Search results

With recreational marijuana becoming a big deal, how can you differentiate one source of weed from another? California farmers take a page from their wine handbook: marijuana appellations, or geographical designations for growing regions.

Hospice provides comfort during the last months of life. But many patients requiring dialysis cannot, or do not, take advantage of this care. We need to do less harm.

As Big Pharma shifts risk for drug discovery to start-ups, the acquisition and licensing of those discoveries serve as a hidden driver of medication cost. Consider Keytruda.

The founding of the modern funeral industry can essentially be traced back to President Abraham Lincoln and his support for embalming the human body after death.

Do artificially-sweetened beverages increase your risk of having a stroke? Maybe, be you have to be African-American, overweight, under-exercised and on a diet termed by the government to be unhealthy. It also helps if you have high blood pressure.

The fact that Ethan Lindenberger is over 18 years of age cannot be glossed over here. When dealing with minors -- which this teen by legal definition is not -- the terrain can get murky.  

Russian trolls and the Organic Consumers Association both spread anti-vaccine propaganda and conspiracy theories in an effort to undermine American technology. Worse yet, they actively collude with one other.

Can yoga, instead of producing only anecdotal success stories, instead demonstrate that it can deliver quantifiable health benefits? A new study may herald a shift in the Western discussion of an Eastern practice.

From Seattle to New Haven, we here at the American Council have crisscrossed America spreading good science news while debunking junk science. We even made a couple of international appearances! Take a look.

Safe or low-risk doses for PFOA, and related chemicals by various governments, are currently widely disparate. Fortunately, recent findings in humans may reduce some of this disparity. Efforts to use this newer information should allow for harmonization -- or at least more consistency -- in government positions.

Oxytocin-deficient animals point to deep links between social behavior and the need to keep warm.

Doing so is becoming increasingly problematic these days, as another person was arrested for practicing medicine without a license. One common aspect among imposters is that they know just enough information to be dangerous. Here's how to separate physician fact from fiction.

Dietary supplement companies are not renowned for their ethical business practices. But 16 companies may have redefined the word "sordid" by peddling useless supplements to Alzheimer's patients and their families. At least they got swatted down by the FDA. But how much did they suck from desperate families before the FDA warning letters went out? And how do these guys sleep at night?

The new behavioralists are trying to figure out how to best reward physicians for good outcomes. We may call it "pay for performance," but it seems an awful lot like all those studies of rats pressing levers to get a reward or avoid being shocked.

The CDC says "tobacco use by youth is rising." If that were to be true, it'd be horrible -- but it's not. Cigarette use is down. The only reason the CDC can make this claim is because the agency considers e-cigarettes and vaping devices -- which only contain nicotine -- to be tobacco products. This is misleading and undermines public health.

So-called "play or pay" was designed as an incentive for pharmaceutical companies to engage, or to continue to be engaged in, antibiotic discovery and development.

Of course, not all causes and manners of death are within our control. Nor should we be so preoccupied with them that we avoid living. But the National Safety Council's annual report proves to be an interesting read, given a 5.3% increase in preventable-injury-related deaths.

Platelet-rich plasma is a growing part of "regenerative" medicine. It's natural, easily applied and a profit center for companies and physicians. But what remains unclear is whether its use is beneficial to patients.

One wonders how the anti-GMO movement could oppose something like this. But given its hostility to Golden Rice, which has been genetically modified to contain a vitamin A precursor to prevent blindness, it usually finds a way.

Can an algorithm prescribe a healthier diet? The short answer: Just a little better than the flip of a coin, or that
printed diet you found on the Internet.

The editorial board of the New York Times came out in favor of revising FDA regulations of cosmetic products. This is a reasonable suggestion since such a review has not taken place since 1938. But sound science, especially toxicology, is essential for any change in regulations to be meaningful. Unfortunately, on the science itself, the newspaper's proposal misses the mark.

Scientists from Mexico have discovered a very clever way of getting rid of HPV, the most common of all sexually transmitted infections. It's done using a simple chemical and a laser -- and there's no harm to normal cells. This method could represent a big advance in eradicating the virus and reducing HPV-related cancers, especially cervical cancer.

While we await a more comprehensive report, the preliminary findings imply nothing of consequence was discovered during the examination that would impede the president doing his job now, or in the foreseeable future.

Since bacteria, such as those that cause gonorrhea or gastrointestinal infections, are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, scientists are searching for outside-the-box ideas to tackle the problem. They may have found in one in bacteriophage: viruses that exclusively infect and kill bacteria.

Twelve patients who tried stem cell injections were hospitalized with infections, according to a published report, one that should cause patients concern. More important is that they should investigate stem cell treatments, for conditions such as cartilage injuries to their joints, before committing to one of these procedures.