In 2012, cigarette packages will have graphic pictures of the health consequences from smoking. One of the images is of a corpse. Also in 2012 we’ll celebrate the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published a few years after the US Surgeon General officially warned us that cigarette smoking is hazardous to health. Despite all that, we remain at risk from tobacco and industrial chemicals—and for much the same reasons. Continue reading →

“Can Preschoolers Be Depressed?” asked the title of a long article in last week’s New York Times Magazine. “Good grief,” I thought. “I know where this is headed.” So I set the article aside. But it kept calling to me, so I read the first page. It was about a four-year old named Kiran who, among other things, spent a day at a children’s museum but couldn’t remember anything fun that he’d done. His life seemed to be awash in that kind of feeling. And so I had another reason not to read the article—I was not drawn to reading about children in that kind of emotional pain. But still it called. Continue reading →

A study has shown that Metformin, a drug widely used in treating diabetics, is likely to reduce the risk of breast cancer. The researchers introduce the study by noting that it is now acknowledged that diabetes increases the risk of breast and other cancers—something we discussed two years ago in our book.

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When my daughter Laural started school, a friend of mine asked what she was learning. After a moment, Laural answered, “How to stand in line and how to take tests.” There you have it: social order and stability are the foundation of education—which should make us ponder the relationship between education and learning. Continue reading →

When I was studying environmental economics in graduate school, a prominent scholar in the field made the argument that environmentalism was a middle class issue. The implication was that all the fuss about saving the whales and whatnot was nothing more than a consumer preference that people with enough money could afford to have and as a consequence should not be taken seriously in the same way as poverty. Continue reading →

If you had cancer, wouldn’t want to know?

That’s the Siren’s call of cancer screening: don’t you want to know? Continue reading →

Last Friday I had the pleasure and privilege of participating in a forum on Smart Meters. Activists in the city of Fairfax led by Valerie Hood organized a town meeting to educate and organize the city’s citizens on how to prevent the installation of wireless Smart Meter technology. Continue reading →

The Harvard Medical School conducts the America Insomnia Survey. The Survey’s purpose is to identify the prevalence and causes of sleep disruption. According to Survey researchers, one quarter of the people in the study experience some form of sleep disruption that is serious enough to affect their work life. The researchers estimate that the economic effect of these disruptions amounts to $63 billion. Continue reading →

Many years ago I watched a TV show about a wealthy man who was a superhero on the side. It was unique because the star was (still is, for that matter) African-American. The hero had a rumpled, geeky white guy who provided him with technological wizardry. It was one of those moments in popular culture when the boundaries of “normal” were pushed outward. Continue reading →

Researchers at Harvard are working on a way to predict adverse drug effects. You might think that clinical trials should do this since clinical trials are the basis for FDA approval. But that’s not how it works. Continue reading →