Trip report: Josh goes into a Manhattan CVS to buy some Tylenol and is horrified by generic drug discrimination. Then he steals a piano.
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Robert Popovian, Pharm.D., MS, Founder of the strategic consulting firm Conquest Advisors (and also a member of the ACSH Scientific Advisory Board) and colleagues take on the important topic of generic drug prices, a sore spot for many Americans. Here is a summary of their latest article titled "U.S. Consumers Overpay for Generic Drugs." Dr. Popovian was formerly Vice President, U.S. Government Relations at Pfizer.
The FDA just voted to approve a different Covid vaccine; this one based on one of the Omicron subvariants. But the decision was anything but simple. A look at the science.
Scientific writing could use an English major
Which is worse, stupidity or malignant intent?
Hype and alarmism hype’s evil twin in today’s scientific enterprise.
A bright, refreshing wine with a bit of a smoky aftertaste – from the nearby wildfires.
As the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade took all of the oxygen out of the media greenroom, another SCOTUS decision on our healthcare, in this case, over insurance costs, was pretty much overlooked. That’s too bad because, in 2019, it involved slightly more than 6% of that budget – for individuals with end-stage renal disease (ESRD).
It is that time of year when my poor dog cowers under the bed as the rocket's red glare of fireworks is seen and heard across the country. Perhaps I am stealing from my fellow writer and chemist, Dr. Bloom, but I just wanted to share what I had learned about the chemistry underlying all that color filling our skies.
The FDA just decided that the anti-Covid drug Paxlovid can be prescribed by pharmacists. ACSH & Company was on this 6 months ago.
Do biotech companies lie about the pesticide-saving benefits of genetically engineered crops? The activist group GM Watch says yes. Do they have a convincing case? Nope.
There are hundreds of pain-patient advocates constantly fighting to overturn the cruel and misguided policies of withholding power pain medications from those truly in need. But it would be difficult (perhaps impossible) to find one who's dedicated his career to advocating for pain patients, now for a quarter of a century. An interview with Dr. Richard "Red" Lawhern, an ACSH advisor.
Do you remember doing the limbo as a kid? The idea was to see how low you could bend your body to get under a stick that got increasingly close to the floor. Today’s regulatory process is the modern version of the limbo. The problem is that science can’t even measure how low they want the limbo stick to go.
The Chinese use quite a bit more salt in their diet than in Western diets, so a new study looking at reducing the incidence of hypertension by dietary reductions in salt in China should be thought-provoking. It is.
Environmental Working Group claims that "obesogenic" chemicals are helping to make everybody fat. Is EWG correct? Next, do we need a COVID booster shot that specifically targets Omicron sub-variants?
In episode 7 of the Science Dispatch Podcast, we review New York University's experiment to offer students free medical school, the goal being to push doctors into under-served communities and understaffed specialties. We then tackle a popular nutrition myth: the dementia-fighting benefits of blueberries.
Vaccination protocols have been set by age, but age-specific efficacies are not well established. Age is by far the most important determinant of mortality rate; the probability of death increases exponentially with age for major causes of death, including COVID. Here we examine relationships between mortality rates, age, and vaccination coverage for the original series and booster shots as they changed during the pandemic.[1]
A recent study examined the nutritional composition of meat and milk derived from gene-edited cattle bred to be hornless. The two-year-long project provided further evidence vindicating the safe use of biotechnology in food production.
It is challenging to explain probabilities that go beyond the difference between the words, probabilities, and odds. [1] In fact, when we use words to describe numbers, it often increases the ambiguity of their meaning – something is lost between sender and receiver in the translation.
Anti-pesticide activist Carey Gillam recently moderated a panel discussion about the weed killer glyphosate. I attended and took notes. Here's what I saw.
On February 22, 2022, Kensey Dishman died. She was thirteen years old. Doctors believe Kensey, a high-risk patient, died of COVID-19-related causes. Kensey had asthma, a condition for which vaccination is recommended. Yet, despite her asthma, she wasn’t vaccinated and wasn’t masked. A week before her death, her school district removed mask mandates. Her choice was to refuse vaccination; her divorced parents were conflicted. Her mother and step-dad, vaccinated themselves, urged Kensey to get vaccinated. Her biological father agreed with her choice not to vaccinate. Normally thirteen-year-olds aren’t allowed to make significant health-related decisions for themselves. So, what happened here?
Lock up your gummy bears, mom, and barricade the hash brownies, pop. Medical centers worldwide report an alarming increase in emergency department visits for young children poisoned by unwitting cannabis exposure. Easy procurement of cannabis goodies where marijuana is legalized or medicalized seems to be driving the increase. So, what’s to be done?
I am a child of the cold war. I remember being in second or third grade and hearing the teacher yell, “Drop,” as we were expected to take cover under our desks. I can remember the surging interest in bomb shelters and when I was old enough to laugh at the idea that “duck and cover” would have any value. Why the nostalgia? Because last week New York City released a public service announcement about how to survive a nuclear attack – valuable information in case one were to occur.
Comedian Bill Maher is in trouble after attacking the fat-acceptance movement on his show last week. Not only was the segment hilarious, but it highlighted an important fact many people would rather not discuss: social-justice activists are rewriting science to protect their ideological commitments.
PFAS, the “forever chemicals,” provides a perfect example of how faulty risk assessment can lead to real-world consequences that destroy people’s lives. This happens when federal agencies do not consider relative risk in their analyses and are blinded to the real-world implications of their actions.
There is some truth to the urban myth that those high on marijuana tend to drive more slowly and at greater distances from other cars. Whether out of an old-time fear of being pulled over or because of some impairment of their perceptions. [1] With eighteen states (and the District of Columbia) with recreational pot sales, and an inability to determine the presence of marijuana as an intoxicant, as we do for alcohol, there is rising concern about marijuana’s impact on traffic accidents and fatalities. Here is the latest data.
Dr. Chuck Dinerstein and Cameron English recently joined Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris on The Other Side of the Story radio show to discuss the controversial claim that "obesity acceptance is ruining our health." Is that true, or has the public health establishment actually exaggerated the dangers of being overweight?
Cato Institute Senior Fellow Dr. Jeffrey Singer (also a member of the ACSH Scientific Advisory Board) has written a powerful piece about the inability of policymakers to realize that their plan to reduce drug overdose deaths is wrong on every level.
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