Health News Stories

Excerpts of Key Health News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on health from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

For further exploration, delve into our comprehensive Health and Food Corruption Information Center.

Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

In the 1970s, a truth was accidentally discovered about depression. American psychiatrists had produced a book ... called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual [that] laid out nine symptoms that a patient has to show to be diagnosed with depression. If [doctors] followed this guide, they had to diagnose every grieving person who came to them as depressed. So, the doctors wanted to know, are we supposed to start drugging all the bereaved people in America? The authors ... decided that there would be a special clause added to the list of symptoms. If you have lost somebody you love in the past year ... all these symptoms are natural, and not a disorder. It was called “the grief exception”. Then ... doctors on the frontline started to come back with another question. If you agree that the symptoms of depression are a logical and understandable response to one set of life circumstances – losing a loved one – might they not be an understandable response to other situations? What about if you lose your job? What if you are stuck in a job that you hate? What about if you are alone and friendless? The grief exception seemed to have blasted a hole in the claim that the causes of depression are sealed away in your skull. It suggested that there are causes out here, in the world, and they needed to be investigated and solved there. Depression ... is a signal that your natural psychological needs are not being met. It is a form of grief – for yourself, and for the culture you live in going so wrong.

Note: The article at the link above is an edited extract from Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari. A 2012 Huffington Post article titled, "Drug Companies Drive the Psychiatric Drugging of Children" describes how fake science and bribes have been used by corrupt pharmaceutical companies to rake in the profits.

Picture this: While reaching for the cookie jar - or cigarette or bottle of booze or other temptation - a sudden slap denies your outstretched hand. When the urge returns, out comes another slap. Now imagine those "slaps" occurring inside the brain. In a report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stanford neuroscientists say they've achieved this sort of mind-reading in binge-eating mice. They found a telltale pattern of brain activity that comes up seconds before the animals start to pig out - and delivering a quick zap to that part of the brain kept the mice from overindulging. Whether this strategy could block harmful impulses in people remains unclear. The current study used a brain stimulation device already approved for hard-to-treat epilepsy. And based on the new findings, a clinical trial testing this off-the-shelf system for some forms of obesity could start as early as next summer, says Casey Halpern, the study's leader. He thinks the approach could also work for eating disorders and a range of other addictive or potentially life-threatening urges. As a physician-researcher, Halpern specializes in deep brain stimulation (DBS), a surgical treatment in which battery-powered implants send electrical pulses to brain areas where signals go awry. The Food and Drug Administration has approved DBS therapy for movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, tremor and dystonia. Occasionally DBS is a last-resort treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Note: Remember that secret military and intelligence projects are usually 10 to 20 years ahead of anything being done in the public. Could some groups already have developed microchip implants designed for behavior modification or mind control?

Throughout the years that I've written about the potential health hazards of cell phone radiation, I've seen a lot of products promise protection from the radiofrequency (RF) signals that our wireless devices emit. They've ranged from the useless gold-lined radiation "shields" to Pong's more respectable line of phones cases that promise to refocus RF energy away from your head. At CES 2018, a company called Spartan grabbed that promise of protection and took it below the belt with a line of men's underwear. Spartan's boxer briefs claim to block 99 percent of cellphone and Wi-Fi radiation with pure silver fibers woven into the cotton fabric. That Spartan is focused on protecting your balls is significant. Though brain cancer tends to dominate the debate over whether wireless signals are safe, other studies have suggested that cell phones decrease male fertility. Some health advocates who have long been involved with the debate, and even some government agencies (most recently, the California Department of Public Health), recommend that men not carry their phones in a pants pocket to reduce radiation exposure to your nether regions. If the potential danger concerns you, most of the typical recommendations like using a headset, texting instead of making a call (a lot of us already do that) and not sleeping with your phone don't cost a penny.

Note: In 2017, after years of public pressure and a lawsuit, the California Department of Health released guidelines on the health risks of cell phone use. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.

