This Terms of Use Agreement (this ‘Agreement’) is entered into by and between the author(s) and ‘you’, the user of this weblog, also known as ‘Health Communication Source’ and ‘raedmansour.com’ (the Site). Access to, use of and/or browsing of the Site is provided subject to the terms and conditions set forth herein. By accessing, using and/or browsing the Site, you hereby agree to these terms and conditions.

THIS AGREEMENT CONTAINS WARRANTY DISCLAIMERS AND OTHER PROVISIONS THAT LIMIT THE AUTHOR’S LIABILITY TO YOU. PLEASE READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY, AS USING, ACCESSING AND/OR BROWSING THE SITE CONSTITUTES ACCEPTANCE OF THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO BE BOUND TO EACH AND EVERY TERM AND CONDITION SET FORTH HEREIN, PLEASE EXIT THE SITE IMMEDIATELY AND DO NOT USE, ACCESS AND/OR BROWSE THE SITE.

BY ENTERING THE SITE, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU HAVE READ AND UNDERSTAND THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, THAT THE PROVISIONS, DISCLOSURES AND DISCLAIMERS SET FORTH HEREIN ARE FAIR AND REASONABLE, AND THAT YOUR AGREEMENT TO FOLLOW AND BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS IS VOLUNTARY AND IS NOT THE RESULT OF FRAUD, DURESS OR UNDUE INFLUENCE EXERCISED UPON YOU BY ANY PERSON OR ENTITY.

MEDICAL ADVICE DISCLAIMER
The Author provides the Site and the services, information, content and/or data (collectively, ‘Information’) contained therein for informational purposes only. The Author does not provide any medical advice on the Site, and the Information should not be so construed or used. Using, accessing and/or browsing the Site and/or providing personal or medical information to the Author does not create a physician-patient relationship between you and the Author. Nothing contained in the Site is intended to create a physician-patient relationship, to replace the services of a licensed, trained physician or health professional or to be a substitute for medical advice of a physician or trained health professional licensed in your state. You should not rely on anything contained in the Site, and you should consult a physician licensed in your state in all matters relating to your health. You hereby agree that you shall not make any health or medical related decision based in whole or in part on anything contained in the Site. Any and all professional credentials that entitles a health professional to make health, medical or scientific statements will always be provided within the title, author and/or post.

PRIVACY NOTICE
This Site upholds all confidentiality laws within the United States of America and the State of Illinois to the extent possible by law within the context of the environment operating from at WordPress.com. Because the Site and domain are hosted on third party servers and in contract with the terms of use agreement with WordPress.com to serve advertisements that may use cookies, beacons, search history and related methods to discover your Internet usage and/or identity, this Site is not allowed to alter their agreements or environment of how, who and where this Site is being hosted.

However, your email address to subscribe to this Site, your identity to make comments, reblog, ‘Like” or post on your social media channel content from this Site, will never result in the sharing of your identity, email address, contact information, social media profile or similar data from statistics provided by Google Analytics, WordPress.com or similar third party applications without your explicit permission.

FINANCIAL, LEGAL AND OTHER ADVICE DISCLAIMER
You hereby acknowledge that nothing contained in the Site shall constitute financial, investment, legal and/or other professional advice and that no professional relationship of any kind is created between you and the Author. You hereby agree that you shall not make any financial, investment, legal and/or other decision based in whole or in part on anything contained in the Site.

INFORMATION DISCLAIMER
The opinions expressed in the Site are not necessarily the opinions of the Author and do not reflect the opinion of his employer(s). The Site is created by the Author in the Author’s individual capacity, is the Author’s personal website, is not edited by the Author’s employer(s) and, as a result, may not be attributed to the Author’s employer.

Any opinions of the Author on the Site are or have been rendered based on specific scientific facts or personal experiences, under certain conditions, and subject to certain assumptions, and may not and should not be used or relied upon for any other purpose, including, but not limited to, for use in or in connection with any legal proceeding or health care. References and citations are provided as secondary research and not to be implied as primary research unless otherwise stated.

The Information may be changed without notice and is not guaranteed to be complete, correct, timely, current or up-to-date. Similar to any printed materials, the Information may become out-of-date. The Author undertakes no obligation to update any Information on the Site; provided, however, that the Author may update the Information at any time without notice in the Author’s sole and absolute discretion. The Author reserves the right to make alterations or deletions to the Information at any time without notice.

All guest writers and contributors to this Site are protected within these Terms of Use Agreement and all Disclaimers. This Site and writers are also protected from all guest posts to this Site. The views of the guest writers and anything written on this Site are their own, and do not in any way reflect the views of this Site, other websites affiliated with this Site, the staff involved with this Site, or any other members of this Site.

