Drugs & Pharmaceuticals

In the 1970s chemists in the illicit drug business began exploring a new class of psychoactive drugs, which were structurally related to the synthetic opiate Demerol. The following story is truly one-in-a-million.

Doctors have been saying it forever (almost): the only thing you should put in your ear is your elbow. No swabs, no pencils, no probes, no eyeglass stems should be used to remove earwax, also know as cerumen.

Who among us hasn’t been tormented by the itch after a mosquito bite? This is due to the histamine release at the offending site.

Things aren’t always what they seem.  Why should this colloquialism be any different in the medical realm?

The last time I wrote about one herpes vaccine - in that case Rational Vaccines' (RVx) Theravax, which claims to have performed well but only in one very pilot study in one foreign country, with no published data - I noted that future studies woul

"Dreaded ‘stomach flu’ wreaks havoc on families — and it’s only going to get worse" Lena H. Sun, Washington Post, January 5, 2017

All too frequently, the things we do daily become routine.  This is likely true of many tasks in a multitude of professions.  It’s just that in certain fields, like medicine, seemingly mundane and tedious duties can—all too often— provid

Type 1 diabetes – the kind that involves loss of the insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells — requires that insulin be injected daily, or several times daily.

RNA-based treatments for select genetic diseases have made major headlines in the last few months by receiving FDA approval and giving hope to families of suffering children.

The overdose epidemic sweeping the nation is hitting some demographics harder than others. New data released by the CDC breaks down heroin overdose deaths by age.