Prices for a cancer drug called lomustine have skyrocketed nearly 1,400 percent since 2013, putting a potentially life-saving treatment out of reach for patients suffering from brain tumors and Hodgkin's lymphoma. Though the 40-year-old medication is no longer protected by patents, no generic version is available. According to the Wall Street Journal, lomustine was sold by Bristol-Myers Squib for years under the brand name CeeNU at a price of about $50 a capsule for the highest dose. The drugmaker sold lomustine in 2013 to a little-known Miami startup called NextSource, which proceeded to hike lomustine's price nine times since. It now charges about $768 per pill for the medication. According to an analysis done for the Journal ... NextSource this year raised prices for the drug, which it rebranded as Gleostine, by 12 percent in November following a 20 percent increase in August. Soaring prices for cancer drugs are a concern for both patients and doctors because financial pressures can lead to delays in seeking treatment that can easily surpass six figures per year. A study published earlier this year in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found prices for 24 patented injectible Medicare Part B drugs rose an average of 18 percent annually over the past eight years on an inflation-adjusted basis. Prices continued to rise even when generic versions of the drug became available.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing Big Pharma profiteering news articles from reliable major media sources.

There’s no more ubiquitous feature of modern life than smartphones. Convenience, necessity and plain fun make the devices a near requirement, but it all comes with a ... doubt: Is there a health risk to a device that’s become almost a human appendage? The California Department of Public Health [has published] guidelines that come close to suggesting that there’s uncertain harm. As people use the devices, more often and at an earlier age, health risks could eventually show up. A Kaiser Permanente study ... found a higher rate of miscarriage for those exposed to radiation emitted by cell phones, power lines and wireless networks. Health dangers indicated in other studies include brain tumors, lower sperm count and impacts on memory, learning and sleep. State health officials are flashing a yellow light. If people want to take steps to minimize risk, the agency has suggestions. On the list is parking a smartphone away from the bedside table at night, storing the device in a purse or backpack instead of a pocket during the day, and generally keeping the phone at a distance from the body. Ease back on phone use when the signal is weak. Such advice sounds easy to accept. But coming from a major state agency, the idea of preventive steps to decrease exposure is sending a message. There are hundreds of millions of phones in this country, and California’s top health experts aren’t convinced there’s no human risk.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.

Most pharmaceutical companies have sworn off ghostwriting, the practice of writing "research" papers for doctors and then paying them to add their names as authors even when they had little involvement or the results were trivial. Merck (MRK), Forest Labs (FRX), and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have all been caught doing it. But what happens to the articles that have been disavowed by companies or discredited by lawyers? Not much, it turns out. They sit inside prestigious online archives of academic material, unretracted, where they look just like real studies with robust results. Ghostwriting doesn't look good in lawsuits, either. Pfizer (PFE) must now pay $9.5 million to a woman who claimed menopause drug Prempro gave her breast cancer; Wyeth - the company that made the drug and was later acquired by Pfizer - commissioned ghostwritten articles about the drug. So it's interesting to note that many of those pay-for-play articles are still sitting in scholarly archives such as PubMed, notching up bibliography references and footnotes, even though they shouldn't be. You can search for more ghostwritten papers here.

Note: Big Pharma giant Merck created a fake medical journal and created a list of doctors to discredit in order to popularize a dangerous drug that may have killed as many as 500,000 people before it was finally recalled. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing pharmaceutical corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

Baby Boomers are sucking the blood of the young. They are ... after the plasma. In Monterey, California, a new startup has emerged, offering transfusions of human plasma: 1.5 litres a time, pumped in across two days, harvested uniquely from young adults. Ambrosia, the vampiric startup concerned, is run by a 32-year-old doctor called Jesse Karmazin, who bills $8,000 (6,200) a pop for participation in what he has dubbed a study. So far, he has 600 clients, with a median age of 60. The blood is collected from local blood banks, then separated and combined it takes multiple donors to make one package. The idea has become faddish in tech circles. Mike Judges Silicon Valley sitcom recently parodied the notion, with arch-tech guru Gavin Belson relying on a blood boy following him around to donate pints of sticky red at inopportune moments. That fictionalised account may well be based on the real-life adventures of Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder. A 2014 Harvard report ... seems to have kickstarted the present revival of interest in transfusions. There, scientists injecting old mice with the plasma of a younger generation found it improved their memory and their ability to learn. Conversely, injecting old blood into young seemed to knobble the young rodents. The scientific community has rolled its eyes at the trial element of Ambrosia. There is no control group and, with participation costing so much, no one involved is very randomised.

