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As divisive as we are, I think we can all agree that our institutions and corporations are not held accountable for their actions. To my right are those concerned with the CDC, WHO, and social media censorship; to my left are those who want to hold the Bigs, tobacco, or food, and federal and state policy accountable. Governmental agencies are hard to pin down because the bureaucracy means everyone and no one is to be held responsible. Because they are legal “individuals,” corporations can have their feet held to the fire by lawsuits. But thanks to a rivalry between Delaware and Texas over who is the most “corporate friendly,” we have corporate’s “Get Out of Jail” free card – the Texas two-step.

Once upon a time, novel conceits of humanoid creation were strictly relegated to the world of fantasy or the imagination. Frankenstein’s monster resided peacefully alongside Mr. Hyde and the Headless Horseman in the pages of storybooks, and the Golem remained buried in Talmudic lore. If there was any moralizing, it was – don’t go there. No longer. Last month the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy devoted an entire issue to the ethics and philosophy of head transplants.
What does this recent symposium tell us about our moral and ethical compass?

While for COVID, as with all diseases, an ounce of prevention, the vaccination, is worth a pound of cure, Paxlovid, there are other treatments. The website, Information is Beautiful, designs infographics – in this case, for the many therapies helpful and not. The size of the circle is an indication of media attention.

News organizations have recently been down on Paxlovid, while it has become the standard of care. Some claim Pfizer's Covid drug "has lost its luster" because of "failures" in two clinical trials. Now, a third trial looks like it could deliver another black mark: the drug doesn't improve symptoms in low-risk patients with Covid. Is this criticism valid? Let's look a little deeper.

In several respects, the latest draft of EPA’s formaldehyde IRIS toxicological review is an improvement over an earlier version I reviewed as an EPA advisor in 2017.  Unfortunately, other aspects of EPA’s current draft suffer from a lack of judgment and adherence to EPA’s guidelines and is a missed opportunity to work with outside parties, such as our European colleagues.  The overall impression of EPA’s current draft is that formaldehyde is toxic at levels below what is often found indoors or in outdoor air. 

Some thoughts on the "debate" between Drs. Jeff Singer and Ardianne Fugh-Berman. Such as it was. The video is now available. Have a strong stomach.

Death seems like it would be a pretty discrete data point with little ambiguity. After all, you either are or are not dead. But as it does so often, the meaning of death in health research is more complex than that simple binary choice. A new study of death and dying in Denmark provides food for thought about how best to use that discrete endpoint to better understand the care we provide.

The activist group Slow Food recently published a listicle warning consumers about the dangers of pesticides. Let's see if their top-10 list stands up to scrutiny.

There's been a lot of news, some of it fear-mongering, about Pfizer's Covid drug Paxlovid. Some people are having their symptoms return after completing the five-day course. Does that mean there is something wrong with the drug, or it's simply a property of the virus? Drs. Henry Miller and Josh Bloom try to provide an answer in Issues & Insights.

What meditation can teach us about listening to others?
It is time to BBQ – a chemistry lesson you can eat
Does science uncover new “truths” or continue to enslave the “already exploited?”
AARP’s conflicted interests

A new mathematical exercise suggests that if we stop eating beef and simply substitute beans, we can reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 75%. The math is good. But the assumptions? Not so much.

Vaccination protocols have been set by age, but age-specific efficacies are not well established. Age is by far the most important determinant of mortality rate; the probability of death increases exponentially with age for major causes of death, including COVID. Here we examine relationships between mortality rates, age, and vaccination coverage for the original series and booster shots as they changed during the pandemic.[1]

In episode 7 of the Science Dispatch Podcast, we review New York University's experiment to offer students free medical school, the goal being to push doctors into under-served communities and understaffed specialties. We then tackle a popular nutrition myth: the dementia-fighting benefits of blueberries.

“Modern food production, be it field cultivations of crops or the capture of wild marine species, is a peculiar hybrid dependent on two different kinds of energy. The first and most obvious is the Sun. But we also need the now indispensable input of fossil fuels and the electricity produced and generated by humans.”

The Pew Organization wanted to see who the American public trusted, so they asked a sample of citizens. Having rounded up the usual suspects, there may be no surprises, but as always, our views can be conflicted.

Thinking about – let alone making plans for – end-of-life provokes anxiety. When we cannot speak on our behalf, our surrogates and loved ones must be called upon to do so. A new study reports that the surrogate’s role on our behalf may be lost in the translation between thought and deed.

Is it really asking too much to have a few weeks of microbiological peace? Apparently, it is. Just as we are finally chucking the masks, upchucking is waiting in the wings. There are some signs of a bad norovirus ("stomach flu") season. Lovely.

An abundance of caution, we have all heard the phrase. And while there are nuances, its gist is, for this particular situation, we are extra careful. And in what situations does that apply? For the most part, situations in which there is a remote chance of a catastrophic outcome that puts its thumb on the scale when measuring risk and benefit. But like the thumb on the grocery scale, it throws off the enterprising of weighing choices and often has stealth costs of its own.

Millions of stars surround us, but every year our skies brighten from the lights we use to keep the dark at bay. As skyglow – the term for that brightening – increases, the number of stars we can see with our eyes is reduced. Let’s talk about light pollution. 

Television has popularized surgical attire; how else to tell the surgeons from the internists? Does the color of scrubs – traditionally green in most institutions – affect relationships with patients? A new study suggests the answer is ...

Medicine aims to identify social determinants of health (SODH) and level the playing field of outcomes so that we all receive equitable care. But measuring disparities is not as easy as it might seem. A meta-analysis of prostate surgery suggests more equality than disparity.

Her dishonest advocacy does incalculable damage to the most vulnerable.

Roughly 2.4 billion people use “polluting fuels … to meet their daily cooking needs.” That includes 83% of the population living in sub-Saharan Africa. A study in Nature Sustainability suggests that for these low-income populations cooking with gas is a big step forward. Is this the invisible hand of Big Gas, some form of economic imperialism, or the best fit for the circumstances?

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, much airtime and social media space has been allocated to the lab leak vs. natural spillover dispute regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2. To summarize briefly, the question is whether the pandemic was caused by a leak from a biosafety level (BSL) four lab in Wuhan, China, or whether it arose naturally as a consequence of a virus jumping from a bat to an animal and then to humans.

On February 11, Health Canada proposed guidelines for PFAS in drinking water that are 50,000 – 300,000 times higher than our EPA’s Health Advisories. This article will look at this and another significant issue, the EPA’s classification of PFAS as hazardous substances.