Claims made on food packaging have been increasingly scrutinized, resulting in a precipitous rise in class action lawsuits against food manufacturers. Food activists and consumer advocacy groups view litigation as a means of protecting consumers from deceptive marketing and greenwashing by large food manufacturers. On the other hand, food manufacturers may view this as a form of extortion, using the threat of court costs and legal fees for out-of-court monetary settlements.
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Seemingly everywhere you look there are articles on the dangers of PFAS. Federal and state governments, environmental groups, and the media have declared that dangerous PFAS chemicals are everywhere and present a widespread problem across the U.S. The condemnation and fearmongering are so widespread that you’d be forgiven if you question why we would even bother to write about such a black-and-white subject in the first place. But we must.
AI and healthcare, murder or malpractice, call centers, and should we get rid of scientific journals?
These days we’re awash in mask mandate conflicts, continuing vaccination resistance, and warnings that the wholesale disruptions to our lives “ain’t over yet.” While the media tends to focus on administrative conflicts as well as the slight, local, daily up and downticks, here we present a longer and broader view.
“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” wrote Gertrude Stein. Others often quote this as a statement of identity. Likewise, in algebra, the law of identity is the equation ‘a = a’. What is true in botanical and mathematical terms also applies to chemistry. Whether extracted from corn or honey created by bees, glucose is glucose, and fructose is fructose.
A Boston Globe article describes COVID-19 patients completing a course of Paxlovid – and then becoming ill again shortly thereafter. Is there something wrong with the drug? Is this something to worry about?
In my experience, orthopedic surgeons are the most fanatical of all surgeons regarding infection prevention. It makes sense since much of their work involves implanting hardware into bones – and an infection in a bone, let alone in the presence of hardware, is very tough to eradicate. So, when a new study looks at orthopedic thought on infection prevention, it is worth considering.
When does Elsie, the Borden cow, go from being an icon to being a Big Mac? When do children and adults decide which animals are pets, and which are eligible to be eaten? A new study suggests these decisions begin when we are tweens.
COVID-19 may remain in our communities for the foreseeable future, and we are told to live with as yet to be defined “new normal.” By and large, this pandemic has been fought on an individual level, one case, mask, and vaccination at a time. Alternatively, environmental risk analysis involves three levels of specificity: community, local, and individual, comprising a “3-legged stool”. Understanding the first two legs is required to benefit the third.
We’ve all been there: Searching online for something to buy, deciding not to, and then having the item stalk us as we move from site to site. (It doesn’t even disappear if we purchase it.) Advertising tracking has been accepted as the price for a “free” Internet, but a new study shows that ad tracking from Big Pharma is alive and well in medical journals. We shouldn’t be surprised.
When discussing Hospital systems, non-profit is a tax status, not a revenue statement. In exchange for providing a range of “community” services, these institutions are tax-exempt. The Lown Foundation dishes the dirt on the profits and losses of some of our most prominent institutions.
Caviar, especially from Beluga sturgeon, is an acquired and expensive taste. With changing geopolitics, would it surprise you that China now produces a third of the global supply? Much of that supply is farm-raised, 500-fold more than wild-caught.
COVID has made travel more difficult. Between a shortage of pilots and other staff, changeable weather, and varying mask rules, travel days between one place and another are often grueling. I know because I just finished a bit of an extended vacation. The CDC’s current guidance is not especially helpful.
Every year there are approximately 400,000 medication errors involving hospitalized patients. Many are medications given at the wrong time or not at all. Of those 400,000 somewhere between seven and 9,000 [1] of those errors result in the death of a patient. RaDonda Vaught, a nurse employed at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, caused the death of a patient with a medication error. I have been thinking about Ms. Vaught a lot lately.
Marijuana is being decriminalized across the US. Most are celebrating, but there is a real (and sometimes serious) public health threat that tags along. Most of you will be unaware of what you're about to read. Dr. Roneet Lev, the former head of the Scripps Mercy Hospital emergency department and also an addiction specialist shares some eye-opening information in the following interview.
A recent study suggested that pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables could counteract some of the nutritional benefits of consuming said produce. Are the results anything to worry about? No, not even a little bit.
A recent study suggests that vaping is much less harmful than smoking. The authors and the journal that published the paper tried to minimize this result. Do they have an anti-vaping bias?
Introducing the ACSH Science Dispatch Podcast — the weekly show where we separate science fact from science fiction.
Retailers have begun to ration infant formula, as the supply is hovering above 50% out-of-stock in several states. Due to supply chain disruptions, recall of products due to pathogen contamination, and inflation, some pharmacies are limiting purchase to three units per customer. This has caused a shockwave among parents of infants.
Disparities in COVID-19 outcomes by race or ethnicity have often been reported, deplored, and attributed to socioeconomic factors. It’s clear that vaccination is the main tool for slowing the spreading of the virus; here we examine disparate vaccination rates by race and ethnicity. However, among such disparities, there is an important distinction between equality (sameness) and equity (fairness).
The effectiveness of vaccines against COVID infection has been well established. Vaccine coverage has been steadily increasing, concurrently with the spreading of the Omicron virus variant. Recent data on children in New York State provide an opportunity to examine these trends.
On Episode 5 of the Science Dispatch Podcast, ACSH contributor Dr. Barbara Billauer recounts the tragic story of the "Radium Girls," a cohort of young women who were gradually sickened and killed by occupational radium exposure in the early 20th century. Subsequent research has shown that their employers knew the girls were at risk, but denied culpability and continuously assured them that all was well.
These shocking developments changed the way we view occupational health and safety—providing the foundation for current radiation exposure standards.
While the nation reels from the horror of Uvalde and the paralysis following Sandy Hook, we should note a statistical analysis of 133 school shootings published last year. The findings should transcend politics, wishful thinking, scapegoating, and conspiracy theories. We present highlights here and summarize the authors’ conclusions.
If you look at Google’s Ngram viewer [1], the word transgender has been used 1285% more in 2019 than the year I graduated from medical school in 1976. Given the multiplicity of articles and arguments on all media platforms, you would think that the transgender community was growing at some quiet but phenomenal rate. I decided to educate myself to fill in the large gaps in my knowledge. Perhaps you are like me and want to have a better understanding. Here is what I have learned from medicine’s scientific literature.
You already eat seaweed but probably don’t know it. Seaweeds are multicellular macroalgae used as functional ingredients, a food additive. Hydrocolloids derived from seaweeds provide texture and structure, prevent the melting of frozen foods, providing edible coatings or other desirable properties to foods as different as ice cream, apples, and bread. No longer considered just an additive, seaweed is poised to enter the US market as a whole food due to its nutritive attributes, potential economic benefits, and unique cultivation requirements.
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