Our results show that relative finger length could be used as a simple test for prostate cancer risk, particularly in men aged under 60," said Ros Eeles, a professor at the Institute of Cancer Research in Britain and co-author of the study. Finger pattern could help...

Narcissistic personality disorder, characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance and the need for constant attention, has been eliminated from the upcoming manual of mental disorders, which psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness. As Charles Zanor reports in today’s Science Times, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — due out in 2013 and known as D.S.M.-5 — has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition. The best known of these is narcissistic personality disorder. It is a puzzle why the manual’s committee on personality disorders has decided...

Scientists have discovered a real-life 'moral compass' in the brain that controls how we judge other people's behaviour. The region, which lies just behind the right ear, becomes more active when we think about other people's misdemeanours or good works. In an extraordinary experiment, researchers were able to use powerful magnets to disrupt this area of the brain and make people temporarily less moral. The study highlights how our sense of right and wrong isn't just based on upbringing, religion or philosophy - but by the biology of our brains. Dr Liane Young, who led the study, said: 'You think...

If there's a silver lining in the continued popularity of non-scientific healing techniques, it's the fact that the scientific community is at long last putting these so-called treatments and potions through vigorous testing. And one by one they fail to live up to their purported benefits. Here are five alternative therapies that were debunked or denounced in 2009.

WASHINGTON – The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, issued the following statement today on the American Medical Association’s (AMA) announcements regarding LGBT rights. AMA members voted to join the effort to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and declared that bans on same-sex marriage result in health disparities for LGBT couples and families.

L.A. Doctor Accused of Faking Medical Exams for Immigrants November 4, 2009 A 72-year-old Los Angeles doctor was accused by state and federal authorities of faking medical exams for immigrants applying for U.S. visas, officials said. According to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Levon Tebelekian allegedly charged immigrants $150 to give them medical clearance papers without giving them medical exams. Such exams are required by the federal government to make sure immigrants don't have any diseases. It is unclear whether any of the immigrants involved in the alleged scam had any health problems.

A boy of 10 died from meningitis after doctors wrongly diagnosed a migraine and told his mother to give him calpol, an inquest was told yesterday. William Cressey saw five doctors in three days before finally suffering 'catastrophic' brain damage. His mother, Cheryl, 48, repeatedly told doctors that she suspected meningitis but each time was ignored, she said. Just hours before he died the schoolboy begged one of those doctors: 'Please help me. I'm going to die.' By then his face was so swollen that he could barely see and he was drifting in and out of consciousness. Wiping tears...

Last year Americans spent $22.5 billion on dietary supplements, taking everything from a standard multivitamin to fish oil for the heart to magnesium for healthy bones. But how do we know which vitamin pills we need and which we don't? And at what doses do the risks outweigh the benefits? Dr. Eric Rimm at the Harvard School of Public Health sat down with ABC's Medical Editor Dr. Tim Johnson to discuss some of the more talked about vitamins, how much of them we should be taking and whether too much can be detrimental to our health. In a field filled...

Watching Albert Arnold Gore Jr., Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., and their fellow juniors consistently duck the tough questions about the scientific shortcomings of their elaborate phantasm of global warming, carbon footprints, hybrid automobiles, fluorescent light bulbs, greenhouse gases, toxic emissions, shrinking icecaps, melting glaciers, homeless polar bears and boring documentaries, it suddenly hit me: if it ducks like a quack, it must be a quack. The venerable American institution of quackery -- quack science, quack medicine, quack

Vitamin supplements taken by millions of people every day for their health could be increasing their risk of death a new Danish-led study suggests. The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The international research team reviewed the published evidence on beta carotene, vitamin A, vitamin E, Vitamin C and selenium. The team was led by Dr Goran Bjelakovic, from Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark. These dietary supplements are marketed as antioxidants and people take them in the hope they will improve health and guard against diseases like cancer and heart disease by eliminating the free radicals...

