There aren't many things today that unite both sides of the political aisle, but leave it to some environmental activists to achieve the impossible. There's bipartisan opposition to a proposed Colorado law that would severely curtail fracking in the state.
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After years, countless hours and dollars spent you'd think doctors could readily share a patient's records. However, you would be wrong. The latest excuse: sharing patient data may be an anti-trust violation, since after all, patient data is valuable. But when did we lose ownership of our most personal of information?
Food labels serve one purpose, and one purpose only: To provide nutritional information to consumers. The process by which a food is produced is not relevant to its nutritional content or safety profile. Therefore, products made using animal cell culture techniques absolutely should not require special labeling.
We asked three straightforward questions about the integrity of the organic certification process. Program officials refused to answer them. It seems clear that this agency is less of a regulatory body and more of a taxpayer-funded cheerleading squad. It should be eliminated.
Ethanol is bad science and bad economics, and combined that makes it bad energy policy.
The litany of new problems these glorified billing platforms have created (and old ones they never solved) is discussed often today, ranging from their role in medication errors to job dissatisfaction. But, the most basic, fundamental harm is largely ignored.
Antibiotics expert Dr. David Shlaes has been fighting two very tough fights for more than three decades. One is against increasingly dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria; the other, against complacency. This American Council advisor is deeply concerned that antibiotic research and development is not even remotely adequate for keeping up with the bugs.
You probably haven't spent a lot of time lately thinking about the element, nickel. Talk about boring. Well, guess what? It is very far from boring, especially when you learn some cool stuff. Here is some cool stuff.
Yelp is a very popular source of recommendations for food, activity, physicians and now the people weigh in on Emergency Departments and Urgent Care Centers. Patients have different expectations for these facilities and it influences their "satisfaction."
We don't know if probiotics are a good idea during antibiotic therapy. So eat plenty of fiber -- such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains -- instead.
Placebos work, but focusing on their neurobiological effects to make their efficacy palatable to the scientifically inclined misses the point. For social creatures, caring helps to heal, by whatever name you give it.
The deadliest occupational group for men was "construction and extraction," with a suicide rate of 53.2 per 100,000 in 2015. For women, the deadliest group was "arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media," with a suicide rate of 15.6 per 100,000.
Only about 37% of American adults bothered to get a flu shot this past flu season. That's actually a decrease from the previous season, when about 43% got one. Partially as a result, 80,000 Americans died from the flu. On the flip side, we did buy more organic food than ever before.
One sure way to damage your wine business is to overdose the soil on chemicals. Yet that's what growers must do if they rely on copper sulfate, a heavy metal that accumulates in soil – and is certified by organic marketing groups.
It's ironic that a great science fiction story could be responsible for some of the science fiction passed off as health and science news today. The effect of that radio broadcast on our citizenry continues to be felt today.
What a medical doctor sees in social media posts can tell an entirely different picture than the one intended to be told. As the saying goes "the devil is in the details."
The October DEA National Drug Assessment, which claimed that opioid analgesic pills were doing most of the killing was pure BS. Now there is even more evidence of this, courtesy of New Hampshire. Only 9% of OD deaths were from pills, the rest for heroin and fentanyl. More lies put to rest.
Plenty of bad papers are accepted as true because the academic who wrote it is famous. On the flip side, many good papers are never written out of the fear that it could cost an academic his job. So, how about we just eliminate real names and publish papers under fake ones instead? That's the fundamental idea behind a new journal, not-so-subtly called The Journal of Controversial Ideas, set to launch next year. This idea is so good, I wish I'd thought of it first.
For the three large pharmaceutical companies that still maintain antibiotic R&D, what do the next 12 months have in store? This year a new biotech, Prokaryotics, licensed a number of preclinical antibiotic assets from Merck. What antibiotic discovery activity still remains at Merck? Our expert expects there will be minimal effort.
The Oregon Democrat recently wrote a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar, claiming that his Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force, formed in 2016, was corrupted by big pharma money. The task force was charged with reforming the CDC's disastrous 2016 opioid guidelines. Sen. Wyden claims that two respected physicians in the group had conflicts of interest. Instead, perhaps it's time for the lawmaker to look in the mirror.
Defrauding the federal government has a long and colorful history. The practice dates as far back as the Civil War, when companies tried to foist lame horses, sick mules and even sawdust in place of gunpowder on our troops. So it's time to cue the theme music ... for this roundup (pun absolutely intended) of this past year's notable healthcare frauds.
With so much disinformation on the Internet, debunking junk science and bogus health claims could be a full-time job. Indeed, "debunkery" is one of the main reasons why ACSH exists. Narrowing down a full year's worth of nonsense into the 10 worst bogus health stories is quite a challenge. But we never shy down from a challenge. Here are the stinkiest stories from the past 12 months.
A new study on this form of diabetes, which is developed during pregnancy, puts forth the idea that simply watching what pregnant women eat and how much they exercise is sufficient prevention. However, it's important to note that doing one without the other is problematic.
With cancer death rates declining 27% over a quarter century, there's much cause for celebrating. But now, complacency is not an option.
It is very tempting to purposefully mislabel a product if you can make extra money and get away with it. But, using isotope analysis, chemists have devised a way to discriminate conventional and organic milk.
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