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YouTube has two billion active monthly users and uploads 500 hours of content every minute. Twenty five percent of U.S. adults get their news from YouTube, and 60% of regular users “use the platform to keep up with current events.” Since roughly 70% of all videos watched come from YouTube’s algorithm, it's fair to ask if it might be biased. A new study says it is, and that the algorithm leans left.

Once a long time ago, doctors made house calls. If you couldn’t reach the office, the doctor came to you. Telemedicine has been a pale but viable replacement. A new smartphone attachment brings a more helpful home visit closer to reality.

It's no secret that pickleball is a national craze. But, how many chemists are willing to try it and not only write about their experience but also the chemistry of the ball?

Americans need assurance of the availability of approved drugs and medical devices in the marketplace so that healthcare providers have more reliable inventory, experience fewer shortages, and more choices when shortages arise. Reciprocity of regulatory decisions would help to achieve that.

The Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley, lived most of their adult lives in a New York City brownstone at the corner of 5th Avenue and 128th Street. Today, their home is a “pocket park,” and the phrase “Collyer Mansion” is firehouse slang for “a dwelling jammed rafter-high with junk.” Together, let’s learn a bit about hoarding.

Too Much Stuff
Am I My Area Code?
Rules for reading – at least for social media

The Guardian's August 17 headline, “Drinking Water of Millions of Americans Contaminated with Forever Chemicals”, was based on newly released data from EPA’s Fifth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule. Contrary to the headlines blasted in the media, the actual data from this rule shows that Americans have nothing to fear from these chemicals.

Evidence-based medicine specifically seeks evidence for treatments, recommendations, and practice guidelines. However, while the spirit of evidence-based medicine is to be based on ethical and scientifically rigorous research, in practice, it is often simply shortened to “Is there any evidence at all?” 

Both scientific and policy advancements could provide desperately needed organs for transplantation. For example, there have been some promising early studies using kidneys from pigs genetically engineered to prevent rejection, but a policy change – paying human donors for donating organs – could be implemented immediately and would be a game changer.

Politicians need to seem to be doing SOMETHING, even if it is ill-advised, profligate, and futile, endangers Americans' standard of living and the nation's security. It applies to much of today's policymaking, from mitigation of climate change to the regulation of chemicals and genetic engineering.

In the Fall of 2021, the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine announced that “licensees may face disciplinary action should they “generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation.” Meryl J. Nass, MD, a Maine family practitioner, had her license suspended for this in January 2022. She is suing, claiming a first amendment right to her speech.

“Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.” It is a concept entangled in both Chinese and Japanese culture, and while difficult to explain well, especially for a novice understander like myself. It is a way of understanding, a particular lens on life.

There’s something about autism that invites scapegoating. The latest attack was on makers of Lexapro, the anti-depressant medication, when used during pregnancy. Six plaintiffs recruited three experts to testify to a supposed causal connection between the drug and their children’s affliction. The court rejected the expert testimony outright and dismissed the case. Three weeks ago, the Second Circuit affirmed. The decisions, while applaudable, are problematic.

Guess what we don't need: How about an inexpensive, addictive drug called fenethylline (aka captagon) that's pouring out of Syria and addicting hordes of people in Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries? If that's not bad enough, it's also used to make jihadist fighters more "effective." There's considerable concern that captagon could be headed to Europe and the U.S. And it's super easy to synthesize. Wonderful.

A new study of associations between incident dementia and air pollution caught my attention because air pollution studies like this have been driving me toward dementia for decades. Let’s unpack their findings.

The consumption of raw oysters is being discouraged in the New York area, thanks to the appearance of Vibrio vulnificus, aka, the flesh-eating bacteria. Although Vibriosis is (thankfully) very rare, it can also be very serious, even deadly. The exceptionally warm ocean temperatures this summer have allowed the bacteria to spread northward, where there has been one confirmed death from raw oysters and two others from skin infections. Is there anything to worry about here?

If alien life does not resemble ET or the Lead Alien in the eponymous movie, how will we recognize them once we meet? Assembly theory may offer a clue.

Greenpeace's longstanding, unwarranted, and vicious opposition to vitamin A-fortified rice has led to tens of thousands of deaths.

According to the Affordable Care Act, anyone needing emergency care is entitled to treatment. In 1985, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) was enacted to provide federal protection. Even so, insurers have tried to get around covering emergency services. The federal government has now muscled up, suing insurers for denying emergency coverage.

"[A] censorious report on National Public Radio, citing a poll, accuses Republican voters of being content to 'do nothing' about climate change. In fact, neither party proposes to do anything about climate change. Democrats propose to spend a lot more money doing nothing.” – Holman Jenkins, Wall Street Journal

"Painkiller" is a textbook example of a show clearly meant to sway public perceptions on a critical public health issue — even if that means lying to viewers along the way.

In 2017 I did an extensive search of Cochrane Reviews that addressed the efficacy (lack, really) of Tylenol (acetaminophen) in controlling pain. With few exceptions, it did little or nothing. In the six ensuing years, there have been more published data on the efficacy of the drug. And the message is the same.

A new study suggests that 25% of “marginalized” patients – Black, Hispanic, or insured by Medicaid – were “jumped over” by the less ill, or those arriving later in emergency departments. Are these disparities the result of the social construct of race? Could it be a “racism or classism” of institutions or personnel? Or could the term disparity be used to by authors to jump the publication line – to sooner rather than later?

“Policymakers embrace the neat, plausible, and wrong explanation for the overdose crisis because it is easier than accepting the inconvenient truth.”

On July 20, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the principal trade association for the chemical industry in the U.S., sued the EPA and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) over the EPA’s 2022 draft IRIS Assessment on Formaldehyde. Lawsuits against the EPA are not unique, but those including NASEM are another story.