Are crazy people dangerous?

Much of the politics around gun control contemplate restricting gun ownership based on mental health status. Whenever there’s a mass murder, the heat of that politics increases. Continue reading →

Food is less nutritious than it used to be. Compared to values from 1950 (the first year for which there are data), nutrients in crops have declined up to 40%. For example, a serving of broccoli eaten in 1950 had significantly more vitamin C, B vitamins, calcium, and other nutrients than the same size serving of broccoli eaten today. In other words, to get the same nutrients today, you’d have to eat up to 40% more food. Continue reading →

Researchers from across the world have launched the Human Early-Life Exposome Project. What they intend to study is “the totality of human environmental (i.e., nongenetic) exposures from conception onward, complementing the genome.” Continue reading →

Researchers at McGill University in Canada report that lab rats and mice are affected by the sex of the people who work with them. When men rather than women work with the animals, they (the animals) show a stress response. It is not a huge response, but enough of a stress to affect experimental results. Continue reading →

A recent report from the insurance company Swiss Re says that there’s a lot to worry about. Three of the six high risk areas Swiss Re identifies are endocrine disrupting chemicals, electromagnetic fields, and nanotechnology. The report mentions two other high risk issues that aren’t covered—namely, climate change and gene technology—because they “are already being tackled” by the insurance industry. Continue reading →

Happy Earth Day!

It’s one of those mass celebrations that continues to have some meaning. After all, it hasn’t been transformed into a shopping extravaganza.

With all the environmental and ecological horrors we face, I thought I’d mention some good news. And that news is not hard to find, believe it or not. Continue reading →

Aiden Fitchett has confirmed the results of a scientific experiment. Aiden is a second grader in Michigan. What Aiden confirmed is that radiofrequency radiation harms the germination and development of Garden cress. Aiden repeated a similar experiment conducted by ninth grade Danish students. Continue reading →

Great time, effort, and money was spent in unraveling the human genome. A principal justification for that enormous project was the belief that identifying genes would unleash unimaginable health benefits: we (or at least gene technologists) would be able to manipulate defective genes or at the very least find out which gene variations are associated with the risk of disease and disability. Continue reading →

I’m sure you’ve heard about the article written for Mother Jones by Mariah Blake on the dangers of plastics used to replace BPA. After years of protracted struggle, parents and environmentalists managed to get BPA banned from use in a wide variety of products, particularly products that affect children. The concern is that BPA has been shown for many years to be an endocrine disruptor that mimics estrogen. Continue reading →

A little over a decade ago, the science journalist Gary Taubes challenged the dominant theory of heart disease in the mainstream media. One critique was published in Science magazine with the title “The soft science of dietary fat” and another was published in the New York Times with the title “What if it’s all been a big fat lie?” Continue reading →