Though well-intentioned, "at all costs" breastfeeding messages are routinely misguided. And even intellectually dishonest.
Search
The CDC recently cautioned that there's a wide range of diseases being transmitted by ticks, and the caseload is growing. Some, like Lyme’s disease, we are familiar with. To take it an important step further, let's take a look at some others that aren't necessarily on our radar – but should be.
In a move steeped in nonsense, Dr. Mehmet Oz has been appointed by Donald Trump to the President's Council on Sport, Fitness and Nutrition. Since his views on health and medicine are so lacking in scientific evidence, we have no idea why anyone is still listening to him at all anymore.
With the cancellation of "The Dr. Oz Show", his alternative medicine audience should not think of it as a time to mourn. but instead should take a moment to celebrate the man who created all their worst fears; they should rejoice a guy who wore medical scrubs during a show in which he suggested apple juice was as dangerous for children as plutonium, who taught concerned viewers to fear chicken and to love juice cleanses.
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.
Governments gave subsidies to farmers, who implemented political beliefs about biodiversity, like planting flowers among their rows of food. Did any of it work? Sort of. But there's more to it than that.
The FDA is going after the most egregious violators of common sense: those who are clearly targeting children. To name and shame the bad actors who are doing a great harm to legitimate smoking cessation efforts, we offer them up here. Take a look; it's truly shameful.
William Shubb, Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, has put a halt to the champagne wishes and caviar dreams of California trial lawyers, a U.N. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Working Group participant, and organic industry front groups hoping to profit from a bizarre determination on glyphosate by IARC that weirdly bucked the science consensus.
Starting this summer, the Dubai Health Authority will sequence the DNA of all three million city residents. The hope is that the information, stored in a database, will result in identifying changes in the genes and proteins that can lead to conquering genetic diseases, 220 of which are prevalent in the United Arab Emirates.
A team of scholars at Iowa State Univ. presented research validating what the scientific community has long suspected: Some anti-GMO groups are (1) either sending information to Russian propaganda sites to assist in their efforts to undermine American agricultural dominance or, (2) they're acting as "useful idiots" by promoting concern about America's food supply.
While BPA hysteria has been going on for many years, for just as long we've been writing that the chemical is safe. As it turns out, we've been right all along (while, as usual, the Joe Mercolas and NRDCs of the world were not).
1. In USA Today, Dr. Alex Berezow had some context for the CNN organization about socialism, which has grown increasingly shrill and bizarre as its market share and credibility have declined.
Without actually knowing how many hours participants watched TV, and by comparing groups with very different risks, researchers concluded that TV watching is associated with clot formation. By extension, does this mean that binge-watching is harmful to our health?
A newly-developed genomic technology has solved part of an age-old mystery: What killed millions of humans 500 years ago in southern Mexico during the "huey cocoliztli" ? This work shows that one of the players in the epidemic was the bacteria Salmonella.
Anthem's new policies contribute to the detriment of patient safety. The insurers "cost-saving" measures create more problems than solutions, while generating questionable financial benefits.
Would knowing more about one's genetic makeup help select the best type of diet for weight loss? Apparently not, since researchers found that information about a person's DNA doesn't help when choosing between low-fat and low-carb diets.
Cosmetics and cleaners are not the great Satan of atmospheric pollution that the media suggests. But why let facts get in the way of a good story?
Regarding the negative effects of antibiotics, an Australian research group sought to understand the effect that non-antibiotic, antimicrobial (NAAM) chemicals have on increasing antibiotic resistance. One of the more infamous of these is Triclosan, which was present in many over-the-counter antimicrobial products before its use in hand soaps was banned.
When bitter custody battles hit the front page (e.g. the mom recently jailed for secretly baptizing her daughter), it is mostly the child who suffers.
For those with a mild or severe head injury, the examination when arriving at the Emergency Department is the same – a series of questions and followed by a CT scan. But a new blood test may change all that, in that it could separate those who need a scan from others who simply should just go home and rest.
Yet another food-cancer story is in the news. But folks, there's little "there" there. It's a correlational study, and the risks for several types of cancer don't increase much at all. This is a finding that should not keep you up at night.
Over the last decade, the gene-editing technology CRISPR – Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palidromic Repeats – has nearly become a household word. Now, there's a new publication dedicated to the process. It's a peer-reviewed journal and its inaugural issue just came out.
Disparities in physicians, based on gender, make the news when women appear better than men. This study runs counter to the popular narrative – and it's just as flawed as the other studies. Why didn't it make bigger headlines?
It's been an ongoing quest for researchers in the field of ornithology to try to zero in on specifically where a bird's navigation system resides in their heads. But now a team of European scientists believe that a particular protein in the retina governs this fascinating compass.
Recently the incidence of syphilis has been increasing in newborn babies and pregnant women, and the United States Preventive Services Task Force has reaffirmed guidelines emphasizing the importance of pregnant women being screened for the disease. It's relatively easy to cure syphilis with antibiotic treatment, and caught early it would prevent devastating effects on both babies and moms.
Pagination
ACSH relies on donors like you. If you enjoy our work, please contribute.
Make your tax-deductible gift today!