Perhaps you've noticed: Hospitals are asking you to come back for your routine care. Amongst the surge in caring for COVID-19 patients, elective care, especially remunerative procedural care, was pushed to the sidelines. One source suggests that overall cancer care has decreased by 37% during the pandemic.
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A “counterintuitive” view of ice sheet melts and sea level rises, the comfort of mac and cheese, often wrong, never in doubt, ignoring the marshmallow experiment, and an in-depth look at a painting of surgical care.
Discredited journalist and conspiracy theorist Paul Thacker, who became infamous for spreading disinformation about GMOs and biotech scientists, is back. This time, he's ranting about 5G. But it seems he could only get his most recent work published in a foreign language with the help of a collaborator, Dutch journalist Jannes van Roermund.
Given that PBS, in its recent documentary, “The Man Who Tried to Feed the World,” found it necessary to disparage Nobel Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug, we believe it is important for our readers, and the world, to know what a thoughtful and truly benevolent man he actually was. Here is an article about Dr. Borlaug, a co-founder of the American Council on Science and Health, shortly after his passing. It was published on our site on September 13, 2009.
COVID-19 is bad enough, so the last thing we need is to add other dangerous infectious diseases in the mix. Yet, that is precisely what will happen if the trend of lower vaccination rates continues. Here's the take of Dr. Jeff Singer (pictured) on the secondary public health crisis now in the works.
Is medicine losing it’s greatest power, the power of touch? Pollution of a different type, light. The ongoing war between evidence gatherers and modelers. And was Transylvania Dracula’s home, or did he come from Ireland?
While coronavirus is obviously concerning and a very real threat to some people (namely, the elderly and immunocompromised), these data also show that the risk for the rest of the population is quite low.
If your sole goal in life is getting your hands on a can of Lysol spray, be prepared to be bitterly disappointed. The EPA gave its approval for Reckitt Benckiser (which sells the stuff) to make anti-COVID claims for two Lysol products. What's in there that can kill the virus? Time for "The Dreaded Chemistry Lesson From Hell"? I think so.
Science communicators are routinely harassed and threatened, not just by the Twitter mob but sometimes by allegedly reputable professors, journalists, and even other science communicators.
The study by Didier Raoult et. al., the one partly responsible for the massive, unwarranted use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID, has been picked to bits by a review panel hired by the journal that published it. It's now clear that the Raoult study was a methodological mess. How did it get published at all? Should it be retracted? Let's take a look.
What exactly do we mean, scientifically, when we talk about individuals? ... Can a model of surgical care costing a small fraction of care in the U.S. teach us anything? ... Nassim Taleb writes about the use of masks. Some habits are hard to break, especially when we see them as the norm and not a habit at all.
A few weeks ago the EPA approved specific anti-coronavirus labeling for two Lysol products. But the two are part of a larger list of 470 other disinfectant products that "meet EPA's criteria for use against SARS-CoV-2." In other words, you can use them to kill the virus. I promise that this isn't nearly as boring as it sounds. But, just in case, have the NoDoz handy.
Attendees of last month's virtual AMR conference learned about advances in reimbursement programs in Europe for antibiotics. However, no one should believe that these baby steps represent significant progress in the effort to fix the antibiotic marketplace. ACSH advisor Dr. David Shlaes explains.
What happens when politics and science mix? Scary stuff. Dr. Henry Miller examines the considerable downside of releasing any COVID vaccine prior to the completion of Phase 3 trials. The founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology, Dr. Miller argues that precise science, not the date of an election, is critical at this time.
Four stories: Phylogenetic analysis suggests that coronavirus arrived in the U.S. between late January and early February. The coronavirus has resulted in more than 1.2 million years of life lost (YLLs) in the U.S. The coronavirus isn't the only game in town. And some people who are most likely to be affected by coronavirus are also refusing to go to the hospital.
For everything, there is a time and place. Emergency Use Authorizations by the FDA were necessary for COVID-19's recent past; they are not necessary and will be harmful when applied to a COVID-19 vaccine.
Some of you screwballs out there have been complaining that I'm not giving enough chemistry lessons. Be careful what you ask for. Here are a chemistry AND a biochemistry lesson about aspirin and heroin. Don't blame me. Consumer demand rules.
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.
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.
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