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In case you haven’t noticed, the coronavirus is still with us. The First Lady has COVID-19, and cases and hospitalizations are rising. Some people where I live are wearing masks, and one of them has Long Covid. The virus is likely in our sanitary sewer systems, and we are responsible for putting it there.

The COVID-19 pandemic flooded the public with both reporting and original scientific research. It was inescapable. Many people waded into these waters, if not for the first time, certainly more than ever before. If you’ve ever tried to read a published peer-reviewed scientific paper, you know how daunting it can be. Jargon, dry language, and difficult-to-understand tables and figures make it cumbersome to wade through. Additionally, most people are not trained in statistics, research methodology, and critical thinking. It’s enough to make people give up and make science seemingly inaccessible.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina and its devastation resulted in manslaughter charges against Dr. Anna Pou, along with a host of civil actions for murder. Dr. Pou received an AMA commendation for the same activities she was charged with.

Given the evident mental impairment and startling ignorance of certain politicians, maybe the nation's law- and policy-making would benefit from politicians undergoing voluntary periodic testing of mental status and intelligence.

Even as we find ourselves in a new wave of COVID-19, the politicizers and minimizers of the pandemic won't let up. They continue to spread disinformation about both the effectiveness and safety of masks.

In order to prevent "pharmacy shopping" – something that is now pretty much impossible anyhow – the DEA has insisted that prescriptions for scheduled drugs sent to one pharmacy (or refills) be picked up at that same pharmacy, not transferred to another one, no matter how inconvenient that may be. Well, guess what? Officials "listened" to "commenters" and made a very small concession. How kind of them!

Remember the Marshmallow experiment? That's the one to see how long a child could hold out against the temptation to eat a marshmallow, correlated with an enhanced ability at delayed gratification and later adult success. A new study looks at children with different behaviors, oppositional and antisocial. How did they fare?

Why do we get sick?
Why are factory farms exempt?
Why does adoption seem more difficult than IVF?
Are shoppers more angry?

As a vascular surgeon, the underlying physics explaining the biological system we care for, our arteries and veins, is well understood. But in many instances, the systems we built to carry fluids in the real world have been based more on “the laws of physics” than the “lessons of biology.”

Microbiomes are the collective and highly personal assortment of microorganisms that live in, on, and around us. If genetically modified effectively, these "black boxes" may help us cure cancer, understand how we can adapt to rising temperatures, play a role in mental health, and improve nutrition in children.

I still remember the thrill I felt when I made my first scientific discovery – feeling that the late nights and hard work had all been worth it. I remember, too, the feeling that, at that moment, I knew something that nobody else – anywhere – knew or had ever known. It was a heady feeling. And then I wanted to tell everyone!

“It never made sense for the DEA to list marijuana as a Schedule I drug. Making it a Schedule III controlled substance will make researching the drug’s medicinal uses easier. But it still makes federal criminals of the millions of adults who have been using marijuana recreationally for millennia and makes as much sense as it does to require people to get a prescription to ingest beer, wine, or whiskey.”

My background is in public health, and I love the idea of making healthcare accessible for everyone, but health coaching, exemplified by the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN), in its current state, is not healthcare. It’s the Wild West of healthcare, and we need a sheriff.

Perhaps you've seen the television ads asking women whether they know about VMS. Pharma has wrapped an old symptom – the hot flashes associated with menopause – in its medical description: vasomotor symptoms. Of course, now that it's a “medically recognized” condition, it follows that medical therapy and its payment should be covered costs.

Remember plant-based meats? Ok, then how about plant-based yogurt? Roughly 6.3% of the dairy consumed finds its way into yogurt. The environmental footprint of the producers of that yogurt is significant. How does plant-based yogurt measure up nutritionally against the classic?

Reporters like to portray themselves as truth tellers who hold the powerful accountable. In reality, many of them are hired guns who publish propaganda under the guise of doing journalism. The good news is that a growing number of Americans are abandoning the legacy media for better sources of information.

The rising tide of nearsightedness.
Given a choice, I would rather shop online rather than in person. How come?
Are big box stores the new main street?
We are not the center of the universe.

I’ve been fascinated with the Manhattan Project since high school. I’m taking a break from my usual articles to give you my take on Oppenheimer, the movie.

Whether it's better in the mind’s eye to know one’s biological origins (if born of a donated sperm or egg) – or not – is the subject of much debate. The answer depends on where you were born.

The deluge of the use of the term "natural" for product promotion continues unabated. But perhaps it's getting stale because KinderFarms, Jessica Biel's company, is selling stuff like Tylenol and Benadryl with the promise of avoiding "artificial petrochemicals." That ignores the fact that these drugs are all made from just that. Nope, no kindness or farms. Just another misleading ad campaign.

Wegovy and Ozempic, both GLP-1 agonists, have taken the world by storm, providing a simple way to lose weight without changing our lifestyle. A new report in Science helps us understand what we do not know: the known unknowns of obesity. Let me summarize.

Another week, another disparity of care. In this case, it's attributable to a measure known to be flawed: pulse oximetry. Does the flaw lie solely in the tool – or how it is used? Let’s take a deeper dive into the latest study of healthcare disparity.

If you’ve been following the news, you’ll have noticed that Japan started discharging its tritiated water into the ocean last week, over the objections of China and South Korea and with the concurrence of the International Atomic Energy Agency. I noticed there were a few comments on my recent ACSH piece on this matter and thought I’d address a few of the points raised in the comments.

Recent breakthroughs in stem-cell have raised the prospect of one day "breeding" humans and growing organs in a lab. How realistic are these scenarios? Netflix just released an embarrassing miniseries about the opioid epidemic. Let's take a closer look at the show's claims.

Wildfire smoke has been in the news this summer, with horrifying accounts of damage and chaos but little about public health. As a long-time student of environmental health and given the extensive reports of unhealthy air, I wondered why we have not heard about adverse air pollution impacts from these events, especially here in the crowded cities of the Northeast. Google reports no civilian deaths from the Canadian fires and only 1 in California this year.