Tired of getting "The Pharmacist Death Stare" every time you pick up a controlled drug? Do you have to beg for a bottle of Klonipin? Pill Puritanism got you down? Well, let's take a tour of "The Amazing Drug Shop!" Quite the place indeed!

The FDA actively – and unusually – collaborated with a biopharmaceutical company to pursue the approval of an Alzheimer's Disease drug, despite many questions about its efficacy and astronomical price. A congressional investigation found that the FDA’s approval process was “rife with irregularities" and that the agency’s actions “raise serious concerns about FDA’s lapses in protocol.”

Making books
A Forest bath’s physiologic effects
Animals in the business zoo
Moynihan was right – It’s time to talk about absent fathers

China’s Zero-COVID policy goes against the central idea of the hygiene hypothesis: that to be the fittest to survive you must be exposed to germs. Could China’s current dilemma be sufficient proof of the need for a sweet spot between filth and sterility?

Vaccination offers the best defense against COVID infection, hospitalization, or death. Effectiveness ranging from about 40% to 90% has been shown in various clinical studies depending upon the predominant variants of the virus, specific vaccines, and selected endpoints. Has vaccination “substantially reduced the burden of disease?”

Humans, trained to become radiologists, must pass a series of examinations to demonstrate their ability to accurately read and interpret images to be “board certified.” The training typically last five or more years; artificial intelligence has been training to take over the reading of these images for at least that long. This month, researchers asked an AI system to take radiology’s board exam; the results are not pretty.

A series of class action cases claim that Zantac can cause cancer. It is not Zantac per se, but a degradation-produced, N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), which may cause cancer at high doses. What do we know about NDMA?

Acid indigestion. Just the words give me heartburn. Multiple remedies are available, both prescription and over-the-counter. But hundreds of thousands of people are claiming that they got cancer from one of them: Zantac. Their cases are pending in various courts around the country. The decision regarding the admissibility of their expert testimony in federal cases was just released. So, how did the plaintiffs fare?

A former boss often used the phrase, “ideas have consequences.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, America saw a rise in junk science and fearmongering. Because of this, three highly respected experts: Nobel Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug (the “Father of the Green Revolution”), Dr. Frederick Stare (founder of the Nutrition Department at Harvard School of Public Health), and Dr. Elizabeth Whelan (noted epidemiologist, nutrition expert and author of 23 books)created the American Council on Science and Health.

Drought plagues much of the Western U.S. and its water woes are severe and worsening, threatening residents' prosperity and quality of life. But the problem isn't supply; it's distribution. We have a way to remedy it.