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When I was young, my dad used to tell me, “The more you know, the more you are capable of knowing.” I think it was his way of encouraging me to read. And it worked. But what does that have to do with science?

The height of absurdity may have been reached in a recent article about how the firefighters’ union is warning its members about the health risks from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in their protective gear. “We need to combat what’s killing us,” said the union president.  

The World Health Organization (WHO) has updated its recommendations on stockpiling medications to be used in the aftermath of a radiological or nuclear attack or a nuclear power plant emergency. It seems like an excellent opportunity to review some of the different types of “anti-radiation” meds and what they do.

Since the second quarter of 2021, pharmacists have administered over 90% of all adult vaccines. Therefore, we need to ensure that laws allowing them to provide all ACIP-recommended, and/or FDA-approved, vaccines are adopted and maintained in every state. This is critical to address the healthcare equity issue, since low-income communities which are over-represented by racial and ethnic minorities have far better access to pharmacies than physician offices.

In 1983 the US Public Health Service recommended that “Sexually active homosexual and bisexual men with multiple partners” refrain from donating blood. In 1986, all gay men were banned from donating blood. In 2013, the AMA stated the ban was “discriminatory and not based on sound science.” Have the bans been completely eliminated? Is the blood supply safe?

Now that the political drama around gas stoves has waned, it's time to discuss the science. Here's what all the talking heads got wrong. Does secondhand weed smoke cause asthma? Maybe, though the most recent study cited as evidence isn't all that rigorous.

Gold is a noble element, one so chemically stable that it’s found untarnished in the ground. But under some conditions, it can be converted to gold salts, which were the standard of care for rheumatoid arthritis. However, gold salts – which are quite toxic –have been replaced with a number of superior immunosuppressive drugs over the past two decades. The Golden Age of gold salts is over.

The Texas Two-Step is a law allowing for the creation of a corporation that subsequently files for bankruptcy, thereby allowing product liability claims to move into bankruptcy court. J&J was the latest corporate filer until a federal judge said, not so fast.

Lessons from the immune system
The silent Award Season is upon us
How music touches us
For Thom, saving coffee from warming, global warming

The simple formulation "calories in vs. calories out," somewhat explains weight gain or loss. A new study takes a deeper look at four components of calorie intake and how they change across various dietary patterns. Are tasty hyper-palatable foods the “Great Satan?”

Debunking bad science can be difficult. The misdirection, false assumptions, and biased narratives are often nuanced or built upon a series of citations requiring the debunker to go down the rabbit hole to find the underlying “truth.” Why is it so much harder to counter lies than to tell them?

The VA wants to allow optometrists to perform some eye surgery on veterans. That's like letting the technician who changes oil at the local drive-through Oil Pal do a tune-up on a $200,000 Lamborghini.

The most recent scare by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) over PFAS in freshwater fish was picked up by CNN and all the major news organizations and presented as fact. But the EWG models skew the results. There are other ways that EWG uses deceptive means to reach its conclusions and deliver the scariest outcomes possible. 

Deaths of despair, death from alcoholism, drug overdoses, and suicides have become a consistent explanation for the increasing mortality in middle-aged White males. A new viewpoint calls our attention to the deaths of despair among Native Americans.

Most of us would say “good” after little deliberation, as would virtually all of the media, but no purveyor of motor fuels would agree, and number crunchers would say, “it depends.”

Sweden garnered both intense criticism and high praise for its conservative pandemic response. How did the country's COVID-19 outcomes compare to those of the US and other countries? From deforestation to climate change and pollution, headline after headline warns that we're rapidly destroying our planet. These scandalous assertions are out of step with the latest evidence.

Original Antigenic Sin (OAS) is the “tendency of individuals exposed to a given strain of influenza to respond with antibodies that react more strongly to the first strain of influenza they had met in early childhood than to the exposure strain itself.” A new study in Nature tries to unravel the reason for that propensity and tells us something about vaccines and boosters.

There is no longer any doubt that drinking alcohol raises the risk of multiple cancers. Why alcohol? What's it doing to us? And an episode of The Dreaded Chemistry Lesson From Hell. No extra charge!

Let’s put an end to doomscrolling for our own sake
Abandon ship!
Pizza boxes
Another lesson from trees

“Eating one bass is equivalent to drinking PFOS-tainted water for a month.” Those are the words of Scott Faber, senior VP for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group. That is the message of a study by the EWG, carefully crafted to instill fear and drive regulatory science. It requires a carefully crafted response – here is mine.

Have you noticed that the names of new drugs are not merely obnoxious; they are also bizarre? As if drug companies hired consultants with a complete disdain for the English language? Quviviq? Ukoniq? Seriously? The people (mostly women) who broke the Nazi secret code in WWII couldn't handle this. Plus assorted other rants.

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, including those large language systems (e.g., ChatGPT), is gaining much traction. When “teaching for the test,” one system passed the U.S. Medical License Exam – a three-component test that's required in order to earn an MD degree. Will doctors be among the first white-collar (white-coat?) workers to be replaced by automation?

Suicide - with or without medical assistance - is now available not only for those with terminal illness but for those suffering chronic conditions, mental illness (to be allowed in Canada beginning in March), or otherwise feel life is just not worth living. Some are against the practice - not just for fear of its overuse, but for its reflections on society. The libertarians are in an uproar. So, who’s right?

Editors at the journal Nature Medicine recently asked researchers and public health experts from around the world to identify clinical trials that will shape medicine in 2023.  They came up with a varied list of candidates, from cervical and prostate cancer screening protocols to gene therapy for muscular dystrophy and new drugs for Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.  The selections are arbitrary and idiosyncratic, but they are interesting, nevertheless. 

Every time you walk down a grocery store aisle, you are impacted by one of the most interesting federal regulations, FDA’s Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) rule. You might assume that the FDA has tested every ingredient in the food, but the GRAS rule allows the food industry to bring a wide array of substances to the market based on their history as being “generally recognized” as safe.