Doctors who are exposed to techniques such as 'nudges' triple the number of prescriptions they write out, a new study has discovered.

Nudges and other techniques from the world of behavioural science are being built into software systems that doctors access when they are treating patients. Two common 'nudges' are reminders at the point when the doctor decides on the next steps and later when their prescribing levels are compared to those of other doctors.

The techniques are tripling the number of prescriptions being written, say researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine.

Gut bacteria act as a first-line defence system for the lungs—and it's the lining of the lungs, and not the immune system as everyone assumed, that receive signals from the bacteria.

Cyber units in Russia—supposedly responsible for Brexit and Donald Trump's election—are now looking to overthrow Western civilization by placing bad news about the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) and flu vaccines on social media sites, says the Daily Mirror.

In one example, governments were hoodwinked into stockpiling Tamiflu during the swine flu scare of 2009—but hadn't seen unpublished studies that found it wasn't effective. Around 80 per cent of the studies into the drug—that showed it didn't prevent complications after someone contracted flu—were either never published or hadn't been independently reviewed first.

Its fatality rate is likely to be around 0.1 percent, 20 times lower than the current reported rate of 2 percent. Some hospitals are already supporting this revised view and have reported fatality rates of around 1.4 percent.

Now Gotzsche is setting up a Cochrane alternative, the Institute for Scientific Freedom, and is looking for crowd-funding to get it going.

Additives in the foods, and especially tBHQ (tert-butylhydroquinone), hamper the immune response so it can't fight the cells that have been infected. As the immune system is supposed to work hand-in-glove with the vaccine, the additives make the vaccine itself less effective.

The higher the temperature goes above the 'normal' 37 degrees C (98.6 degrees F), the more the body speeds up its natural defences against tumours, wounds and infections.

Compounds from the elderberry fruit block the flu virus from spreading and replicating and also strengthen the immune system's response to the virus.

As such, it's more effective than the seasonal flu jab that, at best, has a 40 per cent success rate.

The herb, Andrographis, is being tested as a natural remedy against colds and flu—and treating common problems like these with antibiotics is bringing closer the era of the drug-resistant superbugs.

The diet activates a sub-set of T cells in the lungs that trap the virus and stops it spreading. The discovery is something of a scientific first because the T cells, known as gamma delta, hadn't been thought to be part of the immune system's response to influenza.

To make the vaccine, the virus is first injected into a chicken egg—and this forces it to mutate and change in order to survive and grow. By the time it's extracted and put into the vaccine, it bears little resemblance to the virus that's in the 'real world', say scientists from the Scripps Research Institute.