Scientists discover the secret of ageing

The answer is complex, and will not produce an elixir of eternal life in the foreseeable future.

But the scientists expect better drugs for age-related illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease, to emerge from their discovery of the biochemical pathway involved in ageing.

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The brutal truth about America’s healthcare

They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury.

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In the week that Britain's National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an "evil and Orwellian" example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.

Healthcare is a basic right, not a luxury.

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Senators exclude end-of-life provision from bill

Key senators are excluding a provision on end-of-life care from health overhaul legislation after language in a House bill caused a furor.

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A health care bill passed by three House committees allows Medicare to reimburse doctors for voluntary counseling sessions about end-of-life decisions. But critics have claimed the provision could lead to death panels and euthanasia for seniors.

Reality is fiction. Education is ignorant. Fear sells.

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Once-a-day heart combo pill shows promise in study

The experimental combo pill was as effective as nearly all of its components taken alone, with no greater side effects, a major study found. Taking it could cut a person's risk of heart disease and stroke roughly in half, the study concludes.

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No price for the polypill has been disclosed, but its generic components cost only a total of $17 a month now and doctors expect the combo would sell for far less.

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America's Stupid Health Care Debate: Keeping Some Ideas Off the Table

It is a sad commentary on the pinched and strictly censored level of political discourse in this nation that any serious consideration of Canada's successful approach to health care is simply out of bounds in America.

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There has for years been a huge ongoing propaganda campaign by US health care companies and their lobbies to denigrate Canada's system, but the big truth that they cannot deny is that it is loved by Canadians. The best evidence of this: Despite years of conservative governments in Canada, and in the various provinces, no political leader has ever tried to re-privatize health care in Canada. Clearly such an effort would be political suicide, so popular is the system there. As Canadian resident Joe Sotham explains, "In Canada we complain about wait list length, and the reality is that there is rationing, but everyone gets care and nobody is bankrupted , no HMO clerk stands in the way of treatment. We treat health care like a fundamental right.

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The truth is that every other modern country in the world has long ago figured out that you can't have cost-effective, universal health care unless the government is the paymaster, with prices set by the government. The truth too is that no country that has moved to such a single-payer system has later rejected it--a good indication that the people of these countries are satisfied with the results and with what they're getting for what they're paying.

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Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

Read more, and hope you don't get sick.

Suntan Drug Greenlighted for Trials

Although the drug will not be available for cosmetic purposes any time soon, similar compounds are already being widely abused on the pharmaceutical black market. The official product, a man made hormone called afamalenodtide, has received U.S. government approval to begin clinical trials.

"It's a bioabsorbable implant that you just inject into the skin," said Colin Mackie, director of business development for Clinuvel, the company bringing the drug to the U.S. "It stimulates melanin production."

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Mobile phone use 'raises children's risk of brain cancer fivefold'

Professor Hardell told the conference – held at the Royal Society by the Radiation Research Trust – that "people who started mobile phone use before the age of 20" had more than five-fold increase in glioma", a cancer of the glial cells that support the central nervous system. The extra risk to young people of contracting the disease from using the cordless phone found in many homes was almost as great, at more than four times higher.

Those who started using mobiles young, he added, were also five times more likely to get acoustic neuromas, benign but often disabling tumours of the auditory nerve, which usually cause deafness.

By contrast, people who were in their twenties before using handsets were only 50 per cent more likely to contract gliomas and just twice as likely to get acoustic neuromas.

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Two genes may prevent HIV infection: Canadian research centre

Scientists have isolated two genes which may prevent people from contracting HIV or at least slow the rate at which they develop AIDS, a new study has found.

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Eating soy linked to memory loss

Researchers determined people who ate soy at least twice a day had 20 percent less memory function that those who ate it significantly less.

