Over the past few months more healthcare articles have featured a new (at least for me) statistical methodology: mediation analysis. It doesn’t prove causality, but it can assign a value to the impact of a variable on an outcome. More usefully, it can help suggest what factors we can leverage using public health measures, regulation, or legislation.
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Just over a year ago I wrote about the Biden Administration’s plan to ban menthol. As Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting FDA commissioner stated [1], “Banning menthol—the last allowable flavor—in cigarettes and banning all flavors in cigars will help save lives, particularly among those disproportionately affected by these deadly products.” A new study suggests that her statement with respect to those disproportionately affected is wrong. Let’s see what a new study concludes.
There is no doubt that remote care, virtual care, has come into its own during the pandemic. It seems equally clear that it is not going away but will find a niche in our healthcare landscape. Big businesses, especially private equity investors, see this shift in the landscape as an opportunity and are being led to the promised land of a large return on investments by consultants. What are those “thought-leaders” telling those investors will be the future? Does the term “smoke and mirrors” ring any bells?
A recent study showed that Pfizer's Paxlovid, the most effective Covid drug, failed to prevent infection when given to people who were exposed to the virus but had not yet become infected. Bad news, right? Actually, no - it's quite the opposite. Here's why.
According to the Office of the Inspector General of Health and Human Services, 1 out of every 4 Medicare beneficiaries admitted to the hospital in 2018 experienced harm. Do I have your attention? Good, because the reality may be quite different when you know more about the study underpinning that headline.
Who hasn’t done it? Twisted an Oreo in two and then enjoyed the creamy filling before eating the wafer (with dunking in milk, optional). Why, for the most part, does the filling always remain on just one wafer? A new study in the Physics of Fluids addresses this hugely important issue.
There were more COVID deaths in 2021 than 2020, acceptance of vaccination remains stalled, and some locations are making progress but others are not. Nevertheless, masks have been coming off. Some jurisdictions have declared victory over COVID, but wishing will not make it so.
Britain may soon approve a gene-edited tomato that boosts vitamin D intake. Let's take a look at the science and politics surrounding this important development.
On Episode 4 of the ACSH Science Dispatch Podcast, we examine the need for COVID boosters and the increasingly irrelevant concept of herd immunity. We then dive into an incendiary discussion about the social-justice-inspired effort to deny the dangers of obesity. Finally, is there a "cancel culture" in science?
News organizations have recently been down on Paxlovid, while it has become the standard of care. Some claim Pfizer's Covid drug "has lost its luster" because of "failures" in two clinical trials. Now, a third trial looks like it could deliver another black mark: the drug doesn't improve symptoms in low-risk patients with Covid. Is this criticism valid? Let's look a little deeper.
The FDA has released the latest results from its Pesticide Residue Monitoring Program. Activist groups are scrambling to dismiss the report.
Water (H2O) is essential to life and is ubiquitous; found even on planets, asteroids, and comets. It is a deceptively simple but very complex entity with many facets. Many people in developed countries consider access to quantities of drinkable (potable) and other water to be a given and at a low cost. The United Nations says that access to sufficient, safe water is a human right, but you get what you pay for. Access to universal assured safe drinking water has existed for only about 120 years with the development of microbiology to test for pathogens and engineering for filtration and disinfection water treatment.
Of all the world's problems, arguably the most pressing is "which Tootsie Pop flavor is the most natural?" Another would be "why is Dr. Oz's head in that picture?" A lesson on artificial flavors and people.
In 1974 I called a nuclear engineer to interview him for a term paper on nuclear fusion power. We talked about all the advantages of fusion power, its prospects for the future, the impact on civilization, and so forth…and at the end of the interview, I asked him when he expected to see commercial fusion power. “I think it will be about 20 or 25 years from now that we see the first fusion reactor come online.” And that’s been the standard joke about fusion power since before I wrote my paper – that it’s about 25 years in the future…and always will be. But maybe that’s changing.
E-cigarettes can help smokers abandon their deadly habit. Unfortunately, that message has been buried under a mountain of anti-vaping messaging promoted by tobacco researchers and reporters.
Americans expect that when the tap is turned on, fresh drinking water comes out. This expectation is increasingly questionable. There is a water crisis in the U.S. The increase of severe droughts in the southwestern U.S. has led to very low levels in lakes, rivers, and groundwater across the area. Water shortages are already common and expected to worsen in the coming years. What are we to do?
Pain is one of our senses – like vision, hearing, or taste. It aids our survival by identifying noxious and harmful stimuli. But unlike the other sensations, it's ethically challenging for us to study pain. Instead, we rely on animal studies. Pain’s underlying physiology is understood, but not our experience of pain, unlike other sensations that we can readily share, like listening to music or watching a sunset. That difference makes it difficult to treat.
Is widespread use of artificial sweeteners polluting the environment? If so, what do we do about it? Join us on the latest episode of the Science Dispatch podcast as we take a critical look at the evidence.
This is some potentially exciting news coming from China: a Covid drug called Azvudine (originally an HIV drug) that appears to be quite effective in reducing symptoms from the infection. However, there are two problems: 1) The information comes from Chinese newspapers, not journals; 2) the science doesn't add up.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is once again warning consumers that their food may be tainted by "forever chemicals." Let's take a look at all the important details the activist group left out.
We hear a lot about the tons of plastic that pollute our oceans, but the solution to this troubling problem gets much less airtime. Let's take a closer look at the answer. Hint: it isn't paper straws.
"Climate-anxious" college students are pushing to have low-risk pesticides banned from their campuses. Meanwhile, states that have legalized recreational marijuana use are concerned that their new policy may cause more car accidents. We examine the science behind both stories on episode 14 of the Science Dispatch podcast.
We spend quite a bit on body-affirming surgery in the US. According to the Aesthetic Society, in 2021, we spent $14.6 billion on procedural care, including liposuction and breast augmentation, to mention the top two. That doesn’t include the nips, tucks, revisions, or injectables to fill or paralyze. One form of body-affirming surgery remains quite controversial, genital gender affirming surgery – a new study follows up on our earlier reporting.
For those of us working, or in my case, having worked in the medical community Don Berwick is a well-known gentleman. He is the former administrator of the Center for Medicare Services, President Emeritus of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and the author of healthcare’s triple aim – expanding care, improving quality, and lowering cost. He has a new message today, the Ten Teams.
Cannabis is a complex mixture of hundreds of chemicals. Here’s a look at one of them.
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