Search results

“As the field of transgender health care has transitioned from pathologizing patients to a gender-affirming and patient-centered model and from an understanding of gender as binary to a fuller picture of gender as a spectrum, its associated diagnoses have similarly evolved.” An article in JAMA’s newest spinoff, Journal of Ethics, tries to explore the benefits and problems of a medical diagnosis.

Australia plans to turn e-cigarettes into prescription drugs and will ban people from buying them without a doctor’s prescription. Vaping retailers publicly vow they will move to the underground. We have seen this prohibition movie before. It doesn’t have a happy ending.

New York State's legislators are about to place drastic restrictions on neonicotinoids ("neonics"), a popular, safe, and effective class of pesticides. They're putting the bogus claims of activists ahead of the welfare of consumers and farmers. Let's hope Governor Hochul will be more sensible and veto the bill.

Even as the Surgeon General bemoans the dangers of social media to young people, several states are enacting laws allowing those 14 and over to work without permits, reversing child labor laws enacted almost a century ago. How did we get to the point of curtailing the protection of our most vulnerable segment of the population?

Thalidomide, one of the most infamous drugs of all, caused severe birth defects in the children of pregnant women who took the drug for nausea in the 1950s. Its story has been repeated over and over – mostly wrong. Here's why.

Color me concerned?
Walking About
What does Saudi Arabia have in common with Arizona?
Does the duck-rabbit illusion explain our polarization?

It's finally time to consider Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries proposals to reclaim and reset Earth Systems Boundaries. First up, the three most significant (at least in my view): climate, water, and nutrients. The authors of the paper in Nature challenged us to read their proposals and then discuss them. In the spirit of that challenge, I will let them do the talking.

Let us consider Nature's remaining proposals to reclaim and reset the Biosphere and aerosol pollution. The authors challenged us to read their proposals and then discuss them. In the spirit of that challenge, I have let them do the talking (to be found in the quotes). But I do want to share a few final thoughts.

Russia's decades-old propaganda machine is vast and vicious. Its goal is to damage the health and prosperity of the country's adversaries, especially the United States.

In December, a federal judge dismissed 50,000 Zantac cases because the scientific evidence establishing cancer causation didn’t pass legal muster. In March, a California state judge reached the opposite conclusion. What happens next?

Science and law are both relatively recent human creations. Applied science made its appearance well before its written version. The people of the British Isles erected Stonehenge, and the Egyptians built the pyramids. The science of that time was goal-directed, finding a better way to live in the world and connect with the controlling powers of their gods. Today, science has taken on new roles, especially in understanding those controlling powers and seeking ways to better predict and manage them.

In Part I, I presented a precis of the methodology the authors of Nature’s Earth System Boundaries had for the “… multiple levels of likelihoods to reflect underlying scientific uncertainties and variabilities.” As their findings “are meant as a transparent proposal for further debate” let’s now consider and debate the more contentious methodology underlying their proposed action – justice.

The FDA is responsible for the approval of medications in the U.S. Many similar agencies are doing the same work in other countries. But unlike the U.S. – where cost is not a consideration – several countries including the UK, Canada, and Australia, apply a Health Technology Assessment to consider a new medication’s clinical and economic cost and benefits. A recent study shows they disagree with the FDA’s decision about 20% of the time.

This body is trying to require all physicians to force-taper Oregon patients on prescribed opioids to less than 90 MME per day, or transition them to Buprenorphine. The Board should resign or be fired.

A recent trip to Israel included a stop at the Dead Sea. Many people from around the world travel to the Dead Sea for treatment for psoriasis and other diseases. As I have often questioned flawed studies and research without a scientific basis, I wondered whether there are facts behind the claimed beneficial effects of the Dead Sea. 

The Lancet reports that a clinical study of different doses of glucocorticoids for managing COVID pneumonia was stopped because treatment led to more deaths. There is power in saying, “We were wrong.”

As humans march toward creating more sophisticated robotics, computers, and AI technology, the question has always lurked: Are these techno-devices human? Will they ever be? 

Are hiccups a tell-tale warning?
China and Fentanyl
Artificial, Natural, or Processed
Riding a bike is the best

It's a commonly held belief that a full moon brings out the crazies and the craziness. The word "lunatic" – derived from the combination of "luna," or moon, and "atic," meaning “of the kind of” – was first mentioned in a fourth-century Bible. A new study looks at the influence of the moon and some circadian genes on the incidence of suicide. 

A not-so-recent paper estimated that for every £ spent on cardiovascular research, there was a continuing 9% savings in health costs 17 years later. If the time from the research bench to the bedside was reduced to 10 years, those continuing savings rose to 13%. Why does it take so long to translate medical science into medical care?

The combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI), chatbots, and deep fakes is going to make life interesting in the near future. It won't all be smooth sailing.

Adderall, one of the primary drugs to treat ADHD, has been in the news lately because of a shortage. But there are a number of different ADHD drugs that contain amphetamine – the active ingredient in Adderall. Perhaps this will help clarify what's going on.

A bill recently introduced in the California State Assembly would prohibit five chemicals: brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, polyparaben, red dye #3, and titanium dioxide – all banned in Europe – from food products in California. Let’s dig past the headline.

Gender detransitioning – reversing your transition – is rare, in that less than one percent of persons choose to detransition. Related lawsuits are even rarer; so far, only two cases have been filed in the U.S. and a few in England. But the public reaction couldn’t be more different on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dr. Fauci, speaking on vaccinations: “Past unsuccessful attempts to elicit solid protection against mucosal respiratory viruses [COVID-19] and to control the deadly outbreaks and pandemics they cause," he said, "have been a scientific and public health failure that must be urgently addressed.” That's a lot to unpack.