Surgeons have been cutting back (pun intended!) in their prescription of opioids for pain relief after surgery. Is it affecting patient satisfaction? Evidently not.
Search
Thanksgiving Week is one of the craziest but funnest of the year. It's the perfect American holiday: Tons of tasty food on Thursday, insane shopping on Friday, and lots of football to watch in between naps. The ACSH team will also be celebrating. Indeed, we have much to be thankful for, such as these recent media appearances.
Representatives Terri Sewell (AL) and David McKinley (WV) are trying to push through a new law, one that would ensure that Medicare patients have equal access to "non-opioid" therapies after surgery. If they succeed, then Medicare recipients will have earned the right to suffer along with the rest of us. Brilliant.
Gold is known as a noble metal because of its lack of chemical reactivity. But if you treat it right, you can get it to do some cool things. You can chew on it, make some lousy drugs, screw up the environment mining it, and (maybe) even make a super-pricey burger. Really.
Last year, we wrote about four prescription drugs people hate. It isn't as easy to find drugs that people love, but we came up with four, each remarkable in its own way. You may be surprised by what made this curious list.
From JAMA Pediatrics to Yahoo Finance, our work continues to be cited and published all over the world. Check out where we recently appeared.
The idea was promoted with much fanfare. And to be honest, it made a lot of sense. For the 5% of patients who are chronically ill, the superusers that use up to 20% of our healthcare resources provide them with the necessary additional support. In the tradeoff, their health will improve, and our costs will decline. With similar coverage, the New England Journal of Medicine says that there was no improvement in outcomes. But there's more to it. Let's take a look.
The “pivotal regulatory science” used in setting air pollution standards are epidemiological studies measuring the effects of particulate matter on our health. The recently proposed changes to improve the transparency of regulatory science at the EPA have brought these studies to the fore.
Understanding the confidence interval will help you grasp what an election poll is -- or is not -- saying. As you might have guessed, the media consistently gets it wrong.
The Other Side of the Opioid Controversy (Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds)
The 2016 CDC Guidelines on Opioid Prescribing are so fatally flawed that the only solution is to throw them out and start again. Dr. Andrea Trescot, an anesthesiologist and pain management physician, and ACSH advisor Dr. Red Lawhern explain why.
2020 has gotten off to a rough start for both vaping supporters and critics. A new policy by the Trump Administration has both sides angry, and a new anti-nicotine policy by U-Haul, the self-moving company, appears to be blatantly discriminatory.
From 2000 to 2018, the global incidence of measles fell by two-thirds, and more than 23 million lives were saved by vaccines. This good news, however, is tempered by disturbing regional trends. Over the same time period, measles incidence doubled in Europe and increased 11X in the Americas.
The downside of gift-giving, nuclear power redesigned, and a look at one of our first "industrial" foods.
At least 10% of the U.S. population is currently taking a statin to help lower cholesterol. But can statins help prevent dementia? More importantly, can these same statins accelerate dementia? And how can we explain how statins are responsible for such dramatically different responses? Let's take a look.
Boeing has designed self-cleaning airplane bathrooms that implement UV light. To stop the spread of infectious disease, the entire airplane cabin -- and perhaps other public places -- should also be bathed in UV light.
We must eliminate both. Here's one group's plan to do that.
This article is the second in a three-part series that is adapted from an essay written by Dr. Alex Berezow, now archived at Suzzallo Library's Special Collections at the University of Washington. In Part II, he discusses how aging and cancer are two sides of the same biological coin.
At our 40th-anniversary celebration event in late 2018, Dr. Dourson was introduced to those in attendance at the Washington, DC gala as the nation's toxicologist. Although this welcoming gesture was made somewhat in jest, a quick review of his credentials lends it credence. Let's take a look.
Do you want to use recycled pee for your garden, but first make sure it's safe? How about the world's smallest gold coin? And loud-talkers are not just annoying; they spread germs. Oddball news of the week.
Fish sticks, for many a dinnertime staple, cast an environmental shadow. Fisheries contribute 4% of agriculture's 10-to-32% contribution to Green House Gases. And given those ranges, it should be no surprise that the “environmental performance” varies between the fisheries under discussion. How bad is a fish stick? It depends on what you count, and over what time horizon.
Q: When are environmentalists (such as those with the Union of Concerned Scientists) opposed to efforts to conserve water and energy? A: When hotel housekeeping unions get mad. As we've long said about them, when it comes to saving the planet, ideology trumps science and common sense.
The scientific publishing industry is thoroughly dishonest and corrupt, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the journal Science are now also a part of the problem. Here's a disturbing case in point.
According to the CDC, approximately 26 million Americans smoke tobacco daily. In comparison, 14.6 million smoke marijuana every day. In the headlong green rush for dollars -- it's, after all, a $7 billion market in the U.S. -- no one has been able to answer the question of whether all that pot smoking has any ill effects.
Dr. Jeffrey Singer takes issue with a Cincinnati Enquirer article touting a recent CDC report of a 30% drop in opioid prescriptions in 2016-17, compared to 2010-11. Our ACSH advisor maintains that the restriction of the drugs has no impact on their misuse, but does force pain patients to use ineffective and dangerous alternatives. In other words, prohibition.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, part of HHS, just announced an award as much as $285 million to Paratek, a publicly-owned Boston-based biopharmaceutical company that focuses on infectious disease research, to develop a new antibiotic for anthrax. But, will pull incentives – rewarding companies for the successful development of new antibiotics – be enough to keep large, private companies in the field of antibiotic research? ACSH advisor Dr. David Shlaes explains.
Pagination
ACSH relies on donors like you. If you enjoy our work, please contribute.
Make your tax-deductible gift today!