A study confined to COVID deaths in Florida and Ohio suggests that the Grim Reaper’s “excess” deaths, when stratified by political party, came for Republicans more often than Democrats.
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There's a codeine analog with a strange name: "Thebacon." How does one pronounce this? Is it useful? And are there other obscure chemicals with meat-containing names? And A Dreaded Chemistry Lesson From Hell (TM) for no extra charge.
Discussions of “climate change” or “global warming” tend to focus on increasing temperatures in summer, especially the current run of severe heat waves. The 85-page summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report mentions “winter” only once, the surname of one of the authors, but the adverse health effects of cold winters have long been recognized. Can the health benefits of warmer winters compensate for the damaging effects of hotter summers?
Mosquito magnet
Undercover journalism
Daily Ice cream reduces heart disease
How Madison Avenue taught us to consume healthcare
Tori Bowie, a 2016 US Olympian, died from complications of childbirth; Serena Williams experienced a pulmonary embolism after delivery that was initially ignored. According to the World in Data, US maternal mortality per 100,000 live births lies “comfortably” less than in Grenada but more than in Latvia or Puerto Rico. Let’s get behind the headlines, and delve deeper into a “preventable” problem.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently concluded that the popular artificial sweetener aspartame, widely used in foods and diet drinks, is “possibly carcinogenic to humans,” an alarming conclusion because aspartame is used in thousands of low-calorie products. However, another WHO organization, the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), concluded that it is safe to consume aspartame. Can we make sense of the conflicting conclusions?
Although Kansas' effort to prevent drug-impaired driving is admirable, the method the state is using to detect it is flawed. SoToxa, Abbott's hand-held analytical device can rapidly detect and identify common drugs in saliva but gives no information about the amount of drug present. I predict this will cause all kinds of problems
The FDA has finally allowed women to have access to one brand of one form of birth control. it’s time for them to follow the advice of the medical experts, and allow women access to all forms of hormonal contraceptives.
I’m at an age where I see doctors frequently enough that I noticed that the masks are gone. Will a surge in influenza or COVID this fall and winter bring masks back for all, or has COVID given us something other than a one-size-fits-all approach?
“…body mass index, BMI, then, is a continuation of white supremacist embodiment norms, racializing fat phobia under the guise of clinical authority.” Quite an opening from an article in the AMA’s new Journal of Ethics. Stripped of its rhetoric, could it be true?
There are dozens of fentanyl analogs – mostly illegal – that are being found in street drug samples. But one – para-fluorofentanyl, a drug is now being found left, right, and center.
Clean air has long been recognized as a requisite for mammalian survival. In fact, the National Library of Medicine lists over 8,000 publications citing this, including the terms “air pollution” and “mortality.” How have U.S. mortality rates and life expectancies changed during recent decades of improving ambient air quality?
The value of limitation
The cost of speeding
What’s to eat?
How the media portrays us
In the last few weeks, there have been two articles on the benefit of supplements, specifically multivitamins and flavonols (extracted from cocoa), on improving memory. The media mentioned the multivitamins; the flavanols garnered no attention. What did the studies report?
Over the last few years, it’s become clear that using a patient’s race as a variable in some predictive models – like those involving kidney function – leads to poorer outcomes. Meanwhile, removing that variable leads to improved prediction of patient risk, more prompt treatment, and presumably better outcomes. A new study shows that by taking the race variable “out of the equation” the predictive model fares worse. Should we consider race as a determinant of health?
On May 29, the Vogtle 3 nuclear reactor was brought to 100% power for the first time. It's getting closer to adding another 1100 MW to the grid, with its sister plant, Vogtle 4, not far behind. This is significant because the Vogtle reactors are the first new nuclear power plants built in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown.
When a guy is standing at a urinal in a public men’s room how do subsequent urinators choose where to stand? This vital matter is the subject of an academic paper which I will try (but fail) to explain. Who cares? We both know this is thinly-disguised juvenile (and hopefully offensive) humor. In honor of June 21st - National Urine Day!
Remember herd immunity, the early aspirational goal of our COVID strategy? It has arrived, at least according to some recent findings of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR).
For the past five years, the DEA has classified fentanyl-related substances as Schedule 1 drugs, hoping it will reduce fentanyl-related overdose deaths . Deaths have nearly doubled since then. But, inexplicably, some in Congress think that placing fentanyl-related substances permanently on Schedule 1 will bring the overdose rate down.“
How to manage climate change remains a contested policy area, both nationally and internationally. Who will pick up the tab for the changes? One group of scientists has taken the moral high ground, saying “other agents bear substantial responsibility for the cost of redressing climate harm: the companies that engage in the exploration, production, refining, and distribution of oil, gas, and coal.”
Taurine, a dietary supplement, is in the news because of a paper in the journal Science that showed multiple beneficial effects in mice (anti-aging, mental health, weight loss, etc.). Normally, I'm quite skeptical about such claims, but there is some pretty impressive evidence in mouse models, so I'm not so sure. Here's a short lesson on taurine.
It's finally time to consider Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries proposals to reclaim and reset Earth Systems Boundaries. First up, the three most significant (at least in my view): climate, water, and nutrients. The authors of the paper in Nature challenged us to read their proposals and then discuss them. In the spirit of that challenge, I will let them do the talking.
The nightly news often brings a surfeit of environmental disasters: forest fires, floods, tornados, drought, iceberg melting. What have we done to deserve them? Here I draw on various sources of climate change data to provide some understanding of what may lie ahead.
A recent prospective study of post-surgical patients confirms what many other studies have already shown: prescribing opioids to control pain carries a very low risk of addiction or misuse.
Nitrates – widely used preservatives – are found in a variety of foods. Are they good or bad? After all, they can form nitrosamines, recognized carcinogens. A new study uses the metaphor of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to separate science truth from science fiction. Here’s what I learned.
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