Nuclear medicine is one of those cool specialities that doesn’t get enough attention. While nuclear energy has enjoyed a revival in recent years, little attention has been paid to nuclear medicine. That’s probably partly because explaining it in technical terms inevitably removes some of the magic and partly because many people fear radiation and don’t want to think about it.

But nuclear medicine deserves attention. Not all of the world's nuclear reactors are used for producing energy; they are also used for producing radioisotopes for medicine and industry, training, and other purposes. They are known as research reactors, and there are currently around 220 research reactors in 53 countries. In the heyday of nuclear development, in 1975, there were 373 neutron factories in 55 countries. //

Outside of the wealthier nations, there is a significant shortage of equipment and workforce for nuclear imaging around the world, and one study found that:

A comprehensive scale-up of imaging, treatment, and care quality would avert 9·55 million (12·5%) of all cancer deaths caused by the modelled cancers worldwide, saving 232·30 million life-years. Scale-up of imaging would cost US$6·84 billion in 2020–30 but yield lifetime productivity gains of $1·23 trillion worldwide, a net return of $179·19 per $1 invested.

Healthy people benefit humanity. For those living in the poorest nations to gain access to improved healthcare, nuclear medicine will play a vital role going forward, although when and how that will happen remains to be seen.

Whatever your office setup, the most important thing is to move. //

Without question, inactivity is bad for us. Prolonged sitting is consistently linked to higher risks of cardiovascular disease and death. The obvious response to this frightful fate is to not sit— move. Even a few moments of exercise can have benefits, studies suggest. But in our modern times, sitting is hard to avoid, especially at the office. This has led to a range of strategies to get ourselves up, including the rise of standing desks. //

However, studies on whether standing desks are beneficial have been sparse and sometimes inconclusive. Further, prolonged standing can have its own risks, and data on work-related sitting has also been mixed. While the final verdict on standing desks is still unclear, two studies out this year offer some of the most nuanced evidence yet about the potential benefits and risks of working on your feet.

The box of prescription drugs had been forgotten in a back closet of a retail pharmacy for so long that some of the pills predated the 1969 moon landing. Most were 30 to 40 years past their expiration dates — possibly toxic, probably worthless.

But to Lee Cantrell, who helps run the California Poison Control System, the cache was an opportunity to answer an enduring question about the actual shelf life of drugs: Could these drugs from the bell-bottom era still be potent? //

The age of the drugs might have been bizarre, but the question the researchers wanted to answer wasn't. Pharmacies across the country in major medical centers and in neighborhood strip malls routinely toss out tons of scarce and potentially valuable prescription drugs when they hit their expiration dates. //

Experts estimate such squandering eats up about $765 billion a year — as much as a quarter of all the country's health care spending. //

The findings surprised both researchers: A dozen of the 14 compounds were still as potent as they were when they were manufactured, some at almost 100 percent of their labeled concentrations. //

"Refining our prescription drug dating process could save billions," he says.

But after a brief burst of attention, the response to their study faded. That raises an even bigger question: If some drugs remain effective well beyond the date on their labels, why hasn't there been a push to extend their expiration dates?

It turns out that the FDA, the agency that helps set the dates, has long known the shelf life of some drugs can be extended, sometimes by years.

In fact, the federal government has saved a fortune by doing this. //

For decades, the federal government has stockpiled massive stashes of medication, antidotes and vaccines in secure locations throughout the country. The drugs are worth tens of billions of dollars and would provide a first line of defense in case of a large-scale emergency.

Maintaining these stockpiles is expensive. The drugs have to be kept secure and at the proper humidity and temperature so they don't degrade. Luckily, the country has rarely needed to tap into many of the drugs, but this means they often reach their expiration dates. Though the government requires pharmacies to throw away expired drugs, it doesn't always follow these instructions itself. Instead, for more than 30 years, it has pulled some medicines and tested their quality. //

In 1986, the Air Force, hoping to save on replacement costs, asked the FDA if certain drugs' expiration dates could be extended. In response, the FDA and Defense Department created the Shelf Life Extension Program.