Note: Read more about Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel's investment in this questionable technology. One university researcher has found that many in the European royalty until the end of the 18th century practiced selective cannibalism in the belief if would keep them young. Another article goes into greater depth about the practice some elder members of the wealthy elite taking blood infusions from young people to stay young.

The science is still out on whether the long-term use of cell phones - which emit electromagnetic radiation when they send and receive signals from towers or WiFi devices - can affect human health. But for people who want to reduce their exposure to this type of energy, the California Department of Public Health has published new guidelines on how to do just that. The guidelines, issued last week, note that “some laboratory experiments and human health studies have suggested the possibility that long-term, high use of cell phones may be linked to certain types of cancer and other health effects.” These include brain cancer, tumors of the acoustic nerve and salivary glands, lower sperm count, headaches and effects on learning, memory, hearing, behavior and sleep. The guidelines recommend keeping phones away from the body when they’re not in use ... and sleeping with phones away from the bed. People can also reduce their exposure by limiting cell-phone use when the cellular signal is weak; when traveling in a high-speed car, bus or train; to stream audio or video; or to download or upload large files. All of these circumstances cause phones to put out higher-than-normal levels of RF energy. In 2011, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer published a review stating that cell-phone radiation is “possibly carcinogenic.” And earlier this year, an Italian court ruled in favor of a plaintiff who argued that his brain tumor was the result of excessive work-related cell-phone use over a 15-year period.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.

How much more proof do we need that being online isn’t healthy for us? The latest terrible tech research is from Kaiser Permanente. In a study of hundreds of pregnant women in the Bay Area, the authors found that those who were more exposed to the kind of radiation produced by cell phones, wireless networks and power lines were nearly three times as likely to suffer miscarriages. These electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, are around every single one of us. There will be tremendous pushback against any research showing how dangerous this stuff may be. An example: San Francisco’s radiation-warning law, championed by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, passed in 2010. But after a lawsuit from the cell phone industry, the city backed off on implementing it. Around the same time, the California Department of Public Health drew up its set of guidelines to inform the public about the risks associated with cell phone use. The health department then sat on these guidelines for seven years. The health department’s lawyers ... argued that releasing the guidelines might cause the public to panic. Well, it might be time to start panicking. More and more, it sounds like the long-term effects of our Internet habits could be dangerous, not just for our relationships and our ability to focus, but our brains and bodies as well. The small-but-growing body of EMF research looks like anti-tobacco research must have looked in the 1950s — necessary and important work that will surely gain researchers an ugly, uphill battle against better-funded opponents.

Note: Read an excellent article on the serious dangers of 5G wireless technology which is being rolled out. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.

The US government has lifted a three-year ban on making lethal viruses in the lab, saying the potential benefits of disease preparedness outweigh the risks. Labs will now be able to manufacture strains of influenza, Sars and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers). The ban was imposed following safety breaches at federal institutions involving anthrax and avian flu. Now a scientific review panel will have to green-light each research proposal. It will only be allowed to go ahead if the panel determines there is no safer way to conduct the research and that the benefits it will provide justify the risk. Critics say such "gain-of-function" research still risks creating an accidental pandemic. The ban was imposed in 2014 after embarrassing safety lapses including ... dozens of workers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) being exposed to anthrax bacteria, [and] long forgotten vials of smallpox left in a cardboard box being discovered at a research centre near Washington. In addition, there was concern that research into transmissible pathogens, which is published, could be used to deliberately engineer a mutant virus. Now, the US National Institutes of Health says it is time to lift the ban on funding such research.

Note: Despite FBI assurance to the contrary, the 2001 weaponized anthrax attacks remain unsolved. From November of 2001 to March of 2002, eleven microbiologists mysteriously died. According to this 2009 ABC News article, swine flu may be a "man-made product of genetic experiments accidently leaked from a laboratory". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on avian and swine flu from reliable major media sources.