POSTING GUIDELINES
The Site is open to the public. Therefore, consider your comments carefully and do not include anything in a comment that you would like to keep private. By uploading or otherwise making available any information to the Author in the form of user generated comments or otherwise, you grant the Author the unlimited, perpetual right to distribute, display, publish, reproduce, reuse and copy the information contained therein.

You are responsible for the content you post. You may not impersonate any other person through the Site. You may not post content that is obscene, defamatory, threatening, fraudulent, invasive of another person’s privacy rights, or is otherwise unlawful. You may not post content that infringes the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity. You may not post any content that contains any computer viruses or any other code designed to disrupt, damage, or limit the functioning of any computer software or hardware.

MODERATION GUIDELINES

Authority
This blog is moderated occasionally and posteriorly. Moderators are volunteers. Internet users posting comments on this blog should not be considered as health professionals.

Complementarity
Comments posted on this Blog should be designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient/site visitor and his/her existing physician.

Confidentiality
We remind you that everyone can read and use your comments. You do not have the possibility to erase your own comments.

Comments

• Internet users commenting on the Site must behave with respect and honesty at all times.
• Internet users may not post any commercial/advertising comment without permission.
• Internet users commenting on my blog must post information which are true and correct to their knowledge.
• We invite you to provide resources (references, links, …) on health/medical claims when possible and relevant.

By submitting or posting content on the Site, you grant the Author and any company substantially under the control of the Author, the right to remove any content or comment that, in Author’s sole judgment, does not comply with the terms and conditions of this Agreement or is otherwise objectionable. You also grant the Author and any company substantially under the control of Author the right to modify, adapt, and edit any content.

Furthermore, by making content available, you represent and warrant that:

1. The downloading, copying and use of the content will not infringe the proprietary rights, including but not limited to the copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret rights, of any third party;

2. If your employer has rights to intellectual property you create, you have either (i) received permission from your employer to post or make available the content, including but not limited to any software, or (ii) secured from your employer a waiver as to all rights in or to the content;

3. You have fully complied with any third-party licenses relating to the content, and have done all things necessary to successfully pass through to end users any required terms;

4. The content does not contain or install any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content;

5. The content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);

6. The content is not pornographic, does not contain threats or incite violence, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party;

7. Your content referring to a blog is not getting advertised via unwanted electronic messages such as spam links on newsgroups, email lists, other blogs and web sites, and similar unsolicited promotional methods;

8. Your content is from a blog that is not named in a manner that misleads  readers into thinking that you are another person or company. For example, your blog’s URL or name is not the name of a person other than yourself or company other than your own; and

9. You have, in the case of content that includes computer code, accurately categorized and/or described the type, nature, uses and effects of the materials, whether requested to do so by WordPress.com or otherwise.

INTERNATIONAL AND CULTURAL LAWS
If this Site is read outside of the United States of America, which has laws that restricts or censors content, and this blog content violates their laws, this Site, its writers and all posted content is not responsible for what is interpreted as defamatory statements by their government, country, society, culture, or religion bound to government, religious, or other laws from the reader’s country of origin. It’s your responsibility and the responsibility of your country, state, culture, religion, lifestyle, club, organization or school to ensure you don’t access content deemed inappropriate by your country, state, culture, religion, lifestyle, club, organization or school.

This blog is written in Modern Standard English in the United States of America and in no way is this blog to be held responsible for any translations or interpretations of the content in other languages and countries. Also, know that punctuation can change the intent of a statement, so this blog and its writers will not be responsible and is held harmless from prosecution for bad grammar and punctuation.

THIRD PARTY LINKS AND ADVERTISEMENTS DISCLAIMER
The Site may in the future, from time to time, contain links to third party web sites. These links are provided solely as a convenience to you and not as a guarantee, warranty, or recommendation by the Author of the services, information, content and/or data on such third party web sites or as an indication of any affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement of such third party web sites. The Author is not responsible for the content of linked third party web sites and does not make any representations or warranties regarding the privacy practices of, or the content or accuracy of materials on, such third party websites. If you decide to access linked third-party web sites, you do so at your own risk. Your use of third-party websites is subject to the terms of use for such sites.

THE INCLUSION OF THIRD PARTY ADVERTISEMENTS DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN ENDORSEMENT, GUARANTEE, WARRANTY, OR RECOMMENDATION OF, AND THE AUTHOR MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS AND/OR WARRANTIES ABOUT, ANY PRODUCT OR SERVICE CONTAINED THEREIN.

