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A ruling last May in the UK Court of Appeal may have set an important precedent – that genetic testing extends the duty of a healthcare professional beyond the patient. Yet, extending that duty also risks damaging the underlying trust between doctor and patient. 

These type of studies are increasingly found in the literature. But for many of us, the research approach is new, and it's hard to separate the good from the bad. So here are the basics of how these studies work, along with their benefits and limitations. 

Plastic pollution in the ocean is almost exclusively due to the actions of Asia and Africa, not the United States. Banning straws and plastic bags will do nothing to solve the problem.

The pediatric group recently issued a policy statement riddled with chemophobic nonsense. Why are officials there whining so much? Here's why.

With so many 50-and-older adults having already received the first of a two-part vaccination, there's simply not enough of the medicine, called Shingrix, to go around. Instead of getting their second shot to complete the series, what many have received instead is a spot on a waiting list. But the manufacturer of the promising anti-shingles vaccine says it's ramping up production to meet "unprecedented” demand.

Despite staggering temperatures mostly in the Southwestern U.S., we're doing a relatively good job of guarding our safety, which includes using air-conditioning whenever possible. And while AC is more accessible in this country because energy is relatively cheap and affordable, it appears a connection can be made linking this safety to low-cost natural gas.

Given that insurers use backdoor access to your data (and the law has been unable to keep up, to prevent it), you may want to pay cash before you purchase your next bag of chips or condoms. And you ought to think twice when completing forms seeking demographic data on your race, or when you make a formal name change.

Medicare wants to change how much physicians are paid for office visits. And physician societies worry about how much their constituents' income is impacted. Did anyone notice that physicians are being put on the clock, like every other assembly-line worker? 

Europeans, who overwhelmingly claim to accept the science consensus on climate change, deny a far stronger consensus on biotechnology and believe GMOs are a crime against nature because a gene has been precisely modified by scientists.

There's "transplant commercialism" and “transplant tourism,” which sees patients travel abroad for transplants they might struggle to otherwise obtain quickly. Meanwhile, the global reach of social media makes it increasingly easy for organs to be offered for sale online. How common is this, and what are the larger implications? 

Monitors that continuously measure glucose levels have been recently approved for clinical use by the FDA. They are making patients' lives better, and they may provide us with a new way to better understand the dysregulation of glucose metabolism.

From the supposed need to take more time off, to accusations of being less productive on the job, there are plenty of falsehoods surrounding workers over the age of 50. Let's take a look at these dubious claims – and put them to bed once and for all.

Physicians, on average, interrupt their patients within the first 11 seconds of their visit. They do so when patients are discussing their "agendas." Is this bad manners or bad medicine?

After two decades of very tough research, Big Bad Pharma finally came up with a cure for hepatitis C – a viral liver infection that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer. So, are liver cancer rates dropping? No. That's because young Americans are drinking so much that they are destroying their livers. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals just delivered another blow to a rather-clever-but-cunning play by Allergan, the pharmaceutical giant, to game the patent system.

Plants, marine organisms and bacteria have the capacity to biosynthesize extraordinarily complex organic molecules. Those are the ones that drive chemists nuts when they try to make them synthetically. Here's the story of monensin, an antibiotic used in livestock. While it's a monumental effort to make it in the lab, bacteria can make it in their sleep. 

A new study says that the overdose-reversing drug increases opioid use, and doesn't reduce opioid-related mortality, overall, because it provides users with a “safety net” and thus encourages riskier drug use. But a public health researcher argues that it's a vital tool in fighting the overdose epidemic and too often it's hard to get when it's needed the most.

Since pets are in such close proximity to many more humans, they’re actually more likely than farm animals to transfer resistant bacteria – mainly through saliva or skin contact. Pets risk becoming reservoirs of resistant microbes that spill over into their owners with disastrous effects.

For do-gooders, the ends justify the means. Do-gooders believe they are saving the world, therefore any tactic is completely defensible. In Santa Barbara, selling a drink with a plastic straw could result in a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. 

Complementary medicine ranges from authentic stress-relieving massage to well-meaning (but expensive) placebo, to outright spurious healing claims. Researchers decided to study its impact on patients with curable cancers.

1. Jamie Wells, MD, testified at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week in favor of more transparency in science. The debate over putting an end to "secret science" and "sue-and-settle" agreements is solely a political one, but that has not prevented some scientists from circling the wagons defending a lack of transparency at the agency.

For every 1o C increase in temperature, the risk of suicide also increases by 1 percent to 37 percent. In general, heat tends to exacerbate previously existing mental illness and drug misuse.

Some activists are claiming that a "cocktail" of harmless chemicals is somehow doing something greater than the individual harmless chemicals can. These people don't just deny chemistry, toxicology and biology. They deny simple arithmetic.

While aspirin has been shown to be effective in reducing the risk of cardiovascular events, there have previously been no dosage recommendations tailored to a person's weight. But a new study indicates that a weight needs to be considered to improve helpful outcomes and prevent any harmful effects from occurring.

More American drivers are dying in drug-related car crashes than they are from collisions involving just alcohol.