Pharmacies are increasingly facing stiff competition from the trans-border online prescription trade. Many of the drugs come from Canada, where health care is subsidized and drugs come at a fraction of the cost as their counterparts in the U.S. Now, Wal-Mart is making its foray into this market niche by offering $4 generic drugs.

Research groups are known to fund their studies by accepting grants from various organizations. If it weren’t for the kindness of donations, the research wouldn’t likely be able to be completed. Before medical research reports are published, most publications require knowing who conducted the research and who funded the research. This is standard procedure to ensure that the facts given are not tainted or biased.

Recently (and as far back as the 90s), some of the lung cancer studies have been shown accepting grant money from tobacco companies, leaving us to believe that the research may be a bit tainted. This is especially so with a specific research study from the Lung Cancer Screening Group. In the final report, it is basically saying that lung cancer isn’t as serious as it may seem and that with computed tomographic, or CT, scanning there are better chances of locating lung cancer in very early stages.

Non-partisan group, Center for Responsive Politics just broke the recent news about the amount and origin of money passing hands in Washington politics for 2007. What did they discover? Health care and insurance dominated the Washington lobby.

It seems that every coming decade brings along a newer and deadlier disease, but in reality it’s much worse than that. We only hear about the illnesses that have an impact on a large part of the population -- we didn’t hear about AIDS until it became a worldwide epidemic.

If you look more closely, though, you'll realize that there are some terrifying cases of rare diseases popping up all over the place. And, even worse: Surveys show that these illnesses are becoming more and more common.