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Ticks may be on their way to the operating room.

For the last decade or two, people have been looking for something to attribute to the increase in the number of people with allergies and autoimmune diseases. A lot of ideas have been floated around - cell phones, vaccines, hand sanitizers or anything else that we use more now than we did 20 years ago. 
On that list is also the increase of births done by Cesarean section.

We're currently in the middle of the FDA's open-comment period on genetically edited foods. To date, 191 comments have been submitted, the majority expressing a sentiment of "poisoning the people." Well, scientists and pro-science folks, now's the time to make the scientific community's voice heard. Here's how to do it.

Politics makes utter fools out of otherwise rational people. The vitriol aimed at President George W. Bush by his political opponents caused psychiatrist and political commentator Charles Krauthammer to coin the tongue-in-cheek term "Bush Derangement Syndrome." It caught on. Pundits subsequently seized upon the terms "Obama Derangement Syndrome" and "Trump Derangement Syndrome."

It's a headline perfectly befitting The Onion. Unlike stories found in the satirical newspaper, however, this one is absolutely true.
The Dakota Access Pipeline, which has replaced Keystone XL as the cause célèbre of the environmental movement, has united Native Americans and political activists in opposition. The merits (or lack thereof) of this infrastructure project are not relevant for this discussion. Instead, let's focus on the activists' incredibly bizarre and destructive behavior.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just announced they are temporarily suspending work by lab scientists in BSL-4 (aka biosafety level 4) facilities. They recently learned their current stock of air hoses that  attach to the protective suits worn by staff have not been certified for breathing air.

Beginning in May of this year, all cigarettes sold in the UK must be packaged to standards regulating material, size, shape, opening mechanism and more importantly with plain packaging.
And by plain packaging, I mean a "mud-green box" stripped of all branding. Like this: 

 
 
 
 

Past studies have suggested a link between cat ownership and psychosis, specifically Schizophrenia. But researchers say the latest studies simply don't show any association. That's bad news for the crazy ole cat lady, who can't use her feline friends as an excuse. 

When you are buying gasoline with a particular octane number, joke's on you. There is little or no octane in there, because octane will blow you engine up. A little primer on anti-knock additives. They're not so great either.

If the average person is asked to assess their own driving skills, most will give themselves an above average rating. By definition, half of all drivers are below average, but most people lack the self-awareness to realize this due to a cognitive bias known as illusory superiority.

United Healthcare, the largest provider of Medicare Advantage (MA plans) services, is being sued by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for fraud. I think they may be right. They are gaming a system designed to protect Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers from excessive cost and they are very profitable. Did your revenue go up by 11.6% last year? Theirs did.

Are you your dog? Is your dog you? The science.

1. I was on a podcast with Julie Gunlock of the Independent Women's Forum to talk about Rachel Carson and her book "Silent Spring", which argued that manmade chemicals affect the health and safety of humans.

A doctor talking about gun safety is not advocating gun control. Let's get politics out of medicine.

Policy decisions should be based on evidence in order to provide the most benefit for the health and safety of the public. However, there are scant guidelines for making sound evidence-based policy focused on the intersection of science and society. The Brussels Declaration offers a 20-point blueprint for a set of principles to guide policy makers in this area. 

"Every night on the television news now is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation," lamented the former vice president in his opening remarks for the Climate & Health Meeting. After all these years, he still has a warped penchant for apocalyptic exaggeration. 

Thanks to an arcane FDA law that protects American companies, Marathon Pharmaceuticals has repackaged an "orphan drug" used in Europe – and is now allowed to charge 5,500% more than if we bought it from there. And that's not even the whole story.

Not only does bariatric surgery provide substantial weight loss to the obese, but it can also ameliorate the metabolic derangements of diabetes and decrease their need for medications. And, a new randomized study found, these beneficial results aren't transient — they were still apparent five years post-surgery and were superior to the results of strictly medical treatment.

Tattoo artists must lean over their customers and maintain steady positions, sometimes for hours at a time – and the physical strains they endure can be significant. That's the key finding of the first-ever study of its kind, researchers say, measuring neck- and back-muscle stress at work.

Since “fake news” seems to be the current buzz-worthy expression, let's point out that we don't have to look very far to find common medical falsehoods that originate in the Land of Celebrity. Like bubble-headed actresses who get attention for no good reason, here are some phony claims that lead the way.

Many people take multivitamins "just to be safe." That may not be a good idea, and now a new paper suggests that people who consume too much vitamin B3 might be at higher risk of developing eczema.

Kim Jong Un's half-brother Kim Jong-Nam was assassinated – with a poison. No one knows what it was, but that hasn't stopped chemists from speculating. Here are a few of the intriguing possibilities. They are almost certainly wrong.

Three separate bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress that are designed to drive a stake into the vampire-like Independent Payment Advisory Board. It has no members, little funding and bipartisan support for its demise.  
 

Public health experts have noted the unexplained increases in childhood asthma and autism spectrum disorders over the past few decades. A recent review has linked such ills to the coincident increases in obesity in women of childbearing age.

A co-founder of the "March for Science" says that it's "time for everyone to get on board." Okay, sure. We'll get on board – pending satisfactory answers to serious science policy questions.