Each year, drugs from the stockpiles are selected based on their value and pending expiration, and analyzed in batches to determine whether their end dates could be safely extended. For several decades, the program has found that the actual shelf life of many drugs is well beyond the original expiration dates.

A 2006 study of 122 drugs tested by the program showed that two-thirds of the expired medications were stable every time a lot was tested. Each of them had their expiration dates extended, on average, by more than four years, according to research published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Some that failed to hold their potency include the common asthma inhalant albuterol, the topical rash spray diphenhydramine, and a local anesthetic made from lidocaine and epinephrine, the study said. //

An official with the Department of Defense, which maintains about $13.6 billion worth of drugs in its stockpile, says that in 2016 it cost $3.1 million to run the extension program — which saved the department from replacing $2.1 billion in expired drugs. //

Federal and state laws prohibit pharmacists from dispensing expired drugs, and The Joint Commission, which accredits thousands of health care organizations, requires facilities to remove expired medication from their supply. //

Testing showed 24 of the 40 expired devices contained at least 90 percent of their stated amount of epinephrine, enough to be considered as potent as when they were made. All of them contained at least 80 percent of their labeled concentration of medication. The takeaway? Even EpiPens stored in less than ideal conditions may last longer than their labels say they do, and if there's no other option, an expired EpiPen may be better than nothing, Cantrell says. //

"The question is: Should the FDA be doing more stability testing?" Berkowitz says. "Could they come up with a safe and systematic way to cut down on the drugs being wasted in hospitals?"

Four scientists who worked on the FDA extension program told ProPublica something like that could work for drugs stored in hospital pharmacies, where conditions are carefully controlled.

Greg Burel, director of the CDC's stockpile, says he worries that if drugmakers were forced to extend their expiration dates it could backfire, making it unprofitable to produce certain drugs and thereby reducing access or increasing prices.

Last year, FDA advisers unanimously voted that oral phenylephrine is ineffective. //

No other lab was ever able to replicate the positive results from those two studies. And when FDA scientists carefully looked through the data, they found evidence that some of the numbers could have been fudged and that the results were "too good to be real."

As a final nail in phenylephrine's coffin, modern studies suggest that when phenylephrine is taken orally, it's highly metabolized in the gut, leaving less than 1 percent of the consumed dose as active in the body. The finding explains why oral doses don't cause the constriction of blood vessels throughout the body that could lead to an uptick in blood pressure—a side effect sometimes seen with pseudoephedrine. While researchers initially thought the lack of blood pressure increases was a positive finding, in retrospect, it was a hint that the drug wasn't working.

With that, a panel of advisers for the FDA voted unanimously, 16 to 0, that oral doses of phenylephrine are not effective at treating a stuffy nose.

This study, which involved putting 95 children struggling with gender dysphoria on puberty blockers, was led by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a physician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles who has long been involved in promoting experimental medical treatments for minors.

It would seem that the study, which followed the children for two years, didn’t have the results Olson-Kennedy was looking for.

“The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care,” states the article’s subhed.

That’s a major finding—and one that the public deserves to have access to.

After all, the argument for providing these experimental medical treatments for children is that they will help the children’s mental health. That was seen as a pro that for some outweighed the cons of puberty blockers, which pose health risks along with the unknowns about the long-term effects of delaying a young person’s development. //

But this data won’t be released because “the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court,” writes New York Times reporter Azeen Ghorayshi, summarizing Olson-Kennedy’s reasoning.

In other words, when it comes to how to medically treat children suffering from gender dysphoria, it’s not about the science. It’s about the ideology—and ensuring that ideology triumphs in American law and all states. //

At a bare minimum, we owe it to kids and their parents to give them the latest scientific data about these medical experimental treatment for gender dysphoria.

It’s a shame that the Left is prioritizing politics over science—and the rights of parents and children to make informed decisions.

