Health

The Royal College of Surgeons say that growing numbers of obese people and smokers are being denied operations as they become “soft targets” for an NHS  which has become desperate to save money. According to evidence, they found that patients were being refused hip and knee replacements and a range of other procedures in more and more parts of England. They found that 34 per cent of the 200 health commissioners have one or more policies on body mass index (BMI) level or smoking status which prevent overweight patients or smokers being referred for routine surgery.

Scientists in Japan have been given the green light to start modifying fertilized human eggs. A government bioethics panel said they are only allowing the technique to be used for basic research purposes, They said they could not approve the clinical use of modified fertilized human eggs, citing risks of editing errors and the currently unknown impact on offspring…..so there won’t be any designer babies created any time soon…hopefully.

Scientists have announced that commonly used cold and flu medications, purchased over-the-counter, may cause memory loss, a decline in IQ and a shrinking of the brain.  According to a new study, popular medications used to treat colds, flu, hay fever, allergies, and heartburn all contain anti-cholinergic drugs – which can negatively alter the brain in the person taking them, with effects lasting up to a month after being used. Medications such as Zantac, Night Nurse and Nytol are among a huge list of drugs that may result in adverse reactions.

Your television and computer monitor have been able to manipulate your nervous system for at least the last 15 years, according to a US patent. Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors US Patent #6,506,148 says: “Physiological effects have been observed in a human subject in response to stimulation of the skin with weak electromagnetic fields that are pulsed with certain frequencies near ½ Hz or 2.4 Hz, such as to excite a sensory resonance.

US health officials warned last week that the Zika outbreak could have more of an effect on the United States and called for additional funding to combat the virus. In fact they now want $1.9 billion to fight the “war against Zika”. To back their case, after months of scientific study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded that there was now enough evidence to clearly establish that the Zika virus causes microcephaly in the newborn offspring of infected mothers. Their report was published by the New England Journal of Medicine.