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As part of a healthy diet, US federal guidelines recommend that adults eat 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit and 2 to 3 cups of vegetables per day. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that only 1 out of 10 Americans eat enough of these foods containing essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber. There can be barriers to consumption. Fresh fruits and vegetables are pricey and have limited availability in some communities. They also have short shelf lives. Frozen and canned foods are more accessible and can be stored longer. Are these options to fresh just as nutritious?

A recent story about the bizarre symptoms of policemen, who were exposed to street fentanyl, turned out to be anxiety attacks – not fentanyl poisoning. What happened? Yes, it's time for another Dreaded Chemistry Lesson From Hell!

What meditation can teach us about listening to others?
It is time to BBQ – a chemistry lesson you can eat
Does science uncover new “truths” or continue to enslave the “already exploited?”
AARP’s conflicted interests

There's been a lot of news, some of it fear-mongering, about Pfizer's Covid drug Paxlovid. Some people are having their symptoms return after completing the five-day course. Does that mean there is something wrong with the drug, or it's simply a property of the virus? Drs. Henry Miller and Josh Bloom try to provide an answer in Issues & Insights.

As a bipartisan group of Senators seeks a regulatory path away from gun violence, “One proposal being discussed would possibly incentivize states to enact red flag laws on an individual, rather than national, basis. But for some Republicans, red flag laws are already too invasive of a regulation.” [1] Are red flag laws helpful, or more safety theater? A new study provides some useful information. I wonder if the Senators will take “the science” into account?

Most of my dieting or weight-conscious friends rely on the bevy of artificial sweeteners on the market to aid their quest of finding “their svelte outer selves.” For example, we have saccharin, the oldest of the bunch, sucralose, aspartame, and stevia, available in rainbow-pastel-colored packets for the asking. Is one better than the other?

Parkinson’s Disease is one of several degenerative diseases in our neurologic system. It has a celebrity patient, Michael J. Fox. Still, with a million patients living with the disease in the US and sixty thousand new diagnoses annually, it lacks a biomarker to aid in early detection. An artificial intelligence program looking at nocturnal breathing may change that and, ultimately, how we care for these patients.

Wanna hear something sickening? Neurontin, a drug developed for epilepsy and used off-label for neuropathic pain, had its sales grow 250% between 2004 and 2019. Why? We don't have 250% more epileptics. No, it's because the drug is being forced down the throats of people who can no longer get sufficient pain relief. The result? Abuse and also more overdose deaths. Just another chapter in our psychotic war against legitimate opioid drugs and the people who need them.

We sure need a new pain medicine without the baggage of NSAIDs or the stigma of opioids. Johnson & Johnson thinks it might have an answer - a derivative of Tylenol without the associated liver toxicity. But does it treat pain? Not very well.

There is no question that health, fitness, and anti-aging issues dominate our culture and have risen to a cult level of obsession for millions of people who have turned the simple task of feeding and taking care of themselves into a religious obsession. 

I like Marion Nestle, although I do not always agree with her point of view. She writes a food blog entitled Food Politics, and in her current article, it seems that the emphasis here is on politics rather than food.

Climate change is real; we contribute to it. But warmer temperatures aren't driving unprecedented increases in the number of heart attacks we suffer.

Is the U.S. heading for even more trouble from drug overdose deaths? Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and ACSH advisor, says yes. Modelers have predicted that ODs will accelerate because of even stronger fentanyl analogs and also due to mixing drugs that should not be mixed. Anyone still blaming the overprescribing of opioid analgesics for our soaring deaths should read this.

Recently, Contrafect, an antibiotic biotech company developing a novel product for the treatment of severe staphylococcal infections, suffered a failure in its phase 3 trial. The trail was designed to show the superiority of its new drug over standard treatments. Why is it so hard to show that one antibiotic works better than another in a clinical trial?

A critically important paper in the journal Frontiers in Pain Medicine concludes that while the rationale for reducing opioid prescriptions to minimize overdose deaths was sound between 2006-2010, during the ensuing decade the opposite was true. Reducing opioid prescriptions during this time dramatically increased deaths and hospitalizations. In other words, what worked 15 years ago is an unmitigated disaster at this time.

In our somewhat academic household, “solving differential equations” was a euphemism for tackling a challenging intellectual problem with an uncertain outcome.  Pinning down the health effects of air pollution exposure is one such problem.

Having Covid is a good excuse to bitch about...whatever. I chose digital thermometers. Hateful monstrosities.

A Modern History of Bail
Streetlights illuminating the Street, and some unwarranted (?) surveillance
Calling people names stifles understanding.
Presentism - wokeness reinterprets history

Here is the narrative: if we reduce manmade greenhouse gases and their companion aerosols, like PM2.5, we will reduce global warming and improve our health. Unfortunately, the climate is a bit more complex. Our best plans come with unintended consequences. A new study shows that reducing those manmade aerosols also increases the “climate forcing” bringing about global warming.

Anti-vaping activists have put themselves in an awkward position. They want to demonize e-cigarettes because, they allege, nicotine poses a risk to teenagers. But they also want teenagers to use nicotine gums and patches to quit smoking. What sense does that make? None.

How are politicians similar to bacteria? ACSH advisor Dr. Henry Miller explains.

Certainty and extremism
Will we ever know the origin of COVID-19?
What can the Talmud teach us about Twitter and Facebook?
And now, a moment with Hans Rosling.

Tracking cookies – those bite-size snippets of code that log your internet behavior – come in as many forms as recipes for chocolate chip cookies. They are ubiquitous on all commercial websites, but as it turns out they can often be found on governmental websites. How did that come to be? Part of Big Brother’s surveillance or could it be a quiet “smash and grab” by social media companies?

Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and the District of Columbia have Death with Dignity legislation. Arizona, Delaware, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Rhode Island all have active legislation under consideration. California and Vermont have amended legislation. All told, 74 million individuals live in states with Medical Aid in Dying and 87 million more in states considering this legislation. A new paper looks at who has availed themselves of these services.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently came out in support of "regenerative" farming as a solution to climate change. There is little evidence to justify her advocacy.