The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM) is a medical professional organization that represents roughly 30,000 physicians, and they are trying to head Kamala Harris's radical abortion and other healthcare views off should she be elected president. In an open letter to Harris, they state that doctors at various points in their careers, are facing increasing pressure from "several major medical organizations" to perform controversial procedures like abortion, euthanasia, and gender transition that go against their religious or conscience beliefs. //

The problem, of course, is Kamala Harris' radical positions on abortion and transgender issues — the few positions she has not flipped-flopped on. During a recent NBC News interview, she was asked specifically about being in favor of any type of concessions regarding abortion, like religious exemptions. Her answer was ominous, even for those who might consider themselves pro-choice. Harris was not exactly pro-choice when it came to individual religious beliefs. She stated, “I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body." //

Grazie Pozo Christie, M.D. @GChristiemd
·
I'm a Catholic physician. More to it, I'm an ETHICAL physician.
Kamala hates religious exemptions for conscientious physicians who REFUSE TO KILL.

Catholic and ethical OB GYN's practice excellent maternal care without performing abortions. The vast majority of Gyn's don't… Show more

SBA Pro-Life America @sbaprolife
.@KamalaHarris promises ‘freedom’ but then pledges to federally steamroll Americans into taking part in abortions against their will.

Docs must perform them, taxpayers must pay for them, for any reason, in all 50 states, no exceptions.
Embedded video
11:47 AM · Oct 23, 2024 //

Darren Casper @darrencasper
·
"...no conscience concessions should be afforded to health-care providers who object to performing abortions." - VP Harris
In other words, doctors, nurses & other medical providers should not be allowed to refuse to perform abortions because of their faith

washingtonpost.com
Opinion | Kamala Harris forgets to hide her abortion radicalism
8:57 AM · Nov 1, 2024

The actual recommendations might surprise you—along with the state of modern dentistry. //

Has your dentist ever told you that it's recommended to get routine dental X-rays every year? My (former) dentist's office did this year—in writing, even. And they claimed that the recommendation came from the American Dental Association.

It's a common refrain from dentists, but it's false. The American Dental Association does not recommend annual routine X-rays. And this is not new; it's been that way for well over a decade.

The association's guidelines from 2012 recommended that adults who don't have an increased risk of dental caries (myself included) need only bitewing X-rays of the back teeth every two to three years. Even people with a higher risk of caries can go as long as 18 months between bitewings. The guidelines also note that X-rays should not be preemptively used to look for problems: "Radiographic screening for the purpose of detecting disease before clinical examination should not be performed," the guidelines read. In other words, dentists are supposed to examine your teeth before they take any X-rays.

Scientists are suing an academic publishing company for retracting three key studies exposing the dangers of the nation’s most popular abortion drug regimen shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court was slated to hear arguments in a landmark mifepristone case.

Ten of the researchers responsible for producing the three scientific papers filed a petition to compel arbitration this week against Sage Publications for issuing what they called “pretextual and discriminatory” retractions of their findings on the abortion pill. One of the studies in question, which the lawsuit notes is “the second most-read article” in the journal’s history, specifically determined mifepristone is responsible for a 500 percent increase in abortion-related emergency room visits.

The 2019, 2021, and 2022 papers originally passed peer review for publication without a hitch. The editor-in-chief of Sage’s Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology (HSRME) journal even emailed Dr. James Studnicki, the lead author of the 2021 and 2022 papers, to commend him for his “fine contribution[s],” according to the petition.

In February 2024, however, Sage’s tune changed over a “reader’s concern” that the authors’ links to pro-life organizations “present conflicts of interest that the authors should have disclosed as such in the article.”

Abortion activist researchers publish plenty of papers on the topic without scrutiny. Yet Sage, after what it called an “independent review,” ultimately followed through with the retractions.

Alan BrownSilver badge
Reply Icon
Re: graeme@the-leggetts.org.uk
"Plus also it takes a fairly massive dose of it to do any sort of damage"

The LD50 of paracetamol is 200% of the effective dose - where the effective dose for the average 60-90kg human is roughly 1000mg 4 times in a day. This is one of the closest margins between effective and Uh Oh for any painkiller and the closest for any OTC one.

