© Guardian UK
Portrait, author and activist Naomi Wolf, 10/19/11.

Parents considering male circumcision have a right to expect objective medical advice, untainted by commercial interests.

Matt Williams, an expectant father, stirred up strong debate this week in his Guardian essay on why he won't let his newborn son be circumcised. Referring to a new edict from the American Academy of Pediatrics insisting that "the health benefits of circumcision" outweigh the negatives, Williams spoke for many parents in demurring with this conventional wisdom, expressing the many reasons for his unease.

He pointed out that this delicate decision is often mystified by conflicting advice. The studies upon which the pediatricians rely, he noted, often have to do with highly specific data: the risks in Africa of Aids transmission in uncircumcised men, for instance. And he argued, quite fairly (though he wisely does not equate them), that the pediatricians' odd invocation of parental "religious" and cultural motivations for circumcision, and their assertion that these views should be respected quite apart from medical considerations, is a position that would be resisted if invoked by those who wanted to cut off bits of newborn girls' genitals.

Williams is not alone. A growing movement of men has arisen to decry the practice of circumcision as a mutilation they feel they have undergone, which they say is barbaric, traumatic and sexually desensitizing. But is circumcision indeed emotionally traumatic to newborn boys? And is it, separately considered, physically damaging?

When the parasite responsible for malaria infects human red blood cells, it launches a 48-hour remodeling of the host cells. During the first 24 hours of this cycle, a protein called RESA undertakes the first step of renovation: enhancing the stiffness of the cell membranes.

That increased rigidity impairs red blood cells' ability to travel through the blood vessels, especially at fever temperatures, according to a new study from researchers at MIT, the Institut Pasteur and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

This marks the first time that scientists have identified the specific role of the RESA protein in modulating blood circulation in an environment that mimics physiological conditions, and could help researchers determine new strategies to combat malaria, which infects an estimated 300 to 500 million people worldwide each year.

The study -- coordinated by MIT's Ming Dao, a principal research scientist in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE); Monica Diez Silva, a research scientist in DMSE; and YongKeun Park, an assistant professor of physics at KAIST -- appears Aug. 30 in Scientific Reports, an online journal of Nature.

Regarding Vaccines, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims for Vaccine Damages, and HHS/FDA

Attorney Walter Kyle of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, began representing Plaintiffs with vaccine injuries ten years before the Vaccine Injury Act began, and has argued more than forty cases before the Special Masters of the United States Court of Federal Claims [under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act] - 42 U.S.C.A. §300aa, et.seq. As a result, Attorney Kyle has unique insight into the nuances of vaccine injury law.

To start our interview, may I ask how you became involved in vaccine law?

I began representation of vaccine-injured clients in Arkansas in 1977. My first case out of law school was representing a paraplegic mother who acquired paralytic polio from mutated Sabin live trivalent oral polio vaccine [TOPV] viruses shed from her three-month-old infant's diapers. Centers for Disease control classified the woman in the "immune deficient" category of "vaccine associated contact cases" from Type 2 Sabin vaccine.

For years scientists have been investigating the detrimental effects of gluten on brain and nerve tissue. A recent study published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry is just one more piece of evidence pointing to this overwhelming connection...

"Patients with established coeliac disease referred for neurological opinion show significant brain abnormality on MR imaging."

In the 1980s, audiologists began cautioning lovers of loud music about hearing loss that could potentially result from use of their Walkman or portable compact disc (CD) players. More than thirty years later, the integration of portable digital devices that play music are more abundant than almost every other electronic device in the world, and all of them have an earphone jack. Scientists from the University of Leicester have shown for the first time how noises louder than 110 decibels (dB) cause cell damage which ultimately leads to hearing loss.

Noise-induced hearing loss affects millions and it can be caused by exposure to loud noise over long periods of time, or by loud, short bursts of sound such as gunshots or fireworks.

Although people seem to be more aware of the impact of noise on their hearing, it's not clear whether they're changing their behavior, says Nancy Nadler, director of the Noise Center of the League for the Hard of Hearing in New York City. "We need to help people understand how important their hearing is to them before it's too late. Because once you suffer from a noise-induced hearing loss, there's very little you can do. You cannot get your hearing back," at least not under normal circumstances Nadler stresses.

The researchers said that earphones or headphones on personal music players can reach noise levels similar to those of jet engines, which can reach 140dB at 100 feet distance.

The previous study published in the International Journal of Audiology, demonstrated that teens have harmful music-listening habits when it comes to iPods and other MP3 devices. "In 10 or 20 years it will be too late to realize that an entire generation of young people is suffering from hearing problems much earlier than expected from natural aging," says Prof. Muchnik of TAU's Department of Communication Disorders.

Thanks to aggressive marketing techniques, pharmaceutical companies are raking in profits from atypical antipsychotic medications - drugs originally approved for mental illnesses that are as serious as they are rare.

