I’m sick of editorializing on the horrors I find each week in the mainstream media and scientific literature. So while lots of horrifying things happened this week, I’ve decided to talk about our health and the path to it that’s being created by people who have taken matters into their own hands. Continue reading →

The dominant view of government spending seems to be “You can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it.” Based on this silly notion, battles at the state and national level over cutting government spending have created whole new landscapes of madness and mendacity. The victims of this debt panic are the young, the sick, the disabled, the old, the disadvantaged, and all the others with little power to protect themselves—including the creatures of land, water, and air. Continue reading →

A food desert is a neighborhood devoid of sources of healthy food. A food swamp is a neighborhood overrun by sources of unhealthy food. These two terms have emerged in the last decade in conjunction with the concept of food insecurity: the inability of people to get enough to eat. The USDA, for example, estimates that one in seven people experience food insecurity for short periods during each year. The question that researchers, regulators, and activists have been asking is what can be done about food insecurity, food deserts, and food swamps. Continue reading →

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Michigan State University have confirmed what many people have assumed: monocropping increases pesticide use. What that means is that as agricultural land becomes biologically simplified, pest species increase. With the increase in pests, more pesticides are used to control them. Continue reading →

The CNN headline was “Bill would let federal health researchers ban certain chemicals.” Later this month, legislation will be introduce in the US Senate by Jim Moran and John Kerry that will give the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences the power to classify up to 10 chemicals each year as being “of high concern.” With that classification, use of the chemical would have to stop within two years—unless a specific use can be proven to not expose humans. Continue reading →

How do health practitioners know what to do for you? How do you know what to do for yourself?

Both health practitioners and you evaluate evidence, make decisions, and take actions—or not.

So it seems odd to say that the dominant mode of thought in health science is called evidence-based medicine. Continue reading →

Compared to 40 years ago, when physicians fought against Medicare tooth-and-claw, Medicare and Medicaid are now sacrosanct and doctors now seem to favor socialized medicine in some flavor for everyone—whether the Obama administration’s anemic version or the single payer system just adopted by Vermont. What happened? Did advocacy change the values of physicians? Continue reading →

Fuoxetine is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Its most famous trade name is the antidepressant Prozac®, one of the most widely prescribed drugs in the world. At the 111th meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, researchers reported finding extremely miniscule amounts of fluoxetine in Lake Erie. Continue reading →

I eat almost all of my meals at home. When I have a meal away from home, it’s likely that I’ve made it in my kitchen and taken it with me. The meals I make for myself, I prepare from scratch. It’s a great pleasure to do this. I like eating. I like cooking. I seem to be abnormal in this regard. Continue reading →

Many people object to the idea that microwave radiation at non-thermal levels causes illness and injury. They object to studies that show an association between, for example, cell phone use and brain tumors. One of the main objections is that there is no biological mechanism. Because the radiation used in wireless technologies is below the threshold required to alter chemicals, it simply defies the laws of physics. The associations are just the result of badly designed experiments. Continue reading →