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The International Agency for Research on Cancer says it doesn't know if coffee causes cancer, which is a switch from 1991 when the agency, an arm of the World Health Organization, said it did. That's bad news for those who want to trust IARC's recommendations, because its reasons to reverse course on coffee are no more valid than its reason to have declared it possibly carcinogenic to humans in the first place.

As people tend to get older, decisions about topics such as health and retirement can be a bit more challenging. The difficult decisions we make later in life are often important and can impact our lives substantially, meaning there may be fewer opportunities to recover from any bad decisions we make.

There sure are a lot of toxicology "experts" out there on the web, and they really don't like anything that is sweet (except maybe when they sell it). We recently wrote about sucralose (Splenda), which is trashed by these "Internut" know-nothings despite the fact that its safety profile is about as good as you'll ever see. But, these I-nuts are even more verbal about aspartame -- and the more verbal they are, the more they get it wrong.

Former New York Times columnist Mark Bittman enthusiastically endorses a tax on soda and other sweetened beverages that's now being considered in Philadelphia. While this may seem appealing to people who believe that sugar is a major contributor to America's health problems, when you really examine the logic of such a tax, there isn't much there.

The Department of Defense has revealed that a woman in Pennsylvania was detected carrying a strain of E. coli with 15 different genes conferring antibiotic resistance.

It didn't take long to guess what might be going on: We're educating a whole lot of people about the differences between health scares and health threats -- and doing it well.

Ketamine is an anesthetic that can prevent persistent post-surgical pain in patients who have undergone major surgery. That's a welcome alternative, given the significant opiate addiction crisis plaguing our nation.

It has become increasingly tricky for Medicare recipients to find doctors who will accept them as patient. The paperwork is crazy, and the reimbursement is also crazy, but in the other direction. Something's gotta break. How will this play out?

Image: Ozbolat Lab / Penn State

Engineers have demonstrated that strands of cow cartilage can substitute for ink in a 3-D bioprinting process, which opens a door to creating cartilage patches for worn-out joints.

The Breakthrough Dialogue is a gathering of ecomodernists, who represent everything that modern environmentalism should be: Optimistic, pro-technology, and pro-humanitarian. The upbeat mood of the meeting stands in stark contrast to both mainstream environmentalism, with its apocalyptic and misanthropic worldview, and the American public, who seems to believe that the world is bad and getting worse.

A recent study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, revealed that although expensive, the UNAIDS "90-90-90" program is well worth the price. The program's overall goal is to be able to achieve a 73 percent reduction in the viral load to undetectable levels worldwide by 2020.

Most people have been conditioned to fear chemicals, but the typical fear is not consistent with the actual risk. The vast majority of chemicals that are encountered in everyday life are quite safe. But, when your profession is chemistry, that changes fast. Here is one example.

California's Proposition 65 list is a quintessential example of government bureaucracy gone berserk. It contains 900+ chemicals that the state declares are carcinogens or reproductive toxins. Anything that is made with, or contains any of these, now carries a ridiculous warning sticker. Should penises also be labeled? That makes far more sense than much of the rest of the law.

It is with extreme skepticism toward modern art that I read a review on biological art, or "bioart," in the journal Trends in Biotechnology. The authors' goal was to discuss the history and relevance of this artistic sub-discipline to contemporary society. For me, this bioart ranges from awe-inspiring to mind-numbing stupidity.

For those with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, the unfamiliar can be paralyzing and they need more ritual and routine to offset the chaos of the outside world. A new study examined how endocannabinoids -- natural messengers in the body chemically similar to the active compound in marijuana, and known to generally reduce the activity of neurons -- play a role in how the brain controls this fundamental process.

If you get goose bumps every time you hear the sound of nails on a chalkboard, you aren't alone. But scientists say it's not the high-pitch tone that makes us cringe, as previously thought.

One of the profoundest mysteries of medical microbiology is why some people become deathly sick from rare infections while the vast majority remain unscathed. Now, a common horse bacterium has killed a Seattle area woman.

In the first article of this series we discussed the last of four measures that the Center for Medicare Services uses to establish hospital star ratings — the patient experience — which heavily weighted in determining hospital ratings.
New York hospitals had significantly longer delays than national averages, and the ratings reflect this.

Great frigatebirds seem to defy the rules of gravity, and now they are redefining basic physiology. To understand how birds who remain in flight for weeks at a time also sleep, scientists recorded their brain activity with surprising results. They were found to not only sleep one hemisphere at a time, but even more surprisingly both hemispheres of the brain slept simultaneously -- while in flight.

Miami is now a very scary place to be, and Zika is the reason. Health authorities are taking the matter seriously. They are spraying a very toxic insecticide from planes. Sometimes tough times call for tough measures, and this is one of them.

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When it comes to picking someone who exudes terrific health, physical stamina and excellence in aging, a great choice would be Laird Hamilton. Given the surfing legend's sculpted physique, what principles does he live by? And in regard to maintaining his overall health and fending off back pain as he ages, does his approach make sense for the rest of us?

Our public health strategy tends to be reactionary rather than preventative. Thus, instead of focusing most of our efforts in preparation for what is coming next, we are dumping limited resources on battles already fought. This is a dangerous gamble, considering that the Ebola virus has deadly cousins.

A new study presents calculations suggesting that increasing intake of peanuts and tree nuts might dampen levels of inflammation and thereby decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. But this type of study can't prove causality — so take these nuts with a grain of salt.

Krypton and xenon serve practical and important purposes. But harvesting them from the air is energy intensive, as it requires a temperature of -300 degrees F. So chemists constructed a molecular sieve that easily separates the noble gases at room temperature.