Mosquito season is around the corner, and there may be an extra surprise this year, depending on how Zika behaves. So, do you slop DEET all over your kids? Spray to kill the mosquitoes? Some are calling for the use of DDT. But if you're scared of chemicals, you might actually prefer DDT to DEET. Here's how they compare.
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If you have a hidden agenda, it’s best to try and hide it. That's what we’d recommend after reading a misleading, unbalanced report on the website Quartz. The reporter's unsupported piece isn’t really about meat consumption and how it’s making men sick — it's about meat and how it’s making her sick.
Competitive eater Molly Schuyler stands 5-foot-7 and weighs just 125 pounds. Her petite frame appears to be at odds with her staggering prowess to gorge herself, which left us scratching our heads in incredulity. How does someone manage to eat so much, yet maintain such a seemingly healthy physique?
An analysis of 87 studies squashed the notion that moderate consumption of alcohol (including wine) has any benefit to longevity. This comes after earlier research seemed to indicate the opposite. We wish science would make up its mind.
Black and white Americans, especially men, differ with respect to their risk of lung cancer from smoking exposure. But depending on the metric used, the reasons for this difference is not clear. A new study uses a more detailed computation of exposure to help clarify the different exposure levels.
Thanks to a really idiotic Vermont law, food companies all over the U.S. are scrambling to make thoroughly useless changes to their labels, specifying whether any GM ingredients are in their products. Providing no scientific merit, the law seems to be designed simply to benefit Vermont. Guess who will pay the higher prices for this nonsense?
Over the course of the past few weeks Mylan has replaced Turing and Valeant as the most scrutinized and critiqued pharmaceutical companies in the United States. Though politicians and pundits have claimed the problem is Big Pharma, the issue of price-gouging is far more pervasive among generic drugs.
WebMD earned its recently-bestowed moniker, WebBM, by spewing out one poop-related story after another. But they have really stepped in it now. The site, which we will now also refer to as WebD-U-M-B, published an article on fast-food scares that was really, really stupid.
By now, anyone who has perused the grocery aisles has seen the plethora of products that proudly proclaim they're "gluten-free." But the number of people that need gluten-free foods — those with celiac disease — hasn't increased. Are people being seduced by ads, or is there some other rationale for making gluten-free choices?
The news about Zika keeps coming, and it's not good. A new Lancet study estimates that the fetuses of 1 in 100 women who become infected with the virus during their first trimester will be microcephalic, meaning that they'll be born with undersized heads. Given the number of infections in Brazil alone, this is a disturbingly high number.
The use of intrauterine devices (IUDs) and hormonal implants, while helping protect against unwanted pregnancy, also have their downsides. That's because teens and young women who use them frequently forgo using condoms, which heightens the risk of getting sexually-transmitted diseases.
What started off as a company which gleefully offered revolutionary technology and promises of breakthrough performance, Theranos seems to have failed miserably. Egregious errors were found when California investigators paid a visit to one of its facilities.
A recent published study by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center claims that 16,000 premature births are linked to air pollution, with costs exceeding $4 billion. But how accurate are these estimates? What's more, studies like this are rarely able to prove causation.
Bariatric, or weight loss, surgery works. A severely obese person might lose 50 percent of his or her excess body fat in the first year after such surgery. One question that has lingered for decades is: How long do such effects last? Another is: Do people gain back the weight that they've lost and, if so, how quickly does that happen?
Each bottle of beer you drink makes you a bit more inebriated. Each cigarette you smoke increases your chances of damaging your lungs. Now, researchers say they've learned that each hour worked increases an individual's chances of developing heart disease. However, there are caveats to this finding.
With medical letters and the general health of the presidential candidates recently being the big topic of discussion, who's medically fit or unfit in 2016? What condition would cause you, or a major party, to disqualify someone running for President of the United States? (The answer is different for a physician.)
For the 12+ million Americans who suffer from ADHD, it is rather ironic that many of them had to remember to take their medication four times per day. With a little help from pharmaceutical chemistry, life is now a little easier.
We can’t talk about penises and urethras without mentioning vaginas. So, it seems like the perfect segue in our series on foreign bodies in the body, to move directly from one family jewel to another. Let’s dive right in and open Pandora’s box, so to speak.
Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi was honored for discovering autophagy, which is a type of programmed cell death. Some cells in multicellular organisms, like animals and plants, choose to self-destruct for the greater benefit of the organism. This can occur for a variety of reasons.
Michael Pollan, food activist and journalist, is the proverbial man trapped in the past. His latest piece for The New York Times criticizes the Obama administration for not catering to his bizarre beliefs about how food production actually works. And along he tries to smear ... the American Council's president, and you.
The crisis of antibiotic resistance and our failure to produce a robust pipeline of new antibiotics is no more than us sticking our heads in the sand and pretending the problem will go away before we have to go to the hospital and face the crisis in a very personal way.
The "follow the money" argument is an intellectually lazy fallacy. However, if you really do think that money will change our minds, then write us a check.
Andrew Silver, Inside Science -- Tiny robots taken into the body and controlled by brain patterns could someday help deliver medicine on demand.
The payoff would be tremendous if the technique could be perfected.
"You can get only the dosage you need only at the time you need," said lead author Shachar Arnon, a former computer science graduate student at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
The outbreak began with a Michigan parent who was diagnosed with shingles last October. Despite acquiring first-hand knowledge of the pain and discomfort of shingles, the parent apparently took no significant action to protect his or her 5 kids. Within a month, one by one each came down with chickenpox. And then it spread outside the family home.
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