Certain providers recently received a solicitation from Cigna, informing them that their patients on secukinumab (Cosentyx) – a biologic commonly prescribed for psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, and other autoimmune illnesses – may soon receive a $500 debit card for accepting an alternative treatment. Uniformly, any patient on this medication is enticed to switch even if they’re stable on their current treatment. Disturbingly, this attempt to lure patients by providing them with a one-time payment blurs the line between insurance coverage and medical practice.
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The other day, the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, hosted a webinar for stakeholders on maintaining the scientific integrity of their work. I have pulled a few images from their “slide deck” to share.
Not only does your diet fuel your body, but it also fuels and shapes your microbiome, which in turn can alter your mood, change your response to pathogens, and maybe, just maybe, alter your energy metabolism.
In recent months, the media has called on celebrities to open up about their COVID vaccination status. Immunity is a shared space, the argument goes, and pro-vaccine pop-stars can convince the public that getting immunized isn't just a personal choice. There's some truth to this, but the argument raises touchy ethical questions about privacy that need to be answered.
A new approach to mosquito control, the disparities of the gig economy – writers edition, critical economic theory?, are lawyers circling the Wuhan lab?
The New York Times (correctly) reports that a COVID pill is needed, not just a vaccine. But the paper also tells this story in its typically biased manner, implying that the government, not drug companies, discover drugs. It's a bunch of nonsense that dates back to... forever.
Facebook has proven itself incapable of reliably preventing the spread of "misinformation." If we needed more evidence, the company recently threatened to "restrict" the account of a prominent researcher for talking about science.
For most of us, hiccups are a minor nuisance. But for a very few, it can be a chronic and debilitating condition.
In part one of this series, we looked at some of the hallmarks of sloppy pesticide reporting. We round out our analysis here with a breakdown of three more themes common to this species of junk journalism.
A recent survey found that fewer than 40% of Americans trust their federal public health agencies. Could “mission creep” into issues such as climate change, gun violence, and racism rather than a focus on traditional public health issues be a cause? Did mission creep impact our response to the COVID-19 pandemic?
Last week with little fanfare, the Environmental Working Group released its latest “report” on the putative harmful effects of cellphone radiation. Right from the start, it features two eye-catching words, "radiation" and "children."
Stuart Little aside, laboratory animals aren’t people. And – yes – I know that this is pretty obvious to most of us, but it needs to be said. This is one limitation in studying the effects of…well…anything on rats and mice and applying the results to humans.
On February 9, 2001, the Ehime Maru, a Japanese trawler off Diamond Head in Hawaii, was rammed and subsequently sank by the USS Greeneville with the loss of nine lives. The Naval Court of Inquiry found the captain responsible. What does any of this have to do with COVID-19, let alone swiss cheese? Let’s start with the findings of the naval inquiry that will get us to the cheese.
New data have been published on drug overdose deaths in 2020. Although you won't find it anywhere obvious, prescription opioid analgesics remain only a minor (and stable) contributor to the record 93,000 people who died from drug overdoses last year.
Pregnancy and pediatric "advice" comes from all directions when you're a soon-to-be parent, and most of it is scientifically dubious. In part one, I examined the potentially harmful suggestions my wife and I received from friends and family. This time, I'll cover the less deadly but still ridiculous recommendations.
When the universe formed, there was hydrogen, helium with a light smattering of lithium – every atom in the universe heavier than a lithium atom was created inside a star. Stars like our Sun can produce atoms up to about the mass of iron. Every heavier atom formed in one of the rare stars heavy enough to end their lives in the titanic explosion of a supernova.
This week I took a dive into the rising price of food and the way Subway has run afoul of labeling. Then I read a piece on the tradeoff between taking a risk and an abundance of caution.
I get it. People are sick and tired of COVID and endlessly cranky about having to deal with the changing facts and rules. Some of this discontent is expressed as dissatisfaction with the vaccines. While this frustration may be understandable it is not warranted. The vaccines are nothing short of a medical miracle. Don't shoot the messenger RNA. Blame the virus.
"... the public in these areas are not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances … Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breathe, and their water is safe to drink."
Christine Todd Whitman, EPA Administrator, Sept. 2001
As of today, people who are immunocompromised are allowed to receive a booster shot. Sounds simple, right? That is, until the madness becomes evident.
Last week Governor de Santis of Florida threatened to withhold funding (and salaries) from local superintendents and school board members who disregarded his executive order, effectively prohibiting mask mandates in local school districts. The order came in the face of the Fort Lauderdale-Broward County’s school district vote to require masks.
The President immediately interceded -- promising federal funds to cover local salaries. Some days later, the Governor seems to have backtracked. But conflict between local, state, and federal powers to regulate pandemic conduct has rooted and is spreading. Interestingly, this is nothing new. Pandemics invite politics, often including scientifically apathetic politicians. Exactly 129 years ago, it happened like this:
Three well-known anti-GMO groups have attacked the New York Times for publishing a generally excellent story about crop biotechnology. Natural News, for example, called the article "pure propaganda masquerading as journalism." Unsurprisingly, Natural News is wrong.
As the Delta variant becomes THE primary source of COVID-19 infections there’s a growing body of knowledge to explain why this is happening. Let's consider two new studies and a fact we may have forgotten.
Maia Szalavitz's terrifying article in Wired, which described the cruel laws and punitive regulations that pain patients are forced to abide by, brought to mind hundreds of similarly tragic comments I've been reading for years. These can be found following any of my ~100 articles about pain, opioid denial, or government malfeasance and ineptitude. Here are a few.
The COVID-19 media is saturated with vaccination information and news. Information includes vaccine performance, vaccination availability, hospital crowding. The news includes local mandates, compliance statistics, breakthrough infections, masking requirements. Data on demonstrated public health benefits of vaccination are scarce; we set out to fill that gap. Our primary goal was to define quantitative relationships between vaccination and subsequent rates of infections as of July 24, 2021.
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