A 15-year-old girl and her parents recently came in for a chat with Dr. James Perrin, a Boston pediatrician, because they were concerned about the girl's grades. Previously an A student, she was slipping to B's, and the family was convinced attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was at fault — and that a prescription for Ritalin would boost her brainpower. After examining the girl, Perrin determined she didn't have ADHD. The parents, who had come in demanding a prescription, left empty-handed. Perrin, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other physicians...

Some Democrats, breaking ranks from their leadership, today said the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq was a stunt to divert attention from an unpopular and hopeless war. "This is just to cover Bush's [rear] so he doesn't have to answer" for Iraqi civilians being killed by the U.S. military and his own sagging poll numbers, said Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat. "Iraq is still a mess -- get out."

Traditionalists Unite Against Blasphemy Remnant Press Release www.remnantnewspaper.com Dear fellow Catholics, I talked with Mr. John Watkins (coordinator for the Latin Mass community at Blessed Sacrament) this morning concerning the awful event planned for Sunday at 4:00 p.m. http://www.kansascitykansan.com/articles/2006/01/04/news/local/news13.txt They (The Latin Mass Community) are asking for our help. They would like us to join them in the spirit of peacefully consoling our Blessed Lord for the abomination that is scheduled for Sunday at 4:00 p.m. and to demonstrate to the Archdiocese that this type of blasphemous "musical performance" is not Catholic and cannot be tolerated in a Catholic place...

Website quacks try to cash in on bird flu By David Sapsted (Filed: 21/10/2005) An array of odd and invariably useless products are being marketed by people exploiting fears over bird flu. Aside from an assortment of masks, air filtration systems, rubber gloves and sterilising hand washes, websites are offering everything from herbal teas to a DIY house for bats as answers to the predicted pandemic. The idea behind the bat house, advertised on an internet auction site, is that it will "attract mosquito-eating bats to eat the parasites that may be carrying the disease". Or may not be: avian...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - He went to prison for fraud and was ordered by the U.S. government to stop touting health products on infomercials, but Kevin Trudeau's book "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You to Know About" is a bestseller. Trudeau, who for years sold snoring remedies and memory enhancers through long-format commercials dressed up as talk shows, says he is a consumer advocate battling the "unholy alliance" of drug companies and government regulators. "It's all about money. The drug industry does not want people to get healthy," he says in a commercial for his book. Trudeau says he has...

IT sounds like something out of the satirical journal Annals of Improbable Research: a team of Swedish neuroscientists scanned people's brains as they smelled a testosterone derivative found in men's sweat and an estrogen-like compound found in women's urine. In heterosexual men, a part of the hypothalamus (the seat of physical drives) responded to the female compound but not the male one; in heterosexual women and homosexual men, it was the other way around. But the discovery is more than just a shoo-in for that journal's annual Ig Nobel Prize - it raises provocative questions about the science and ethics...

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - A compound taken from male sweat stimulates the brains of gay men and straight women but not heterosexual men, raising the possibility that homosexual brains are different, researchers in Sweden reported on Monday. It also strengthens the evidence that humans respond to pheromones -- compounds known to affect animal behavior, especially mating behavior, but whose role in human activity has been questioned. The pheromone in question is a derivative of testosterone called 4,16-androstadien-3-one, or AND. "AND is detected primarily in male sweat," the researchers write in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National...

Key points • Study finds parents discriminate between children based on 'attractiveness' • Canadian study showed parents more likely to neglect 'unattractive' children • Attractiveness described in terms of facial symmetry, cleanliness and attire Key quote "Most parents will react to this with shock and dismay. They’ll say ‘I love my kids and I don’t discriminate on the basis of attractiveness.’ The point of our research is that people do" - Dr Andrew Harrell, University of Alberta, Canada Story in full GOOD-looking children get more attention from their parents than less attractive ones, new research has claimed. The study by...

