‘A dentist accused of fondling the breasts of 27 female patients is trying to keep his dental license by arguing that chest massages are an appropriate procedure in certain cases. Mark Anderson’s lawyer says dental journals discuss the need to massage the pectoral muscles to treat a common jaw problem.
Police say Anderson said during recorded phone calls that he routinely massaged patients’ chests to treat temporo-mandibular joint disorder, or TMJ, which causes neck and head pain. [..]
Zaro said Anderson, 48, of Woodland, needs to keep seeing patients so he can feed his seven children and pay for his defense.
The judge made no immediate decision.’
‘Two Army colonels are accused of switching identities to try to fool a paternity test, authorities said.
Bruce S. Adkins, 44, is accused of trying to take a paternity test in the place of Scott M. Carlson, 51. Both were charged Thursday with tampering with public records, tampering with evidence, forgery, theft and obstruction of justice, District Attorney David Freed said. [..]
Both men had been members of the class of 2007 at the Army War College in Carlisle. Freed said Carlson appeared at the Cumberland County domestic relations office in March to arrange for a paternity test.
Carlson had been paying a Virginia woman child support for her 9-year-old daughter and she was seeking an increase, Senior Assistant District Attorney Derek Clepper said.
County domestic relations employees became suspicious when another man showed up in April, claimed to be Carlson and wanted to take the paternity test.’
‘It has long been regarded as a potentially troublesome, redundant organ, but American researchers say they have discovered the true function of the appendix.
The researchers say it acts as a safe house for good bacteria, which can be used to effectively reboot the gut following a bout of dysentery or cholera.
The conventional wisdom is that the small pouch protruding from the first part of the large intestine is redundant and many people have their appendix removed and appear none the worse for it.
Scientists from the Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina say following a severe bout of cholera or dysentery, which can purge the gut of bacteria essential for digestion, the reserve good bacteria emerge from the appendix to take up the role.’
‘DrugLib.com is a comprehensive drug database organized by relevance to specific drugs. It provides a convenient, one-stop access to a wide range of information related to your drug of interest, including drug label & prescribing information (description, clinical pharmacology, side-effects, indications, warnings, etc.), published studies, current clinical trials, alerts and news.’
Seems like a good starting place for any information regarding common prescription medications.
‘An unfortunate, but amazing case: a 25-year-old schizophrenic man shoved a 14.5-cm-long ballpoint pen through his eye socket, all the way to his cerebellum (in the rear of the brain). Hospital staff found him lying in a pool of blood, and the man told doctors he ‘had torn his eyes because it tickled and that 10 years earlier he had shot himself in one eye with an airgun rifle.’ His doctors were puzzled: the man slipped quickly into a coma, but there was no sign of serious trauma to the area other than a small hematoma. A CT scan (above) provided more baffling information, which the doctors initially interpreted as a bullet wound in the left parieto-occipital region. When the patient died 4 days after the injury, the ballpoint pen was discovered wedged deep into the brain. The blunt end of the pen, with cap, had been inserted first, with the cap lodged well into the right lobe of the cerebellum. This is one of the only known suicides on record from “low-velocity” penetrating objects.’
‘A small Russian city just got a really big addition: a 17-pound, 1 ounce baby whose mother had already delivered 11 other children.
Tatiana Khalina, 42, delivered the girl by Caesarean section at a maternity clinic in Aleisk, a town of 30,000 people in the Altai region in southern Siberia, a nurse at the clinic said Thursday. [..]
The daily Moskovsky Komsomolets quoted the local social services chief, Marina Alistratova, as saying the family had modest means. She said Khalina’s husband was on contract with a local military unit.
“We have presented them with a good washing machine, a food package and a card,” Alistratova told the newspaper. “We will keep supporting them in the future.”
An average weight for newborn babies is around 7 pounds, 1 ounce, according to international statistics.’
State health regulators have determined that a La Jolla cardiologist hit a combative patient repeatedly after an angioplasty, placing him in jeopardy, it was reported Thursday.
Dr. Maurice Buchbinder made “chopping like blows to the patient’s abdomen,” tried to hit his leg “with a substantial amount of force” and “used the tip of his elbow to hit (him) on the forehead” during the incident on Aug. 24, three witnesses told investigators, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. [..]
After the patient was moved to a gurney when the angioplasty was finished, the physician told him, “You are an animal” and then “grabbed and twisted the patient’s nose,” making it turn “bluish,” the witnesses said, according to the Union-Tribune.’
‘A cancer patient says she was left alone in a CT scanner for hours after a technician apparently forget about her, and she finally crawled out of the device, only to find herself locked in the closed clinic.
