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This article has it all: cats versus dogs, a Dreaded Chemistry Lesson From Hell® featuring union-busting replacement hosts, stereochemistry (kept to a legally permissible minimum), a superior form of catnip, and selective butt sniffing. How could you possibly resist?

Vermont’s new paraquat ban’s political signal could travel much farther than its practical effect. The weedkiller’s acute toxicity is undisputed; the harder question is whether its possible link to Parkinson’s Disease is strong enough to justify broader bans before federal regulators act. As the EPA reassesses and states move ahead, paraquat has become a test case for whether pesticide policy is driven by evidence, precaution, politics, or all three.

The Longview paper mill disaster drew attention to the chemistry of "white liquor," the caustic mixture used to separate lignin from cellulose. Surprisingly, the sulfide chemistry that helps turn wood into paper has a mechanistic resemblance to the sulfur-based chemistry that protects the liver from the toxic Tylenol metabolite NAPQI.

The artificial sweetener aspartame has been controversial from the get-go, and despite numerous studies that have addressed just about every facet of this chemical, the “all-clear” is still elusive.

America’s political divide is no longer confined to ballots, policy preferences, or media diets; it may now be showing up in biomarkers, medical trust, and premature death. Among Americans born between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the most conservative members appear measurably less healthy than their liberal peers, a gap that may now be reflected in premature deaths. Has ideology become a social determinant of health?

ACSH Executive Vice President Cameron English opens up about how vaping helped him quit tobacco (and eventually nicotine), why the narrative on harm reduction is finally changing, and the advice he hopes smokers take to heart this World No Tobacco Day — in a conversation with ACSH Video Producer Ana-Marija Dolaskie.

Washington will almost certainly try to claim credit for the decline in overdose deaths. But the evidence suggests multiple factors are at play, none of which involve enforcing drug prohibition.

Data Suggest Oregon’s Drug Decriminalization May Not Have Simply Failed. Here's why.

If you've had a cortisone shot, chances are you haven't had a cortisone shot. Confused? Good. The story of how cortisone disappeared from many "cortisone shots" is a lesson in medicinal chemistry, drug development, and medicine's habit of refusing to update its vocabulary.

A combination of human and artificial intelligence has paved the way for a GLP-1 agonist that is effective when taken by mouth.

Long before antibiotic resistance became a mainstream public health concern, a quiet conversation between Senator Ted Kennedy and the CEO of SmithKline Beecham helped frame the crisis in stark economic and medical terms. What began with a charitable antibiotic donation evolved into an unlikely collaboration that helped shape America’s early legislative response to the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance.

Modern pain medicine often treats addiction and pain by entirely different standards. While addiction is accepted as a neurobiological condition worthy of pharmacologic treatment, pain patients increasingly face suspicion, behavioral substitution, and therapeutic abandonment. This contradiction has a name: pain exceptionalism.

The best surgeons I trained with and worked alongside were not necessarily the most daring or dazzling; they understood that brilliance without discipline is just another name for risk. That is why my residency’s surgical maxim — Tutus non praeclarus, safe, not brilliant — remains a useful lens for judging today’s institutional claims about patient safety.

Coffee may be America’s favorite daily drug, and dementia one of its most feared diagnoses. So, when a large study suggests that coffee and tea drinkers who consume caffeinated beverages have a lower risk of dementia, the finding is bound to grab attention. But the real story is far less than “coffee prevents Alzheimer’s.”

Turmeric supplements have become a booming “natural” health product, promoted for everything from inflammation and joint pain to general disease prevention, while regulatory agencies are increasingly documenting rare but serious cases of liver injury. Can turmeric supplements offer meaningful benefits that justify their real-world risks?

At the time of this writing, residents of Garden Grove, California, are watching nervously as crews struggle to prevent a tank containing 7,000 gallons of overheated methyl methacrylate from exploding. There are similarities between this incident and the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment. But there are also important differences.

Medicine now rightly recognizes addiction as a neurobiological disorder that may require long-term pharmacologic treatment. Yet when the subject turns to pain, many of the same institutions adopt a very different philosophy: medication becomes morally suspect, while behavioral approaches are elevated as preferred alternatives. This contradiction reveals a deeper inconsistency in how modern medicine understands pain itself.

Newborns routinely receive the Vitamin K shot immediately after birth to prevent vitamin K deficiency bleeding (VKDB), a rare but potentially life-threatening condition that can cause brain bleeds. Despite strong evidence that the shot saves lives, refusal rates have risen 77% in recent years, fueled by social media. From one parent to another, don't fall for myths that could endanger your child.

The sparkle is due to tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide that reflect light in such a way that they sparkle. The discovery of infusing water with these bubbles was well…a sparkling discovery.

Fiercely self-assured, scientifically relentless, and unwilling to accept the limits imposed on women of her era, Rosalyn Yalow turned rejection, skepticism, and condescension into fuel for a Nobel-winning career that transformed how doctors measure the body’s hidden chemistry.

Coffee may be America’s favorite daily drug, and dementia one of its most feared diagnoses. So, when a large study suggests that coffee and tea drinkers who consume caffeinated beverages have a lower risk of dementia, the finding is bound to grab attention. But the real story is far less than “coffee prevents Alzheimer’s.”

Here’s a rare treat. It’s one thing to read about Taxol, one of the most important breakthroughs in modern cancer treatment. It’s another thing to hear the story from someone directly involved in the effort to bring the drug from Pacific yew trees to cancer patients. Burt Rosen, former Director of Government Affairs at Bristol-Myers Squibb, recounts the scientific, political, and environmental battles behind Taxol’s path to market.

Beer is chemically far stranger than most people realize. A new study suggests that subtle changes in beer molecules — including some compounds drinkers can barely detect — may strongly influence whether a lager tastes smooth, harsh, fruity, or just plain awful. The findings may even help explain why beer drinkers can react so strongly when breweries tinker with a familiar formula.

Melanoma is among the most preventable skin cancers when found early, yet it remains the skin cancer most likely to spread and cause death. Dr. Paul Chapman explains what makes melanoma different, which warning signs to watch for, and how BRAF-targeted therapy and checkpoint inhibitors have transformed treatment over the past decade.

Synthetic pesticides: they're the ultimate bogeyman in the mind of today's chemophobic health "influencer." As popular as this view is, it's badly misguided. The truth is that pesticides have dramatically reduced farming's environmental footprint—helping protect beneficial insects as food production grows.