PHILADELPHIA -- When word spread that people injured by the fen-phen diet drug cocktail could share in a multibillion dollar legal settlement, law firms began sponsoring health screenings so large that a judge quipped that one doctor's work "would have been the envy of Henry Ford." Tens of thousands of people took echocardiograms _ sometimes on machines set up in hotel rooms _ to see if they had heart valve damage caused by the drugs. Doctors earned hefty fees evaluating tests for lawyers, with some handling as many as 10,000 diagnoses apiece. Years later, people are still arguing whether the...

GAINESVILLE Florida's Board of Governors voted 10-3 today to reject a proposed chiropractic school at Florida State University that was sought by powerful lawmakers, but vehemently opposed by some FSU medical faculty. The board did not agree there was a need to create the nation's first chiropractic school at a public university, especially when state funding is so scarce and it could damage the school's reputation. The project has been embroiled in controversy since last year when state lawmakers put $9 million in the state budget for a school. Instead it was a pet project for then Senate President Jim...

Two studies by University of Illinois food science and human nutrition professor Sharon Donovan show that the soy isoflavone genistein, in amounts present in commercial soy infant formulas, may inhibit intestinal cell growth in babies. So what are we to think about soy in a baby's diet? Donovan said it's an important question to ask because almost 25 percent of formula-fed babies in the United States consume soy formula. Although babies on soy formula appear to grow normally, these formulas contain very high concentrations of genistein, from 32 to 45 milligrams, which is higher than the amount found to affect...

(CNSNews.com) - With the world's attention focused on the earthquake/tsunami that has claimed tens of thousands of lives in at least ten countries that surround the Indian Ocean, media organizations like Reuters are pinning part of the blame for the catastrophe on "global warming." "A creeping rise in sea levels tied to global warming, pollution and damage to coral reefs may make coastlines even more vulnerable to disasters like tsunamis or storms in [the] future," wrote Alister Doyle, an environmental correspondent for Reuters, who attributed the opening paragraph of the story to "experts." However, Doyle's story did not contain...

What the Bleep Do We Know?" a quirky film by a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur that links quantum physics with the teachings of a Washington state guru - who channels a 35,000-year-old warrior - is breaking attendance records at art houses across the country. A word-of-mouth campaign, undeterred by reviews skeptical of the film's New Age underpinnings and leaps of scientific faith, has made it an unexpected hit among independent films. Box office returns of $8.3 million in mid-November put it among the top-grossing indies in recent years, behind "Fahrenheit 9/11" ($119 million), "Bowling for Columbine" ($21 million) and "Super...

Meat Increases the Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease “Extensive evidence points to the rich Western diet as the fundamental cause of Alzheimer’s disease: … Worldwide, the incidence of AD [Alzheimer’s disease] is more common among people who follow meat- and dairy-centered diets, than among those people who eat a more plant-based diet.” —Dr. John McDougall, McDougall Wellness Center Indeed, a flood of research shows that the toxins in meat, including chicken and fish, increase your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, while the antioxidants in vegetables help prevent this deadly disease. Click here to learn more. In the wake of former President...

Is it an unfortunate evolutionary holdover, or the product of bad upbringing? At the recent conference in Chicago of the Association of Politics and Life Sciences, a panel on "Biobehaviorial Approaches to Politics" addressed the important question: What is wrong with people who disagree with the mainstream of American academic social scientists? Nancy Meyer-Emerick, an assistant professor of public administration at Cleveland State University, made a presentation on "Evolutionary Perspectives on the Authoritarian Personality." Professor Meyer-Emerick wants to know if there are genetic tendencies that promote what she dubs "authoritarianism." She defines this distasteful quality through the work of University...

President Bush plans to unveil next month a sweeping mental health initiative that recommends screening for every citizen and promotes the use of expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs favored by supporters of the administration. The New Freedom Initiative, according to a progress report, seeks to integrate mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing "services in the community, rather than institutions," the British Medical Journal reported. Critics say the plan protects the profits of drug companies at the expense of the public. The initiative began with Bush's launch in April 2002 of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health,...

