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The American Medical Association claims the body mass index (BMI) is "white supremacist" medicine, and the CDC says men can breastfeed babies. The public health establishment seems to have lost its grip on reality. How did this happen?

A recent photo published on a local community bulletin board shows some maniac snorkeling in the Bronx River, a former toilet of New York Coty. What could he be looking for? Turds? Or worse ... Yankee tickets?

Five years after the driver of Uber’s autonomous car killed a pedestrian, the driver pleaded guilty to one count of reckless endangerment and was sentenced to no prison time, just three years of supervised probation. The law is designed to fill a deterrence function and mete-out punishment for wrongdoing. So, did the law serve its function here? Does the law appropriately address these new technologies?

To space and beyond
A tale of statistics
Are we part of Earth’s microbiome?
The astronomical cost of drugs for rare orphan diseases

Is the “moral injury” experienced by physicians self-inflicted?
Even chocolate is a monopoly
No Brown M&Ms
The power of checklists

Stressors, be they physical or spiritual, are often incited as causative factors in a variety of illnesses, including cancer. The effect of those stressors on our physiology can be passed on to our children, as studies of holocaust survivors have found. The integrated stress response (ISR) is a signaling network that bridges those stressors and the physiologic reactions within our cells. How can chemicals remember?

Shinrin-yoku, also known as a "forest bath," originated in Japan and it's believed to enhance one’s well-being while helping “connect” with nature. It involves immersing oneself in a forest or natural environment and mindfully engaging with the surroundings through the senses. Western medicine offers “nature prescriptions” – the walk with or without the mindfulness. Does it improve our health?

The creation of sperm in mammals, known as spermatogenesis, is critically impacted by temperature. A very small increase results in a significant reduction in the little swimmers. Peto’s paradox points out that larger animals with more cells – and, therefore, a greater risk of mutation – have less chance of cancer than smaller animals. A new hypothesis connects these two seemingly unrelated dots.

The Golden State instituted a program to reduce carbon emissions to 40% below 1990 levels (the cap), by providing carbon credits to account for those excess carbon emissions (the trade). Economists worried that the job loss associated with industries with excess carbon emissions would not be offset by increasing jobs in “green” industries. A new study reports mixed results.

I’ve been visiting doctors lately, and my blood pressure has been recorded many times. Some days it is 140/80; other days, it is 200/110. Why could that be? And what does it tell us about healthcare and BIG DATA?

As fewer individuals pick up cigarettes, more are picking up vape cartridges. Over time, some smokers move on to vaping, while some vapers move on to smoking; the gate swings in both directions. Does perhaps the gate swing more one way or another? Authors of a new study offer what they've learned.

Oppenheimer and the “Gita”
Releasing the nukes
Where have all the Dinosaurs gone?
The return of the paper bag

An allergy to the sugar galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose “alpha-gal” – which causes an allergy to red meat and is spread by a tick – has “climbed 41%” over four years. To add to our fears, the media reported, “42% of health care providers didn’t know about the syndrome, and another 35% weren’t too confident about how to diagnose and treat it.” Is the meat apocalypse upon us? Have the cows found a way to make us eat less of them and more vegetables?

COVID-19, a respiratory virus, often begins in viruses trapped in our nose and upper respiratory tracts. While universal precautions in healthcare settings require frequent handwashing, enforcing that requirement is lax, and compliance is often low. A new study reports on rhinotillexis, the act of “extracting nasal mucus with one’s finger,” and subsequent mucophagy, the ingestion of said mucus, among healthcare workers in the Netherlands.   

"The United States needs resilient, diverse, and secure supply chains to ensure our economic prosperity and national security.” – Executive Order #14017
“The pandemic and recent supply chain disruptions have revealed the perils of a national food system that depends on capacity concentrated in a few geographic areas and requires many steps to get from farm to fork. In order to be more resilient, the food system of the future needs to be more distributed and local.” – the USDA response.

It is seemingly such an easy question: if I need an ambulance, what will it cost me? Unfortunately, there's only a complex answer, summarized as “it depends.”

Shionogi just purchased Qpex. When I inquired about this, the Qpex folks told me that Shionogi is a company truly committed to the antibiotics space. What I found was truly inspiring! This is a real feel-good story! How often does that happen for antibiotics?

Johnson’s Baby Powder once conjured cooing babies, satiny-smooth skin, and wholesome purity. But claims the talc was contaminated with asbestos invoked the fear of cancer, leading to thousands of personal injury suits and millions of dollars in damages, which relied on expert testimony for support. Denying any causal connection, J&J’s spin-off declared bankruptcy but now is fighting back – suing doctors whose “research” shored up the awards. While J&J has a right to protect its product brand, don’t doctors have the right to free speech?

It is virtually impossible to walk a single block in New York City without seeing stores selling CBD oil. The Drug Gods haven't frowned upon CBD yet because it won't get you high. But CBD frequently contains delta-9-THC, the primary psychotropic component of marijuana, and that will get you high. Can CBD oil get you in trouble? Maybe.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly important role in health care. This could lower costs and streamline patient interactions—but the technology has a dark side, too. Critics of "ultra-processed" food often claim that certain snacks aren't even food. Let's debunk this myth, with a special focus on Pop-Tarts.

Earlier this month, the headline “New Study Finds PFAS 'Forever Chemicals' in Drinking Water from 45% of Faucets Across US” led many news reports. That's after 32 individual PFAS were tested and found in both private and public water supplies, presenting potential hazards to our nation’s health. What did the study really say?

A Fish Tale
The Ancients on Public Life
Hester Prynne, cancel culture’s first victim?
Should I get a COVID booster?

One of the judgments made by scientists is how to aggregate or segregate data – especially when it comes to changing a continuous variable like age – into separate bins (10 to 18, 19 to 34, etc.). Race/ethnicity as a category has come in for some well-deserved criticism. Leave aside the argument that it is a social construct, race/ethnicity contains too many confounding features. A study in Nature points to a new way to break the category into meaningful segments.

Roughly 99.5% of people born before 1980 are infected with herpes zoster, yet only 33% will develop its clinical manifestation: shingles. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that 98% of people in the U.S. have been infected with COVID, but roughly 30% of our population has been symptomatic to the extent that they are registered as “cases.” It's time to discuss the infection enigma - “the puzzling observation that only a small minority of infected people die from infection or even develop clinical disease.”

A study confined to COVID deaths in Florida and Ohio suggests that the Grim Reaper’s “excess” deaths, when stratified by political party, came for Republicans more often than Democrats.