SolidSquid
Reply Icon
Re: so he scoffed “a huge handful of ibuprofen and acetaminophen”
I'd thought it was difficult to kill yourself with paracetamol, but that it did large amounts of damage to your digestive tract. A quick google tells me I'm wrong on that, but that it is difficult to kill yourself quickly with it. It's your liver that's destroyed by it, it takes 3-5 days for you to die and is incredibly unpleasant since your liver is slowly dying.

Anonymous Coward
Reply Icon
Anonymous Coward
Re: so he scoffed “a huge handful of ibuprofen and acetaminophen”
Actually what I think is "Why is it not sold with the antidote already in it?".

Methionine is the stuff that's needed, in some countries it is compulsory to supply paracetamol with the appropriate percentage included.

Musaiga
6 hours ago
"This stuff cost too much to make. We need to recoup our investment. Screw logic, let's have actual Human Beings Beta-test this shit."

Isn't that the long and short of it?

I worked in Human Blood and Plasma manufacturing. I assisted in the processing of all that "donated" blood plasma. Also worked in R&D with Hemoglobin.
We had a whole testing facility, detached from the main factory by about a football field. Sterile, albino Rabbits were bred especially for testing. By "sterile" I mean they were raised in a 100% sterile environment, no viruses or bacteria. Each rabbit was injected from a separate lot of product to determine whether or not it would cause a fever in the rabbit.

Therein lies the "test". Mandated by THE FDA!
Used all caps there so the readers from PETA could grab a Kleenex.

They seldom die. But alas, they cannot be given away as pets. Besides the obvious ambulance chasing theory, there's this. They have no antibodies, to anything. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Like AIDS in Rabbits, only more accurately BFZI (Bred for zero immunity). This means they would last a week maybe, in the real world.
I'm going in to all this, because I loved your explanation Ward. Thought I'd add a direct example here.
In those days employees could sign up for tours of our "animal facility". The explanation I just gave was pretty much from the mouth of the Department Manager, who was leading the tour. This was the late 1980s. A biological "She" manager who knew her stuff, and showed real affection towards them critters.

Thalidomide was developed originally as a mild sedative and worked very well in this application. In the 1950s, the main body of scientific thought was that drugs would not cross the placental barrier, so when thalidomide was discovered to be very effective in dealing with morning sickness, doctors in Europe began to prescribe it for that purpose. The results are well known; many children exposed to this substance were born with horrible deformities.

The anti-animal research claims regarding thalidomide are simple; the research done with animals did not predict the teratogenic (birth defect) effects of thalidomide. A common claim in the animal rights community is that rats, mice, and hamsters did not show any teratogenic effects when thalidomide was in pre-clinical trials. This is a blatant falsehood. Several research projects demonstrated teratogenic effects in rats, mice, hamsters, and primates.

So, the truth is somewhat different. An objective analysis of the thalidomide tragedy reveals just the opposite of what the anti-animal-research people claim. The problem was, in fact, insufficient animal testing. Indeed, thalidomide was never approved in the United States, precisely because the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) felt that insufficient pre-clinical (animal) testing was done. //

Ironically this same property of thalidomide, namely bonding to developmental DNA, is making it useful in treating cancer patients. //

The question to be posed to the anti-research people at this juncture is simple: "Please explain to us how the lack of application of these highly predictive tests before the release of thalidomide in the European market translates into a failure of animal research, rather than a failure to apply sufficient animal research." //

This is but one example. It's also important to note that animals are currently used not only in research but in the production of medical products; for instance, the production of insulin is generally batch-tested in animals genetically engineered to be diabetic, although in recent years there has been a lot of work done towards a cellular-level test that doesn't involve an animal subject. //

C. S. P. Schofield
6 hours ago
Question for the ‘Animal Rights’ ninnies; are you prepared to take the place of experimental animals? //

frylock234
7 hours ago
Husband works in animal pharma, and they do have to use animals for testing. Basically, the companies seek to reduce their dependence on animal testing whenever possible because it is very expensive among other things, like being a PR issue no matter how humanely you try to conduct the testing. Every national/international entity they conduct business with inspects for test animal treatment among many, many other things although some countries care more about it than others.

