Attorneys for Pathologist Yehuda Hiss, considered the man who knows “where all the bodies are buried” (including the questionable circumstances of the assassination of a prime minister some seventeen years ago) are saying the rumors about his being fired by Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman s on Monday are premature.

Hiss has been a controversial figure for years, and his Abu Kabir forensic lab has been involved in a number of strange controversies and scandals revolving around the collection of bodies organs as well reports of missing body parts and other organs from dead bodies that passed through his lab.

Families have complained for years that the bodies of dead family members they received back were missing organs, and the bodies were stuffed with other materials to hide the missing parts.

Initially the Health Ministry wanted to try to reunite the found body parts and bury them with their original bodies, but the job of identifying each unlabeled organ and sample to their their original owner has proven to difficult to do.

Hundreds of people have contacted the Health Ministry to try to reclaim body parts over the past few months since the initiative “Final Resting Place” was launched, where the Health Ministry tries to link as many parts to their owners as they can so they can get a proper burial.

But due to the difficulty in identifying all the parts to their original bodies, the Health Ministry created a mass grave for many of the 8288 body parts, many of them not documented, that Hiss and his lab had collected over the years.

Some are upset their family member’s body parts went into a mass grave.

Others have wondered why it took so long for Hiss to be fired, and that is a whole other story.

Israel’s Health Ministry will begin a more concentrated effort to encourage women to breastfeed their babies, instituting new policies in hospitals starting September 1.

Mothers of newborns will receive explanations of the many health benefits of breastfeeding, and their babies will only be given formula if the mothers expressly request it, according to the new policy.  Immediately after birth, interested mothers will be eligible to receive lactation guidance from experts on site.

If a health reason for the mother or child necessitates formula feeding, or the mother otherwise chooses not to breastfeed, she will be given a choice between two formulas.  Prior to the switch, babies were fed formula from birth unless the mother expressed interest in breastfeeding, or from birth until the mother determined she was ready to begin breastfeeding.

Under the new initiative, mothers will be offered the option of rooming with their newborns, and babies who are fed formula or water will have the amounts recorded in their medical charts.  Newborns who are nursing will also not be offered pacifiers.

The choice of two different formulas will also break the monopoly of formula companies which provide free formula to newborns in the hospital.  The new regulations will prohibit the distribution of formula, baby foods, teas, and baby bottles in the hospital, and will remove all advertisements for baby foods and formulas from hospitals, health clinics, and national well-baby (Tipat Chalav) clinics.

The health ministry and the World Health Organization recommend exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of life, with breastfeeding plus supplements being recommend even past the first year.

A new Health Ministry reports shows that a whopping 25 percent of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)treatments resulted in pregnancies, with 20% of attempts resulting in live births.  The number represents the doubling of success in the last decade.

According to the report, 4.1% of births in Israel were the result of IVF treatments in 2010, compared to 2.5% in 1997.  In 2010, 8,123 IVF cycles resulted in pregnancy, with 4,217 achieving success in 2000.

The average women gave birth to 1.2 babies, a consistent figure which is accounted for by the common Israeli practice of returning only one or two embryos to a woman’s body, so as to avoid the risk of multiple births.

Healthy ministry officials attribute the surge in success to Israeli advancement in IVF technology and procedure, and extensive scientific and medical research.

Israeli law provides all women with free and unlimited IVF procedures for up to two live babies.  In 2011, 35,000 IVF cycles were completed throughout the country, up from 18,011 in 2000.

Among the reasons for the rising figures in IVF treatment success is the advanced scientific and medical research in the field of medicine.

In May, Jerusalem’s Shaarei Zedek hospital celebrated its 200^th successful pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) IVF procedure, in which doctors examine embryos on the molecular level to assist families with pre-dispositions for debilitating genetic disorders to have healthy children.

Dr. Michael Gal, Senior Physician in Shaarei Zedek’s IVF unit, told the Jewish Press’s Yishai Fleisher that Israel has the highest number of IVF units per capita in the world because of government support and because “we love children here”.

Prime Minister Netanyahu announced before pesach that he would lower the gas taxes by 15 agurot. However, he waited until no one was paying attention – due to the media focus on the Machpela House incident with Defense Minister Barak – to announce that 2% of government jobs would be cut in order to fund the tax reduction. Netanyahu explained that lowering taxes means shrinking the government, and, this time, cutting taxes means cutting public sector jobs. He emphasized that no one needs to be fired if enough workers embrace early retirement or quit, but conceded that this means the ministries will not be hiring for a long time.

Among those affected are the Justice Ministry, which will lose 134 jobs, Homeland Security Ministry (77), Health Ministry (48), Defense Ministry (45), Education Ministry (43), Industry and Trade Ministry (37), Prime Minister’s Office (35), Welfare Ministry (19), State Comptroller (12), and the President’s Office, which will need to lay off one worker.

There will be many exemptions. Minority workers will keep their jobs, since the government must reach its target of a 10% employment rate of affirmative action groups in the public sector by the end of 2012. In addition, pressure from various groups has succeeded in exempting soldiers, policemen, doctors and nurses in hospitals, and teachers from the cuts.

Netanyahu is known to be a master spin-doctor, and the way he managed to cut public sector jobs by 2% under everyone’s noses will surely be added to his list of spin-doctor achievements.