The superbug crisis is killing more patients than breast cancer as the Government is relying on flawed figures. The Department of Health estimates that 5,000 people die each year due to drug resistance, but Dr Ron Daniels, chief executive of the UK Sepsis Trust, claims the true figure is around 12,000. The number of deaths is rising each year as more bugs that lead to blood poisoning are becoming resistant to antibiotics. The full extent of the problem is obscured because the Government statistics are calculated using “ballpark” figures from foreign studies, not those conducted in the UK. Antimicrobial resistance is considered to be one of the world’s most serious and growing long-term threats to health, which it has been warned could eventually lead to everyday cuts and infections becoming fatal. Yet superbugs are rarely listed on death certificates. The UK Sepsis Trust is calling for an official register of superbug deaths in order that the rising count is reflected in Government policy. Figures provided to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism by Dr Daniels suggest the number of people dying from sepsis, triggered by antibiotic resistant bacteria, is more than double the official figure. This would put superbugs ahead of breast cancer, which is widely thought of as one of the UK’s biggest killers, despite the number of deaths falling to 11,433 in 2014.

Note: There is strong evidence to suggest that feeding antibiotics to livestock leads to superbugs in humans. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.

Don’t want to get a vaccine for yourself or your child? Prepare to face the consequences. In the last month, a Detroit mother went to jail because she refused to vaccinate her child. Fifty people lost their jobs at a group of Midwestern hospitals and clinics because they declined a flu shot. And an Oregon university has blocked students from registering for classes unless they have a meningitis shot. All states have some vaccine requirements for public education—no shots, no school. All but three states - Mississippi, West Virginia and California - allow parents to send their child to school without vaccines based on some kind of non-medical exemption. In 2013, more than 90 percent of American children had been vaccinated for chicken pox, hepatitis B, measles, mumps and rubella, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, a significant number of people ... hesitate when a doctor offers them a vaccine. A new study released on Monday found that 27 percent of the parents surveyed could be classified as moderately or highly hesitant around vaccines. That same study found these people may be particularly concerned with the purity of vaccines. Increasingly, parents who choose not to vaccinate are warned of harsh penalties. People who choose not to vaccinate themselves may also face serious consequences. Some states have laws guiding which vaccinations people working at hospitals or other health care facilities must have; more often, requirements may be enshrined in a facility's policy, not in law.

Note: Watch an excellent video of Emmy award winning reporter Sharyl Attkisson exposing how the government fired an vaccine expert who found links to autism. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing vaccine controversy news articles from reliable major media sources.

After months of deliberation and investigation, the WHO has concluded that cannabidiol (CBD) is a useful treatment for epilepsy and palliative care, and does not carry any addiction risks. The organization is set to run a fuller review of cannabis next year. The report ... also recommended imposing the strong restrictions available on fentanyl, a synthetic opioid which has killed thousands of people in America’s drug addiction epidemic. “There is increased interest from Member States in the use of cannabis for medical indications including for palliative care,” the report said. “Responding to that interest and increase in use, WHO has in recent years gathered more robust scientific evidence on therapeutic use and side effects of cannabis and cannabis components.” In conclusion, the authors wrote: “Recent evidence from animal and human studies shows that its use could have some therapeutic value for seizures due to epilepsy and related conditions.” They added that ‘current information does not justify scheduling of cannabidiol’, and declared that taking medical marijuana will not lead to addiction to THC, the psychoactive property of cannabis that induces a ‘high’.

Note: More people are arrested in the US for marijuana use than for all violent crimes combined and the US federal government continues to regard non-psychoactive CBD as a dangerous drug. The UK government recently announced it will regulate CBD as medicine. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.

In her tidy trailer, the widow dabs at her eyes. She loved [Walter S. Kasza] for more than four decades ... and Stella Kasza wants you to know that, damn it, he existed. He died in April 1995, a wraith, 73 years old. Bill Clinton did not kill Wally Kasza, but he has been forced to deal with his widow. The administration maintains an abiding interest in the lawsuit Stella Kasza has brought against the federal government. Under a "presidential determination" that he must renew annually, Clinton has decreed that potential evidence related to Kasza's death is classified, top-secret, a matter of national security. Why should Wally Kasza matter? He was a sheet-metal worker. For seven years he put up buildings and installed cooling systems for a defense contractor at an Air Force base. Stella Kasza and the rest of America know [that base] as Area 51. What's being covered up there, according to lawsuits filed by Kasza's widow, another worker's widow and five former Area 51 employees, are brazen environmental crimes. For several years, the workers say, they labored in thick, choking clouds of poisonous smoke as hazardous wastes were burned in huge open trenches on the base. Another sheet-metal worker at Area 51, Robert Frost, died at age 57. Biopsies showed that his tissues were filled with industrial toxins rarely seen in humans. What is the government's response to these stories? Nothing. The policy is that nothing illegal occurred at Area 51 because, officially, nothing occurs at Area 51.