Elvira Tellez of Tucson said she called her son in a panic, and he told her to call 911.
Pima County sheriff’s deputies arriving at the oncology office had her unlock the office door to let them in, said Deputy Dawn Hanke, a department spokeswoman. The deputies contacted the office manager, who was not aware of the situation.’
‘Hair is a better source of ancient DNA than bone or muscle, a new study involving woolly mammoth hair suggests.
“The main problem with things like bone is that it contains real DNA from the source, but also a load of DNA that is undesirable,” said study team member Tom Gilbert of the University of Copenhagen. “For example, when a mammoth dies and the body starts putrefying, bacteria gets all throughout the body. Later, as it’s buried in the ground, soil bacteria get into it.”
Contamination from bacteria DNA generally make up 50 to more than 90 percent of the raw DNA extracted from the bone and muscles of ancient specimens, Gilbert said. In contrast, more than 90 percent of the DNA extracted from hairs taken from woolly mammoth specimens in the new study belonged to the extinct mega-mammals themselves.
“The quality of the DNA was fantastic,” Gilbert told LiveScience. “It was way better than we ever imagined. There’s both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA in there.”‘
‘The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.
Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected “in order to finish quickly the African people”.
The Catholic Church formally opposes any use of condoms, advising fidelity within marriage or sexual abstinence.
Aids activists have been angered by the remarks, one calling them “nonsense”.’
‘A plastic surgery office discriminated against a pregnant secretary who was fired after being told to suck in her belly so she wouldn’t scare away patients, government lawyers charged in an anti-discrimination lawsuit filed Wednesday. [..]
Griggle, who worked in the company’s Cranberry office, said she was fired in December 2005, two weeks after telling her supervisors she was pregnant.’
‘A Kansas City police officer was suffering a diabetes-related reaction when he apparently shot a truck driver at a convenience store, the officer’s attorney said Wednesday.
The officer, who has not been identified by the Police Department, doesn’t remember shooting anyone on Monday night, attorney John P. O’Connor said.
“It’s obvious to me there was no intent on his part to hurt anyone,” O’Connor said. [..]
The shooting victim, who also has not been identified, did not suffer life-threatening wounds. The officer has been put on paid administrative leave while the incident is being investigated.’
‘A laboratory technician was fired after the parents of a 3-year-old boy claimed she bit his shoulder during a blood test, a hospital spokesman said.
Faith Buntin took her son Victor to St. Vincent Hospital on Friday to have blood drawn because of recent recalls of toys involving lead. She said she saw the worker put her mouth on Victor’s shoulder as she restrained him so another lab worker could draw the blood.
“I looked at her like that was the craziest thing that I’d ever seen,” Faith Buntin said Tuesday. “She looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Oh, it was just a play bite. He’s not hurt.'”‘
‘Harvard physicists have shown that specially treated diamond coatings can keep water frozen at body temperature, a finding that may have applications in future medical implants.
Doctoral student Alexander Wissner-Gross and Efthimios Kaxiras, physics professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, spent a year building and examining computer models that showed that a layer of diamond coated with sodium atoms will keep water frozen up to 108 degrees Fahrenheit.
In ice, water molecules are arranged in a rigid framework that gives the substance its hardness. The process of melting is somewhat like a building falling down: pieces that had been arranged into a rigid structure move and flow against one another, becoming liquid water.
The computer model shows that whenever a water molecule near the diamond-sodium surface starts to fall out of place, the surface stabilizes it and reassembles the crystalline ice structure.’
‘The Church of Scientology has been granted access to a confidential psychiatric report tendered as evidence in the trial of a Sydney woman accused of murdering her family earlier this year.
The 25-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was diagnosed with a psychotic illness last year but allegedly discouraged by her parents from taking her prescribed medication because of their Scientology beliefs. [..]
Cyrus Brooks, community relations officer for the church, said it had sought access to the document after media coverage linking Scientology to the alleged murders, although access was granted on condition that the church not release the report to the media.
Despite this, Mr Brooks has emailed excerpts from the report to journalists to “correct” their reporting of the case.’
Followup to Scientology ‘stopped accused killer getting help’.
‘The amoeba typically live in lake bottoms, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment. Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose — say, by doing a cannonball off a cliff — the amoeba can latch onto the person’s olfactory nerve.
The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up to the brain.
People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers, Beach said. In the later stages, they’ll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes.
Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have been effective stopping the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.
“Usually, from initial exposure it’s fatal within two weeks,” Beach said.’
Followup to Brain-Swelling Amoeba Blamed For 2nd Child’s Death.