Hubs got challenged by an activist once, and he shut her down by asking her when the first live animal test should take place, "In controlled circumstances on a test animal, or the first time your vet injects it into your beloved dog?" //

wildmlm
7 hours ago
Lab testing of animals was inhumane decades ago. All labs receiving federal grants, and most state grants, require institutions to have an Institutional Animal Care Committee (IACUC). All use of animals, including field research, requires an Animal Use Protocol (AUP). The committees are rigorous because violations of requirements can cost the institution millions. The AUP is a pain but understandable. I spent my entire career doing animal field research. The focus on AUPs didn’t ramp up until the late 1970s.

More WIV News: Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz worked to secure millions for a Minnesota-based lab that worked with the Chinese research facility. //

Researchers at France’s Pasteur Institute have just released a report suggesting that researchers at the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV, which may have been ground zero for COVID-19) may also be responsible for an outbreak of a “highly evolved polio strain.”

According to their findings, a young boy caught a case of polio ’99 percent’ identical to a polio variant that was stored 200 miles away at the Chinese research labs in Wuhan. //

The Pasteur researchers suspect that WIV14 polio, so named by the Wuhan scientists who first catalogued the strain, likely evolved from a well-preserved, 1950s strain of the virus used — almost exclusively — in vaccine production and laboratory settings.

The USDA recorded 69 violations in a year. So far, 9 people have died in the outbreak. //

While it's always lurking, L. monocytogenes especially plagues the food industry because it has the notable ability to reproduce at refrigerator temperatures—a condition that typically limits the growth of other nasty germs. //

According to USDA documents, the agency has not taken enforcement actions against Boar's Head, and there is no data available on swab testing for Listeria at the Virginia facility. The plant has been shut down since late July after health investigators found the outbreak strain of L. monocytogenes in unopened containers of Boar's Head liverwurst.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on "Fox News Sunday" to talk about his plans to partner with Donald Trump to "Make America Healthy Again," and dropped some big truth bombs about the corruption and perverse incentives within the United States' public health agencies. //

"I wouldn't dismantle them. I would change the focus, and I would end the corruption. Right now, 75 percent of FDA’s budget is coming from pharmaceutical companies. That is a perverse incentive.

"In NIH, the - scientists and officials at NIH who work on drug development, incubate drugs for the pharmaceutical company, get to collect lifetime royalties from those products. These are regulators. They’re supposed to be looking for problems in those products.

"We have these agencies that have become sock puppets for the industries they’re supposed to regulate, so they're not really interested in public health.

"The most profitable thing today in America is a sick child. Everybody’s making money - the hospitals are making money, the pharmaceutical companies are making money; even the insurance companies make money.

"We need to end those perverse incentives, we need to get the corruption out of the FDA, out of NIH, out of the CDC, and make them function as they're supposed to function, which is to protect public health and to protect childrens' health.”

Clinical doctors smiled (actually, they grimaced) while reading two recent headlines. The first was “Wyden, Blackburn Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Tackle Health Care Workforce Shortages.” This is one more demonstration of Ronald Reagan’s prescience when he said in his 1981 Inaugural Address, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Every direct care provider understands from painful daily experience that government regulations stemming from federal legislation are the real reason for shortages.

At first glance, vitamins and other dietary supplements seem like qualified medical expenses for health savings account (HSA) and flexible spending account (FSA) holders. They are designed to fill "gaps" in the average diet, offsetting nutritional deficiencies along the way — yes, even those deficiencies that can lead to larger health problems.

However, the IRS defines qualified medical expenses within the IRS Section 213(d) as “amounts paid for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation or treatment of a disease, and for treatments affecting any structure or function of the body.” The IRS has further specified that these expenses must be primarily to alleviate a physical or mental defect or illness.