Note: After decades of total denial, the US government finally admitted in 2013 that Area 51 exists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing military corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

The medical industry produces plenty of waste ... in addition to using loads of energy. The health care sector accounts for 10 percent of carbon pollution in the United States. “Unfortunately, the way we practice medicine today has a negative impact on our environment and, in turn, human health,” [said NYU Langone Health professor Cassandra Thiel]. She and her colleagues decided to examine the problem of health industry emissions to see if they could find greener approaches. They studied cataract surgeries performed in a health care center in India, the Avravind Eye Care System, which is seen as a model for its low cost and excellent results. Because the United States and other developed nations rely largely on single-use materials in surgery, “we wanted to examine whether a different approach, where surgical supplies are mostly reused, could make a bigger impact on reducing emissions,” she said. Their paper appears in the Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery. “India currently performs over seven million cataract surgeries a year,” Thiel said. “If all were done with the U.K.’s process, they would emit nearly one million metric tons of greenhouse gases. If all were conducted with Aravind’s process, they would emit about 40,000 metric tons of greenhouse gasses. This difference is equivalent to removing over 230,000 passenger vehicles from the road.”.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.

The Philippines ordered an investigation on Monday into the immunization of more than 730,000 children with a vaccine for dengue that has been suspended following an announcement by French drug company Sanofi that it could worsen the disease in some cases. The World Health Organization said it hoped to conduct a full review by year-end of data on the vaccine, commercially known as Dengvaxia. In the meantime, the WHO recommended that it only be used in people who had a prior infection with dengue. The government of Brazil, where dengue is a significant health challenge, confirmed it already had recommended restricted use of the vaccine but had not suspended it entirely. Amid mounting public concern, Sanofi explained its "new findings" at a news conference in Manila but did not say why action was not taken after a WHO report in mid-2016 that identified the risk it was now flagging. A non-governmental organization (NGO) said it had received information that three children who were vaccinated with Dengvaxia in the Philippines had died and a senator said he was aware of two cases. Last week, the Philippines Department of Health halted the use of Dengvaxia after Sanofi said it must be strictly limited due to evidence it can worsen the disease in people not previously exposed to the infection. Nearly 734,000 children aged 9 and over in the Philippines have received one dose of the vaccine as part of a program that cost 3.5 billion pesos ($69.54 million).

Note: This US government webpage states, "Since 1988, over 18,897 petitions have been filed with the VICP [Vaccine Injury Compensation Program]. Over that 29-year time period, 16,857 petitions have been adjudicated, with 5,782 of those determined to be compensable. Total compensation paid over the life of the program is approximately $3.7 billion." Why aren't these large numbers being reported in the media? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing vaccine controversy news articles from reliable major media sources.

Aluminium in vaccines may cause autism, controversial new research suggests. Autistic children have up to 10 times more of the metal in their brains than what is considered safe in adults, a study found. Study author Professor Chris Exley from Keele University, said: 'Perhaps we now have the link between vaccination and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the link being the inclusion of an aluminium adjuvant in the vaccine.' The researchers speculate autism sufferers may have genetic changes that cause them to accumulate aluminium which healthy people are able to remove. Research at Keele University, published in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology, provides the strongest indication yet that aluminium is a cause of ASD. The aluminium content of brain tissues from five donors who died with a diagnosis of ASD was found to be extraordinarily high; some of the highest values yet measured in human brain tissue. Why for example, would one of the four major brain lobes of a 15-year-old boy with autism be 8.74 (11.59) micrograms/g dry weight - a value which is at least 10 times higher than might be considered as acceptable for an adult never mind a child? The new evidence strongly suggests aluminium is entering the brain in ASD via inflammatory cells which have become loaded up with aluminium in the blood and/or lymph, much as has been for certain immune cells at injection sites for vaccines that contain aluminium to increase the body's immune response.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing vaccine controversy news articles from reliable major media sources.

