It's no secret that droughts have been dominating the news, especially this summer. Even a quick glance at the current NOAA global drought map makes this evident. The lack of rain in two important rice-producing provinces in Chinese has prompted the government to take action to try to protect the crops. How? Cloud seeding. Does it work? Why is an obscure chemical called silver iodide (not silver, as I used in the title) used? Keep reading.
(Left) Global...
We rarely take a moment to reflect on the beauty, indeed, the awe-inspiring nature of what makes us tick. And while all of our physiologic systems are intricate shorelines that we can continually discover and reimagine, our immune system is perhaps the most elaborate. Immunity stands at the portal where our inner selves meet and interact with all of the outside worlds, all of the other. While one group of scientists have attempted to understand immunity through its finest detailing, bringing us vaccines, antimicrobials and now CAR-T therapies; other scientists continue to search for the evolutionary underpinnings of immunity. By the mere facts that we breathe and eat, we are integrated into our environment; immunity helps to regulate that integration.
There are two competing...
1. In Washington, D.C., I went to Capitol Hill and met with the Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, who was intrigued by our Little Black Book of Junk Science. Rep. Smith keeps a copy of the U.S. Constitution in one suit pocket and I encouraged him to keep our book in the other. He didn't commit to that just yet but he asked for copies to be sent to him so he could give it to the committee and that is part of our goal. We want it in the hands of every member of Congress and everyone in America too. It's time to take decision-making back from activists and engage in evidence-based thinking again.
He had his scheduler Gina take the picture on the left, which I told him was a nice thing to do, and he...
America has an obesity problem. We can thank science for that.
Not science directly, of course, the scientific method doesn't make us pick up that spoon, but science in the sense that it's now easy to be obese. For the first time in the history of the world, the poorest people can afford to be fat, a much different scenario than was painted a few generations ago, with mass starvation and mandatory birth control promoted by Apocalyptic firebrands like Drs. Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren.
Rather than watch helplessly as people starved, as was the future promised those born in the 1960s, scientists have made it possible to produce more food on less land using less environmental strain than was ever believed realistic. Three generations ago, meat was something most people...
In January, U.S. Marshals, at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, raided Dordoniz Natural Products of South Beloit, Illinois, to seize almost 90,000 bottles of a drug the company called RelaKzpro, valued at around $400,000. What it really was about was kratom, a drug being sold as a supplement, but which slides under the radar because it is a "natural" product derived from the leaves of the Mitragyna Speciosa tree.
Kratom is instead, in plain terms, an opioid, like codeine or hydrocodone, plus components of a psychoactive drug. For that reason,...
Wednesday, Sept. 21 will mark another mixed-emotion anniversary for the family of the late Nils Bohlin, a celebrated inventor and design engineer whose work and landmark signature creation is widely credited with saving more than 1,000,000 lives.
On that day in 2002, Bohlin was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work in the late 1950's developing the three-point safety belt, which is standard equipment in cars everywhere and since its adoption has significantly reduced automobile fatalities around the world.
On the same day, however, Bohlin passed away at the age of 82. So when he posthumously took his place among the world's all-time great inventors -- Thomas Edison (electric lighting, phonograph), Orville and Wilbur Wright (flight) and Enrico ...
Last week, President Bush signed a bill allocating $15 billion for AIDS drugs in Africa (and funding efforts against tuberculosis and malaria). In his State of the Union address earlier this year, Bush said of the AIDS initiative that "seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many." It's good to hear some cost-benefit analysis being employed even on a grandiose government project, one that could easily be sold with nothing more than a tug at the heartstrings. With luck, it will pay off in millions of saved lives.
A few less-publicized events in the past several weeks held by the Sabin Vaccine Institute, TechCentralStation, Choosenow.net, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine were reminders that good scientific ideas tend to be sold on the basis...
In March 1996 a 20-year-old Long Island, New York, college student died after ingesting eight tablets of Ultimate Xphoria, a dietary supplement whose main ingredient is the stimulant herb ephedra, also called "ma huang" and "Chinese ephedra." Practitioners of Ayurveda (traditional Indian medicine) and traditional Chinese medicine have used this herb for millennia to treat respiratory ailments. And a health food industry representative has stated that every day roughly five million Americans consume ephedra products. Should ephedra dietary supplements be reclassified and regulated?
"Ecstacy" Not Ecstasy
Promoters claim that ephedra preparations marketed under such names as "Cloud 9," "Go For It," "Herba Fuel," "herbal ecstacy ¢ ," and "Up Your Gas"...
DISPATCH 7/11/08: Nature and Fluoride for All, Plus Smoke and Life
ACSH taste tests Truvia
ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan and Dr. Ruth Kava attended the New York launch of the "natural" sweetener Truvia yesterday. ACSH staffers sampled it today with mixed results -- some of us liked it, while others complained about its aftertaste. "We're happy to have another sweetener on the market, and I'm sure it's very safe, but we're concerned about marketing it as 'natural'," Dr. Whelan says. "It's appealing to ignorance on the concept," which includes most people thinking "natural" things are inherently safer or better than "artificial" things.
"The definition of natural used for Truvia is...
Arsenic, the chemical element (As) thirty-three in the periodic table, combines with oxygen, chlorine, and sulfur in the environment to form inorganic arsenic compounds. These compounds may be present as solid minerals or dissolved in water. Inorganic arsenic is the most toxic form of arsenic, with arsenic trioxide being the most common form. Arsenic also combines with carbon and hydrogen to form less toxic organic arsenic compounds often found in fish and shellfish.
Both Poisonous and the Magic Bullet
Arsenic has been used throughout history as the...