What inspires a mainstream medical researcher or MD to develop a vaccine? Saving mankind from disease? Probably not - but maybe for some. I's more likely the inspiration comes from a steady stream of royalty money and no liability for vaccine damages.

Once a patent is issued and the vaccine hits the market, the producer gets sales revenue, but the creator gets royalties from those sales.

Just about any Big Pharma drug can eventually be fined by government agencies or sued for damages by consumers or class actions suits.

But the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) aka the Vaccine Court, offers settlements for vaccine damages from a combination of funds collected by purchaser surcharge taxes on vaccines and federal funds to compensate those who manage to have their cases approved. Thus the vaccine industry is exempt from financial liability.

The new research suggests that no strings attached casual sex might not be as much fun as first thought

Casual sex and no strings arrangements have been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts by a new research study.

Somewhat shockingly, for every single sexual encounter the report suggests that the odds of suicidal thoughts jumped a staggering 18 PER CENT.

The study, lead by Dr Sara Sanberg-Thomas, suggested that casual sexual relationships were linked to poor mental health.

But they also found that the vice versa was true also, with people who show signs of depression and other similar mental illnesses being more likely to engage in casual sex.

Dr Sandberg-Thomas explained: "Several studies have found a link between poor mental health and casual sex, but the nature of that association has been unclear.

"There's always been a question about which one is the cause and which is the effect.

"This study provides evidence that poor mental health can lead to casual sex, but also that casual sex leads to additional declines in mental health."

The results were found to transcend gender boundaries with both men and women equally susceptible.

The people handing out mammogram and radiation prescriptions to 'cure' breast cancer probably don't want you to know this about breast cancer: in numerous cases, it goes away all by itself. Radiation, the primary means, if not invasive surgery, to eradicate breast cancer works by killing off cells by exposing the DNA to ionizing radioactive waves. The problem is that this treatment also kills off healthy cells, and has even been shown to cause breast cancer. In a study published at Dartmouth Medical School Magazine, the 'taboo' subject of spontaneous remission is openly discussed.

One of the doctors who helped write up the findings, H. Gilbert Welch, M.D., M.P.H, made sure they were published in Archives of Internal Medicine. The study compared 100,000 Norwegian women ages 50 through 64 who were divided into two groups, with women in both groups having invasive cancers. Women in the first group were followed from 1992 to 1997, while women in the second group were followed from 1996 to 2001.

The women in the first group had only one screening, and the women in the second group had one every two years. Women in group 2 were exposed to an average of six more breast screenings via mammography. Interestingly, the incidence of invasive breast cancer was 22% higher for women in the second group (the ones more often screened with mammograms)! What this means is that when we just let the body heal itself without radiation-causing screenings, often, the cancer goes into remission all on its own.

Celiac disease is widely known to cause digestive problems. That's just the tip of the iceberg, according to the book Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers, by David Perlmutter. The intestinal difficulties associated with celiac disease are caused by an immunological response triggered by gluten, similar to an allergic reaction but less violent. This response, which leads to inflammation in the gut, can happen elsewhere in the body, too. Inflammation is at the root of many diseases and complications, including, Perlmutter argues, brain decay. Gluten can lead to inflammation in the brain, which Perlmutter believes leads to conditions like dementia and Alzheimer's.

A practicing neurologist, Dr. Perlmutter's experiences with patients, along with medical research he's studied, have led him to piece together a theory behind brain degeneration that's based on a foundation of gluten and high blood sugar. He also argues for the importance of cholesterol to maintaining brain health, and makes a compelling case that cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are bad for the brain.

Grain Brain frequently veers from the brain to other parts of the body that Perlmutter says are damaged by gluten and carbohydrates and of the general dangers of fat avoidance. You may have heard some of these ideas elsewhere; Perlmutter is clearly aligned with the likes of Robert Lustig, a pediatrician who writes of the ills of sugar, and Gary Taubes, one of the first to demolish the idea that dietary fat and cholesterol are responsible for heart disease.

In late 2010, Dr. Christopher Duntsch came to Dallas to start a neurosurgery practice. By the time the Texas Medical Board revoked his license in June 2013, Duntsch had left two patients dead and four paralyzed in a series of botched surgeries.

Physicians who complained about Duntsch to the Texas Medical Board and to the hospitals he worked at described his practice in superlative terms. They used phrases like "the worst surgeon I've ever seen." One doctor I spoke with, brought in to repair one of Duntsch's spinal fusion cases, remarked that it seemed Duntsch had learned everything perfectly just so he could do the opposite. Another doctor compared Duntsch to Hannibal Lecter three times in eight minutes.

When the Medical Board suspended Duntsch's license, the agency's spokespeople too seemed shocked."It's a completely egregious case,'' Leigh Hopper, then head of communications for the Texas Medical Board, told The Dallas Morning News in June. "We've seen neurosurgeons get in trouble but not one such as this, in terms of the number of medical errors in such a short time."

But the real tragedy of the Christopher Duntsch story is how preventable it was. Over the course of 2012 and 2013, even as the Texas Medical Board and the hospitals he worked with received repeated complaints from a half-dozen doctors and lawyers begging them to take action, Duntsch continued to practice medicine. Doctors brought in to clean up his surgeries decried his "surgical misadventures," according to hospital records. His mistakes were obvious and well-documented. And still it took the Texas Medical Board more than a year to stop Duntsch - a year in which he kept bringing into the operating room patients who ended up seriously injured or dead.

