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Being an inspector for Michelin, the origins of the CT scan, the hygiene hypothesis appears as a call for biodiversity, the politics of writing about science in the age of COVID

A new report from a Congressional subcommittee concludes "that commercial baby foods contain dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium." While these products inevitably contain tiny quantities of these heavy metals, which are ubiquitous in nature, baby foods generally pose minimal risk to young children.

It's intuitive that a robust immune response to COVID-19 will result in a less severe, even asymptomatic infection. A new study puts some numbers to the term "robust."

Statins, which are used in treating heart disease, are among the most widely prescribed medications in the U.S. Diabetes is associated with a very high risk of heart disease. So the thinking has been that a pre-emptive statin, before heart symptoms appear, would be beneficial for those patients. But statins accelerate the progression of diabetes. A new study tries to determine their downsides.

The Veteran Administration's "Opioid Safety Initiative" – as fine an example of doublespeak as you'll see – succeeded in reducing opioid prescriptions by 64% in less than a decade. That's just fine if you're prepared to accept the accompanying 75% increase in rural veteran suicides. Drs. Jeffrey Singer and Josh Bloom are not. Here's their opinion piece in The Virginian-Pilot.

The other week, our Dr. Bloom tooted out an article on the gaseous composition of flatulence, or farts. Just a week later, an academic meeting of gastroenterologists took up the same issue. Time for a scientific update!

The anti-GMO movement is gradually campaigning itself into irrelevance. Unfortunately, this positive trend has been slowed by public universities that pay activists exorbitant speaking fees to promote their questionable ideas. This is but one example of taxpayers subsidizing ideological advocacy with potentially serious consequences.

The following is a compendium of articles and op-eds I have written since 2013. It is an updated version of "Analyzing The Opioid Crisis: 65 Articles By Dr. Josh Bloom," which was published in 2019.

YouTube announced last week that it's banning a number of high-profile anti-vaccine activists from its platform. The policy shift is meant to stem the spread of misinformation, but it raises some troubling questions. Most important among them: is more censorship worth the cost it imposes on society?

Has the New York Times, which has been squarely in the 'No GMO' column for many years, moved into this century? Drs. Kathleen Hefferon and Henry Miller argue yes, but not nearly enough so to make up for past misrepresentations about genetic modification.

Had she lived, Henrietta Lacks would have been 101 in August. Instead, she died at 31, a victim of aggressive cervical cancer. Monday marks the 70th anniversary of her death on October 4, 1951.  But her cells live on, immortalized by George Gey, a cellular biologist at Johns Hopkins.

It takes up a third of our life; why do we sleep? Jimming the lock of the lock and key model of biology. How to escape a volcano, like the one on La Palma. The Work Ethic revisited.

It's time for another installment of "The Health Ranger Chronicles," where we examine Mike Adams' claims about the supposed dangers of COVID vaccination. Adams and other Natural News writers have alleged that the shots are mind-control tools or bioweapons, and that planning for the pandemic began in 2015. This time, COVID-19 is apparently a real threat, but the vaccines are still more dangerous.

Wanna hear something crazy? Fentanyl test strips are FDA-approved to quickly test for the presence of the dangerous drug in the urine in overdose cases. They can also be used to check for fentanyl in street drugs and counterfeit pills. But in more than 40 states, this is illegal (!). Why? Because they are considered to be drug paraphernalia. Seriously. Good luck finding any policy or law dumber than this.

As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph).

Many tobacco control advocates have attacked vaping by emphasizing the risk it poses to teenagers. While children should never use any nicotine product, there's a strong case to be made that the campaign against teen vaping has distracted us from tackling a critical public health threat: adult smoking.

The DEA just issued a Public Safety Alert about the presence of deadly doses of illicit fentanyl in counterfeit pills, something that has been known for years. Why the delay? Dr. Jeffrey Singer of the Cato Institute (and an ACSH advisor) explains.

The year was 1947 – the last smallpox invasion in America. Ground zero:  New York City. The carrier: an ex-pat named Eugene LeBar, who had arrived from Mexico on March 1. By the time his diagnosis was confirmed, more than a month later, he had likely exposed thousands of New Yorkers. Even before arriving in New York, LeBar had traveled through seven major American population centers, exposing probably hundreds more.

The constant barrage of news, cloaked in attention-getting words and images, is playing havoc with instinctual behavior that is millions of years old. There is, for me, a direct connection between fight or flee, chronic stress, and how we have chosen to use the medium of digital communication. Digital media is an out-of-control fear machine.

Antiviral drug development for COVID-19 took a back seat to vaccines during the brief time – when we thought that ending the pandemic was simply a matter of getting enough needles in enough arms. But the virus had other ideas: variants. Now it's looking like we may need a drug to complement the vaccines. Three are in development. Here's a look at Pfizer's PF-07321332. It should work, but don't hold me to that.

Some experts have argued that America's expensive, inefficient health care system is to blame for our intense vaccine hesitancy. While this is a plausible explanation, it misses the key problem—the politicization of medicine, along with almost everything else in our culture.

Beauty and personal care products are a vast industry, for both women and men. In 2019, the personal care products industry generated sales of $49.2 billion in the U.S., and $380 billion globally. Women spend an average of $35/month, while men spend an average of $29/mo. Some believe these products pose significant risks to our health. Is this another case of a big fear and little risk?

As a society, we are increasingly overweight. Some argue that it isn't weight; we're just big-boned. Others say that excess pounds do not equate with being either unfit or unhealthy. Can you be healthy and significantly overweight? What does "science" say?

Here's the news, straight from the headlines: “70% of fully vaccinated prisoners caught COVID-19 in a Texas Delta outbreak, the CDC says — but vaccines protected against severe disease.” This is not misleading; just incomplete. It was a choice to report the easy narrative, rather than digging deeper. Here's what information was overlooked.

Japanese consumers now have access to a genetically engineered -- specifically, a CRISPR-edited -- tomato that can help prevent high blood pressure. Hopefully, it's one of many gene-edited products we'll begin to see in grocery stores around the world.