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There are thousands of chemicals, mostly dyes, used to create tattoos. Some of them are known carcinogens. Although the tattoo-cancer link is weak, people who are worried can get them removed. But the lasers that remove tattoos react with some inks and produce a different set of carcinogens—a strange but interesting problem.

For years, we’ve heard that social media is dangerous- especially to kids. The data was sketchy, but the anecdotal reports horrific - the perfect ground for band-aid remedies, poorly thought-out responses, inadequate legislation, and lawyers trolling for personal injury clients. But now, it seems a new threat has been detected: Addiction. Is it real? Other countries seem to think so.

Recent news reports alleged that new research has found a link between "forever chemicals" and liver cancer. This was an exaggeration of the results, to say the very least.

Much of the planet is now in the grips of a severe drought. This has prompted China to try cloud seeding to try to squeeze some water from the clouds. Is this real? Does it work? The Dreaded Chemistry Lesson From Hell is included at no extra charge.

Recent news reports have spurred concern that just touching fentanyl can be dangerous. Let's take a look at the chemistry behind this claim. Comedian Bill Maher recently attacked the fat-acceptance movement as a danger to public health, sparking ferocious criticism on social media. Sadly, few people recognized the most important point about Maher's commentary: he was right.

Recently, Contrafect, an antibiotic biotech company developing a novel product for the treatment of severe staphylococcal infections, suffered a failure in its phase 3 trial. The trail was designed to show the superiority of its new drug over standard treatments. Why is it so hard to show that one antibiotic works better than another in a clinical trial?

Is the U.S. heading for even more trouble from drug overdose deaths? Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and ACSH advisor, says yes. Modelers have predicted that ODs will accelerate because of even stronger fentanyl analogs and also due to mixing drugs that should not be mixed. Anyone still blaming the overprescribing of opioid analgesics for our soaring deaths should read this.

Climate change is real; we contribute to it. But warmer temperatures aren't driving unprecedented increases in the number of heart attacks we suffer.

The last several months have been … interesting … at Europe’s largest nuclear energy station. Last March, Russian troops took control of the 6-reactor site, causing some damage during the battle and raising fears of a wider catastrophe. Several months passed, during which the Ukrainian operators continued running the reactors under the direction of Russian, providing power to their part of Ukraine; this interregnum came to a halt this summer when the Russians established a full-blown military base on the power site and began launching attacks from there, and disconnecting most of the power lines leading into the plant from the electrical grid.

Reporters have turned yet another study's underwhelming results into exaggerated headlines about the cognitive benefits of fruit consumption. Let's take a closer look at the paper in question.

Take a deep breath
Food strikes back and tries to kill you
Dr. John Ioannidis, pre-pandemic, on public health communication

Catastrophism in the media and our lives
Friendship and politics
Why do Americans own so many guns

The “hard problem” – nuclear waste
Our bookshelves speak to our inner nature.
A sustainable diet is not a choice of meat or plants; it is meat and plants.

Most of our previous COVID-19 analyses focused on national and regional trends. A recent article indicated that the pandemic might be entering a new period of less lethal infections [1]. This trend might relate to a new variant, exposure differences, or additional vaccination acceptance. Here we draw on weekly state-level data to explore such relationships, including two other COVID-19 metrics: percentages of positive tests and rates of hospitalization.

In the very early years of open-heart surgery, when the supply of surgeons failed to meet the demand for their services, the giants of cardiovascular surgery would walk from operating room to operating room carrying out the delicate, critical parts of care and leaving their trainees to open or close the patient’s chest. This was an early form of overlapping surgery. It would not be its last. As the waiting list for surgery in the UK’s National Health System exceeds six million, two anesthesiologists attempt a pre-emptive cautioning against adopting overlapping surgery.

Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and the District of Columbia have Death with Dignity legislation. Arizona, Delaware, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Rhode Island all have active legislation under consideration. California and Vermont have amended legislation. All told, 74 million individuals live in states with Medical Aid in Dying and 87 million more in states considering this legislation. A new paper looks at who has availed themselves of these services.

In the first year of medical school, the first lecture in any class often began by explaining why this was the most crucial subject. I learned that the skin was important because it kept all the other pieces inside and that the intestine was the most important because when you spread out its inner surface, it would cover the globe. I even learned that the brain was the most important, but as George Carlin pointed out, “Look who is telling you that.” In any event, a new study tries to determine which disease is most important to us based on linguistic analysis. You are going to love this.

Physicians frequently overestimate the probability that a diagnosis or intervention would be helpful. Are they overly optimistic? Are the cynical correct in assuming that optimism hides a conflict of interest? Or are physicians no better than most of us at the mathematics of probability? A new study suggests we are not receiving a passing grade in that course.

When it comes to assaults, firearms get much attention, although there are many other means of mayhem. That includes knives in stabbings and using blunt objects, including fists; guns are just the most efficient at causing injury and death. A new study looks at the healthcare costs for assaults. Why should you care? Because in the world of city budgets, we should at least consider these expenses when we redefine where policing policies are directed. 

1988 Seoul, South Korea. Olympic diver Greg Louganis attempts a reverse two-and-a-half pike and hears a “big hollow thud…” his head hitting the springboard. [1] A few stitches and he returns to ultimately claim the Gold Medal. Not all of us are that lucky. Can physics help us understand the risks?

Based on data gathered by the CDC, in 2020, the rate of suicide in the US population was 13 per 100,000, far more frequent in men (21 per 100,000) than in women (5.4 per 100,000). Firearms were the most common means, again higher amongst men than women. For fifty years, identifying the individuals at risk for suicide has been no better than a coin flip. A new study looks at whether there are markers that can improve the ability to identify the group of individuals using guns to take their life.

Sugar-sweetened beverages, SSBs, contain added sugar, or in some cases, noncaloric sweeteners, and are nonalcoholic. As global waistlines have increased, so have taxes on these “bad boy” products – now implemented in “45 countries, including numerous subnational local jurisdictions.” A systematic review considers the impact of these taxes on raising revenue and improving health.

For those of us working, or in my case, having worked in the medical community Don Berwick is a well-known gentleman. He is the former administrator of the Center for Medicare Services, President Emeritus of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and the author of healthcare’s triple aim – expanding care, improving quality, and lowering cost. He has a new message today, the Ten Teams.

McKinsey & Company, those highly paid consultants to entrepreneurs, corporations, and governments, make some general suggestions about “greening” our grocery stores. Let’s take a look at what they are suggesting.

Tracking cookies – those bite-size snippets of code that log your internet behavior – come in as many forms as recipes for chocolate chip cookies. They are ubiquitous on all commercial websites, but as it turns out they can often be found on governmental websites. How did that come to be? Part of Big Brother’s surveillance or could it be a quiet “smash and grab” by social media companies?