Science
New GLP-1 drug guidelines recently recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) were reviewed in a JAMA article published online a few days ago. One major point? Global obesity rates have been rising substantially for more than 30 years. But change is in the air! To illustrate: adult obesity in […]
Read The Color of North if you are awed by astonishing facts of life, such as the frog that freezes solid each winter and thaws and returns to life in the spring, or the amazing bacteria that survive in scalding temperatures. Read the book if you’re intrigued by information such […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Vaccinations − and Politics? Stick with science! Vaccination saves lives. I earlier posted on this site two essays on the importance of vaccinations in preventing, or attenuating, serious diseases. My first essay focused on Benjamin Franklin’s bitter regret that he had not “inoculated” his four-year-old son who died of small […]
Not worried about AI? Read this! But first sit down, especially if you’re already worried about the November elections. An article in today’s Wall Street Journal (see here), describes how one man set up a fake, fully automated, AI-generated ‘pink-slime’ news site, one programmed to create false political stories, all […]