Non-stop activity isn’t the apotheosis of productivity. It is its adversary. Researchers are learning that it doesn’t just mean that the work we produce at the end of a 14-hour day is of worse quality than when we’re fresh. This pattern of working also undermines our creativity and our cognition. Over time, it can make us feel physically sick – and even, ironically, as if we have no purpose. “The idea that you can indefinitely stretch out your deep focus and productivity time to these arbitrary limits is really wrong,” says research scientist Andrew Smart. “If you’re constantly putting yourself into this cognitive debt, where your physiology is saying ‘I need a break’ but you keep pushing yourself, you get this low-level stress response that’s chronic – and, over time, extraordinarily dangerous.” One meta-analysis found that long working hours increased the risk of coronary heart disease by 40% – almost as much as smoking (50%). Another found that people who worked long hours had a significantly higher risk of stroke, while people who worked more than 11 hours a day were almost 2.5 times more likely to have a major depressive episode than those who worked seven to eight. The reason we have eight-hour work days at all was because companies found that cutting employees’ hours had the reverse effect they expected: it upped their productivity. If eight-hour days are better than 10-hour ones, could even shorter working hours be even better? Perhaps.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.

When the drugs came, they hit all at once. It was the 80s, and by the time one in 10 people had slipped into the depths of heroin use - bankers, university students, carpenters, socialites, miners - Portugal was in a state of panic. In 2001 ... Portugal became the first country to decriminalise the possession and consumption of all illicit substances. Rather than being arrested, those caught with a personal supply might be given a warning, a small fine, or told to appear before a local commission – a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker – about treatment, harm reduction, and the support services that were available to them. The opioid crisis soon stabilised, and the ensuing years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates. HIV infection plummeted from an all-time high in 2000 of 104.2 new cases per million to 4.2 cases per million in 2015. Portugal’s remarkable recovery ... could not have happened without an enormous cultural shift, and a change in how the country viewed drugs. Portugal’s policy rests on three pillars: one, that there’s no such thing as a soft or hard drug, only healthy and unhealthy relationships with drugs; two, that an individual’s unhealthy relationship with drugs often conceals frayed relationships with loved ones, with the world around them, and with themselves; and three, that the eradication of all drugs is an impossible goal. In spite of Portugal’s tangible results, other countries have been reluctant to follow.

Note: Portugal's successful policy has contributed to public health outcomes that starkly contrast US trends.

Against the backdrop of the nation's largest Veterans Day parade, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced this month he'd sign legislation making New York the latest in a fast-rising tide of states to OK therapeutic pot as a PTSD treatment, though it's illegal under federal law. Twenty-eight states plus the District of Columbia now include PTSD in their medical marijuana programs, a tally that has more than doubled in the last two years. The increase has come amid increasingly visible advocacy from veterans' groups. Retired Marine staff sergeant Mark DiPasquale says the drug freed him from the 17 opioids, anti-anxiety pills and other medications that were prescribed to him for migraines, post-traumatic stress and other injuries from service that included a hard helicopter landing in Iraq in 2005. In a sign of how much the issue has taken hold among veterans, the 2.2-million-member American Legion began pressing the federal government this summer to let Department of Veterans Affairs doctors recommend medical marijuana where it's legal. The Legion started advocating last year for easing federal constraints on medical pot research, a departure into drug policy for the nearly century-old organization. "People ask, `Aren't you the law-and-order group?' Why, yes, we are," Executive Director Verna Jones said at a Legion-arranged news conference early this month at the U.S. Capitol. But "when veterans come to us and say a particular treatment is working for them, we owe it to them to listen and to do scientific research required."

Note: This Associated Press article no longer appears on CNBC's website. Here's an alternate link for the complete article. The illegal drug MDMA was recently fast tracked for FDA approval after preliminary studies found it to be effective for treating PTSD in a therapeutic context. While police in the US arrest more people for marijuana use than for all violent crimes combined, articles like these suggest that the healing potentials of mind-altering drugs are gaining mainstream credibility.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.