Free Republic

In the late 1950s, dentist and US Navy Capt. Kirk C. Hoerman, then a young man in his 30s, attempted to answer a bold question: Might the saliva of prostate cancer patients have different characteristics from that of healthy people? Could it contain traces of a disease that’s so far away from the mouth? Without wasting more of their own saliva on elaborate discussion, Hoerman and his colleagues from the department of dental research at the Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Illinois, got down to work. They analyzed samples from more than 200 patients and healthy controls, and found...

Ukraine's newest heroes: Brave Russian defectors have joined Kyiv's forces on frontlines against Putin's regime to liberate their beloved country from his rule Scores of Russians have defected to fight alongside Ukrainian armed forces They risk severe treatment and most likely the death penalty if they are captured But fighters say they see Putin and the Kremlin as a 'cancer' preventing peace Like all his Ukrainian army comrades, Volodymyr Grotskov is fuelled by deeply-held patriotism as he risks his life on the bloodstained frontline of the brutal war against Russia. The 48-year-old electrical engineer says he loves his country and...

23andMe was co-founded by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki — YouTube is owned by Google.Seeing as how Google has been trying to get into the pharmaceutical business, is 23andMe an extension of that designed to profile individuals and target them with new drugs?A man and his wife decided to test the accuracy of 23andMe’s at-home DNA testing kit by sending in a saliva sample collected from their pet lizard. What they found is that the whole thing is a sham.In the following video, the man explains how after three months of waiting, he received anomalous results suggesting that his pet lizard...

It's the kind of thing you hear about but don't think anyone would really do. Vegas local Cynthia Baer says believe it. "This actually happens to people! It happened to me," she said. Watch the full story during Good Morning Las Vegas on 13 Action News at 5 and 6 a.m. Feb. 22. A frustrated worker might actually spit in your food. Here's Baer's story: she's a single mom selling her handmade masks on Etsy to help make ends meet. She says she needs to stay home and help her young children with online school. "We live such a careful...

In ads on TV, it all looks so simple. People use mouthwash, it instantly neutralises all the nasty bacteria hiding in their mouths, and – just like that – their dental hygiene is assured. But what's really going on when you rinse a cap-load of antibacterial chemicals around your mouth? What does that to your body, and to other kinds of microorganisms that may actually be beneficial to health? As a study showed last year, the downstream effects can be surprising, and far-reaching too, affecting much more than just your dental wellbeing. In an experiment led by scientists from the...

AS cases of meningitis, a rare and potentially fatal disease, popped up in cities nationwide over the past several years, public health officials noticed a trend: many of those infected were gay men. There’s no known medical reason why meningitis, which is transmitted through saliva, would spread more among gay and bisexual men. Yet New York, Chicago and now Southern California have experienced outbreaks disproportionately affecting that population. “It is perplexing,” said Dr. Rachel Civen, a medical epidemiologist at L.A. County’s Department of Public Health. Of the 13 cases of meningitis this year in L.A. County — excluding Long Beach,...

I'm currently watching Rubio make his post-primary speech. He said we need to get back to "free enterpise" for our economy. "Free Enterprise" to me is just code that establishment Republicans use when they mean sending jobs to Mexico and bringing in millions of Mexicans to the USA. He has not mentioned immigration ONCE. Not even a mention. He did, however, praise Yeb Bush and the entire Bush family.

Dozens of Texas drivers have been stopped at a police road block, where they were then directed into a parking lot and forced into surrendering blood, saliva and breath samples in a study that has upset civil liberties advocates. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration admitted it was attempting to conduct a government study meant to determine the number of drunk or drug-impaired drivers on the road at any given time.  “It just doesn’t seem right that you can be forced off the road when you’re not doing anything wrong,” Kim Cope, who said she was forced to the side...

Study could have an impact in fighting head and neck cancersCurcumin, the main component in the spice turmeric, suppresses a cell signaling pathway that drives the growth of head and neck cancer, according to a pilot study using human saliva by researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. The inhibition of the cell signaling pathway also correlated with reduced expression of a number of pro-inflammatory cytokines, or signaling molecules, in the saliva that promote cancer growth, said Dr. Marilene Wang, a professor of head and neck surgery, senior author of the study and a Jonsson Cancer Center researcher. "This study...

Research promoting a painless new method for detecting diabetes, utilizing saliva, was revealed today at the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) 18th Annual Meeting & Clinical Congress. While searching for biomarkers that may indicate diabetes, doctors examined the saliva of 40 different patients. Through salivary analysis, they managed to devise a new, "non-invasive" method for detecting diabetes that foregoes the uncomfortable prick of a needle -- patients need only to spit into a cup. The spit test could be performed for little cost in a doctor's office or at a patient's home. "Our goal was to characterize proteins in...

Carnivorous Plants Use Pitchers Of 'Slimy Saliva' To Catch Their Prey ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2007) — Carnivorous plants supplement the meager diet available from the nutrient-poor soils in which they grow by trapping and digesting insects and other small arthropods. Pitcher plants of the genus Nepenthes were thought to capture their prey with a simple passive trap but in a paper in PLoS One, Laurence Gaume and Yoel Forterre, a biologist and a physicist from the CNRS, working respectively in the University of Montpellier and the University of Marseille, France show that they employ slimy secretions to doom their victims.Pitcher...

Natural-born painkiller found in human saliva 22:00 13 November 2006 NewScientist.com news service Andy Coghlan Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Saliva from humans has yielded a natural painkiller up to six times more powerful than morphine, researchers say. The substance, dubbed opiorphin, may spawn a new generation of natural painkillers that relieve pain as well as morphine but without the addictive and psychological side effects of the traditional drug. When the researchers injected a pain-inducing chemical into rats’ paws, 1 gram of opiorphin per kilogram of body weight achieved the same painkilling effect as 3 grams of morphine....

We had an extended debate at the office today....what was the best "MTv Unplugged" performance? Me? Hands down....Alice in Chains! Before any reasons are discussed ..... I was curious as to anyone else's opinions or preferences on the topic?

"Shy-bladder syndrome" won't spare impaired motorists from taking drug tests, if a Utah police sergeant has his way. Sgt. Dennis Simonson of the Logan Police Department requested a $5,800 grant from the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice to launch the first pilot study in the country using roadside saliva detection devices. The new tool, RapiScan, which is manufactured by Cozart, detects drugs in a driver's system using a saliva swab. Saliva is an immediate sample of what is circulating in a person's bloodstream, said Michael Beaubien, Cozart vice president for North American operations. "The purpose is to allow people...

<p>DALLAS (AP) - A substance in the saliva of vampire bats could prove to be a potent new treatment for strokes, an Australian scientist says.</p> <p>That same substance -- Desmodus rotundus salivary plasminogen activator, or DSPA -- might someday be given to stroke victims to dissolve clots and thereby limit brain damage, he said.</p>