Thursday, Nov 28th
Last update07:16:28 AM GMT
Health Glance
Sunbathing is known to cause skin cancer – but it may also help people survive when they get it, scientists are reporting.
American Airlines has sent letters to its retirees, saying it will be ending its Retiree Standard Medical Plan option for non-union employees.
The health insurance plan will be canceled as of Dec. 31, 2009. Instead, retirees will be able to purchase a supplemental Medicare coverage plan. But under the new programs, retirees will have to pay monthly premiums.
Bans on smoking in public places have had a bigger impact on preventing heart attacks than ever expected, data shows.
Smoking bans cut the number of heart attacks in Europe and North America by up to a third, two studies report. This "heart gain" is far greater than both originally anticipated and the 10% figure recently quoted by England's Department of Health.
Wealthy nations have contracted for much of the expected pandemic vaccine production, leaving little for poorer countries. But while Canada and some European nations will use vaccines containing adjuvants, American officials have decided against it for now. They say that they have enough vaccine and that the safety of the additives has not been proved.
True, many test subjects treated with the medication felt their hopelessness and anxiety lift. But so did nearly the same number who took a placebo, a look-alike pill made of milk sugar or another inert substance given to groups of volunteers in clinical trials to gauge how much more effective the real drug is by comparison. The fact that taking a faux drug can powerfully improve some people's health - the so-called placebo effect - has long been considered an embarrassment to the serious practice of pharmacology.
The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis. The stakes could hardly be higher.
The mainstream media is engaged in what we Americans call "bald faced lies" about swine flu. It seems to be true with this issue more than any other, and it became apparent to me recently when a colleague of mine -- a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist -- told me their column on natural defenses for swine flu was rejected by newspapers all across the country. Many newspapers refused to run the column and, instead, ran an ad for "free vaccine clinics" in the same space.
The media, it seems, is so deeply in bed with the culture of vaccinations that they will do almost anything to keep the public misinformed. And that includes lying about swine flu vaccines.
Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.
"We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than drunk driving and homicide combined,"
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