What is our most important organ? Every time there was a new lecturer in medical school, they began by pointing out why their organ of interest was the most important. After all:
Search
Can being one with nature harm nature?
For Climate Change - Having your meat and eating it too.
“VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.
Advice from a bad mother
The Fourth Turning and Complexity
Can a medication change our brain’s anatomy?
Are colonoscopies helpful?
Can the value of chicken soup be quantified?
The U.S. Government doesn't want to hear the message: The Centers for Disease Control and the Veterans Administration published practice guidelines on the prescription of opioid pain relievers in 2022 that they knew were unsupported by science and harmful to public health. The Department of Health and Human Services is stone-walling repeated demands for a senior staff review of these issues.
Roadside drug tests are unreliable, so why are they so widely used in the U.S.? Meanwhile, researchers who make "health disparities" the focus of their work sometimes misrepresent their results. Here's a textbook example from a study that used pulse oximetry to measure disparities in COVID-19 treatment.
Many cancers are treated with DNA-damaging drugs. But one, testicular cancer, responds so well to the drug cisplatin that the cure rate for early-stage disease is about 100%. Even if the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes, there is a five-year survival of 74%. What makes this combination of a particular drug and cell type so unique?
The COVID-19 pandemic has virtually – but not entirely – disappeared from public concerns. Nevertheless, new variants are being examined, as are new vaccines intended to counter them.
Our behavior seems to be built by evolution, and it's sometimes paradoxical. To borrow from the hard sciences, our behavior exhibits complementarity. We are largely felicitous to our family and friends, yet stand-offish (if not aggressive) to “others” we may encounter. Willful ignorance straddles that complementarity borderline. A new study offers insight into what's really going on.
Flu shots perform inconsistently because it's hard to anticipate which strains of the virus will be circulating in a given year. So far in 2023, it appears that the latest round of vaccines are working well. The FDA has determined that Sudafed PE doesn't work. Questions and accusations are flying as a result: why were we sold a useless decongestant in the first place? And more importantly, who's to blame for this public health blunder?
Advil, aka, ibuprofen, is one of the most widely used drugs in the world. It's effective for relief of pain, inflammation, and fever. It can also wreak holy hell on your stomach. Unfortunately, the two effects go together. Grab the Rolaids. It's time for an Advil lesson.
Some people drink coffee, and the next thing you know, they're trying to climb the Empire State Building. But others feel little or nothing. What's going on?
“Last month, California lawmakers passed a bill that would decriminalize the personal possession of small amounts of a few plant-based psychedelics. This raised hopes that this could be the first of many reforms to unlock the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. Unfortunately, Governor Newsom vetoed the bill, citing reasons that can only be characterized as specious.”
The siren song of precision medicine is lost in the translation, from the laboratory to the bedside. Two studies suggest that precision medicine is more an aspirational term than reality.
Rather than rehash the disclosure of conflicts that led to the downfall of the now-former Chief Medical Officer at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, consider how this episode reflects a more common problem of "entitled" powerful people. Here are two remedies that don't require investigations and can possibly help correct medical research's vacillating integrity dilemma.
A new review from regulatory experts at the National Health Service reveals a workforce shortage crisis. Officials paint a "bleak picture" about the state of the government-run health system.
While the exact reason is elusive, the facts are pointing towards the collaborative efforts of a local healthcare group, Be There San Diego, which in 2011 began aggressive follow-up treatment for at-risk patients. Coincidentally, there was a startling, 22 percent decrease in local heart attack hospitalizations beginning that year and extending through 2016.
There are precedents in healthcare to tethering financial compensation to body parts, as in the case with egg or sperm donation, and surrogacy. Are organs any different?
Here's an example of how a kernel of insight from a study evolves into a news item, which can then become a health concept that people can unwittingly incorporate into their personal exercise routines. And all for no good reason.
A male physician disparages female doctors. Things don't go well for him. However, we now can have an honest discussion about the issue.
Did team sports for kids evolve from hunter-gatherers who needed to practice for war? A new paper suggests that is so.
A paper says up to 8,000 new antibiotic combinations could be ready for testing, but there is a big catch: It's called reality.
Formaldehyde is one of the most demonized chemicals. Know-nothings try to terrify us about the 10 milligrams of the chemical you get from a packet of aspartame. But did you know that your body produces, uses, and eliminates 50,000 mg of the stuff every day? That's because every living cell in our body requires formaldehyde.
The EPA is evaluating 10 chemicals under the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act. So we have created explanations for each, with recommendations when the science is clear.
Tom Frieden has just been arrested for sexually harassing a Brooklyn woman in 2017. Whatever results from Frieden's alleged crime will be determined by law enforcement. But we at ACSH have been writing about his crimes against science for years. Here are some examples.
Anti-science activists continue to scramble to shore up their clients, who have become increasingly unnerved that we're pushing them back to the fringes where they belong. And then legitimate media linked to us as well.
Pagination
ACSH relies on donors like you. If you enjoy our work, please contribute.
Make your tax-deductible gift today!