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CMS provides a twice-annual snapshot of the care and concerns of Medicare beneficiaries. They just released the latest survey that ended in April. We have time to take in a few curated highlights.

The CDC is again recommending that fully vaccinated Americans mask up in certain circumstances. This is bad advice at odds with the available evidence that will only seed more vaccine hesitancy.

The Philippines has finally approved Golden Rice, a genetically engineered crop designed to combat vitamin A deficiency. Greenpeace, never content to let evidence guide its agenda, has trotted out some mealymouthed justifications to urge regulators to reverse the decision.

New CDC recommendations say that the use of masks indoors should be governed by the level of COVID transmission in a particular area. But the agency's plan is unworkable. Here's why.

I never really got into fishing, although I have many friends and family who love it. While it’s not the reason I don’t fish, I was surprised to find out recently how hazardous it is – according to statistics, fishing accounts for about 80,000 injuries every year in the US alone, [1] and that doesn’t even get into things like drowning, electrocution, and so forth. And when we look at the dangers of commercial fishing, things get even worse. Reading that chapter made me wonder why any sane person would ever pick up a rod and reel and go anywhere near the water. 

How do you protect a baby who can't get vaccinated from relatives who won't get vaccinated? Scientific arguments don't work, but proper incentives and boundaries just might. Here's what I've discovered in my first few weeks of parenthood.

The FDA needs to step up and fix the definition of strength. "Business as usual” under the existing language of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 means continued disincentives to promote a more aggressive uptake of biosimilars.

Sometimes an article cries out for attention. This one did because it is a great example of association, not causation. Which did come first, the medication or the loneliness?

I was taking out the trash and recycling the other day, and as I was dumping things into the cans-and-bottles bin and the paper-and-cardboard bin, I started thinking about radioactive waste. Because who doesn’t, right? And in particular, I was wondering yet again why the US disposes of our spent fuel rather than trying to get every bit of utility out of it. We used to – we just stopped. Odd.

Leisure inequality? – say it ain’t so, the shameless way we care for our veterans, the New York Times paper of record or advocate? Why is travel to another country increasingly difficult.

COVID-19 has brought telemedicine to the forefront of medical innovation. Think of it as a digital return of the house call. But is there steak beneath all that sizzle?

There’s no doubt that obesity is a growing global problem. It lies at one end of the spectrum from its less-discussed – but equally malnourished – polar opposite: hunger. Given that some argue that defining obesity as a disease will change the trajectory of the problem for the better, it’s time for a closer examination.  

The "Broken Window" theory is among the most widely-known ideas in policing. It’s been very controversial to say the least. But what if we don’t understand how to address the broken window? A new study looks at fixing the window, rather than pursuing the one who threw the rock.

Deaths of despair were first defined by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, two economists, in 2015. These were deaths due to suicide, overdoses, and alcoholic liver diseases disproportionately impacting White males without a college degree. As Vox [1] so vividly described the problem, “In 2017 alone, there were 158,000 deaths of despair in the US: the equivalent of “three fully loaded Boeing 737 MAX jets falling out of the sky every day for a year.” A new study seeks to understand why these deaths increase in the US, but not 16 other high-income, industrialized nations.

Joe "Crazy Joe" Mercola was just targeted by the Times, which called him "The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online." For Mercola this is probably a compliment since his rejection of science and medicine has enabled him to amass a $100 million fortune selling junk online. It was nice to see The Times weighing in – but they're a little late to the party. ACSH has been doing just this for more than a decade. Some examples of our work.

Discussing our mortality is tricky business. Few of us jump into the discussion, even when it’s increasingly important near the end life. So it’s easily understandable why the carbon footprint from the disposal of one’s remains doesn’t always land on most people’s list of worries.

You may have encountered the term "D614G mutation" when reading about the COVID delta variant. What does this mean? Why is it important? Why does it make "delta COVID" more infectious? Keep reading.

The $21 billion settlement between the attorneys general of several states and pharmaceutical distributors will make the lawyers rich (they get roughly 10 percent of the total) but will do nothing to affect overdose rates. Dr. Jeffrey Singer tells us why.

The complications of being hospitalized with COVID-19 may increase your chances of dying, and in many cases leave you more debilitated than before becoming ill. There is more to COVID-19's recovery than those with "long COVID."

This week I took a dive into the rising price of food and the way Subway has run afoul of labeling. Then I read a piece on the tradeoff between taking a risk and an abundance of caution.

This will come as a shock to you; it did for me. As a physician, not everyone followed my advice. In fact, some people sought second opinions choosing other paths and other physicians! Why would that be?!

Susan Goldhaber resurrected this long-forgotten issue, so let’s take another look. Having spent a good portion of my time at Brookhaven National Laboratory working on the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP), I come with a certain amount of nostalgia. My disclaimer: since this work was on behalf of the Department of Energy, I confess to being more interested in BTUs than aquatic life. 

When the universe formed, there was hydrogen, helium with a light smattering of lithium – every atom in the universe heavier than a lithium atom was created inside a star. Stars like our Sun can produce atoms up to about the mass of iron. Every heavier atom formed in one of the rare stars heavy enough to end their lives in the titanic explosion of a supernova. 

Twenty-six million children and 480,000 buses travel over 6 billion miles every school year. Add to this mix, many children can have asymptomatic COVID-19 and could act as transmitters, creating a possible superspreader event. But at least one study says not so fast.

The picture tells the story. 'Nuff said.