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A growing body of research suggests that your gut microbiome can influence your health in a variety of subtle but important ways, and the foods you consume can have an upstream effect on the health of these trillions of microbes residing in your digestive system. An ACSH reader asks whether the widely used sweetener high fructose corn syrup should be avoided for that reason. Let's take a look.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is once again warning about the supposed dangers posed by mercury-containing vaccines. "I’m proud to finally deliver on a long-overdue promise: protecting our most vulnerable from unnecessary mercury exposure," he tweeted in early August. Kennedy was celebrating the removal of the preservative thimerosal from a small fraction of seasonal flu vaccines. The problem? He bungled basic chemistry in his rush to (once again) badmouth immunization. Let's take a look.

In just three months, ChatGPT will turn three, and it’s already reshaping the way we work, think, and even imagine the future. Today, AI systems can generate images, mimic human behavior, and tackle tasks that once seemed uniquely human — feats that evoke awe, a sense of dystopia, and raise uncomfortable questions: “Will my job survive the rise of machines?”

American health policy has long grappled with the same question: do we change behavior by changing individuals, or by modifying the environments in which they live? From tobacco warnings to pandemic lockdowns, history shows that slogans fade but structures endure. The coming MAHA initiative will be judged not by its rhetoric, but by whether it builds the scaffolding that makes healthy choices unavoidable.

Before you toss every packaged food into the trash, consider that the line between“healthy” and “ultra-processed” is blurrier than wellness gurus would like you to believe. A fortified wholegrain loaf can be branded a dietary villain, while bacon and puffed rice sail through unscathed. The real story isn’t about purity versus poison; it’s about convenience, nutrition, and whether we’re confusing classification with common sense.

Cardboard is not just for shipping impulse purchases and making forts for your cat. Then there’s beer sludge — no longer a byproduct of your regretted college years, but now repurposed into vegan milk. And seahorses — the one species where the males actually do the heavy lifting in reproduction. Finally, medicine is Darwinian.

Before the pandemic sent supplement sales into the stratosphere, America was already popping “immune-boosting” pills like they were magical shields against disease. The most enthusiastic buyers weren’t the sick and vulnerable — they were the wealthy, well-fed, and already healthy. It turns out that the real immune-boosting effect of these supplements may have more to do with placebo-fueled confidence.

Welcome to Medicare Part D, where your prescription drugs come with co-pays and co-insurance. If you thought co-pays and co-insurance were mundane payment terms, think again. These figures are expertly designed to shuffle more costs onto you while keeping insurers comfortably in the black.

Welcome to the era of algorithm-driven diabetes management, where closed-loop glucose monitoring systems keep you from tanking into hypoglycemic coma (although they seem to have a quirky preference for letting ketoacidosis sneak up on you). This study of nearly 14,000 young diabetics shows that high-tech isn't always high touch.

Metaphors might well be the duct tape of human understanding. Sometimes, they’re elegant, like a well-crafted bridge; other times, they’re more of a rickety rope ladder held together by questionable logic. This week’s reading takes us from literary gumbo to literal space poop, from physics muscling in on biology’s turf to transfusions of milk for bleeding.

Surgeons dictate operative reports, creating an essential but error-prone document. Enter artificial intelligence, the latest techno-fix promising to clean up surgical storytelling. Will AI bring surgical documentation into the future?

It's a problem Secretary Kennedy Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) brigade, armed with populist slogans and a two-year timeline for "measurable results," are tasked to fix. If history has taught us anything, it’s that complex systemic issues can’t be solved by political willpower and gut instincts alone. A new JAMA study breaks down where all the money for chronic disease is going — time to follow the dollars and see where they lead.

Who knows what thoughts lie in the mental recesses of the would-be suicide victim? Sometimes, they leave a note; sometimes not. Sometimes, there are obvious rational reasons – unbearable pain, for one. Sometimes, not. However, sometimes, we can discern the motive or the message from the means. For the sake of protecting public health and safety, and possibly even preventing suicide, we should be paying attention.

The microbiome is a gut-wrenching mystery. One day, it’s the key to immortality; the next, it’s just along for the ride. If you’ve ever been told to fear sweeteners, shun sugar, and bow to fermented foods lest you destroy your delicate microbial overlords, it turns out what we think we know is much like a juice cleanse— fleeting, overhyped, and occasionally full of crap.

Talking with Lars always brings me back to my days at the FDA, particularly regarding the tangled mess of biotechnology regulation. This time, a California judge’s decision to roll back progress on the oversight of genetically engineered crops effectively shoved American agriculture back into the 1980s.

This week, I joined Lars Larson to discuss a brutal flu season, the role of Tamiflu, and why universities are skimming millions off NIH research grants — sometimes as much as 60% — in the name of "overhead."

"The Last Ranger," an Oscar-nominated short film, depicts the poaching of rhinos in South Africa to collect the horns, a supposed aphrodisiac. Well, they don't work, just like some of the other superstitious nonsense that harms other animals for no good reason. It's 2025, not 2025 B.C. Enough already.

The decision reinstates unscientific regulation of new plant varieties, contradicting not only decades of experimentation, application, and deliberation, but also common sense.

When I was growing up, menstruation was called “the curse.” It was a curse – once used to enslave women, including barring co-educational pursuits. It took the medical research of one woman, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, to prove that menses was a normal bodily function with no detriment to mental and physical performance. In so doing, she revolutionized not only medical education for women, shattering the prevailing “hysteria-ization” of the female.

There are wonders of the visual world—this week, dive into the hidden beauty of the plants that keep us alive, the less beautiful reality of why doctors over-test, and the existential crisis gripping young physicians who now see medicine as just another job. And if that wasn’t enough, we also have HIMs peddling pharmaceuticals. Some things are worth a closer look—others, not so much.

Science fiction has a way of masquerading as science fact — until someone like me comes with a bucket of cold, hard evidence. But let’s be real: debunking nonsense takes exponentially more effort than producing it. Jonathan Swift knew it in 1710, and here I am, centuries later, still speaking my truth before the next viral misinformation dumpster fire.

When COVID-19 vaccines rolled out, public health officials largely followed a simple logic: protect the most vulnerable first. The Great Barrington Declaration advocated for "focused protection" of the elderly and at-risk. But what if neither approach was the best way to save lives? A new study suggests that focusing on prevention — cutting off transmission routes — could sometimes be the smarter move. Did we get the vaccine strategy all wrong? Let’s dive in.

While our ancestors wagered on chariot races and bloodsport outcomes, today's high-tech hustlers are busy cashing in on online odds. As billions are wagered on sporting events and online platforms dominate the industry, an emerging public health challenge – one that includes depression, bipolar disorders, and suicidal behavior – demands our attention.

A new lawsuit claims that a hairstylist developed bladder cancer from working with a dye chemical for decades. The verdict: quite possibly. Even more intriguing, the dye itself is harmless — but its oxidation product is not. The exact same chemical transformation explains why Tylenol is a liver toxin.

Recent senatorial hearings reflect the move to convict UPFs (ultra-processed food) as the culprit responsible for society’s obesity and juvenile metabolic diseases “epidemics” while deflecting focus from infectious disease prevention. But, in pursuing UPFs, are we ignoring other contributory or confounding factors like nicotine withdrawal, a couch potato culture and social media sloth, sugar substitutes, and environmental toxins? Before we torch the Twinkies, perhaps we should be sure we’re not pursuing the wrong perpetrator.