STANEK: Abortionist jokes and quacks Tuesday, June 15, 2004 By Jill Stanek (Jill@illinoisleader.com) "I know I'm not Marcus Welby," quipped Arizona abortionist Brian Finkel when he was convicted earlier this year on 22 counts of sexual abuse of patients. [Photo and quote courtesy of The Arizona Republic.] OPINION -- Q: What’s the difference between an abortionist and a catfish? A: One’s an ugly, smelly, garbage eating bottom feeder, and the other one’s a fish. Although abortion was legitimized in 1973, the reputation of abortionists was not. For this and other reasons, the number of abortionists in America is in rapid...

A federal judge has ruled a former Temple University student can proceed to trial in his suit against two school officials who he claims tried to commit him to a psychiatric ward because of his religious beliefs. Michael Marcavage alleges William Bergman, Temple University vice president of operations, and Carl Bittenbender, managing director of Campus Safety Services, forcibly detained him and attempted to have him involuntarily committed in the school hospitals' pysch ward in the fall of 2000. The lawsuit seeks unspecified money damages from the administrators. Marcavage had been working to offer a Christian alternative on campus to the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers who found homosexual rams in a herd of sheep said they had found changes in the brains of the "gay" animals. The results, published in the latest issue of the Journal Endocrinology, tend to support studies in humans that have found anatomical differences between the brains of heterosexual men and homosexual men. The researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine found certain groups of brain cells were different between rams and ewes in a part of the sheep brain controlling sexual behavior. And in rams that preferred to mate with other males,...

January 14 could have been a bad day for George Bush. As the president was preparing to announce America's return to the moon in a speech at the headquarters of Nasa, he was almost asked to deliver a very different message: that the Earth could suffer a devastating asteroid strike within 24 hours. Astronomers have revealed that during a "nine-hour crisis" the night before Mr Bush's speech they believed there was a one in four chance an asteroid would hit the planet in 36 hours. Had it not been for a break in the clouds that allowed an amateur astronomer...

LONDON (Reuters) - British surgeons are endangering patients by using paper clips to close wounds and tongue depressors as splints for babies, a government agency said Tuesday. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said it had uncovered an increasing trend for doctors to use medical devices in ways they were not meant to be used, and also "adapt nonmedical products for clinical purposes." Such misuse can put patients' health at serious risk, it said. "For example, use of tongue depressors in a neonatal intensive care unit as limb splints led to two deaths and one amputation because of fungal...

Breakthrough Offers Worldwide Solution to Global Warming First to Solve Green House Gases from Combustion of Fossil Fuels; Global Economic Impact Projected The technological breakthrough which the world scientific and health communities have been desperately seeking to solve the problem of green house gases and global warming was unveiled today by Robert R. Holcomb, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, before an audience of New Zealand government, business and environmental leaders. Dr. Holcomb announced today for the first time a revolutionary new technology, Electron Stream Carbon Dioxide Reduction (ESCO2R) commonly called the Carbon Dioxide Converter...

"Should These Conditions Be Normalized?" : American Psychiatric Association Symposium Debates Whether Pedophilia, Gender-Identity Disorder, Sexual Sadism Should Remain Mental IllnessesOn Monday, May 19th, 2003 in San Francisco, at a symposium hosted by the American Psychiatric Association, several long-recognized categories of mental illness were discussed for possible removal from the upcoming edition of the psychiatric manual of mental disorders. Among the mental illnesses being debated in the symposium at the APA's annual convention were all the paraphilias--which include pedophilia, exhibitionism, fetishism, transvestism, voyeurism, and sadomasochism. Also being debated was gender-identity disorder, a condition in which a person feels persistent discomfort...

IF THEY BELIEVE THAT III This is the third article in the "If They Believe That" series on the dominance of superstitious rather than rational belief. The first two, were on Religion and Science. Superstition and Medicine (The following is adapted from "Truth and Superstition" in the September issue of Fire and Hammer.) One set of beliefs that are undeniably important to all people, both because everyone considers them important and because, when acted on, they have profound consequences, are those beliefs we have about the nature of our bodies, health, and disease. Depending on one's particular medical beliefs,...