Disparities in healthcare are increasingly a hot topic in the journals. Two recent studies demonstrate disparity but identify very different actionable causes. As with all healthcare, it is more complicated and entangled than a single narrative or lens can explain. The data dots are correct, but there is more than one way to connect and explain them.
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FAIR Health aggregates pricing and cost information for private insurers of healthcare. Its annual report, on what we might consider primary care, shows the changes wrought by COVID-19 and how we seek care. [1]
To obtain a permit for a handgun in New York City, the applicant must provide written consent from those living with them that the presence of a gun is OK. Is that a good or bad requirement? A new study looks at homicide deaths among “cohabitants of handgun owners,” what could go wrong?
President Eisenhower worried that we were creating a scientific/technologic elite that controls the narrative and stifles heterodoxy. But the digital age and the democratization of knowledge threaten the scientific "priesthood" – much in the way the printing press threatened the controlling interest of an earlier time. The priesthood must learn to adapt to a world where it no longer has a monopoly on specialized knowledge.
COVID, war, inflation, drug overdoses, the Yankees. Enough stress! Let's take a stress break. A slice of American history with *very* little science. And some pretty pictures too.
Vice News endorses all the currently fashionable opinions—including activist bromides about modern agriculture. The magazine recently took exception to children's books meant to teach elementary-school students about pesticides. I take exception to Vice's sorry excuse for science reporting.
There is no doubt that inflation is upon us. The oldsters among us remember the bad old days, 13% mortgages. But as with any economic stress, it falls unevenly. Elaine Schwartz from Econlife shows the problem in two graphs, courtesy of the New York Times.
Lake Hillier is anything but usual. The Australian lake is 10 times saltier than the ocean, and bright pink. The color comes from the microorganisms that, somehow, are able to thrive under the harshest of conditions, because of the pink. It's no accident. Nature figured out how to use chemistry to defeat the sun.
Four years ago, with much-deserved fanfare, NYU’s School of Medicine ended tuition for its students. That class just graduated – giving us the first opportunity to see what changes free tuition may have made.
Virtue signaling, how deadly are the new variants, Metaverse?, and medicine is an art.
The President just canceled the educational debt of 350,000 disabled students, a minuscule $7 billion of the $1.7 trillion in student debt. Who is leading the push here, the politicians or the public? The Brookings Institute offers up some answers.
Nurses, more so than physicians, are joining the Great Resignation. 32% say they are heading for the exits, up from 22% just a few months ago.
Will we ever run out of "alternative therapies" to force on people who just need a little Valium or some extra morphine following surgery? Hard to say, but take a sniff of this one.
Everyone I know is against STDs (Sexually transmitted diseases). I haven’t heard anyone say the solution is to ban sex. Instead, most health specialists advocate “safe sex.” When it comes to guns, however, this rationality is lost. We’re either categorically in favor or against, with some focusing on gun safety. So, how would you make a safer gun?
You can be blindfolded, throw a stone, and probably hit a writer who gets the opioid crisis all wrong. Today, let's throw one at German Lopez of The New York Times.
Uterine transplants are not new. The first successful uterine transplant was done in Sweden in 2013. America boasted its first successful uterine transplant three years later at Baylor. But these were in cis-women born without a functioning uterus. Now, an Indian doctor is proposing uterine transplantation for trans-women. The reaction in the bioethics community is mixed.
A recent study has helpfully advanced our understanding of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Some journalists exaggerated the paper's results in their rush to publish stories. Fortunately, other reporters helpfully and publicly corrected the errors. This is how the media should always operate.
Recent coverage in the Washington Post illustrates how the media (and even some in the scientific community) have exaggerated the risk COVID-19 poses to the elderly and downplayed the efficacy of vaccination in this age group.
A new study compares our spending on cancer and cancer mortality rates with other high-income countries. You know the findings before I begin; we spend more to “get less.” But is mortality the correct metric?
Along with our usual dietary advice about eating moderate amounts of many different types of food, physicians often suggest we reduce our sodium intake because of the deleterious effects on our blood pressure and heart. A new study suggests that the recommendation about salt is about to come tumbling down.
Science Magazine editor-in-chief H. Holden Thorp recently declared that researchers need to get off the sidelines and into the gun-control debate. His call to action was wrong in every possible way.
Fox News claims Americans are obese primarily because they eat too many carbs. The science behind this idea is still not compelling.
The U.S. National Organic Program (NOP) was established in 1990 as part of the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). The mission of AMS is to administer programs that “create domestic and international marketing opportunities for U.S. producers of food, fiber, and ‘specialty crops.’” Organic is one such specialty crop. Many U.S. consumers swear by organic foods but are unaware of the history, principles, and regulations behind the NOP. Read on if you dare to know more.
A reader asked us to examine a recent opinion piece full of spurious claims about the weed killer glyphosate. The story further confirms that newspapers cannot be trusted to faithfully report the facts about pesticide safety.
New research suggests that vegan diets promote weight loss. There's a little bit more to the story, though.
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