Just before Christmas, Stephanie Willette went from being a healthy nursing student to suddenly being a helpless patient paralyzed from the neck down with a tracheotomy so she could breathe.

Today the 20-year-old is slowly recovering in a Kingston rehab hospital, still unable to sit up, but hoping that she’ll eventually walk again.

The Lindsay woman is yet another person stricken with Guillain Barre Syndrome, yet another whose family blames her H1N1 flu shot for triggering the rare neurological condition.

“They can’t prove it, but they can’t disprove it. She was perfectly fine until two weeks after her shot,” says her angry mom Karen. “I think there’s a lot more cases out there than the government’s letting on. It’s a big secret.”

According to the ministry of health, they are investigating just four reported cases of GBS in Ontario following the province’s mass inoculation of five million people.

But we’ve already told the harrowing stories of two patients who blame their debilitating onset of GBS on the swine flu shot — which they received within days of each other at the same Markham doctors’ clinic.

Since then, four more GBS victims have come forward to the Sunday Sun. With the addition of a Hamilton case reported last November, that’s seven Ontario cases by our count alone.

So exactly how many have really been devastated by this highly touted vaccine? And why is Quebec the only province that has a no-fault compensation program for the unlucky few who suffer such a crippling side effect?

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MINNEAPOLIS — A urologist has been indefinitely barred from inpatient surgery for removing the wrong kidney of one patient and taking a biopsy from another’s patient’s pancreas instead of a kidney. Dr. Erol Uke has signed the disciplinary ruling from the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, agreeing that his actions justify the board’s discipline.

The ruling said Uke could regain surgical privileges if the board later determines he’s competent to do so.

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According to the criminal complaint, the D.A. alleges Dr. Murray “did unlawfully, and without malice, kill Michael Joseph Jackson … in the commission of an unlawful act, not a felony; and in the commission of a lawful act which might have produced death, in an unlawful manner, and without due caution and circumspection.”

Dr. Murray will be arraigned today at 1:30 PM. As we first reported, he will plead not guilty.

Andersson, known to his patients as Dr. Syed, had a wall of photos at his home office in San Francisco’s Lakeshore district, showing him with actress Julia Roberts and actress-model Elizabeth Hurley, Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and other notables.

His Web site boasted of his research that had led to cures for everything from stretch marks to hair loss.

San Francisco prosecutors say it was all a lie. The pictures were digitally altered, the credentials and research manufactured, his patients – children told they had cancer, adults injected with drugs they didn’t need – taken for thousands of dollars.

Andersson, 66, was charged with 51 counts this week in San Francisco Superior Court, including practicing medicine without a license and grand theft through deception. He appeared in court Wednesday and was ordered held on $1 million bail.

For a long time scientists were puzzled with people’s addiction to junk food. Only recently, scientists from the Scripps Research institute in Florida discovered that foods high in calories can be as addictive as drugs. Doughnuts, hamburgers and chips contain a whole bouquet of addictive components.

Normally, obese people get very nervous when hungry. They remain nervous until they eat a pizza, hamburger or any other food high in calories and harmful for their health.

Feeling of being fool makes obese people relaxed and happy. When overweight people diet, they may feel continuous psychological discomfort despite of the lost weight.

Usually we judge these people saying they are weak-willed. Yet, junk food is a necessity for them, not a whim. Of course, no one adds drugs into food. Salt, sugar and fat contained in most junk food stimulate production of endorphins, hormones of happiness, in our body.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday that it plans to investigate a cluster of facial birth defects and other health issues among migrant farm workers in the impoverished California enclave of Kettleman City as part of the Obama administration’s pledge to shift the agency’s attention toward issues of environmental justice.

Residents suspect the facial deformities are linked to a nearby toxic waste dump. The dump is set to be expanded to accommodate waste from large population centers, including Los Angeles, and residents have filed a lawsuit against the Kings County Board of Supervisors challenging its approval of the expansion.

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Brielle Garrison suffers from anophthalmia, which is a disorder that results in the absence of ocular tissue and usually develops during pregnancy.

Dr. Manny Alvarez, managing editor of health at FoxNews.com and Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Science at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, said he has delivered several babies with this ocular abnormality.

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Scientists  blame  flame  retardant chemicals for delays in becoming pregnant. The chemicals, called PBDEs, were in common use in the 1970s in lounge suites, electronics, fabrics, carpets, and plastics, but were have been phased in Europe since the 1990s. The chemicals can leach out through dust gathered on surfaces which contain the compounds.They can be inhaled and then stored in human fat cells. A study found that women were half as likely to conceive if they had high levels of PBDE in their blood. Researchers from the University of Berkeley published the study in the journal of Environment Health Perspectives yesterday.

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