Researchers have made some surprising findings.

Microbes are in the news these days. Specifically, the microbes that live in and on the human body, making up our "microbiome." Michael Pollan made a splash with a column titled "Some of My Best Friends are Germs" about a year ago, and now Martin Blaser, director of the Human Microbiome Project at NYU, has published a book called Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues.

In a short period of time, bacteria, fungi and other microbes have gone from enemy to friend in the public consciousness.

But in addition to the many studies finding out about the numbers and diversity of the microbes with whom we share our bodies and their roles in our nutrition and immune function, some researchers have made some surprising findings: the bugs in your gut might actually impact your emotions.

Could the Black Death Actually Have Been an Ebola-like Virus?
Things seem to be looking up for rats. After more than 500 years, rats may be off the hook for causing the Black Death, the horrible plague that claimed up to 60% of the European population. In virtually every textbook the Bubonic Plague, which is spread by flea-ridden rats, is named as the culprit behind the chaos. But mounting evidence suggests that an Ebola-like virus was the actual cause of the Black Death and the sporadic outbreaks that occurred in the following 300 years.

At the forefront of this theory are two researchers from the University of Liverpool, Dr. Christopher Duncan and Dr. Susan Scott. Let's look at six small pieces of this puzzle.

"Eppur si muove" - And yet it moves - were the words Italian mathematician and physicist Galileo Galilei allegedly uttered after being sentenced by the Inquisition for heresy. Galileo's heresy was his opinion that the Sun lies motionless, that the Earth is not at the centre of universe, and that it moves. Unlike those around him who were quite happy to blindly follow dogma concerning the universal order, Galileo observed the world around him, measured different parameters and finally, after he analysed enough collected data, worked out that the Earth is moving around the Sun. Galileo was certainly luckier then Giordano Bruno, another Italian mathematician, who was burned at the stake in 1600 for advocating the same idea.

People who attack homeopathy these days do so with the same fervor as the Inquisitors. With their small, medieval minds, they repeat the same nonsense and misconceptions about homeopathy, over and over, without making the slightest effort to conduct their own research or empirical quest. I have to admit that my first reaction to homeopathy was of a similar myopic nature, my 'conventional scientific mind' immediately dismissed it as nonsense, and I had no desire to study the subject further.

Enter Spark, the appropriately named dog

But then one day Spark visited my practice and everything changed.

It took me a few moments to realize that Spark was not some strange, hairless breed I had never encountered before, but rather a West Highland Terrier. He had only a few tufts of hair remaining, mostly on his head, chest and the tip of his tail. The rest of his skin was completely bald, blackish and covered with oozing sores and scabs. I was the fourth veterinarian to see Spark. After learning his medical history and previous treatments, it became obvious that there weren't many options left to try. He had already been treated with several anti-parasitic medicines, tested for different allergies and was eating nothing but hypoallergenic dry-foods. None of this had worked. He'd also been on several types of antibiotics and steroids, as well as a course of fungicidal medicine, all to no positive effect whatsoever. In fact his health kept deteriorating.

It used to be that no one could take psychiatric drugs while in the military. All that has changed in recent years. Today, psychiatric drugging has gone rampant. From 2005 to 2011, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration increased their prescriptions of psychiatric drugs by nearly seven times. That's over thirty times faster than the civilian rate, even though the American military has been steadily reducing troop levels since 2008.

Officially, one in six American service members is on at least one psychiatric drug. That's probably a very low estimate. Psychiatric drugs are handed out not just by psychiatrists, but also by physician's assistants, nurses, medics--they're even passed around from soldier to soldier. And the U.S. government acknowledges they have no way of knowing how many drugs are handed out on the front lines. This rampant drug dispensing has turned very dangerous, especially when so many "qualify" for psychiatry's biggest diagnosis/drugging combo of all.

An FDA report from 2005 titled "Diphtheria and Tetanus Toxoids and Acellular Pertussis Vaccine Adsorbed Tripedia" outlines a number of adverse events reported during post-approval use of the Tripedia vaccine, and one of them is autism. (1)

Health-care providers who administer vaccines are required to keep permanent vaccination records, they are also required to report any occurrences (adverse events such as autism) to the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services following immunization of any events.

The report also illustrates that the tripedia vaccine has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potentials or impairment of fertility. This makes one wonder what other vaccines have not been properly evaluated. Furthermore, it illustrates how a review by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found evidence for a causal relationship between tetanus toxoid and both brachial neuritis and Guillain-Barre syndrome.

This document just adds more confusion to the topic of vaccines and autism. How can the general public be expected to believe there is no link when more evidence keeps on mounting that suggests that there could be. Why does an FDA document even mention autism and its association with vaccinations?

There is good reason to be confused, this isn't fear mongering.

