America’s most expensive medicines revealed
Newly-approved $3.5m-a-dose bleeding disorder drug tops the list, while gene therapy for motor neuron disease is second at $2.5m – so are insurers actually paying up?

The United States is behind some of the world’s most vital and innovative medications, but it also sells them for the highest prices.

Earlier this month, the federal government approved a blood clot therapy that costs $3.5million per dose — making it the most expensive drug in the world.

But a bevvy of prescription medications have sky-high prices attached to them – mostly because they are on the cutting edge of science and target some of the rarest and hardest-to-treat conditions… (Continue to full article)

Masks make a comeback
Hundreds of thousands of students across the US will be forced to wear face coverings when classes go back this week as schools bring back controversial mandates.

Hundreds of thousands of students across the US will be forced to wear face masks in class when schools go back this week as controversial mandates make a return.

Despite Covid infection rates plateauing for months, elementary and high schools in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania have made face coverings a condition of entry for students returning from the holidays.

Education officials claim the policy is to prevent a boom in respiratory illnesses after increased mixing during the first normal Christmas and New Year in years… (Continue to full article)

DEA warns that ADHD over prescription could be as bad as OPIOID CRISIS
In stinging letter to pharmaceutical giants it accuses of ‘aggressive marketing’ – as users rise 10% in a year to 41 million

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has expressed concern that ‘aggressive marketing practices’ by telehealth companies may be contributing to excessive prescriptions for medications used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a letter from the agency.

While the letter does not mention specific companies, it is believed to refer to telehealth companies such as Cerebral Inc. and Done Global Inc., whose prescribing practices have reportedly been under investigation by the DEA after blitzing social media with online adverts including Instagram and Facebook.

This decision follows a more than doubling in Adderall prescriptions of more than 10% per year in 2021 through to October 2022, after a roughly 5% annual increase in the three years prior, according to data from research firm IQVIA… (Continue to full article)

Big pharma’s golden ticket: Sales of new weight-loss shot made by Eli Lilly forecast to hit $50BILLION this year – which would make it the best-selling drug of all time
A new weight-loss drug made by Eli Lilly is set to become the best-selling medicine of all time, analysts predict.

Tirzepatide — sold under the brand name Mounjaro — is expected to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight loss within months.

Analysts expect the drug — which is believed to be better than similar rival medications — to make anywhere from $25 to $48billion in the US in its first year… (Continue to full article)

Floating poo, hearing voices and excessive sweating: Six of the strangest cancer symptoms REVEALED
Unusual lumps, a persistent cough and headaches are the cancer warning signs doctors tell you to watch out for.

But floating poo, excessive sweating and hearing voices are some of the stranger signs tumours give off.

Many of these symptoms are exceptionally common and can be caused by a lot of different conditions… (Continue to full article)

Ultraprocessed foods linked to cancer and early death
Eating a lot of ultraprocessed foods significantly increases men’s risk of colorectal cancer and can lead to heart disease and early death in both men and women, according to two new, large-scale studies of people in the United States and Italy published Wednesday in British medical journal The BMJ.

Hot dogs qualify as an ultra-processed food, since they’re packed with preservatives. zz/Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 2018 via AP Images

Ultraprocessed foods include prepackaged soups, sauces, frozen pizza, ready-to-eat meals and pleasure foods such as hot dogs, sausages, french fries, sodas, store-bought cookies, cakes, candies, doughnuts, ice cream and many more.

“Literally hundreds of studies link ultra-processed foods to obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and overall mortality… (Continue to full article)

Your Brain is far more complex than the largest computer in the world, or the panel on an electric atomic power plant. It is so powerful that it controls and navigates you throughout your whole life.

A person cannot put a value on thinking and thinking skills. Lets us start by asking. What is thinking? Thinking is a unique, silent, selective, non-material, low energetic, electromagnetic process in which a person dreams, reasons, calculates, evaluates, perceives, receives senses, conserves, remembers, conceptualizes, organizes, and disorganizes, creates, exercises, AND DETERMINES the future of their lives.

Your future life, education, work ethic, competitiveness, security, home environment, living, working conditions, nutrition, goals, and ambitions is determined by the path your brain is on and where it leads you. Continue reading →

Steve Jobs

I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world. In some others’ eyes, my life is the epitome of success. However, aside from work, I have little joy. In the end, my wealth is only a fact of life that I am accustomed to. At this moment, lying on my bed and recalling my life, I realize that all the recognition and wealth that I took so much pride in have paled and become meaningless in the face of my death.

You can employ someone to drive the car for you, make money for you but you cannot have someone bear your sickness for you. Material things lost can be found or replaced. But there is one thing that can never be found when it’s lost – Life. Whichever stage in life you are in right now, with time, you will face the day when the curtain comes down. Continue reading →

Or… Et tu, Primum Non-Nocere!

A few weeks ago, I wrote a commentary titled Primum Non-Nocere; First, Do No Harm. The title comes from the opening line of the twenty-four hundred-year-old oath written by Hippocrates, the pioneer of modern medicine. He authored over seventy medical books, most notably treating the patient and the malady, not just the disorder. Hippocrates understood that the patient and illness are inextricably linked.

That post was about an encounter with factory medicine as an observer. Today I want to relate a developing saga as the participant – my point of view.

I call this a comedy of errors because, in 2003, I made the inexcusable error of making my way to the Emergency Room (ER).

Yes, Maisy, I drove to the hospital.

I didn’t know I had a heart attack. I could still drive, so it couldn’t be that serious.

Right? Continue reading →

In California, millions of residents and thousands of farmers depend on the Bay-Delta for fresh water – but they can’t agree on how to protect it.

Illustration of the BayDelta by Alëna Skarina

Editor’s NOTE: The following is an unusual posting for this site, however – as one gets caught up in it’s reporting and importance of meaning – it all has much to do with continued loss of our health. ~ J.B.

The Sacramento is California’s largest river. It arises near the lower slopes of Mt. Shasta, in the northernmost part of the state, and runs some four hundred miles south, draining the upper corridor of the Central Valley, bending through downtown Sacramento, and, eventually, reaching the Pacific Ocean, by way of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. Erik Vink, the executive director of the Delta Protection Commission, a state conservation agency, described the Sacramento to me as “California’s first superhighway.” By the eighteen-fifties, daily steamboats ferried passengers between San Francisco and Sacramento in as little as six hours. Travellers now mostly use I-80 to cover the same ninety miles, and oceangoing ships bound for the Port of West Sacramento finish their trip in a deepwater canal built sixty years ago by the Army Corps of Engineers. But the Sacramento is still important: it and its tributaries make up the state’s single largest source of fresh surface water. Most precipitation in California falls in the north, while the biggest users, including all the major metropolitan areas and the immense farms of the San Joaquin Valley, are farther south. Devising ways to move water from wet places to dry places has been the labor of generations. During the past century and a half, miners, farmers, politicians, engineers, conservationists, and schemers of all kinds have worked – together and against one another – to create one of the most complex water-shifting systems in the world. Continue reading →

Recently I had a bout of the Chinese Virus, referred to by the sanitized name of Covid 19. Both my wife and I had been vaccinated against it, but for me that seems to have made no difference. Thankfully, I was not overly ill with it–a sore throat, fever, runny nose, and loss of appetite for a few days and then it started to wear off. Maybe the version I got was this newer Omicron version, which is not nearly as lethal as earlier versions. I don’t know. I had to do the ten day quarantine thing and I thank the Lord it was not worse. I had a good friend that died from this thing while visiting relatives in New York.

What brought this to mind was that I talked to two nurses, both from different places – and neither one had much faith in the vaccines. Continue reading →