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Perhaps you’re familiar with the sentiment about how a child's behavior is often transformed into how they act as an adult. A new study finds a connection between some early lifestyle and health choices and later-life concerns.

They are the foundation of the CDC's 2016 opioid guidelines, resulting in legislation that limits opioid prescribing in 36 states. Morphine milligram equivalents, or MMEs, are used to set arbitrary prescribing limits for opioids by physicians, since many state legislators fail to understand – and translate into policy and law – the ‘16 guidelines. If we had all known the history of MMEs, perhaps we would not have been so eager to embrace them.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to what's been described as heavy fighting at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, near the Ukraine-Belarus border. There have also been reports of rising radiation levels in some places, and concerns about possible damage to the entombed reactor that was damaged in the 1986 accident.

Horseshoe crabs, those almost pre-historic-looking creatures that we occasionally see washed up on the shore, hold a special place in medicine. But that's about to change.

Here is the headline: Covid may raise the risk of diabetes in children, CDC researchers reported. [1] Of course, the study comes with more caveats than what’s in the article. So, what actually did the CDC find, and what does it mean?

There’s considerable discussion about whether COVID vaccines are responsible for the barrage of variants that keep hitting us. Is selective pressure driving this – like with bacteria and antibiotics? Let's take a look.

A 105-carat diamond, giving the moon its props! A belated Valentine’s Day present and a video of NY City 77 years ago.

The Michelson Philanthropy Prize in Immunology was awarded on Feb. 24 to Dr. Paul Bastard at the Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris. Why should you care? Because his work helps us better understand the biology of why some die from COVID-19, while others are seemingly – and are – immune.

The Olympics (mercifully) is over. There were four doping incidents, one of which was a doozy. So this is a fine time to discuss a lesser-known class of drugs called SARMs? These drugs are not anabolic steroids, but they act very much like them. (Bodybuilders love them, too.)

A new study in JAMA Network Open is a follow-up to a 2015 study done by the same researchers. The questions are: Do you store loaded guns at home? Are they locked or not? Do you store guns that are loaded and unlocked? This is not about the right to bear arms, but the responsibility to store them safely around children.

In considering traumatic deaths, firearms have overtaken motor vehicle collisions as the primary cause of lost potential years of life. This is not the gun violence that captures the headlines; it is the slow daily attrition we have, in large part, to which we have become numb.

There’s a new study of the benefits of eating your vegetables. It has the usual measurement problems – and concludes that vegetables are good for your health. But it clarifies the issue that your food selection has little effect, as compared to your other life choices.

Should organic farmers grow gene-edited crops? A leading figure in the agroecology movement says "yes"—and so does the generation of environmentalists following in his footsteps.

The media reports the results of sloppy vaping research, then quickly forgets them. We do not. What follows is a list of many of the low-quality studies that have investigated the alleged health risks of e-cigarette use. We'll regularly update this catalog of bad studies as necessary.

Although the 2022 revision of the 2016 CDC Opioid Prescribing Advice is an improvement over the original document, it still refers to Morphine Milligram Equivalents (MME) as a guide to physicians. Unfortunately, this number does not accurately reflect the relative strength of opioid painkillers. Dr. Jeff Singer and I explain why in a new op-ed in the NY Daily News.

In the mood for a lesson on drug-drug interactions? I didn't think so. But you got one anyhow. Might as well read it, no?

Pull incentives to fix the broken antibiotic marketplace – like a subscription payment of several billion dollars per needed antibiotic – are finally going to be implemented in 2032. What happens then? But before we get there … a brief word about blogging on Google’s Blogger.

Separating rights from responsibilities, framing, following the science? Stealing our privacy through our games.

Infection of a vaccinated person is referred to as a “breakthrough” case. Such cases are infrequent, but they raise questions about the long-term efficacy of vaccination. Here we examine some of the available breakthrough data.

The American public has been concerned with radiation safety as far back as the tragic story of the “Radium Girls,” female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with self-luminous paint between 1917 and 1920. While there is substantial data demonstrating powerful carcinogenesis from high-dose radiation, e.g., an atomic bomb explosion, can small doses of radiation cause cancer? Some believe that they can.

A new paper from Johns Hopkins suggests that lockdowns had minimal impact on our health based on a meta-analysis of the effects of lockdowns on COVID-19. With blood in the water, partisan lines were quickly drawn. “Fox News has charged that there's been a ‘full-on media blackout,’" and the medical media, while not quite as hyperbolic, were dismissive because it was a pre-print, by economists, using a poor sample of studies. One more important note, the paper is 64 pages long, so who among all those reporters and experts actually read the paper? I did. [1]

An unexpected delay in the FDA's authorization of COVID shots for children under age 5 could amplify parents' existing concerns about vaccinating their kids. Here's what we know about the situation.

“[From] mid-July through mid-November, 2021, more than one million individuals with COVID-19 were admitted to hospitals, 156,382 of them died of COVID-19 complications. Most of these hospital admissions and patient deaths were preventable through… vaccines.” [1] But vaccine resistance continues to be strong, persuasion, as I’ve written, is ineffective on a large enough scale, and those opposing mandates speak loudly. The situation is likely to continue. If vaccine-resistant intransigence is entrenched, will mandates work?

To discuss the Draft CASAC Report on EPA’s Draft Supplement to the 2019 Integrated Science Assessment (ISA) for PM and the Draft CASAC Report on EPA’s Draft PM Policy Assessment (PA).

As of January 25, 2022, some 40% of Americans [1] have not been fully vaccinated. [2] This, notwithstanding valiant efforts for over a year at persuading vaccine uptake.  The impacts are now apparent. The US death toll [3] is averaging 2500 cases a day – and rising, at least for now.  Because of widespread vaccine resistance, the President has attempted to mandate vaccines. In addition to those refusing vaccines, we now have a separate group of individuals who oppose vaccine mandates.