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Vaccine preventable diseases have made a recent comeback thanks to the anti-vax movement. However, recent data show that views among parents are changing and one new study points out the best way to convince them of the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

This seems like an opportune time to take stock of how we re doing as an antidote to all that junk science so pervasive in the new media. So this article is entitled ¦..Junk Science Report Card

The initial promise of agricultural GMOs was to breed better crops more efficiently than we had been doing through techniques like selective breeding, mutagenesis and radiation. These are all relatively clumsy and inefficient. Genetic engineering allows us to do what we have been doing since the dawn of agriculture: improve our crops in a more directed and specific way that only affects a couple of genes. The development of GMOs was never about helping Monsanto sell more Roundup. It was about efficiently engineering crops to be able to grow and flourish on undesirable land, as well as, in many cases, improving their nutritional characteristics.

A recent article published online in JAMA Oncology focuses on the increased recent attention in medicine, the media, and by the general public that has generated the perception that rates of breast cancer among young women have been increasing. (An

What s a person to do, when on the one hand it s clear that many Americans are being under-treated for a dangerous condition, while on the other, too many of us are getting way too much care. The lesson: especially when it comes to our health, too much is as bad as too little.

It has been 13 years since the publication of the Women s Health Initiative (WHI) studies in 2002 that examined the role of menopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in the prevention of cardiovascular disease. It can be argued that never before or since has a medical study generated such controversy by the media and scientific community.

What excuse to be anti-science will environmental groups use now that they can no longer claim it's about corporations? Monsanto's early patents on GMOs have started to expire.

Another group of serious doctors calls for the television kind to be regulated.

Everyday the Red Cross must collect 15,000 blood donations for America s 2,600 hospitals and transfusion centers. But in the summer months when people are more likely to be on vacation, they lose about 40 percent of their donors.

Greenpeace really loves bees so much that they regularly hold bee die ins where they dress up in bee costumes and lie on the ground to be sprayed by faux pesticides. Environmental activists have also given eulogies and

In the early 1990s, Gary Hirshberg, chairman and former president and CEO of Stonyfield Farm, was a leader of the nascent corporate responsibility movement .....But now, Hirshberg has deserted evidence-based science in his support of mandatory labeling of GMO foods

In the Bronx this week an outbreak of Legionnaires disease has been reported, with the toll amounting to almost 50 suspected cases and 2 deaths. Health officials are searching for the source, which is generally a contaminated water supply.

Hypocrisy in action: New Jersey township votes to bar natural gas pipeline for imaginary health and environmental concerns. Translation: we re fine with using natural gas fracked from nearby Marcellus shale in PA, but don t transport it near my backyard. They should turn off all those fossil-fuel energy sources, right?

ACSH friend John Stossel, writing for Reason.org, calls out the EPA for its much-too-cozy relationship with activist groups espousing environmental causes. But the NGOs goals are ideological, not scientific. Perhaps the best example: NRDC and its revolving-door with the federal environmental agency.

Earlier this week, we discussed two novel drugs that could potentially revolutionize the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease. Both drugs are antibodies, and work by an entirely new mechanism by binding to, and inactivating a protein called PCSK9. PCSK9 plays a part in the regulation of circulating cholesterol (homeostasis).

Bt Brinjal (eggplant) is a genetically modified plant which is created by inserting a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis into the genome of the brinjal. The Bt brinjal has been developed to have resistance against lepidopteron insects. It was approved for

New obesity treatment approved by the FDA is just a refinement of an old one the gastric balloon. There doesn t seem to be anything really new under the sun when it comes to peeling off excess body fat. But who knows, maybe this will do the trick for at least some folks.

A non-scientist thinks he has discovered that GMOs contain formaldehyde.

An old, and weakened Mahatma Gandhi went 21 days without eating. Other reports have humans living as many as 40 days without food. But to go this long without food, people still have to consume water. Seven days is believed to be the most a person can go without water, but some estimates put that length at closer to three. We are 60 percent water and we need to keep it that way by consuming as much as 4 liters of fluid a day.

In just a few days, Diet Pepsi will no longer contain the artificial sweetener aspartame. PepsiCo is replacing aspartame in Diet Pepsi, Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi, and Wild

Roger Schlueter at the News-Democrat fielded a question from a concerned reader about alternatives to surgery for appendicitis. It's a bad idea to try homeopathy or alternative medicine but there are cases where surgery may not be needed.

I've been writing about artificial sweeteners, especially aspartame (NutraSweet) for years. Why?
Well, the same reason that I write anything to cut through the crap. And if you want to find more crap, you'd better get yourself tickets to a political debate.

Patrick Moore was instrumental in the founding of GreenPeace, and held high positions until he broke with the group in the 1980 s over policy decisions. Since then Moore has been an outspoken critic of the organization for losing touch with its initial science mission. This week, Moore posted a video on youtube in which he describes his reasons for leaving, and how GreenPeace is now doing more harm than good for the world.

In a number of cultures around the world, excess body fat is seen as a good thing. In traditional Chinese culture as well as in many African and Pacific Island ones, a larger body means one has enough to eat (not so common is some areas), perhaps because of more than average income.

Today, July 28th, 2015 is World Hepatitis Day. Every year 1.4 million people die from viral hepatitis and yet all of these deaths could be prevented with better awareness and understanding.
There are five hepatitis viruses, A, B, C, D and E, though most people are only familiar with the first three.
Hepatitis A is spread mainly through eating food or drinking water that has been contaminated by the feces of an infected person. It can clear itself up naturally after a few weeks and there is a vaccination that can prevent infection.