The FBI is investigating whether the Nashville bomber was motivated by 5G paranoia. Unfortunately, the media has been helping feed these conspiracy theories. Are we heading into a new era of anti-technology terrorism?
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Recently we've experienced a trifecta regarding the issue of mortality associated with fine particles (PM2.5, i.e., particles with median diameters less than 2.5 millionths of a meter). Let's take a more in-depth look behind the headlines.
Drs. Jeffrey Singer and Josh Bloom just published an op-ed in the Philidelphia Inquirer about the pointless and inhumane treatment that pain patients must endure in the name of fighting the "opioid epidemic." Except it's nothing of the sort. We are having a "street drug epidemic." This is why people are dying, not from prescription analgesics.
Vaccinations are finally here but it could be well into 2021 until we reach herd immunity. What to do in the meantime? Dr. Henry Miller argues that this is precisely the right time to try to "flatten the curve" again. Miller also argues that doing so is essential to economical health, not contrary to it.
Is President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, or any other individual infected with COVID-19 susceptible to reinfection? While there are a few scattered reports, the real question is how much of our immune response persists. A new study provides updated information.
Nationally, according to The American Farm Bureau Federation, farm and ranch families comprise less than 2% of the U.S. population, growing and producing the food for what the other 98% need. The rest of us are free to choose other livelihoods. This results in most consumers having limited to no understanding regarding standard agricultural practices, basic plant physiology, and the global food challenge to feed over 7 billion people.
The infectious period for a COVID patient is thought to be 10-20 days, based on the severity of the disease. One patient, however, was shedding virus for 105 days and was infectious for 70 of them.
Nearly a year into the pandemic, can we begin to make some definitive statements about the transmission of COVID-19 between individuals, based on a patient’s symptoms or testing? A meta-analysis provides some answers. (Or at least it gets us into the ballpark.)
In the United States, we live in an affluent culture whose standard of living is high compared to other nations. Yet, we fail to be grateful for the advances in food science and biotechnology we benefit from, which frees us from the day-to-day task of our food production. One of the major phobias consumers struggle with is related to pesticides.
Hey, pain patients: You've got company. Me! Thanks to a herniated disc in my neck I'm going through some of the same stuff I have been writing about for years. Stuff that you're well aware of. With one exception. You did not wake up with a bowl of blueberries in your bed.
Of course, reports on the game-changing COVID-19 vaccines have been dominating the news, and the American Council has been busy responding to requests from media outlets across the country. In addition to providing interviews for print publications and radio talk-show hosts, our work and expertise has been featured in Op-Ed columns, as well as excerpted for science-based articles all over the web. Here are some of the places we've appeared in the month of November.
Once again, I reached out to my friends living in an extended care facility to get an update. After all, they were in the first wave to be immunized, weren't they?
The popular press is replete with descriptive data on the current pandemic on global and national scales and for selected local areas with extreme outcomes. Here we describe regional data from April through December 2020 and analyze commonality among regions, case-fatality rates, and rates of change among daily rates, including "flattening of curves." We hope to Improve understanding of regional differences and trends in the pandemic.
A new study finds that people who love terrifying movies are more resilient and less concerned about the current pandemic. It is time to get out the popcorn and see what is on the big screen.
Remember vaping? Before COVID-19 took all the oxygen out of the room, vaping was a big fear. A new study shows that what we have claimed all along is true: vaping reduces inflammatory biomarkers associated with smoking tobacco.
COVID may trigger autoimmune disease in some people, contributing to their deaths.
There are several websites compiling data on the vaccination roll-out. As was the case for tracking the spread of COVID-19, some metrics are more helpful than others. Here is our initial guide, and like COVID-19, subject to change.
Though politicians and the public love to hate Big Ag and Big Pharma, everybody comes begging for help when the going gets tough. The arguments against biotechnology have been made exponentially weaker by the success of the coronavirus vaccine.
Vaccinating the population of the United States is quite an enterprise. The media has recounted the problems of extreme cold logistics and getting the vaccine from manufacturers to health care workers, along with the delays in the roll-out. But those problems are far more easily solved than the trip from vial to arm.
If the media was doing its job instead of providing free marketing and public relations to the renewable energy industry, it would have reported that Europe's energy transition has come at great cost because of massive subsidies, higher taxes, and poor decisions.
Certain kinds of scientific literature reviews can bias experts into being more optimistic about the potential outcome of a clinical trial than the data actually warrant.
McKinsey Global Institute has summarized the cost of living in the wealthier countries since the beginning of the century, now twenty years ago. What has gone up and what has gone down?
It's impossible to know for sure if Rush's cigar smoking caused his lung cancer, but it certainly increased the risk, even though cigar smokers don't inhale the smoke.
Safety data based on more than 17 million Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccinations was just published in a JAMA online article. How safe were they? Very.
Richard Lawhern of the ACSH Board of Scientific Advisers points out that US national policy for regulating prescription opioids doesn't lack for data. It instead drowns in persistently biased anti-opioid misrepresentation of the data we already have.
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