So why are HSA users coming up empty when searching for HSA eligible vitamins and supplements? Learn which vitamins and supplements are HSA eligible. //

Currently, the only way to use a consumer-directed healthcare account to pay for most vitamins and supplements is if a specific vitamin or supplement is recommended by a medical professional to treat or mitigate a medical condition with a letter of medical necessity.

Many more people may be sickened in the outbreak than the current numbers indicate. For many infected people, the bacteria only cause relatively mild infections that don't require medical care. Even if they do seek medical care, laboratories don't routinely test for listeriosis in patients with mild gastrointestinal illnesses. Lastly, while many infected people develop symptoms within two weeks of an exposure, symptoms can develop up to 10 weeks after eating a contaminated food, and there are additional lag times in connecting cases to an outbreak.

Despite talk of ’emergency abortions,’ there is never a circumstance in which the mother’s health would benefit from the death of her unborn child. //

Recently the Association for American Physicians and Surgeons filed a suit after multiple doctors were targeted by credentialing boards and the U.S. government for their anti-abortion stance post-Dobbs. Public ignorance and confusion over a “necessary” abortion continues to permeate political language and Biden’s rule is yet another coercive attempt to install national abortion “must-haves.”

An anonymous Food and Drug Administration committee determines “arbitrary safety standards” and what defines “emergency use” and “necessity,” said John Seeds, former department chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Virginia Commonwealth University, and can then utilize those standards to hide and mislead the public on the point of abortion.

Seeds testified in favor of a bill in Virginia that would change Health Department standards for abortionists, requiring providers to report any significant complication of an abortion. //

Since the legalization of abortion 50 years ago, huge strides have been made in maternal and perinatal care, with viability improving from 27 to 22 weeks gestation, said Dr. John Bruchalski, a former abortionist who now runs Tepeyac OB-GYN, the largest pro-life OB-GYN practice in the nation.

“What these ‘emergency abortion’ laws are saying is if there’s another medical approach to the situation, like real medical treatment or stabilization to closely follow the course of disease in the patients … you still have to provide an abortion if a woman wants it,” Bruchalski said.

The two primary situations when a pregnancy must be induced before viability to save the life of the mother, first-trimester hemorrhaging and ectopic pregnancy, have clear treatments that do not require an abortion, Bruchalski said.

“In [catastrophic uterine bleeding] you’re targeting the placenta and its removal because that is the cause of bleeding, the preborn child is not your target,” Bruchalski said.

In the case of an ectopic pregnancy, an OB-GYN removes the diseased segment of the fallopian tube containing the embryo.

“This is intellectually and scientifically not a direct abortion,” Bruchalski said. “The definition and the intent of an elective abortion is to terminate the life of the fetus. The intention and truth matter not only to the profession and the doctor but to the patient.”

In the vast majority of cases of ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages, the preborn child has already died due to the disease, Bruchalski said. In either situation, targeting the child is never the intent and is therefore not an abortion, but abortion practitioners deceive physicians and patients by saying ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and elective abortions are all the same.

“This coercion is based on fundamental lies and half-truths, from beginning to end,” Bruchalski said. //

“There are sometimes reasons for early induction that require additional support for the baby, as the baby is not ‘ready’ to be born, but it’s essential for the well-being of the mother,” Johnson said. “However, there is never a circumstance that the mother’s health would benefit from the death of her unborn child. Even in true crash C-sections where mom has to be in the OR [operating room] literally within minutes, there is never a reason to end the baby’s life in the hope of saving mom.”

“The whole discussion of ER abortion of a healthy pregnancy is bogus,” Seeds said.

The woman realized how serious her infection was once she was in custody.

"Ants are able to diagnose a wound, see if it's infected... and treat it accordingly." //

“When we're talking about amputation behavior, this is literally the only case in which a sophisticated and systematic amputation of an individual by another member of its species occurs in the animal kingdom,” said co-author Erik Frank, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “The fact that the ants are able to diagnose a wound, see if it's infected or sterile, and treat it accordingly over long periods of time by other individuals—the only medical system that can rival that would be the human one."