Is Biogen's Alzheimer's drug a historic achievement or red herring? There are plenty of opinions on both sides. Nonetheless, it received FDA approval despite an unanimous downvote from its own expert panel. What is going on here? No one knows, but to me, it just doesn't smell right.

What if you could knock someone off merely by thinking about it – and no way to trace those thoughts to the crime? And more horrendous still: what if you could harm someone because of some subconscious desire, one that you weren’t even aware of? This isn’t the stuff of science fiction. It might even be possible now.

“Maximum containment laboratories, commonly referred to as biosafety level 4 (BSL4) labs, are designed and built to work safely and securely with the most dangerous bacteria and viruses that can cause serious diseases and for which no treatment or vaccines exist.” 

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a favorite tool of skeptics aiming to spread immunization fears. As it turns out, VAERS has actually helped ensure the safety of FDA-approved shots.

Organized medicine, and by that, I mean healthcare with all its players, institutions, and systems, is continuing to undergo seismic shifts. Those related to COVID-19, like video visits or increasing acknowledgment of socioeconomic determinants of our health, get the headlines. But the changes to the business of medicine are rapidly increasing, will affect us far sooner, and I am afraid, for far longer. What are we sacrificing on the altar of efficiency and access?

As the debate over the origins of SARS-COV-2 rages, the case for silencing social media users grows weaker.

Benzene, a known carcinogen, was detected by a new company called Valisure, in hand sanitizer this past winter. Now, the company has detected it at various concentrations in sunscreen. Are the risks the same? Probably not.

I've written numerous times that when it comes to supplements, you can throw both common sense and science out the window. Up is up and so is down. Somehow, I’ve been laboring under the notion that I don't really have much else to write about this topic. That was until a leisurely stroll up and down the aisles of a CVS store. And an existential thought experiment at no extra cost.

Drinking cholera, culture wars, let's put a hydra in a blender and see what we get [spoiler alert: no organisms are harmed], the science of gerrymandering.

We learn more and more every day about the bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live within us and support us. It's our own personal world: the microbiome. And researchers have identified ecologic niches with varying microbial occupants. And it seems that cities have unique microbiomes, too.