Four-fifths of all antibiotics are consumed by the meat industry

Livestock consumption of antibiotics reached a record nearly 29.9 billion pounds in 2011.

The Food and Drug Administration, last year,  proposed a set of voluntary “guidelines”designed to nudge the meat industry to curb its antibiotics habit.  Since then, the agency has been mulling whether and how to implement the new program. Meanwhile, the meat industry has been merrily gorging away on antibiotics—and churning out meat rife with antibiotic-resistant pathogens—if the latest data from the FDA itself is any indication.

 

 

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Scientists create 3D printed human embryonic stem cells for first time

Scientists have developed a 3-D printer that prints human embryonic stem cells.

What if you could take living cells, load them into a printer, and squirt out a 3D tissue that could develop into a kidney or a heart? Researchers are one step closer to that reality, now that they have developed the first printer for embryonic human stem cells.

 

 

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Injectable foam stops internal bleeding on the battlefield

The polyurethane foam begins as two liquids stored separately and injected together into the abdominal cavity.

Despite the best efforts of military first responders to stabilize abdominal wounds sustained on the battlefield, they have few options when it comes to stopping internal bleeding caused by gunshots or explosive fragments.  DARPA is studying a new type of injectable foam that molds to organs and slows hemorrhaging. This could provide field medics with a way to buy more time for soldiers en route to medical treatment facilities.

 

 

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Seniors in Sun City, Arizona

Sun City, Arizona

In 1960 in the U.S., the average life expectancy for all races and sexes was 69.7 years.  In 2010, the average life expectancy increased to 78.7 years.  In 1959, entrepreneur Del Webb built Sun City, Arizona.  Sun City was the first active retirement community for the over-55.  Webb predicted that retirees would flock to a community where they were given more than just a house with a rocking chair in which to sit and wait to die.  (Pics)

 

 

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U.S. scientists make a breakthrough in tuberculosis

Tuberculosis most commonly affects the lungs, is transmitted via the air and caused by strains of mycobacteria.

Worldwide, more than 2 billion people are struck down with tuberculosis (TB).  Scientists in the U.S. have made a medical breakthrough that could save hundreds of thousands of lives.

 

 

 

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Obamacare will cost the average American family $20,000 a year: IRS

The cheapest plan for family will cost $20,000 per year.

American families will be forced to buy conventional health insurance that primarily benefits the pharmaceutical industry under Obamacare. By 2016 the cheapest health insurance plan available will cost a typical American family $20,000 a year, according to the IRS.

 

 

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Revolution in personalized medicine is coming

The need for personalized therapies abound.

It is the dawn of a new age of personalized medicine.  The interpretation of the human genome will transform medicine.   We are moving into the data-driven medicine of tomorrow.  Soon, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and most importantly, prevention will be tailored to individuals’ genetic and phenotypic information.

 

 

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Is there more to life than being happy?

There is more in live than being happy.

Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents in September 1942. When his camp was liberated three years later, most of his family, including his pregnant wife, had perished, but Frankl, prisoner number 119104, had lived.  In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl’s bestselling 1946 book, he wrote in nine days about his experiences in the camps, he concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning, an insight he came to early in life. When he was a high school student, one of his science teachers declared to the class, “Life is nothing more than a combustion process, a process of oxidation.” Frankl jumped out of his chair and responded, “Sir, if this is so, then what can be the meaning of life?”

 

 

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Germany passes ‘Circumcision Law” after outcry

A religious circumcision.

The Bundestag hurriedly passed some strange new legislation last month: the “Circumcision Law.”   The law guarantees the right for parents to have their children circumcised. This was the government’s answer to a passionate and uncomfortable five-month debate over the practice, in which religious minorities and their supporters clashed with a cabal of doctors and politicians over tolerance versus children’s rights.

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