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No matter how you slice it "Jamaican vomiting sickness" is something you want to avoid. You can do so by not eating the ackee fruit, a staple of that Caribbean nation – or at least waiting until it's ripe. Here's a lesson about metabolic toxicity wrapped in a mini-travelogue.

A long life free of disease and illness is preferable for many of us. The evolving science behind life expectancy gives us clues on how to achieve this goal by looking at eight risk factors – the ones most under your control – that can add years to your life and, evidently, life to your years.

Social media influencers (SMI) are a growing advertising market, returning nearly six dollars for every dollar invested – a return on investment of 5.78. These SMI are the next step in direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing. A new study looks at the patient influencers in healthcare.

That's a good question. Masks remain one of the non-pharmaceutical means of controlling the spread of infection. But how effective has COVID masking been in practice?

The recent Office of Science and Technology Policy report demonstrates that the federal government is not serious about feeding the country or developing a strong bioeconomy. The White House’s assessment contains decades-old unworkable initiatives. So we ask: Is the administration moving a ‘bold’ and ‘innovative’ agenda – or one simply focusing on climate initiatives, while China advances its bioeconomy?

Borlaug was a brilliant scientist and plant breeder, but the other secrets of his success were his perseverance and persuasiveness.

The shortage of Adderall, an important medication used to treat ADHD – attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder – is a story of supply, demand, the invisible hand of market forces. It’s also about a bureaucracy focused on regulation rather than outcome. It has all the hallmarks of the opioid crisis. We have learned nothing.

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 infections through many mammal species in the wild raises the specter of deer becoming a SARS-CoV-2 reservoir — a permanent home for the virus and a regular source of outbreaks in other animals, including humans.

Beethoven’s Hair
People vote with their feet
Repugnant transactions
All my brackets are busted bigtime

From the same folks who instigated the class action litigation over Zantac, we now have a new class action suit – this one claiming that dry shampoos contain dangerous levels of benzene, a known carcinogen.

The National Physician Residency Match pairs about-to-graduate medical students and some already graduated, to residency training programs, a necessary step in gaining a medical license. Physicians’ “Match madness” just ended, and self-congratulations and hand-wringing were found throughout the media.

A perceptive reader wrote, noting that I repeated a fictitious quotation of Francis Bacon. ChatGPT has been around for only a few months, and it seems I have already been fooled.

Twenty years ago, Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug wrote about agricultural biotechnology – its promise, importance, over-regulation, and the mindless opposition to it from activists. His words ring true today.

Time with your doctor is limited. Here are some ways to get the most out of your appointment and make your healthcare expenditure in time and money more cost-effective.

Social justice advocates continue to demand that professions like medicine become more "diverse." Critics contend this development could bring unqualified physicians into the profession and jeopardize public health. Should we be worried? The FDA wants to label certain foods in the grocery store "healthy." It's an awful idea.

Given the low mortality from slow-growing, localized prostate cancers and the side effects of many treatments, deciding whether to opt for monitoring or treatment can be excruciatingly difficult.

In order to prepare for the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 "variants of concern" or other epidemic coronaviruses, researchers are taking a variety of approaches to creating vaccines that will protect against not only known viruses but also against variants that have not yet appeared.

AI. Blah blah blah. You can’t turn on the news without hearing about it constantly. So I decided to see if it knew chemistry. With a few exceptions, it did very well. Even when I tried to trick it.

It's the end and beginning of an era. With this in mind, I provide a retrospective of blogs going back over a decade.

While they could have gone even further, Senators Markey and Paul, and Representatives Norcross and Bacon deserve praise for stepping outside the box to address opioid addiction and overdoses.

A few years ago, I consciously decided to forgo eating octopus because it was "too intelligent.” But I continue to eat pork, arguably as intelligent because it is “so tasty.” That led – tongue firmly in cheek – to the taste-to-intelligence ratio test.

Long COVID will take a toll on the nation's healthcare system for the foreseeable future, but we can reduce new cases by treating acute COVID infections with a commonly prescribed, inexpensive medicine.

Whenever I think of Teddy Roosevelt, I imagine a hyper-talkative exuberant extrovert. He was known as an environmentalist, historian, and writer, but sadly his contributions to public health are obscured by his “larger than life” personality.

The New York Times devoted most of an opinion column to this ill-posed question. That's because concerning an airborne virus such as COVID-19, there are more relevant questions: How do masks work? When should they be used?

With much fanfare, the EPA announced the proposed drinking water regulations for two “forever chemicals,” PFOA and PFOS. EPA Administrator Michael Regan said, “Communities across the country have suffered far too long from the ever-present threat of PFAS pollution. That is why President Biden launched a whole-of-government approach to aggressively confront these harmful chemicals, and EPA is leading the way forward.”