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A new paper provides solid evidence that the cause of the apparent uptick in celiac disease cases is not due to wheat breeding. So, the search for the real cause continues.

Despite the intentionally misleading title, soaking your nuts in chlorine isn't such a bad idea in this case. If you read about the "hygienic practices" of the Orangeburg Pecan Company, chlorine sounds pretty good. Hope you have a strong stomach.

Not unlike most trends, when the pendulum swings to an extreme, the overcorrection follows it. It's resulted in parenting by guidelines and legislation, which misses the big picture.

We understand that patients may be victims of medical error. But should physicians also consider themselves victims when the medical failure results in disability and death?

Does closer supervision of doctors in training result in greater patient safety? Does the practice make for better physicians? It seems that it's all about the stress and anxiety of taking off training wheels.

Infrastructure maintenance is not just an issue for bridges and roads. Sometimes the infrastructure that needs an update is how we assess risk, especially for patients where treatment continues to change.

Unless they're eradicated smallpox-style, infectious diseases never disappear. Like an unlucky penny, they can show up at any time. Three stories from around the U.S. serve to underscore a crucial lesson.

The tale of an eggplant's exit from the body. Always a fun experience! 

Blood, sperm and sometimes even organs are bought and sold. And now the next human-harvested commodity appears to be DNA. Two West Coast firms are entering the so-called "bio-broker" market, looking to buy your genetic data in order to re-sell it to pharmaceutical companies. It's all in the name of scientific research and drug discovery.

Thirty five years after graduating, ACSH President Hank Campbell returned to North Penn-Liberty High School in Pennsylvania to give the commencement speech honoring the Class of 2018. While noting that much has changed since he left, the basic challenges facing young people today have not.

When lawyers and marketing firms can directly target patients via their mobile phones – while, yes, even in the ER – the time is yesterday to preserve the once-presumed protected health information.

Synthetic cannabinoids are sometimes mixed with rat poison, which causes uncontrollable bleeding. So, as it turns out, the neighborhood drug dealer might not be a completely trustworthy individual.

Using data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Canadian researchers focusing on adult deaths for those aged 24 to 35 found that in 2016, the last year studied, 20 percent of all fatalities in this age group were opioid related. In 2001, the figure was just 4 percent.

There's a shortage of physicians needed to intervene in acute strokes. Cardiologists have the skills, but not the experience or judgment. Should they fill the gap? Will more patients be helped or harmed?

Reductionism is the basis for most science. Since so many factors can be involved, isolating them in a lab-bench experiment can yield valuable insights. For epidemiological studies, it doesn’t work as well.

Can the FDA's tactics – to impact the current opioid problem – also predict its successor? The goal is to head off escalation before problems are crises, and the move is a departure from the status-quo, reactive nature of prior policies.

This week, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, an NFL offensive lineman, graduated from McGill University’s medical school while an active player for the Kansas City Chiefs. In football's modern era, if not the NFL's entire history, his fascinating accomplishment – the first active player to hold a medical degree – appears to be unprecedented.

With the proposed consumer privacy initiative in California a reaction to internet data abuse, it's time, long overdue, to discuss the murky territory once-presumed-protected health information has entered.

French lawmakers gave President Emmanuel Macron an exit from his bizarre political promise last year about banning the safe, herbicide glyphosate. And Europeans, finally, have caught on to the junk science at Ramazzini Institute.

The ubiquitous, on-screen advertising about prescription drugs is highly structured by the FDA. That helps explain why the voice-over's claims and cautions are delivered so quickly at the end of the commercial. 

In our postmodern society – where truth is relative, "fake news" is prevalent, and scientific facts are just an opinion – it shouldn't come as a surprise that modern medicine is facing a backlash.

Keith Humphreys, a psychologist, writes about opioids for The Washington Post. But he has an unusual take on the matter. Does Humphreys know what he's talking about? Let's see. 

A word of caution: Combining marshmallows and lava is a bad idea. Some lost soul on Twitter asked the U.S. Geological Survey if they should engage in this cookout practice, and this is one time we agree with centralized government on science and health.

OK, folks. Time for a five-question pop quiz, based upon reading Access Imperative by McKinsey and Company. And for you overachievers out there, there's a bonus question for extra credit! Go for it.

How can we get more parents to vaccinate their kids? New correspondence in The Lancet may bring us one step closer to an answer, using its analysis of the human papillomavirus vaccination program that began in Ireland in 2010.