1. In Las Vegas Review-Journal, Dr. Josh Bloom wrote about a worthwhile effort to combat deaths due to illegal opioids which has transformed into government interfering in the doctor-patient relationship. Though bad doctors have been arrested, and "pill mills" shut down, the overwhelming majority of harm has come from illegal purchases, not cancer patients in real pain. You can read his article here.
2. In Reason, science journalist Ron Bailey delves into the same topic, wondering if the pain relief benefits of prescription opioids outweigh their addiction risks? He notes the groundbreaking work of Dr. Bloom and also discusses Andrew Kolodny, executive director for Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, who has named himself and his group as de facto authorities on the opioid issue without showing any grasp at all of the real factors. You can read Bailey's article here.
3. At the financially shaky gossip site Vox, they are scrambling to do anything to attract eyeballs and sell more ads to keep the lights on. That can be the only explanation for why their "The Verge" site would commission political conspiracy theorist, environmental activist and sort-of-science-communicator Liza Gross to once again claim that science and health are a "Deep State" corporate agenda. This time she insists that if you support vaping, you must be part of Big Tobacco.
You read that right, if you have been trying to end smoking for 40 years, like we have, but are more compassionate than preaching abstinence-only "quit or die" techniques, partisan true believers insist you are secretly in cahoots with Big Tobacco. It's so bananas it sounds like it could have come right from Sierra Club, where she used to work. Or Environmental Health News, where she proudly worships at the altar of endocrine homeopath Pete Myers. Except she doesn't even realize she is endorsing pharmaceutical companies when she blocks out smoking cessation tools and leaves nothing for addicts except patches and gums. Or dying.
Political science majors tend to get a little batty in their dotage so Gross can be forgiven for not blazing any new trails when she invokes the same tired stolen ACSH documents an angry fired employee gave to Mother Jones that one time, which showed that *gasp* non-profits need to ask people for money to stay in existence. Literally all of her article could have been written by a dozen progressive anti-science activists and there would be no difference in style, intent or logic. None of her article is saying anything new, other than weirdly smearing our advisor and fellow anti-smoking evangelist Dr. Brad Rodu of the University of Louisville. Her paragraph on us could easily have been written (maybe it was) by Attorney Lisa Graves, the Democratic lawyer who runs Sourcewatch and is paid by corporations and individual activists to attack scientists and companies. Or Charles Seife or Paul Thacker, who somehow managed to place an article smearing scientists in the science journal PLOS, where Gross is somehow a "Senior Editor" despite having no science background, after NYU, where Seife works and Thacker is desperate to get hired, gave her an award. Gross is the only political scientist who gets to be called "Senior Editor" there, the rest of their employees are actually qualified and I'm not trying to disparage them by association. It's probably coincidence those two got into PLOS (their conspiracy fable was retracted after outrage by the science community) after she got an NYU award.
But if I were a shoddy pseudo-journalist like Gross I would allege in The Verge that their article was quid pro quo for giving her an award, all as part of a Vast Deep State Conspiracy.
4. In Becker's Clinical Leadership & Infection Control, they discuss our work noting how many healthcare employees treat patients when they are ill.
5. In the Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Charlotte Gazette-Mail, James Felsen argues for why health policy should be local. We don't have a national police force for a good reason, and education at the federal level is basically useless, they take money from states just to get a cut and give it back. All education is really local. So why dictate a one-size-fits-all health-care policy for New York City and Mississippi? Read Felsen's article here.
6. In American Thinker, ACSH science advisor Dr. John Dunn takes on medical journals and everything else that has fallen under the spell of the Noble Lie.
7. Cameron English. who is working on the new Deniers For Hire website designed to expose anti-science activists like Gross, Thacker and Seife, interviewed Dr. Josh Bloom about the facts versus fiction of the opioid crisis. You can listen to the interview here.
8. In World Net Daily, journalist David Lightsey takes on the increasingly bizarre website Newsweek, and Dr. Oz's favorite scaremongering site, Consumer Reports. Pesticides need to be used properly, just like guns, Newsweek articles and government regulations. But calls for silly bans over specious claims help no one and Lightsey invokes the watershed moment for activists and how they once controlled media - when the PR group Fenton Communications, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the television show "60 Minutes" conspired to manufacture a scare about alar on apples. Can you even remember when Newsweek was a good publication? Neither can I. And if I want to buy a toaster, I'll ask Consumer Reports, but as Freedom of Information Act emails have shown, when it comes to science Michael Hansen of Consumers Union is clearly in the bag for activists, supplement sellers, and the alternative medicine charlatans who keep Dr. Oz on the air. Read his article here.
9. In Top Secret Writers, they discuss our work on ethanol ablation and if their might be a new approach to treating cancer.
