Homeopathy will not be banned by NHS despite critical report

Health minister Anne Milton said complementary and alternative medicine "has a long tradition" and very vocal people both in favour of it and against it.

A report by a group of MPs said homeopathic medicine should no longer be funded on the NHS and called for a ban on the medicines carrying medical claims on their labels.

The Commons Science and Technology Committee said there is no evidence the drugs are any more effective than a placebo - the same as taking a sugar or dummy pill and believing it works.

Last month, doctors attending the British Medical Association (BMA) annual conference backed this view, saying homeopathic remedies should be banned on the NHS and taken off pharmacy shelves where they are sold as medicines.

The treatment was described as "nonsense on stilts" and that patients would be better off buying bottled water.

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Anti-vaccination group accused of harassing parents

The Australian Vaccination Network is an awful little organization that exists to spread fear and disinformation about vaccines, under the pretense of caring about children. They're getting an official comeuppance, though: the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission has put together a report condemning AVN. They're announcing that AVN's claims are inaccurate and misleading, and further, that AVN harasses people. There's a terrible story at that link of a couple whose child died miserably of whooping cough…and Meryl Dorey, head of AVN, responded by demanding medical records and insisting that the child couldn't have died of a disease preventable by vaccination.

An excellent report on ABC:

AVN is a couple of truly rotten people with an office. It's a shame that the only punishment the HCCC report is doling out to them is a demand that they put a disclaimer on their web site.

Doctors to 'print' new organs for transplant patients

Although God may not like amputees enough to give them the limbs they desire (See WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com), we are fortunate enough to have real doctors and scientists to look after us.

I cannot understate that fact enough.

Yesterday I found out a friend of mine had been diagnosed with having a brain tumour. It sounds horrific, and frankly it is, but the doctors and nurses simply said, "You're going to be fine, its an easy operation and we'll do the surgery within 2 weeks; we'll cut away part of the skull, take out the tumour and put your skull back in place."

Think about that for a second. How easy do they make it sound.

That is how far we have progressed in our knowledge of the human body. No longer are we are the mercy of an invisible force who would take away peoples life without any warning.

We as a species have learnt so much about the human body and its inner workings that we are now able to diagnose and treat even the most terrifying ailment such as a brain tumour and pass it off as if you were having a fracture re-set.

Now we are, nearly, at the stage where if an organ of ours fails, for whatever reason, we can simply create the necessary cells using our DNA, manipulate them into shape and create a completely new organ.

Doctors might one day be able to 'print' living body parts they need for surgery, including blood vessels and entire organs.

The astonishing technique is known as bio-printing and it could make the transplant list a thing of the past.

Currently patients on the transplant list have to wait months or even years before a suitable organ becomes available.

Some religious people may say that we are only acting according to God's plan, and without the tools he put in front of us we'd never have succeeded.

If anyone honestly things this then they should be very very concerned, because I cannot imagine people worshiping a God who is fucking toying with us. A God who torments us, by killing our friends and loved ones, into spurring us on to find bigger and better ways of saving people.

Surely a world where in the vastness, possible infinite, of space lived an organism that evolved from single cell organisms to the point were we can manipulate the world around us so much that we can create new ways of ensuring we can keep on procreating, is much more likely than one where a God created us in all his love but for millions of years tortured and tormented us until only the strongest survived.

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Retina Created From Stem Cell

In another world first in the fight against degenerative eye disorders, scientists from the Universtiy of California, Irvine, have created an eight-layer early-stage retina from human embryonic stem cells. Not only is this the world's first three-dimensional complex tissue structure to be made from stem cells, but it also marks the first step toward the development of transplant-ready retinas to treat eye disorders affecting millions.

The retina is the part of the eye that records images and sends them from the eye to the brain via the optic nerve. Building on a process designed in a previous study, researchers created multiple cell types using microscopic gradients for solutions in which to bathe the stem cells and initiate specific differentiation paths.

"Creating this complex tissue is a first for the stem cell field," said Hans Keirstead, study leader of the Reeve-Irvine Research Center and the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at UCI. "Dr. Gabriel Nistor in our group addressed a really interesting scientific problem with an engineering solution, showing that gradients of solutions can create complex stem cell-based tissues. We made a complex structure consisting of many cell types. This is a major advance in our quest to treat retinal disease. What’s so exciting with our discovery is that creating transplantable retinas from stem cells could help millions of people, and we are well on the way.”

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