In Duntsch's case, we see the weakness of Texas' unregulated system of health care, a system built to protect doctors and hospitals. And a system in which there's no way to know for sure if your doctor is dangerous.

The British are rightly famous for their tea drinking.

They - I should say 'we', as, yes, your humble author is a Brit - manage to down 165 million cups every day, and there are only 62 million of us.

Only the Irish drink more tea than us per person.

We all know about the effects of caffeine on the brain, but research has found two more ingredients of tea with important effects...

1. Green tea may help fight Alzheimer's

Scientists have found that a natural component of green tea may eventually provide a way of curing Alzheimer's disease (Rushworth et al., 2013).

Early-stage research has found that a component of green tea - epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) - can disrupt the built up of plaques in the brain, which is what causes brain cells to die. Eventually this may help lead to a cure for the crippling disease.

2. Old brains love tea

While we'll have to wait for the Alzheimer's research to progress, tea has been shown to have more immediate effects.

A study of 2,031 people aged between 70 and 74 found that those who drank tea - which contain micronutrient polyphenols, like EGCG - had better cognitive performance (Nurk et al., 2009).

Polyphenols are also contained in red wine, cocoa and coffee.

The winter heralds 'flu season', and many will be urged to get them themselves adequately protected through vaccination. A recent piece in the British Medical Journal [1] by Dr Peter Doshi (from the John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, US) makes the point that public health campaigns often present flu vaccination as a no-brainer: we're all at risk of flu and its complications, the flu shot is risk free, and vaccination saves lives. However, as Peter Doshi goes on to explain, all these assertions are open to question.

Dr Doshi questions the trend for increasing numbers of people being defined as 'at risk'. In 1960, this definition only applied to individuals aged 65 or older. By 2010, this definition had extended to everyone over six months of age.

It is often claimed that flu vaccination saves lives. This claim is based on so-called 'epidemiological' evidence which finds that those who receive the flu vaccine are less likely to die than those who don't. Risk reductions of 30 - 50 per cent are sometimes quoted. However, as Peter Doshi points out, flu only accounts for about 5 per cent of wintertime deaths. How, on earth, then can flu vaccination reduce the overall risk of death by those previously quoted figures? Answer: it can't.

An eye-opening new study published in the Journal of Viral Hepatitis reveals that conventional hepatitis B vaccine- and hepatitis B immunoglobulin-based treatment for infants of mothers who tested positive for hepatitis B infection is nothing near "95% effective in preventing infection and its chronic consequences" that the World Health Organization (WHO) and a myriad of health organizations around the world claim it to be. [i] To the contrary, researchers were able to detect through highly sensitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) DNA testing that 42% of the infants still had 'occult' hepatitis B infection, 24 months after initiating treatment at birth, despite the fact that the vaccine reduced the incidence of overt infection.

In the researchers' own words: "The results of this large prospective longitudinal study show that 42% of babies born of HBsAg-positive mothers develop occult HBV infection, which is not prevented by administration of recombinant HBV vaccine to the newborn." [italics added]

This study not only clearly calls into question the standard of care for preventing hepatitis B infection in infants born to infected mothers, but it also challenges core tenets of vaccinology, including hepatitis B vaccine safety and effectiveness.

It's hardly surprising to learn that diet soda is dangerous or that it "may do more harm than good. We've been reporting on the dangers of diet soda here for a long while now. Well, recently researchers from Purdue reviewed a dozen studies all published within the last five years on the health risks of consuming diet soda. They published their findings in an opinion piece in Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism (pdf); it was there they revealed their "shock" over their findings.

"Honestly, I thought that diet soda would be marginally better compared to regular soda in terms of health," said the author Susan Swithers. "But in reality it has a counterintuitive effect...We've gotten to a place where it is normal to drink diet soda because people have the false impression that it is healthier than indulging in a regular soda. But research is now very clear that we need to also be mindful of how much fake sugar they are consuming."

The researchers wrote:

"The negative impact of consuming sugar-sweetened beverages on weight and other health outcomes has been increasingly recognized; therefore, many people have turned to high-intensity sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin as a way to reduce the risk of these consequences. However, accumulating evidence suggests that frequent consumers of these sugar substitutes may also be at increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease."

As a result, they set out to discuss the previous findings and attempt to explain how diet soda does serious damage to the body.

• People are 30% more stressed now than before smartphones were invented

• Constant e-mails and texts from friends and bosses prevent them relaxing

• Around 65% of people say they prefer being digitally switched off

Gadget-obsessed Britons who are constantly connected to the internet are more stressed than ever before, new research has revealed.

Never being able to switch off and having nowhere to hide from friends and employers makes people 30 per cent more stressed today than they were before smartphones and tablets existed.

Ever-present emails, texts and other forms of instant communication creep into downtime and prevent people relaxing.

The devices are meant to alleviate pressure by providing communication on the move but Frances Booth, one of the leading digital distraction authors, said they actually add to people's woes.

In her research she monitored the stress levels of 15 adults, aged under 40, who spent one week with their usual digital devices, and one week without them.