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We’ve all been there: Searching online for something to buy, deciding not to, and then having the item stalk us as we move from site to site. (It doesn’t even disappear if we purchase it.) Advertising tracking has been accepted as the price for a “free” Internet, but a new study shows that ad tracking from Big Pharma is alive and well in medical journals. We shouldn’t be surprised.

For the once pretty, vivacious young women in their late teens and early twenties awaiting marriage and children, sickened as they lip, dip, and painted radium onto watch dials the statute of limitations was a major obstacle to their legal claims. In Part II of our story, we look at their legal struggle.

“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” wrote Gertrude Stein. Others often quote this as a statement of identity. Likewise, in algebra, the law of identity is the equation ‘a = a’. What is true in botanical and mathematical terms also applies to chemistry. Whether extracted from corn or honey created by bees, glucose is glucose, and fructose is fructose.

Once pretty, vivacious young women in their late teens and early twenties awaiting marriage and children, one by one, they sickened. On X-ray, their bones looked moth-eaten; their teeth fell out, leaving pockets of pus– every dental effort to treat them caused more tooth loss. Eventually, their jawbones broke or splintered in their mouths, or they suffered cancerous sarcomas of their limbs, requiring amputation. Their spines crumbled, their legs shortened, so they painfully limped. For years no one could determine what ailed them. They were the “Radium Girls.”

These days we’re awash in mask mandate conflicts, continuing vaccination resistance, and warnings that the wholesale disruptions to our lives “ain’t over yet.” While the media tends to focus on administrative conflicts as well as the slight, local, daily up and downticks, here we present a longer and broader view.

In order to preserve their "independence," a growing cadre of medical journals is refusing to publish any research conducted by vaping-industry scientists. It's a policy marred by hypocrisy that will exclude good science from the peer-reviewed literature.

There is no doubt that remote care, virtual care, has come into its own during the pandemic. It seems equally clear that it is not going away but will find a niche in our healthcare landscape. Big businesses, especially private equity investors, see this shift in the landscape as an opportunity and are being led to the promised land of a large return on investments by consultants. What are those “thought-leaders” telling those investors will be the future? Does the term “smoke and mirrors” ring any bells?

If you read only one thing this week please consider the hypocrisy over the ban on mentholated cigarettes. We are made of stardust, and our energy within might mean we are made of music. Once upon a time, Barnes and Noble was a predator; nowadays, has it become a benefactor? The Scream, not the picture, but the sound?

A Boston Globe article describes COVID-19 patients completing a course of Paxlovid – and then becoming ill again shortly thereafter. Is there something wrong with the drug? Is this something to worry about?

Just over a year ago I wrote about the Biden Administration’s plan to ban menthol. As Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting FDA commissioner stated [1], “Banning menthol—the last allowable flavor—in cigarettes and banning all flavors in cigars will help save lives, particularly among those disproportionately affected by these deadly products.” A new study suggests that her statement with respect to those disproportionately affected is wrong. Let’s see what a new study concludes.

Over the past few months more healthcare articles have featured a new (at least for me) statistical methodology: mediation analysis. It doesn’t prove causality, but it can assign a value to the impact of a variable on an outcome. More usefully, it can help suggest what factors we can leverage using public health measures, regulation, or legislation.

Adam and Eve were commanded not to eat of the tree of knowledge, lest “in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” [1]
Adam and Eve did not die - not then, anyway. But now, with knowledge generated by whole genome sequencing comes proposed attempts to create the “perfect child.” Should that day come, I suggest, it would be the death of humanity.  

Chef Julia Child may have chortled “wash that bird,” but for years food safety experts have been pushing back against that practice. Before cooking, washing raw poultry was thought to contaminate the sink and nearby food contact surfaces with “chicken juice” and any pathogens it might contain. A recent observational study conducted by North Carolina State University has pointed to a more significant source of cross-contamination: your hands.

Can we get our obesity problem under control? In part one of this series, we saw that common policy responses to our expanding waistlines have failed. Let's now consider why these interventions tend to yield such disappointing results.

Many obesity experts argue that changing the public's "food environment" is the key to promoting widespread weight loss. This proposed solution is not backed by solid evidence.

Four years ago, with much-deserved fanfare, NYU’s School of Medicine ended tuition for its students. That class just graduated – giving us the first opportunity to see what changes free tuition may have made.

AI and healthcare, murder or malpractice, call centers, and should we get rid of scientific journals?

Seemingly everywhere you look there are articles on the dangers of PFAS. Federal and state governments, environmental groups, and the media have declared that dangerous PFAS chemicals are everywhere and present a widespread problem across the U.S. The condemnation and fearmongering are so widespread that you’d be forgiven if you question why we would even bother to write about such a black-and-white subject in the first place. But we must.   

The President just canceled the educational debt of 350,000 disabled students, a minuscule $7 billion of the $1.7 trillion in student debt. Who is leading the push here, the politicians or the public? The Brookings Institute offers up some answers.

Imagine running long enough to get out of breath, long enough to be winded for a minute or two. Now imagine that same need for air after walking from your bedroom to the kitchen. That is the lived experience of individuals with severe respiratory illness, like the on-the-job illness we call black lung disease.

The debate over when to lift mask mandates continues. The CDC extended mask guidance on airplanes, among other forms of mass transit, for an additional two weeks. The war over masks in elementary school continues to be waged. A new model attempts to provide more data on the interaction of the three horsemen of non-pharmaceutical intervention, face masks, room ventilation, and distance in short and long-range airborne transmission.

As I get older, increasingly grumpier, and less tolerant of blatant stupidity, it is far too difficult to stomach listening to or reading anything about our current culture unless I am nearly exhausted. So, if and when I read the news, it is generally after a workout. This morning, and after a workout, I unfortunately glanced at the news on the way to my emails. Here I found more of the continuous media-driven celebrity advice on how to eat and age well. Troy Aikman and Martha Stewart provided today's contrasting advice.

Ukrainians are being urged to get their hands on a supply of potassium iodide for radiation sickness in case Vladimir Putin uses a nuclear weapon. Does iodide work? The short answer is yes – but for only one cancer.

A surprisingly large percentage of physicians have recommended vaping as a safer alternative to their smoking patients, a new study shows. The results suggest that many doctors have parted ways with the abstinence-only approach to smoking cessation championed by tobacco-control activists.

Epidemiological studies have reported statistically significant relationships between long-term air pollution and mortality over the past 50 years, frequently without controlling for smoking. Smoking is perhaps the strongest actionable risk factor in our longevity, and despite dramatic declines, it remains so in modern society. Smoking more than one pack per day can double the risk of all-cause mortality and increase lung cancer risk at least 10-fold.