Free Republic

Sometimes he went by the nickname, Mik. To the thousands of people, especially veterans, who listened to his hip-hop, he was known as Doc Todd. George Michael Todd was a Navy corpsman who served in Afghanistan with the 2/8 Marines — known as "America's Battalion." He died in Atlanta earlier this month at the age of 38. The cause was sudden cardiac death, according to his wife, Abigail. In 2017, Todd told NPR his album Combat Medicine was intended to help fellow veterans heal. One of his most popular songs, "Not Alone" is about empowerment, "about taking charge of your...

GUATEMALAN star Marcos Menaldo has tragically passed away at the age of 25 after suffering a heart attack in training on Monday. The Deportivo Marquense defender complained of breathing difficulties during a session while preparing for the new season. Menaldo received emergency CPR at the Marquesa de la Ensenada Stadium in San Marcos. He was then transferred to the Hospital de Especialidades where he died. The centre-back was instrumental in helping Deportivo win Guatemala's second division title last campaign. They were crowned as Liga de Ascenso champions in December on the day that Menaldo turned 25. OF COURSE, IT HAS...

SCIENTISTS combing the human genome have discovered ten common genetic mutations that boost the risk of sudden cardiac arrest by subtly disrupting the heart beat, two studies released on Sunday reported. The findings shed light on the cause of the irregular rhythms that often underlie severe heart problems, and could point to new treatments, said the study, published in Nature Genetics. Heart disease is the number one killer worldwide, claiming upward of 17 million lives every year, according to the World Health Organization. Smoking, obesity and high cholesterol are common risk factors, but genes can be a critical factor too....

A therapy that increases patients' survival rate to 4.7 percent from 1.5 percent may not sound like a breakthrough, but that is how an editorial in a medical journal last week described a new treatment to revive people whose hearts had suddenly stopped. The new advance was an old drug, vasopressin, injected before a shot of the standard therapy, adrenaline. In people who had no pulse or electrical activity in their hearts, a condition called asystole that is almost always fatal, 12 of 257, or 4.7 percent, who got vasopressin survived, in contrast to only 4 of 262, or 1.5...