‘It sounds like the plot for a scary B-movie: Germs go into space on a rocket and come back stronger and deadlier than ever. Except, it really happened.
The germ: Salmonella, best known as a culprit of food poisoning. The trip: Space Shuttle STS-115, September 2006. The reason: Scientists wanted to see how space travel affects germs, so they took some along — carefully wrapped — for the ride. The result: Mice fed the space germs were three times more likely to get sick and died quicker than others fed identical germs that had remained behind on Earth. [..]
After 25 days, 40 percent of the mice given the Earth-bound salmonella were still alive, compared with just 10 percent of those dosed with the germs from space. And the researchers found it took about one-third as much of the space germs to kill half the mice, compared with the germs that had been on Earth.
The researchers found 167 genes had changed in the salmonella that went to space.’
‘The RPG that had plowed into Moss’ lower abdomen stretched from one hip to the other. If the RPG went off, it would kill everyone within 30 feet of him. Yet Angell stayed close, bandaging his wounds and stabilizing the weapon so that movement wouldn’t cause it to explode.
Moss was still fully conscious, so Angell ordered him to not look down at the injury. He didn’t want Moss to panic.
“I’m gonna do everything I can,” Angell said to Moss. “You keep fighting with me and I’ll keep fighting with you.” [..]
Reports of injuries had been radioed to the medical evacuation helicopter (MEDEVAC) base in Salerno, Afghanistan — minus one crucial piece of information.
“We didn’t tell them that, you know, Moss had live ordnance in him,” Mariani said, “because there was that possibility that, you know, they might not want to transport him with live ordnance in him.”‘
‘Ever since I was a little girl, I have periodically played a game I like to call ‘What would happen if…’
The very first time I played this game I was 5 years old and riding in the car with my Mother. She had allowed me to sit in the front seat, but the novelty of that wore off rather quickly and I got bored. Almost immediately after we merged onto the expressway, I spied the car door handle. I thought to myself, I wonder what would happen if I opened the car door right now? [..]
This past Friday evening, I found myself inadvertently playing another game of ‘What would happen if…’’
‘The state’s public health department asked parents Thursday to toss certain Chinese-made lunchboxes potentially containing dangerous levels of lead – the same ones it distributed in a campaign to promote healthy eating.
The department distributed more than 350,000 of the canvas lunchboxes, only to find out that at least three that were tested in a batch of 56,000 contained “significant” levels of lead.
“It certainly is unfortunate that an item we’re using to promote healthy behavior is discovered to be in itself a health hazard,” said Mark Horton, the director of the Department of Public Health. “We will be reassessing our policy on the distribution of our promotional products.”‘
‘Ernie Vesie says he needs his weed. He and his wife Roni have a legal prescription to use the medicinal marijuana. Ernie suffered a painful stroke, and Roni is recovering from major stomach surgery. The two say it eases their pain.
The Vessies grow the marijuana in their south Sacramento backyard. During happier times, a bumper crop blossomed and it was something Ernie’s became proud of. But, after three armed suspects forced their way into their home, the plants are now gone.
“He told me if I opened my mouth, he’d put a bullet in my head,” said Ernie.
It is the second time they’ve been robbed and it is believed to be the same three suspects. [..]
There is not much left of Ernie and Roni’s stash, so they’re smoking what they can.
“Breaks my heart they took all the good stuff,” said Ernie.’
‘The building is protected by access codes, cameras and even tornado-proof walls. So what’s inside?
The answer is plant seeds. Billions of them. In fact, there are around 370,000 different species accounted for in the vault.
For each species, 3,000 seeds are placed in a sac.
“All the storage sacs are bar coded. Also, they’re labeled with the name of the type of plant material that’s in each of these sacs,” said Harvey Blackburn, who is the acting director of the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation.
The next question might be, why? The answer has to do with national security.’
Scientists have known for more than 70 years that the one surefire way to extend the lives of animals was to cut calories by an average of 30 to 40 percent. The question was: Why?
Now a new study begins to unravel the mystery and the mechanism by which reducing food intake protects cells against aging and age-related diseases. [..]
Researchers report in the journal Cell that the phenomenon is likely linked to two enzymes—SIRT3 and SIRT4—in mitochondria (the cell’s powerhouse that, among other tasks, converts nutrients to energy). They found that a cascade of reactions triggered by lower caloric intake raises the levels of these enzymes, leading to an increase in the strength and efficiency of the cellular batteries. By invigorating the mitochondria, SIRT3 and SIRT4 extend the life of cells, by preventing flagging mitochondria from developing tiny holes (or pores) in their membranes that allow proteins that trigger apoptosis, or cell death, to seep out into the rest of the cell.’
