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In war, the first casualty is truth. Apparently, the same is true of pandemics. Some people are now pretending that they saw the novel coronavirus coming long before anybody else, including scientists and public health officials. In their revisionist history, they were beacons of clarity while others were "COVID deniers."

Given the rogue nature of one scientist, should we expect "designer babies" to follow?

Remarks delivered at the American Council on Science and Health's twenty-fifth anniversary celebration on the evening of December 4, 2003 in New York City.

A new paper claiming that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was genetically engineered in a laboratory has several red flags. It should not be taken seriously.

Rembrandt Foods is closed … again. It has sent their employees home and is sitting idle as highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) claims the lives of over 5 million laying hens. This Iowa liquid egg producer also shut down in 2015, when waterfowl migrating up the Mississippi flyway brought the HPAI strain to their barns and flocks.

The type of cognitive strategy chosen could help protect an individual from the negative sequelae of traumatic events. A new study reveals that a technique called "concrete information processing" could be used to prevent intrusive thoughts (a hallmark of PTSD), and blunt emotional responses to subsequent distressing situations.

1. Tech Times seeks to inject some science into police violence discussions and uses our work to do it. In the ongoing debate over gun ownership, a lot of papers are produced but not all of them make sense. "Virtual lives lost" is one such metric. Like virtual water, virtual money, and virtual emissions, pretend assets can't be utilized. If someone dies young, is is correct to assume they will live to be 80? Not really, which is why average life expectancy is a flawed notion.

Modern life has buffered us from so many of the constant dangers of pre-modern life that few of us fear them. Unfortunately, the removal of the constant threat of disease and starvation seems to cause us to fill in the vacuum with new fears. Instead of fear-mongering, though, the happy story of the last half-century should be told in terms of the cancer epidemics or other dark, unseen forces that didn't strike us.

Dr. Jeffrey Singer (pictured) is one of the brave physicians on the front line in the battle against anti-opioid madness. He graciously gave us permission to reprint his recent Cato Institute blog post. It speaks directly to the role of government in determining who gets what pain medicine, and how much. Dr. Singer addresses just this as he explains why Sen. Robert Portman (R-OH) went way off the deep end, proposing a national three-day limit on opioid prescriptions following surgery -- evidence be damned.

Her dishonest advocacy does incalculable damage to the most vulnerable.

November 20th, 2009
EPA, Breast Exams, Cervical Exams
By Curtis Porter

This week's announcement by Philip Morris that it plans a "global blitz" to dramatically increase the number of cigarette smokers around the world represents the ultimate public health nightmare.

The American food supply is safer and more nutritious today than at any point in history. And this decade the CDC found that 8 out of 10 Americans were not even at risk for nutritional deficiencies. Despite this, millions of Americans still fear the safety of their food. Why?

Typically, the peer review process is "single-blind," meaning that reviewers are aware of an author's identity. Yet it can also be "double-blind," where neither the author nor the reviewers know each other's identity. But, bottom line: Does knowing who wrote a paper influence the reviewer's opinion of it? 

1. Organic Consumers Association, and the groups it funds, like US Right To Know and the lawyer-run partisan attack site Sourcewatch, may be in a lot of trouble.

A dearth of truth in medical advertising is probably our greatest public health threat. With consumers bombarded by spurious claims, our agencies need to be proactive, not reactive in protecting the public.  

There has been a lot of ink spilled, and bytes spent this week discussing the FDA’s approval of aducanumab, brand-name Aduhelm, for the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease. I have mixed feelings; there are advantages to a Phase 4 study, but how do you say no to hope?

Using statistics, you can show almost anything is correlated.

Decades ago, I became a fan of the ACSH long before becoming an occasional contributor. I was motivated by one clear point of reasoning. I found it next to impossible to locate a reliable source of health-related issues I had an interest in, as well as being able to recommend that source to students enrolled in my college course for continuing education purposes.

As more children and teens become susceptible to whooping cough (pertussis), it becomes more important to protect newborns and infants from contagion transmitted by those age groups. With siblings now transmitting the virus more often than moms, pregnant women need to be vaccinated to insure protection.

Public health is a field that's widely misunderstood, even by science journalists. That's because epidemiology is an inexact science, complicated by a large variability in the quality of the data it produces. Also, by its reliance on advanced statistical methods. 

As social media platforms unleash a torrent of content, the battle against inaccuracies becomes increasingly daunting. Algorithms, touted as gatekeepers, have not worked. Can crowdsourced corrections stem the tide of misinformation?

A recent study claims Medicare is discriminating against female doctors in payments. Here is what's really going on.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) created queue guidelines for those receiving the COVID-19 vaccines. While vaccination of healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities is already underway, there's much being written about position jockeying for those in the groups that follow. Let's take a deeper dive into these deliberations.

What does Facebook's algorithm say about me?