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Introducing Exerkines: The Magical Molecules of Exercise!
Introducing Exerkines: The Magical Molecules of Exercise. Everyone knows that exercise improves health. That’s old news. Here’s something far more exciting. Scientists have demonstrated that our skeletal muscles do much more than just move us about. While contracting, our muscles release swarms of molecules that spread throughout our bodies and blend with molecules released by other […]
Selling Faster Than Hotcakes: GLP-1 Medications
Selling faster than hotcakes: GLP-1 medications are flying off pharmacy shelves, and at fancy prices. Total spending in the U.S. for these drugs in 2023 (the latest year I found data for) was $71,700,000,000 (yes, 71.7 billion. See here.). Sales have been growing steadily. In 2018, total U.S. sales of GLP-1 drugs were $13.7 billion. […]
Worried about AI? I am.
Worried about AI? I am, and for reasons that should frighten everyone. There’s no doubt that Artificial Intelligence can be remarkably useful. You’ve probably used it. I have. I tinkered with it for an earlier post to show how clever (and fast) AI is at composing a poem (see that here). But when writing a […]
Our Deluded HHS Secretary Kennedy
Our deluded HHS Secretary Kennedy is at it again. Earlier this week he fired all 17 members of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee and will replace them with new members. Have you read how he justified this change? “Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific […]
HHS Dumps Successful Vaccine Developer
HHS dumps successful vaccine developer. Do you remember Operation Warp Speed? During the first Trump administration that program led to the unbelievably fast development of Covid-19 vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer. Those companies used newly-developed mRNA techniques to produce their vaccines in record time. According to Dr. Ashish Jha, who coordinated the Covid-19 response in […]
Facts about Vaccines
Facts about vaccines? Here are some worthy of notice. One hundred years ago, on May 2, 1925, the Journal of the American Medical Society cited W. W. Keen’s personal experiences with three epidemics of “the most loathsome, nauseating, sickening disease,” smallpox. To summarize his experiences, JAMA reported that before the use of Edward Jenner’s protective […]
Trump’s Jagged 100 Days
Trump’s jagged 100 days. It hasn’t been a serene beginning for our combative president. He’s ruffled more feathers in three months than a pair of wily foxes might ruffle when locked in a huge chicken coop for an equal duration. President Trump has set records. As of April 25, he had signed 139 executive orders, […]
Happiest Countries on Earth
Happiest Countries on earth. Have you seen the latest list? The top four happiest locations all lie north of the USA. I’ve been lucky enough to spend time in each of those easygoing nations, and I have no quibble with the results. I smiled a lot while in each country. I’ll mention a few reasons […]
Trump’s Atrocious Behavior
Trump’s atrocious behavior, a personal opinion. Readers following this blog may recall that I gave Trump a D- as his final grade for his first term in the Oval Office. He accomplished a few good things, I thought, but his personal behavior, embarrassingly non-presidential as it was, clearly deserved a flat-out F. Only some of […]
Our Little Irritations
Our Little Irritations. I think most of us sense them, those petty events that set off little twinges, those inconsequential triggers that blip on our radar and cause us to respond as predictably as Pavlov’s dog (or at least I do) when our bell rings. For me, it’s usually a word, or phrase, that rings […]