A large study just found that there was little, or no, evidence of cancer linked to the use of hair dye. But one of the most common dyes, para-phenylenediamine, could be reasonably expected by a chemist to be carcinogenic because of the conditions used in the dying process. Even though it's not. Here's why.
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GHB, one of the "date-rape drugs," is being increasingly abused after two decades of low usage. Here's a lesson on the chemistry, biochemistry, and nomenclature of the drug. Admittedly, this sounds deadly boring. But there's more. Juvenile puke humor! Enjoy.
Obesity remains a significant health problem, especially when it increases one's susceptibility to COVID-19. While better eating habits and exercise have long been the mainstays of weight reduction, in the last 10-to-15 years surgical rearrangements of the gastrointestinal tract have come to the fore. Not only do they reduce weight, but they've improved hypertension and diabetes mellitus. A new study compares surgical and medical management for diabetes.
If artificial intelligence can replace some highly specialized medical doctors, is any job safe? It appears the biomedical profession is ripe for an overhaul.
Bari Weiss, a New York Times opinion writer, quit her job following relentless defamatory, bigoted, anti-Semitic, workplace bullying from her super-woke colleagues. And workplace bullying is a lot more common than one might think.
Incompetence, waffling, moving the goalposts, disregarding unintended consequences, and being political have hurt Americans' confidence in their public health institutions.
Dutch journalist Jannes van Roermund sent an embarrassing, unprofessional, and accusatory email to epidemiologist and ACSH advisor Geoffrey Kabat. Dr. Kabat's response is pure gold.
The term "opioid" has become a dirty word. "Synthetic" is also dirty. When putting them together you get something that is dirty but also confusing -- and probably intentionally so. There's no scientific reason to categorize a drug as a "synthetic opioid" or a "synthetic anything," as you will read here. To see how silly it is, let's perform the same exercise with antibiotics and see how that works out.
Gene drive technology is powerful and slightly frightening. But the coronavirus pandemic reminds us that we want to have multiple weapons in the public health arsenal, should we be confronted with another life-threatening microbe.
A group of researchers reports an association between low vitamin D levels and COVID-19 infection. Is this a true cause-and-effect relationship? Or are we seeing an excellent example of selection bias? Let's take a look.
As I watch the current debacle of our children preparing to return to school, I more and more feel it is time to take a moment to talk about the errors we have made. My original thoughts turned to responsibility and accountability, words that have occupied my professional life as a surgeon, words molding my thinking just as they molded my character.
A fact-checking site called PolitiFact weighs in on the validity of the claim that opioid deaths decreased in 2018, thus supposedly marking the first time we are getting control of the "opioid epidemic." Let's fact-check the fact-checkers. Plus, Andrew Kolodny dines on his own words.
Should you happen to be in the vicinity of Albuquerque don't miss the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. It is fascinating. It's also bewildering to see what people were putting in, and on, their bodies in the 1920s and 30s. The exhibits in this New Mexico museum make today's quackery look like peer-reviewed studies in JAMA. Here are some of them.
The RAND Corporation recently released a study of hospital pricing for commercial insurance vs. Medicare, the de facto standard. It's no surprise that commercial insurance pays more than double Medicare. And those payments are not evenly distributed nationally, within states, or even health systems.
Social distancing reduces the possibility of becoming infected with COVID-19. A new study suggests that social distancing also applies to facilities -- in this case -- nursing homes. But how can these particular facilities do that? Read on.
Here's the lineup: Our immune system has lots of moving parts and they do not always make sense, at least on the first read. ... While the truth may set you free, learning the truth is often hampered by paywalls. ... And a beautiful interactive on a woodblock print that shows: (1) How a picture is worth a thousand words and (2) How culturally interconnected we have been for a lot longer than the past few years.
Statistics and science aren't the same thing. Moreover, statisticians aren't fortune tellers, yet we continue to treat them as if they are. It's time to stop.
Reports of an H5N8 influenza virus spreading among birds across the globe understandably have generated concern. However, H5 viruses do not pose a direct threat to the health of the vast majority of humans on the planet, at least not yet.
From vaping to cutting-edge biotechnology, UK health regulators do a far better job than their American counterparts. This was proven yet again when the UK beat the U.S. FDA at approving a coronavirus vaccine produced by Pfizer, an American company.
There are three major reasons why SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus, will never be eradicated.
There’s a new diet that’s the talk of the town. It advocates eating more calories, not less. So is it all fad, or is there a grain of truth to it?
There's nothing like fear to generate abnormal behavior. And in the age of COVID-19 there's plenty of fear going around (so expect a lot of it). In the past few months, we've seen that one of these odd behaviors is attributed to a significant number of health-news headlines recommending vitamin C to purportedly assist one's immune response to COVID-19. Let's take a closer look.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo would rather allow more Americans to become infected with and die from coronavirus than to allow an imperfect vaccine distribution plan to proceed.
Almost 100 years ago, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel about a doctor trying to elevate scientific discovery over the pursuit of wealth that often accompanies the practice of medicine.
The story was about young Dr. Martin Arrowsmith, who discovers a new treatment for bubonic plague. It appears the drug works – but without rigorous controlled experiments, who can be sure? Arrowsmith wants to play by the scientific rules and hold off universal dispensation until he can "prove" the efficacy of the treatment using controlled studies -- all the while people are dying around him.
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