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The antennas are coming

Why don’t more people know that low-level, non-heating electromagnetic waves can adversely affect people’s health and well-being? One reason is that citizens are prohibited by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 from speaking at public meetings about health effects when cell-phone antennas are proposed for their towns, a law written by lobbyists designed to keep information about health effects from the public. Another is the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Law of 1999, which gave cell phone companies total immunity from product liability. Unlike cigarettes, you will not read in your newspaper about any high-profile lawsuits claiming cell-phone use causes brain tumors or cancer. By law, there can be no lawsuits.

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WTF!? Internet Addiction Nominated for Entry in the Manual of Mental Disorders

Block cites research from South Korea, where, he says, the affliction is considered a serious public health problem, and the government estimates that 168,000 children may require psychotropic medications.

Trying to get everyone on some type of medication?

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Mobile phone addiction: Clinic treats children

However, it may take a year to wean them off the "drug", said Dr Maite Utgès, director of the Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida, north-east Spain, where they have been treated for the past three months.

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Oral sex blamed for throat cancer rise

No one understands the precise reason for the increase, though experts suspect it's linked to changes in sexual practices that emerged in the 1960s and '70s. For example, oral sex is a known risk factor for HPV-related throat cancers, and studies have shown that people who have come of age since the 1950s are more likely to have engaged in oral sex than those who were born earlier.

What? I am going to have a hard time believing that humans rarely engaged in oral sex prior to the 1960's.

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Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits

A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

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Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

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Expect new drugs to treat aging, researchers say

Speaking on a panel of aging experts, Sinclair had the boldest predictions. He said scientists can greatly increase longevity and improve health in lab animals like mice, and that drugs to benefit people are on the way.

"It's not an if, but a when," said Sinclair, who co-founded Sirtris Pharmaceuticals to pursue such drugs.

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Sinclair said treatments could be a few years or a decade away, but they're "really close. It's not something (from) science fiction and it's not something for the next generation."

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Scientists reveal dangers of older fathers

A mass study found that deaths of children fathered by over-45s occurred at almost twice the rate of those fathered by men aged between 25 and 30.

Scientists believe that children of older fathers are more likely to suffer particular congenital defects as well as autism, schizophrenia and epilepsy. The study was the first of its kind of such magnitude in the West, and researchers believe the findings are linked to the declining quality of sperm as men age.

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Energy drinks linked to risky behavior among teenagers

Health researchers have identified a surprising new predictor for risky behavior among teenagers and young adults: the energy drink.

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The finding doesn't mean the drinks cause bad behavior. But the data suggest that regular consumption of energy drinks may be a red flag for parents that their children are more likely to take risks with their health and safety. "It appears the kids who are heavily into drinking energy drinks are more likely to be the ones who are inclined toward taking risks," Miller said.

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Frightening food for thought

You may know Monsanto for its role in those old chestnuts PCB, dioxin and Agent Orange, poisons so pervasive and so stubborn they have spread their toxic stain from pole to pole.

But did you know the 100-year-old company is a major player in the GMO revolution? Under the plausible guise of eradicating world hunger with genetically modified seeds resistant to Round-Up, a best-selling herbicide it also developed, Monsanto has launched an insidious campaign to achieve worldwide market supremacy, regardless of the social cost to small farmers and rural economies.

It's all laid out in previously classified documents, and confirmed by scientists, politicians and victims. What the evidence suggests is that Monsanto has long waged a dirty war of pressure campaigns, corruption, collusion with government and prevarication, also known as big fat lies.

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It's not scary. It's terrifying. Like a Kurt Vonnegut Ice Nine effect, Monsanto's GMO market penetration looks to turn the world to mono-culture and potential environmental catastrophe. Rather than feed the planet, says Robin in this essential wake-up call, Monsanto is well on the road to ruining it.

Read the rest. And if you know nothing about Monsanto, then do some research and learn a little bit. More than likely, you will not like what you discover.

Losing just one night's sleep makes brain prone to 'sudden shutdowns'

Being deprived of sleep even for one night makes the brain unstable and prone to sudden shutdowns akin to a power failure - brief lapses that hover between sleep and wakefulness, according to researchers.

"It's as though it is both asleep and awake and they are switching between each other very rapidly," said David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.

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