It's no surprise then that a major portion of the sales of these types of "hard-core" psychiatric drugs come from off-label uses. Drugs such as Seroquel, Zyprexa, Risperdal and Abilify are now increasingly prescribed by psychiatrists and primary-care doctors to treat conditions they were never intended or approved for, such as:

• Anxiety
• Attention-deficit disorder (ADD)
• Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• Behavioral problems, and
• Insomnia

Scientists are closer to establishing a definitive bacterial cause for the skin condition rosacea. This will allow more targeted, effective treatments to be developed for sufferers, according to a review published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology.

Rosacea is a common dermatological condition that causes reddening and inflammation of the skin mostly around the cheeks, nose and chin. In severe cases skin lesions may form and lead to disfigurement. Rosacea affects around 3% of the population - usually fair-skinned females aged 30-50 and particularly those with weak immune systems. The condition is treated with a variety of antibiotics, even though there has never been a well-established bacterial cause.

A new review carried out by the National University of Ireland concludes that rosacea may be triggered by bacteria that live within tiny mites that reside in the skin. The mite species Demodex folliculorum is worm-like in shape and usually lives harmlessly inside the pilosebaceous unit which surrounds hair follicles of the face. They are normal inhabitants of the face and increase in number with age and skin damage - for example, following exposure to sunlight. The numbers of Demodex mites living in the skin of rosacea patients is higher than in normal individuals, which has previously suggested a possible role for the mites in initiating the condition.

The rhythm of life is driven by the cycles of day and night, and most organisms carry in their cells a common, (roughly) 24-hour beat. In animals, this rhythm emerges from a tiny brain structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus. Take it out of the brain and keep it alive in a lab dish and this "brain clock" will keep on ticking, ramping up or gearing down production of certain proteins at specific times of the day, day after day.

A new study reveals that the brain clock itself is driven, in part, by metabolism, the production and flow of chemical energy in cells. The researchers focused primarily on a phenomenon known as "redox" in tissues of the SCN from the brains of rats and mice.

Redox represents the energy changes of cellular metabolism (usually through the transfer of electrons). When a molecule gains one or more electrons, scientists call it a reduction; when it loses electrons, they say it is oxidized. These redox reactions, the researchers found, oscillate on a 24-hour cycle in the brain clock, and literally open and close channels of communication in brain cells.

They report their findings in the journal Science, which also wrote a Perspective on the research.

"The language of the brain is electrical; it determines what kind of signals one part of the brain sends to the other cells in its tissue, as well as the other parts of the brain nearby," said University of Illinois cell and developmental biology professor Martha Gillette, who led the study. "The fundamental discovery here is that there is an intrinsic oscillation in metabolism in the clock region of the brain that takes place without external intervention. And this change in metabolism determines the excitable state of that part of the brain."

The adult human circulatory system contains between 20 and 30 trillion red blood cells (RBCs), the precise size and number of which can vary from person to person. Some people may have fewer, but larger RBCs, while others may have a larger number of smaller RBCs. Although these differences in size and number may seem inconsequential, they raise an important question: Just what controls these characteristics of RBCs?

This question is particularly relevant for the roughly one-quarter of the population that suffers from anemia, which is often caused by flawed RBC production. A better understanding of how RBC production is controlled may offer greater insight into the development and potential treatment of anemia.

By analyzing the results of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in conjunction with experiments on mouse and human red blood cells, researchers in the lab of Whitehead Institute Founding Member Harvey Lodish have identified the protein cyclin D3 as regulating the number of cell divisions RBC progenitors undergo, which ultimately affects the resulting size and quantity of RBCs. Their findings are reported in the September 14 issue of Genes and Development.

"This is one of the rare cases where we can explain a normal human-to-human variation," says Lodish, who is also a professor of biology and bioengineering at MIT. "In a sense, it's a window on human evolution. Why this should have happened, we have no idea, but it does."

Two men in Missouri who became severely ill after sustaining tick bites were found to be infected with a new type of virus, according to a study from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Both men were admitted to hospitals after experiencing high fevers, fatigue, diarrhea and loss of appetite. They were originally thought to be suffering from a bacterial infection, but doubts arose when they didn't improve after being treated with antibiotics.

Further tests revealed their blood contained a new virus, which the researchers dubbed the Heartland virus. It belongs to a group called phleboviruses, which are carried by flies, mosquitoes or ticks, and can cause disease in humans.

While the genetic material of Heartland virus appears similar to that of other phleboviruses, the particular proteins it produces are different enough to call it a new species, said study researcher Laura McMullan, a senior scientist at the CDC.

Because the Heartland virus causes such general symptoms, it could be "a more common cause of human illness than is currently recognized," the researchers wrote in the Aug. 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.