How many of you have read any of the user agreements we have with Google or Facebook? Neither have I. Why are legal contracts so “notoriously difficult for non-lawyers to understand?” A new study in Cognition provides some clues.
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MIT’s first female student and professor, why nutritional studies go awry, a Carl Sagan Moment, and “clandestine” Chinese scientists and our northern neighbor.
How exactly do we think, the great migration – of our medications, freeing speech, and monkey minds.
As earth day approaches, activist groups have amplified their predictions of an impending environmental disaster. A brief survey of the evidence shows that the situation isn't nearly as dire as they claim.
Socioeconomic risk factors have gotten much attention as they relate to disparities in health outcomes. Lower income, lower educational attainment, and so-called lifestyle issues – drinking, smoking, eating, and exercise – seem to be fellow travelers. A new mediation analysis seeks to disentangle them and point us toward the real drivers of health disparity.
Ocean? Pool? Ocean? Pool? Perhaps this will help you decide.
Once pretty, vivacious young women in their late teens and early twenties awaiting marriage and children, one by one, they sickened. On X-ray, their bones looked moth-eaten; their teeth fell out, leaving pockets of pus– every dental effort to treat them caused more tooth loss. Eventually, their jawbones broke or splintered in their mouths, or they suffered cancerous sarcomas of their limbs, requiring amputation. Their spines crumbled, their legs shortened, so they painfully limped. For years no one could determine what ailed them. They were the “Radium Girls.”
For the once pretty, vivacious young women in their late teens and early twenties awaiting marriage and children, sickened as they lip, dip, and painted radium onto watch dials the statute of limitations was a major obstacle to their legal claims. In Part II of our story, we look at their legal struggle.
Over the past few months more healthcare articles have featured a new (at least for me) statistical methodology: mediation analysis. It doesn’t prove causality, but it can assign a value to the impact of a variable on an outcome. More usefully, it can help suggest what factors we can leverage using public health measures, regulation, or legislation.
Just over a year ago I wrote about the Biden Administration’s plan to ban menthol. As Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting FDA commissioner stated [1], “Banning menthol—the last allowable flavor—in cigarettes and banning all flavors in cigars will help save lives, particularly among those disproportionately affected by these deadly products.” A new study suggests that her statement with respect to those disproportionately affected is wrong. Let’s see what a new study concludes.
There is no doubt that remote care, virtual care, has come into its own during the pandemic. It seems equally clear that it is not going away but will find a niche in our healthcare landscape. Big businesses, especially private equity investors, see this shift in the landscape as an opportunity and are being led to the promised land of a large return on investments by consultants. What are those “thought-leaders” telling those investors will be the future? Does the term “smoke and mirrors” ring any bells?
We know from many studies that there is an inverse association between our intake of dietary fiber and the development of cardiovascular disease. The mechanism joining fiber to cardiovascular disease is thought to be mediated by INFLAMMATION! A new study strongly suggests that it is time to give that hypothesis a rest – as always, it is more complicated and unclear.
Every day of the week, surgeons stand before their peers to discuss and explain the most recent bad outcomes. It is part of our training and our work. As we continue to discuss and explain the public health, behavioral, and political choices during the pandemic, those weekly surgical conversations about morbidity and mortality can give us some insight into how we respond to what went right and what went wrong.
Antibiotic R&D is hard. Getting to approval is harder. Surviving the commercialization step today is almost impossible. Government-based funding to fix the broken antibiotic market is essential to stop this march of the lemmings. Private investment will follow a government incentive and amplify its effect.
Hear about the German guy who got arrested for getting selling forged vaccine cards to anti-vaxxers? That should be funny enough, right? Nope. ACSH goes the extra kilometer, as usual.
When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars for making a joke about his wife’s bald head, it brought attention to a disease that is often invisible, misunderstood, or treated as a punchline for jokes: alopecia areata. What is this disease? Why does it create such intense feelings that Will Smith lost all control on stage in front of millions?
Polling the population for their opinions and views has a long history. But are we most informed by the opinions categorized by race and gender, or might we learn more by viewing thoughts among like-minded individuals – like birds of a feather? A new study suggests how we consider how we cluster and flock.
My wife is an excellent cook, and I am a fair sous chef, not quite as devoted as Paul Childs, [1] but persistent and helpful. I always rinse chicken as I take it from its packaging; my wife always tells me that she and the CDC do not recommend that practice. A new study brings physics and bacteriology to the issue, alas, not in my favor – but it offers me some science-informed compromise.
Barry Bonds has an asterisk next to his name because he used muscle-enhancing steroids. President Clinton earned an asterisk because he used another human as a humidor. Will Smith applied for his when he slapped Chris Rock. An asterisk after your name signifies some notable exception, usually bad. I have questions.
In April, the EPA published its draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Toxicological Review of Formaldehyde (inhalation), a 192-page document. The publication of this document raises issues that go far beyond the health effects of formaldehyde, issues concerning science, policy, the role of our scientific agencies, and the potential overreach of government regulatory authority.
According to the Office of the Inspector General of Health and Human Services, 1 out of every 4 Medicare beneficiaries admitted to the hospital in 2018 experienced harm. Do I have your attention? Good, because the reality may be quite different when you know more about the study underpinning that headline.
Britain may soon approve a gene-edited tomato that boosts vitamin D intake. Let's take a look at the science and politics surrounding this important development.
A recent study showed that Pfizer's Paxlovid, the most effective Covid drug, failed to prevent infection when given to people who were exposed to the virus but had not yet become infected. Bad news, right? Actually, no - it's quite the opposite. Here's why.
There were more COVID deaths in 2021 than 2020, acceptance of vaccination remains stalled, and some locations are making progress but others are not. Nevertheless, masks have been coming off. Some jurisdictions have declared victory over COVID, but wishing will not make it so.
Federal regulators and anti-tobacco campaigners are on the warpath against flavored vaping products. Though alcohol and marijuana use are more common (and more harmful) teenage vices, there seems to be little interest in restricting access to these products.
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