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Pregnancy means letting go of some of your favorite things — temporarily. As she wraps up her fifth month of pregnancy, here's what ACSH's Ana Dolaskie says she misses most. Hint: It rhymes with "shmeer."

Researchers are challenging the widely-held belief that those on the autism spectrum choose not to make eye contact largely due to indifference for the other party. Instead, they believe the behavior is not a product of conscious decision making – but instead it's based on an involuntary neurological reaction taking place.

When it comes to coconut oil, the greasy stuff is best used on your skin, not melted in a pan meant for eating. The 100% fat in this oil isn't healthier than olive oil, or any other cooking oil. Has mainstream media finally caught on?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Dr. Tim Farnum, an anesthesiologist and founder of the nonprofit Parents Against Underage Smartphones, is spearheading legislation that would ban smartphones for children under 13. Should it hit the 2018 Colorado ballot the proposed law, if passed, would be a first. Unsurprisingly, it has generated controversy.

We have been reading a bunch of nonsense about artificial sweeteners causing elevated blood glucose for years. A study out of Britain puts this to rest – and does so in no uncertain terms. 

The EDF is quite insistent that we're poisoning our children with lead, and it wants the maximum permissible levels in foods and drinks for babies to be much lower than what the FDA allows now. Is this position defensible? 

We are a sleep-deprived country, and aside from more obvious downsides such as lack of alertness, sleep deprivation can induce too much eating and weight gain. Fortunately, catching up on sleep on weekends might ameliorate the impact of too little sleep on body size.

When it comes to USDA rules changes related to approval of genetically-engineered products, the Trump administration is honoring its commitment to using evidence-based thinking about agricultural policy.

Caring for patients as they approach their deaths is sensitive, emotionally fraught territory. It is also an important discussion. A new study sheds some light on the difficulties in those talks for patients and physicians. 

The recent outbreak in New York City has already claimed a 90+ year old and sickened six others, four who remain hospitalized. It's caught by breathing in the bacteria in the form of water vapor – aerosols – so when an outbreak occurs, and the source of the bacteria contaminated aerosols is shut down, the outbreak is contained. 

Surgical techniques and medical care does change with the generations. How is a surgeon suppose to keep up? Can you teach an old-doc-dog a new trick or two?

When statins and angioplasty aren't enough to prevent a heart attack, it may be possible to minimize damage to the heart by using a photosynthetic cyanobacterium. While still in the preliminary stages, research indicates that the oxygen produced by these non-pathogenic bugs could help keep the heart going.

1. "Democracy Dies In Darkness" - that is the tagline for the Washington Post these days. And yet they promote darkness about science. Last Tuesday they were hosting a panel on "how science and technology are changing our food systems", yet what did they leave out? Anyone who knows anything about science or technology and food.
Instead, it was mostly organic salespeople and scaremongers.

John Mackey of Whole Foods, which sells products at a 45% markup over other stores by claiming that its food is cleaner and healthier and holier, is adorably complaining about investor greed and propaganda.

One of the many medical myths that we are bombarded with is the idea of "chronic Lyme disease." Lyme is real and can be serious if not treated. But attempts to "cure" chronic Lyme can be dangerous or even deadly, especially when long courses of antibiotics are given. Here's the latest on this from the CDC. 

In what basically amounts to an exercise that combines psychology, marketing and food salesmanship in equal parts, researchers at Stanford University learned something fascinating: If you jazz up the names of vegetable dishes, more diners will eat them. And giving them healthy-sounding descriptions, like "light 'n' low-carb," discouraged consumption.

The Centers for Disease Control calculated that, on an average day, 103 Americans die in car accidents, 121 commit suicide and 49 are homicide fatalities. But that's the average day. As it turns out people die differently on Monday than they do on Saturday.

Tans look healthy — even though they're not. A tan means sun exposure, which means an increased risk of skin cancer. But new research is pointing the way to getting the benefits of melanin, the tan-producing pigment,  without exposure to UV radiation. The new technique works in mice, so maybe it will be the answer for humans, too.

Otto Warmbier, the Ohio college student detained in North Korea, returned to the United States in a "coma" that has endured since March 2016. With an etiology already in dispute, there's a tendency for wrong information to spread. So let's shift gears to focus on comas, in general, to clarify any falsehoods.

In Part 1, we looked at some very strange science coming from the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Here, we examine some possible reasons for an apparent intentional omission of crucial data, which led to the misclassification of glyphosate as a "probable carcinogen." Looks like IARC knew this, but misclassified it anyway.

To understand the high cost of prescription medicines we should "follow the money." With apologies to Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan, it's time to "watch the river flow."

America has about the highest proportion of overweight and obese on Earth, but the rest of the world is hot on our heels. A massive meta-analysis of global data indicates that between 1980 and 2015 the prevalence of obesity doubled in more than 70 countries.

Few chemicals evoke more of a visceral response than glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. According to activists the herbicide causes cancer. A 2015 IARC monograph agreed, calling it ''probably carcinogenic to humans." But it did so without considering a key, conflicting study. Stranger still, the exonerating evidence came from the chairperson. What's going on?

Since every minute counts for heart-attack victims, getting automated external defibrillators to them faster has the potential to truly save lives. A Swedish study shows that dispatching GPS-enabled drones to stricken people where these devices aren't readily available is a feasible and efficient way to increase patient survivability.
 

One of the many responses to the opioid crisis has been the development of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs. These are databases containing the drug utilization of patients based upon physician prescriptions. The question is: Do they help?