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Citing a strain on “overwhelmed” health resources, Governor Kay Ivey declared an official State of Emergency in Alabama on Thursday due to the rapidly spreading flu epidemic. WHEREAS the State Health Officer has reported that an outbreak of the influenza virus has occurred in the State of Alabama; and WHEREAS this outbreak poses a high probability of widespread exposure to an infectious agent that poses significant risk of substantial harm to a large number of people in the affected population; and WHEREAS the health care facilities and personnel of the State are overwhelmed by the number of ill patients and...

If you ever have need of the services of a psychiatrist, I would strongly recommend you select one besotted with liberal ideology. First of all, you'd save a ton of money. That's because liberal psychiatrists are blessed with the gift of being able to diagnose you without even having seen you. That means you're consultations need not last very long. I should warn you, however, that you can be sure that if you're a political conservative, you are likely to be committed to a mental institution. More than 50 years ago, a psychiatrist published an article that stated flatly GOP...

Medical science is making bold new leaps every day. Not only is there a new medication out that is just like the old medication, except it costs 10 times as much, but the American Medical Association has decided that gender is purely imaginary.For thousands of years, human ignorance convinced us that there were two genders. Now the AMA says that gender is imaginary. You can be any gender you want. Change gender every week. Or every day. We’re in Hopechangeistan now. Biology, like economics and military science, are purely imaginary fields. “Science” says so. In other action Monday, the AMA...

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama, the U.S. Senate candidate from Chicago who has become the Democratic Party's latest rising star, is drawing enough support from the entertainment industry to put on his own variety show. From comedian Chris Rock to singer Barbra Streisand to musician Herbert Hancock, entertainers have written out checks of $1,000 or $2,000 to help the 42-year-old Illinois state senator win the seat being vacated by retiring GOP Sen. Peter Fitzgerald. Film directors Rob Reiner ("The American President") and Edward Zwick ("The Last Samurai" and "Courage Under Fire") both contributed in the past three months, according to Obama's...

Philosophers always say, define your terms. So what is a quack? Quacks are people who treat any one idea (it may be a bad idea or a good idea) as if it is the entire world. Excess is the problem. A lack of proportion is what makes someone a quack, and what makes quacks a menace. There are poisons which, used in tiny doses, can be beneficial. It’s the dose that makes the poison. Quacks would not understand that. If a few drops are good, they would say, let’s make everyone swim in the stuff. Quackery lies in treating some...

Some highly respected doctors seemed to validate our suspicions about quack doctors when they declared after the Sikh shootings in Wisconsin, that gun violence is a social disease! I think the quack doctors are actually the carriers of social disease. I would like to know if I had to shoot an intruder in my home at night would these doctors support my plea that I am not responsible since I am diseased? It might be a safer defense than “stand your ground.” The white-coated “experts” say that the disease pattern spreads “much like an infectious disease circulates.” The surprise is...

I will not address the scientific grounds for circumcision (which among other things drastically reduces the transmission of infections including AIDS), because your decree has nothing to do with science. Rather, as Heinrich Heine wrote in 1844 of your city of Cologne, Dummheit und Bosheitbuhltenhier GleichHunden auf freierGasse; Die Enkelbruterkennt man nochheut An ihremJudenhasse. (Stupidity and evil mated here / Like dogs in the open gutter / You still can recognize their descendants today / By their Jew-hatred).

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...