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Two months ago, there was a mad rush to get the two oral antiviral pills approved to treat COVID-19. Pharmacies often ran out of these drugs within hours of delivery. Now, no one wants them. What is going on?

A new study employs some blatantly obvious sleight of hand to amplify the so-called teen vaping 'epidemic.' Here's what you need to know.

Crappy studies on the alleged harm of artificial sweeteners are about as common (and valuable) as a wad of gum stuck under a school chair. Yet, here's another claiming that consumption of artificial sweeteners, especially aspartame and acesulfame-K, are associated with cancer. Shall we dismantle it? I say yes.

Seemingly everywhere you look there are articles on the dangers of PFAS. Federal and state governments, environmental groups, and the media have declared that dangerous PFAS chemicals are everywhere and present a widespread problem across the U.S. The condemnation and fearmongering are so widespread that you’d be forgiven if you question why we would even bother to write about such a black-and-white subject in the first place. But we must.   

A Boston Globe article describes COVID-19 patients completing a course of Paxlovid – and then becoming ill again shortly thereafter. Is there something wrong with the drug? Is this something to worry about?

These days we’re awash in mask mandate conflicts, continuing vaccination resistance, and warnings that the wholesale disruptions to our lives “ain’t over yet.” While the media tends to focus on administrative conflicts as well as the slight, local, daily up and downticks, here we present a longer and broader view.

Fat-acceptance advocates say medical terms like "obesity" and "overweight" stigmatize fat people and should be eliminated from our vocabulary. They're putting public health at risk to promote a misguided ideology.

Operation Warp Speed, everyone loves watching a controlled building demolition, know your adversary, and social media and the “slap heard round the world.”

Daily COVID-19 cases reached an all-time high in February and then descended as rapidly as they had surged, with the Omicron variant in full swing. Mask rules were eased as the media featured reports of double-digit percentage decreases in infections and hospitalization, implying that Omicron infections may be less severe than with the previous Delta variant. Meanwhile, vaccination rates remained stalled in some recalcitrant states, and thoughts of a 4th booster program appeared. Who knows what evil still lurks in the heart of the virus?

Claims made on food packaging have been increasingly scrutinized, resulting in a precipitous rise in class action lawsuits against food manufacturers. Food activists and consumer advocacy groups view litigation as a means of protecting consumers from deceptive marketing and greenwashing by large food manufacturers. On the other hand, food manufacturers may view this as a form of extortion, using the threat of court costs and legal fees for out-of-court monetary settlements. 

Is it too early to address what went wrong when the COVID vaccines were rolled out? This is not about the “first rough draft of history." Instead, it's a more dispassionate, high-altitude view that allows us to assess this public health moment through two different critical theory lenses: complex systems and scaling.

COVID’s Delta Variant is far more infectious than the earlier versions. It also differs in which age group is most susceptible, as this study from South Korea points out.

In my experience, orthopedic surgeons are the most fanatical of all surgeons regarding infection prevention. It makes sense since much of their work involves implanting hardware into bones – and an infection in a bone, let alone in the presence of hardware, is very tough to eradicate. So, when a new study looks at orthopedic thought on infection prevention, it is worth considering.

A recent study suggests that vaping is much less harmful than smoking. The authors and the journal that published the paper tried to minimize this result. Do they have an anti-vaping bias?

“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” wrote Gertrude Stein. Others often quote this as a statement of identity. Likewise, in algebra, the law of identity is the equation ‘a = a’. What is true in botanical and mathematical terms also applies to chemistry. Whether extracted from corn or honey created by bees, glucose is glucose, and fructose is fructose.

We’ve all been there: Searching online for something to buy, deciding not to, and then having the item stalk us as we move from site to site. (It doesn’t even disappear if we purchase it.) Advertising tracking has been accepted as the price for a “free” Internet, but a new study shows that ad tracking from Big Pharma is alive and well in medical journals. We shouldn’t be surprised.

This article, which complements the one by my colleague Chuck Dinerstein, discusses the broad findings of a provocative study that ties IQ loss directly with childhood lead exposure. The study estimates that 90% of the children born between 1950 and 1980 had clinical concerning blood lead levels, resulting in decreased IQ levels. Certainly, these results will cause great concern among us baby boomers, and some might even say that this finding helps explain many of the world’s problems.

When discussing Hospital systems, non-profit is a tax status, not a revenue statement. In exchange for providing a range of “community” services, these institutions are tax-exempt. The Lown Foundation dishes the dirt on the profits and losses of some of our most prominent institutions.

Introducing the ACSH Science Dispatch Podcast — the weekly show where we separate science fact from science fiction.

Retailers have begun to ration infant formula, as the supply is hovering above 50% out-of-stock in several states. Due to supply chain disruptions, recall of products due to pathogen contamination, and inflation, some pharmacies are limiting purchase to three units per customer. This has caused a shockwave among parents of infants.

Marijuana is being decriminalized across the US. Most are celebrating, but there is a real (and sometimes serious) public health threat that tags along. Most of you will be unaware of what you're about to read. Dr. Roneet Lev, the former head of the Scripps Mercy Hospital emergency department and also an addiction specialist shares some eye-opening information in the following interview.

COVID has made travel more difficult. Between a shortage of pilots and other staff, changeable weather, and varying mask rules, travel days between one place and another are often grueling. I know because I just finished a bit of an extended vacation. The CDC’s current guidance is not especially helpful.

Every year there are approximately 400,000 medication errors involving hospitalized patients. Many are medications given at the wrong time or not at all. Of those 400,000 somewhere between seven and 9,000 [1] of those errors result in the death of a patient. RaDonda Vaught, a nurse employed at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, caused the death of a patient with a medication error. I have been thinking about Ms. Vaught a lot lately.

On Episode 5 of the Science Dispatch Podcast, ACSH contributor Dr. Barbara Billauer recounts the tragic story of the "Radium Girls," a cohort of young women who were gradually sickened and killed by occupational radium exposure in the early 20th century. Subsequent research has shown that their employers knew the girls were at risk, but denied culpability and continuously assured them that all was well.
These shocking developments changed the way we view occupational health and safety—providing the foundation for current radiation exposure standards.

If you look at Google’s Ngram viewer [1], the word transgender has been used 1285% more in 2019 than the year I graduated from medical school in 1976. Given the multiplicity of articles and arguments on all media platforms, you would think that the transgender community was growing at some quiet but phenomenal rate. I decided to educate myself to fill in the large gaps in my knowledge. Perhaps you are like me and want to have a better understanding. Here is what I have learned from medicine’s scientific literature.