An attempt to improve vaccination rates in Colorado failed Tuesday in the state Senate.

Instead, the Senate approved a bill to enhance vaccine education efforts - a watered-down version of a measure that would have made it harder for parents to opt out of vaccinating their children. Colorado is among a handful of states that allow parents to sign "personal belief" exemptions from required immunizations, and last school year Colorado had the 6th-highest rate of immunization exemption in the U.S. at 4.3 percent.

The bill would have required parents invoking the "personal belief" exemption to watch a video about vaccinations or get doctor clearance for taking the exemption.

Democratic sponsors said the bill stood no chance of passage in the face of strong opposition from some in both parties. They called the watered-down bill the only viable option.

"At this point our decision is, are we happy taking the baby step ... or do we want to give it all up?" said Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, sponsor of the vaccine measure.

The bill still requires schools to disclose vaccination rates, a safeguard aimed at protecting kids with fragile immune systems. It also directs state health authorities to work on improved communication with parents about vaccines.

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Psychiatry has a real credibility problem on its hands.

What does it tell us about the state of psychiatry when some of the biggest names in the psychiatric establishment are distancing themselves from psychiatry's diagnostic system and its treatments?

In 2013, National Institute Mental Health director Thomas Insel, citing the lack of scientific validity of psychiatry's official diagnostic manual, the DSM, stated that, "NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories." In response, Robert Whitaker, investigative reporter and author of Anatomy of an Epidemic, observed,

"This is like the King of Psychiatry saying that the discipline has no clothes."

"When Insel states that the disorders haven't been validated," Whitaker points out,

"he is stating that the entire edifice that modern psychiatry is built upon is flawed, and unsupported by science... If the public loses faith in the DSM, and comes to see it as unscientific, then psychiatry has a real credibility problem on its hands."

Soybeans are the second-largest US crop after corn, covering about a quarter of American farmland. We grow more soybeans than any other country except Brazil. According to the US Department of Agriculture, more than 90 percent of the soybeans churned out on US farms each year are genetically engineered to withstand herbicides, nearly all of them involving one called Roundup. Organic production, by contrast, is marginal - it accounts for less than 1 percent of total American acreage devoted to soy. (The remaining 9 percent or so of soybeans are conventionally grown, but not genetically modified.)

Americans don't eat much of these lime-green legumes directly, but that doesn't mean we're not exposed to them. After harvest, the great bulk of soybeans are crushed and divided into two parts: meal, which mainly goes into feed for animals that become our meat, and fat, most of which ends up being used as cooking oil or in food products. According to the US Soy Board, soy accounts for 61 percent of American's vegetable oil consumption.

Given soy's centrality to our food and agriculture systems, the findings of a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Food Chemistry are worth pondering. The authors found that Monsanto's ubiquitous Roundup Ready soybeans, engineered to withstand its own blockbuster herbicide, contain more herbicide residues than their non-GMO counterparts. The team also found that the GM beans are nutritionally inferior.

Julia Child, goddess of fat, is beaming somewhere. Butter is back, and when you're looking for a few chunks of pork for a stew, you can resume searching for the best pieces - the ones with the most fat. Eventually, your friends will stop glaring at you as if you're trying to kill them.

That the worm is turning became increasingly evident a couple of weeks ago, when a meta-analysis published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine found that there's just no evidence to support the notion that saturated fat increases the risk of heart disease. (In fact, there's some evidence that a lack of saturated fat may be damaging.) The researchers looked at 72 different studies and, as usual, said more work - including more clinical studies - is needed. For sure. But the days of skinless chicken breasts and tubs of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter may finally be drawing to a close.

The tip of this iceberg has been visible for years, and we're finally beginning to see the base. Of course, no study is perfect and few are definitive. But the real villains in our diet - sugar and ultra-processed foods - are becoming increasingly apparent. You can go back to eating butter, if you haven't already.

Last week, officials in Guinea expressed optimism. The outbreak of Ebola that had spread into Liberia and beyond appeared to be waning. The number of deaths, which had then numbered 106, had slowed. Travel restrictions had been bolstered. The outbreak, which had sent waves of panic across West Africa, finally seemed under control.

"The number of new cases have fallen rapidly," Rafi Diallo, a spokesman for Guinea's health ministry, told Reuters. On the day of the interview, April 15, there were 159 confirmed or suspected cases of the disease. "Once we no longer have any new cases ... we can say that this is totally under control."

It's eight days later. And the number of those killed by the Ebola killed in Guinea is now 136. Nearly 210 cases have been confirmed. In all, across Liberia and Guinea, 142 people have been killed - and 242 infected - in an outbreak that began months ago in the forested villages of southeast Guinea and shot to the capital city.