‘Three old bones from a left wrist offer a new twist in the long running debate about the so called hobbits of Indonesia, suggesting they were indeed a small and different kind of human species, rather than modern humans with a growth disorder.
Three years ago, Prof Mike Morwood, of the University of New England, in Armidale, Australia, and colleagues made headlines worldwide when they announced the discovery of 18,000-year-old remains of Homo floresiensis in the Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. [..]
Today in the journal Science an analysis of three wrist bones of one of the fossil specimens (called LB1) led by Matthew Tocheri of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and including Prof Morwood and colleagues in Indonesia and America shows that the bones are primitive and shaped differently compared to both the wrist bones of both humans and of Neanderthals, suggesting they do represent a different kind of human.’
Followup to Hobbits may be earliest Australians.
‘In a provocative article, an Italian medical professor argues that Pope John Paul II didn’t just simply slip away as his weakness and illness overtook him in April 2005. Intensive care specialist Dr. Lina Pavanelli has concluded that the ailing Pope’s April 2 death was caused by what the Catholic Church itself would consider euthanasia. She bases this conclusion on her medical expertise and her own observations of the ailing pontiff on television, as well as press reports and a subsequent book by John Paul’s personal physician. The failure to insert a feeding tube into the patient until just a few days before he died accelerated John Paul’s death, Pavanelli concludes. Moreover, Pavanelli says she believes that the Pope’s doctors dutifully explained the situation to him, and thus she surmises that it was the pontiff himself who likely refused the feeding tube after he’d been twice rushed to the hospital in February and March. Catholics are enjoined to pursue all means to prolong life.’
‘If you’re taking a fat-blocking medication for weight loss, you’ve probably experienced “treatment effects” – flatulence, oily anal discharge, bowel urgency, and liquid stools that are difficult to control. [..]
You shouldn’t have to compromise your freedom in order to lose weight. You shouldn’t have to worry about where the nearest lavatory is, or whether the dark spots will show through your pants if you lose control and soil yourself. You shouldn’t have to stifle a laugh or a sneeze for fear of anal incontinence.
You deserve a better backup plan than the extra change of clothes in your car. Now there’s a simple and effective solution that can allow you to use weight-loss fat blockers while giving you a sense of security and confidence, knowing that you’ll be in control.’
Followup to alli: Miracle diet pill with teeny-tiny side effect and Diet Drug: Lose Weight, Possibly Soil Self.
‘Mrs. A. R is an active 76 year-old grandmother who lived on her own for several years. She had an uncomfortable vaginal lump for several years. Occasionally, this required reduction by her late family physician. The patient did not visit a physician after the death of her family doctor ten years earlier. She felt that prolapse is a woman’s lot and nothing could be done about it.
This patient was brought to the emergency room with a history of vaginal bleeding. Examination showed that the uterus was totally outside the vulva (prosidentia), atrophic and ulcerated vaginal mucosa and inflamed cervix. The bladder and rectum were also prolapsed with the uterus and the patient was unable to empty her bladder. X-rays of the kidneys, ureters and bladder with contrast (IVP) suggested chronic inflammation of the bladder.’
.. ‘the uterus was totally outside the vulva’ .. Do I need to stick a warning here? Don’t blame me if you don’t like what you see after you click. 🙂
‘Hundreds of people in Peru have needed treatment after an object from space – said to be a meteorite – plummeted to Earth in a remote area, officials say.
They say the object left a deep crater after crashing down over the weekend near the town of Carancas in the Andes.
People who visited the scene have been complaining of headaches, vomiting and nausea after inhaling gases.
But some experts have questioned whether it was a meteorite or some other object that landed in Carancas.’
‘With her nine-year-old son William lying desperately ill in hospital following emergency brain surgery, Ruth McCartney-Moore prayed that she would one day hear his voice again.
But when he did speak weeks later, she was in for a shock.
He had lost his strong Yorkshire accent and was now speaking the Queen’s English.
“We noticed that he had started to elongate his vowels in words like ‘bath’ which he never did before,” said Mrs McCartney-Moore, 45, a music teacher from York.
“He no longer has short vowel sounds – they are all long. It’s bizarre.”‘
‘Firefighters cut a hole in the side of a house and used a forklift to extricate a 900-pound man from his second-floor bedroom after a visiting nurse became worried about his health.
Rescue workers were called in Tuesday by the nurse, who determined the 33-year-old man needed medical help, Fire Chief Tom Cochran said.
Cochran said the man had not left his home since 2003. [..]
They covered the man with a blue tarp to shield him from onlookers and slid the platform onto a flatbed truck for a trip to Sparrow Hospital.’
