There are many good reasons to avoid illegal drugs, like addiction and overdosing. The next best is that local street chemists aren't terribly trustworthy. It's common for drugs to be mixed with other chemicals, some of which are far more dangerous than the drug itself. Case in point: Fentanyl, which is often mixed into heroin.
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An international team of medical experts recently published a global call to action in an effort to curb the unethical, unsubstantiated use of stem-cell based therapies driving medical tourism. When greed trumps science, we all lose.
Many public and private locations have begun carrying injectable epinephrine. But with no generic form of the easiest kind of device, there have been complaints of price gouging. No more. The FDA has approved the first generic version of epinephrine auto-injector for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions.
Wasting food, a precious resource, is bad. Does French regulation make for less waste? Or could there be an equally simple free-market solution?
Now that the results of his posthumous brain examination are in, we now must add Jeff Parker, who played briefly in the 1980s and died last September at 53, to the running list of former hockey players who developed CTE during their careers. Everyone gets the link between head trauma and this devastating brain disease. Everyone, that is, except the head of the NHL.
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.
In the grand tradition of misidentifying problems and offering proposals that won’t work, the city council of Washington, D.C. wants to force manufacturers of flushable toilet wipes to change the label to “non-flushable.” This is wrong.
Dr. Michael Dourson, who sits on ACSH's Board of Scientific Advisors, discusses changes at the EPA. He notes the public interest is best served when science is replicable, and when it's not access to underlying data is vital to independent analysis. Without quality risk assessment, we can't create effective national regulations.
The departure of Soup CEO Denise Morrison is the fifteenth CEO change at a large packaged food company in the last two-and-a-half years. What do they all share in common? They apologized for being in business and chased a vocal consumer segment that hates them - the "nocebo" community that seeks out products based on what they claim not to have on the label.
Studying how cells heal themselves potentially has a wide application in medical research. And for the last 100 years slicing a single cell into two equal parts has only been done by hand. But a young, observant scientist and her fellow Stanford University researchers have just developed a method that's 200 times faster than the current process.
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.
A new study just published in JAMA Internal Medicine states that for those who are HIV-positive, lung-cancer prevention – specifically, trying to quit – should actually take priority over the treatment of HIV and AIDS. Chalk up another horrific distinction for the ills of cigarette smoking.
A long-awaited report on strategies to combat the national opioid crisis has been issued by the White House. Will it make things better or worse? Some of the recommendations are no-brainers, while others are controversial with some being good and others being just terrible. Here's how we scored 'em.
Guys, you know the rules: Always pick the urinal the furthest from the other guy. Little did we know that this issue was of such import, that a couple of lunatics with expertise in math and computer science would quantify urinal selection behavior. Sorry, you'll have to read it. It's not live streaming.
Here's something encouraging for people who buy pain cream for minor, short-term issues: It actually works.
Basically, exaggerated male sex organs may intensify an organism’s focus so much that they pay a hefty cost when it comes to their own survival. In some cases, they facilitate their own extinction.
In 2012, the hepatitis C universe changed forever when Gilead's Sovaldi was approved. Finally, there was an excellent drug that could eliminate the infection almost all the time. But some strains of HCV are tougher than others to treat. But now, Gilead strikes again.
Researchers found that students who exhibited signs of paranoid thinking – specifically, the tendency to interpret random coincidences as highly meaningful, or to believe others are plotting against them – had a particular genetic profile.
Sepsis, sometimes inaccurately referred to as blood poisoning, is sparked by the body’s reaction to infection. Between 12 and 25 percent of patients with sepsis will die during hospitalization. Sepsis contributes to one-third to one-half of all in-hospital deaths.
While kids look forward to Halloween because of the candy, some people just cannot let them have fun without ruining it. Opponents of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, use this carefree event to scare parents about what their children are eating.
Is there gender discrimination in payments made to physicians? Not by Medicare, Medicaid or insurance companies. So why does Doximity, a social network of physicians, say it exists? It all depends on what you're measuring.
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.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women. To learn why, along with how best to prevent it and to clarify any misperceptions about the dynamic nature of the female cardiovascular system ...
Since “fake news” seems to be the current buzz-worthy expression, let's point out that we don't have to look very far to find common medical falsehoods that originate in the Land of Celebrity. Like bubble-headed actresses who get attention for no good reason, here are some phony claims that lead the way.
Thirty five years after graduating, ACSH President Hank Campbell returned to North Penn-Liberty High School in Pennsylvania to give the commencement speech honoring the Class of 2018. While noting that much has changed since he left, the basic challenges facing young people today have not.
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