Health & WellnessS


Bad Guys

Teen Commits Suicide Due to Bullying: Parents Sue School for Son's Death

Family Wants No Money but Insists School Address Bullying and Three Other Suicides

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© (Courtesy Mohat Family)In a federal lawsuit, the parents of Eric Mohat allege that their son committed suicide after being tormented by bullies at his Mentor, Ohio, High School. They say the school knew about the bullying and failed to protect their son.
Eric Mohat, 17, was harassed so mercilessly in high school that when one bully said publicly in class, "Why don't you go home and shoot yourself, no one will miss you," he did.

Now his parents, William and Janis Mohat of Mentor, Ohio, have filed a lawsuit in federal court, saying that their son endured name-calling, teasing, constant pushing and shoving and hitting in front of school officials who should have protected him.

The lawsuit -- filed March 27, alleges that the quiet but likable boy, who was involved in theater and music, was called "gay," "fag," "queer" and "homo" and often in front of his teachers. Most of the harassment took place in math class and the teacher -- an athletic coach -- was accused of failing to protect the boy.

Health

Fear Erased in Rat Brains

Fearful memories have a powerful grip on the brain, but researchers have developed a new technique in rats that loosens that grip and overwrites the fear response permanently.

The technique, involving exposing rats to the very thing they were primed to fear and taking advantage of a moment of weakness in memory of that fear, could eventually be used to develop clinical treatments of fears in humans, the scientists said.

Fear memories, like other bad memories, are particularly sticky in the brain compared to "good" ones. Evolution played a hand in this, the thinking goes, because fearing things that can harm us is an advantage to survival.

So the brain has a hard time letting go of these memories, as well as distinguishing rational from irrational fears. Researchers have long looked for a way to short-circuit the brain and help it delete those irrational fears.

Heart

Scientists prove human heart can regenerate cells

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© REUTERS/Camilla Svensk/HandoutJonas Frisén of Sweden's Karolinska Institute in an undated photo.

London-- Scientists said on Thursday they had shown the human body regenerates heart cells at a rate of about one percent a year, a discovery that could one day reduce the need for transplants.

The study of 50 volunteers, using a dating method that detects traces of a carbon isotope left by Cold War nuclear bomb tests, raises the prospect of artificially stimulating the renewal process some day, they reported in the journal Science.

"It would be a way to try and help the heart to some self-help rather than transplanting new cells," Jonas Frisen of Sweden's Karolinska Institute said in a telephone interview.

"Taking advantage of the heart's own capacity to generate new cells either using pharmaceutical compounds or, if it is possible, by exercise or any other environmental factor."

Health

US: House Committee Urges Probe of Uniforms Posing Health Problems

Complaints that new uniforms are causing rashes and other irritations for Transportation Security Administration officers who screen passengers at airports have triggered an inquiry by the House Committee on Homeland Security.

In a letter to TSA Administrator Kip Hawley, the committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) called the complaints "very troublesome" and requested that the agency fully investigate the issue and report back with proposed solutions to any problems found.

According to unions representing federal workers, hundreds of transportation security officers, or TSOs, have complained about the uniforms, most reporting skin rashes but others complaining of runny or bloody noses, lightheadedness, red eyes and swollen and cracked lips.

Health

Flashback Who's Afraid of GMOs? Me!

In your article, Who is Afraid of GMOs? (by Lindsey Partos), the author tries to persuade us that genetically modified (also known as GMO, GM, GE, and biotech) foods can feed the world's hungry and that foes of this technology are selfish, greedy idealists who abet the starving of millions of people.

In fact, the foes of genetic crops are the heroes who are fighting greedy, huge agribusiness interests that are slowly destroying our environment and exposing us all to uncertain dangers for their own gain.

Instead of focusing on the (yet) uncertain health risks and accepting by faith that GMO food can better feed the hungry, the author should have zeroed in on the scientifically unsubstantiated safety issues and the clear environmental dangers of GMO crops. The lack of evidence of harm to date may simply be the result of a lack of resources to look at potential problems from GMOs.

Health

Marijuana Chemical May Fight Brain Cancer

Active Component In Marijuana Targets Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells, Study Says

The active chemical in marijuana promotes the death of brain cancer cells by essentially helping them feed upon themselves, researchers in Spain report.

Guillermo Velasco and colleagues at Complutense University in Spain have found that the active ingredient in marijuana, THC, causes brain cancer cells to undergo a process called autophagy. Autophagy is the breakdown of a cell that occurs when the cell essentially self-digests.

Bulb

New York county ban on baby bottle chemical is official

New York - A suburban New York county has adopted the nation's first ban on the chemical found in plastic baby bottles and sippy cups.

The measure banning the sale of baby bottles containing BPA was signed by Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy on Thursday after county legislators passed it last month.

Several states including California, Oregon and Hawaii are considering bans the chemical formally known as bisphenol A, but Suffolk County, on Long Island, is the first place in the nation to enact one.

Pills

Big Pharma's Latest Insanity? A "PolyPill" Combining Five Different Drugs Into One Pill

What do you get when you combine cholesterol medication, three different blood pressure drugs and aspirin into a single pharmaceutical pill? If you believe the drug company that funded its own study on this chemical cocktail, you get a wonder drug that has all the "benefits" of five different drugs with no more side effects than a single drug!

That's the story from Bangalore, India, anyway, where 2000 citizens of India were recruited into a clinical trial to test these drugs. The use of low-income citizens in developing nations as guinea pigs is now a common Big Pharma practice, by the way. It's cheaper than using Americans as guinea pigs, and the risk of lawsuits from harm or death is much lower in such countries.

Alarm Clock

Irradiated Foods Cause Severe Neurological Damage

In a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) report on cats developing severe neurological symptoms due to a degradation of myelin, the fatty insulator of nerve fibers called axons. Because myelin facilitates the conduction of nerve signals, when it is lost or damaged there can be impairment of sensation, movement, thinking and other functions, depending on what particular nerves are affected. This loss of myelin is found in several disorders of the central nervous system in humans -- the best known being multiple sclerosis (MS).

So what caused the cats to develop neurological problems? Although the researchers' statement to the media practically buries the fact, a close read shows the animals were fine until fed irradiated food. What's more, when they were taken off the irradiated diet, the animals' nervous systems began healing.

Bad Guys

US: Psychiatric Hospital Operates Like Prison, with Sex Abuse and Violent Assaults

A federal Justice Department investigation has concluded that the psychiatric ward of Brooklyn's Kings County Hospital Center (KCHC) has been a place where patients are regularly abused by staff and other patients, and where treatment needs are ignored in favor of restraint and control.

"Substantial harm occurs regularly due to K.C.H.C.'s failure to properly assess, diagnose, supervise, monitor and treat its mental health patients," the department's 58-page report reads.

The report documents an environment where assault is regularly perpetrated between patients, where suicidal warning signs are ignored, and where staff regularly restrain patients instead of treating them. Among the more egregious cases cited are a physical fight between six patients resulting in one of them needing surgery, a 16-year old patient forcing a 14-year old patient to perform oral sex, and other incidents of sexual assault and rape.