If you’re in a room with 100 people, 20 of them will be chemically sensitive. What that means is that they react to such things as fragrance, paint, cleaning products, pesticides, glues, plastics, carpet, and car exhaust with anything from a headache to a seizure. Continue reading →

What’s true of a population isn’t true of any individual person in it. For example, a population has an average height. No single person is exactly that height. To confuse the two is to commit what is called the ecological fallacy. Continue reading →

David Erdal is a management consultant working in Britain. He advises workers on how to take over a company and run it as a cooperative. It’s a booming business. It turns out that the cooperative sector in Britain is bigger than the agriculture sector. Continue reading →

As I’m sure you know, a diabetes epidemic is assaulting our children. Continue reading →

Each Tuesday, Barack Obama holds a counterterrorism meeting in the White House situation room. At these meetings, Mr. Obama personally decides who will be killed in a drone strike. Knowing how fond the President is of electronic gadgets, it occurred to me (uncharitably I’ll admit) that this must seem to him something like playing a Game Boy. Continue reading →

Suppose you don’t feel well. You keep getting the flu. You can’t sleep. You’re anxious and irritable. Your gut is in turmoil. Nothing you do works, so you go to a doctor who prescribes some drugs. Or you go to a naturopath who prescribes some neurofeedback. Or you go to a homeopath who prescribes some remedies. Or you go to an acupuncturist who treats you and sends you home with some medicinal teas. Continue reading →

The FDA maintains a database of clinical trials. They created the database after 20 years of criticism about the murky and often deceptive use to which this research was put in approving drugs and medical technologies. The database is intended to make it possible for researchers and clinicians to access the best evidence in medical care. Continue reading →

The Wildlife Conservation Society has launched an international effort to prevent the extinction of a dozen turtle species. I marvel at this: people from around the world collaborating to save creatures because it’s the right thing to do. Continue reading →

With austerity politics in full bloom, governments at all levels are eliminating a wide range of activities. Most of these affect our health. For example, over the last two years the state of Massachusetts has eliminated funding for the prevention of lead poisoning. According to the Boston Globe, the US Congress is likely to eliminate these programs as well. Continue reading →

Last week, the New York Times reported that researchers found that the risk of autism is associated with certain DNA variants. The article used the word “mutations” in its title, presumably to conjure the horrors of a 1950s science fiction movie. Early on the article says, “Scientists have been debating the relative influence of inherited risk and environmental factors in autism for decades, and few today doubt that there is a strong genetic component.” Continue reading →