This Site DOES NOT generate any money for the authors and NO ONE  is paid for blogging content or for the links on this Site. There are no reciprocal arrangements or favors made to add or exchange links on this website. WordPress.com advertisements are automatically placed into this website and are not under the Site’s control. At the present time, the Site does not accept any advertising money.  If this changes, this will be spelled out directly via a post to this Site and updated within the Terms of Use Agreement.

This Site is personally funded by the author of this Site. This Site is not supported financially by any other person(s) or entities. There are no conflicts of interest to declare in publishing and funding this Site. The total cost of hosting this Site on WordPress.com is $18.00 USD/year. If any of the above conditions change, these will be spelled out directly via a post to this Site and updated within the Terms of Use Agreement.

DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES
The Information made available at the Site is provided on an “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” basis without warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including, without limitation, warranties of title, noninfringement, and implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the Author makes no warranty, representation or guaranty as to the content, sequence, accuracy, timeliness or completeness of the Information, that the Information may be relied upon for any reason or that the Information will be uninterrupted or error free or that any defects can or will be corrected.

Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the Author makes no representations or warranties with respect to any Information offered or provided within or through the Site regarding treatment of medical conditions, action, or application of medication.

Under no circumstances, as a result of your use of the Site, will the Author be liable to you or to any other person for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, exemplary, consequential or other damages under any legal theory, including, without limitation, tort, contract, strict liability or otherwise, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the Author shall have absolutely no liability in connection with the Site for:

1. Damages as a result of lost profits, loss of good will, work stoppage, failure of performance, delays in operation or transmission, non-delivery of information, deletions of files, mistakes, defects, errors, interruptions or computer failure or malfunction;

2. Any loss or injury caused, in whole or in part, by the Author’s actions, omissions, or negligence, or for contingencies beyond the Author’s control, in procuring, compiling, or delivering the Information;

3. Any errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in the Information regardless of how caused, or delays or interruptions in delivery of the Information;

4. Any files, programs and downloads or links you are directed to where you can upload/download files or programs and any damages or harm to your or another website, blog, computer, or any electronic device is not the responsibility of this Site; or

5. Any decision made or action taken or not taken in reliance upon the Information.

RESERVATION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
The Site is protected by United States copyright laws. The Author hereby reserves any and all intellectual property rights in the Site that may not be covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

AGE RESTRICTION
The Site is intended for persons eighteen (18) years or older. Persons under the age of eighteen (18) should not access, use and/or browse the Site.

INDEMNIFICATION
You agree to indemnify and hold the Author harmless from any claim or demand, including attorneys’ fees, made by any third party as a result of (1) any content posted or made available by you on this Site, (2) any violation of law that occurs by you through the Site, and/or (3) anything you do using the Site and/or the Information contained therein.

INVALIDITY
If any provision of this Agreement is held to be invalid or unenforceable in whole or in part in any jurisdiction, then that provision shall be deemed ineffective in such jurisdiction but shall have no effect on the enforceability of the remaining provisions.

GOVERNING LAW, CONSENT TO JURISDICTION AND LIMITATION ON CLAIMS
This Agreement and your use of the Site, along with the Information contained therein, shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Illinois without regard to conflict of laws principles, and you agree to submit to the jurisdiction of courts in the State Illinois. You further agree that any claims or causes of action arising out of or related to this Agreement and the Site, along with the Information contained therein, shall be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose, or such claim or cause of action shall be forever barred.

ENTIRE AGREEMENT
You hereby acknowledge that this Agreement represents the entire understanding between you and the Author concerning your use of the Site and the Information contained therein.

MODIFICATION
The Author may, in the Author’s sole and absolute discretion, modify the terms and conditions of this Agreement in whole or in party at any time for any reason without any notice to you, whether prior or otherwise. Such modified terms and conditions shall supersede these terms and conditions and shall become binding when published online on the Site.

WAIVER
The Author’s failure to exercise or enforce any right or provision of this Agreement shall not be deemed to be a waiver of such right or provision.

THE SITE AND THE INFORMATION CONTAINED THEREIN IS MADE AVAILABLE BY THE AUTHOR FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE. BY ACCESSING THE SITE, YOU UNDERSTAND AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE IS NO PHYSICIAN-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOU AND THE AUTHOR. YOU FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR UNDERSTANDING THAT THE SITE SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR COMPETENT MEDICAL OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE FROM A LICENSED PHYSICIAN OR PRACTITIONER OF HEALTH COMMUNICATION IN YOUR STATE.

All comments, questions or requests regarding this website are welcome by using this contact form.

CHANGE LOG
Created: 01/01/2013
Updated Moderation Guidelines: 07/06/2013
Modified Medical Advice Disclaimer: 07/07/2013
Added Site Funding Source: 02/19/2017

Adapted from Allergy Cases and WordPress.