Trump Team’s $500 Million Bet on Old Vaccine Technology Puzzles Scientists
Some raised eyebrows over a Trump Administration big spend for a possible flu vaccine.
Read more...Category Archives: Health care
On the Practical Importance of Basic Research for Human Health
I was listening to the journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News last week as he talked briefly about his wife’s ongoing cancer treatment. His short gloss was directly on point, and it motivated me to dig deep in my archives on the history of research on breast cancer and how one never knows what […]
Read more...How the State Sent Californians’ Personal Health Data to LinkedIn
The state’s health insurance exchange transmitted pregnancy and domestic abuse data during a marketing campaign. It is reviewing its website practices.
Read more...Underage Workers, Millions of Dollars and Trucks Full of Dead Chickens — Inside the Business of Killing in Response to Bird Flu
The federal government has a single contractor to assist with killing infected flocks, leading to delays and the use of controversial culling methods.
Read more...The Ripple Effects of Shrinking U.S. Science
Severe cuts in science research funding will cause a complex cascade of effects across the United States and the world.
Read more...Coffee Break: The Attack on Scientists and Scientific Research Continues, Plus One Great Result on a Vaccine That Prevents Cancer
Part the First. Convergence and Consensus in Science, or and how to interpret scientific results in context. From Holden Thorp, the Editor-in-Chief of Science: Kathleen Hall Jamieson believes that scientists need to talk…about convergent evidence. “Unlike declarations that a consensus exists, a claim that convergent evidence exists honors science’s norms of critique and correction by […]
Read more...What Are the Health Impacts of Plastic?
Scientists are investigating how plastic additives and microplastics affect our bodies, and are worried about what they’ve learned so far
Read more...Coffee Break: The Current State of Science During Trump v.2.0 Plus One Signal Advance
As someone who has spent most of his working life as a scientific worker and later as an academic scientist, graduate supervisor, teacher, grant reviewer, and administrator, the current devastation being visited upon my colleagues and their institutions is sickening. I have never thought my work was more useful or more important than anyone else’s. […]
Read more...What Science Says About Food Additives
RFK Jr. has said the U.S. should end the use of synthetic food additives. How would that affect public health?
Read more...Prevagen®: A Most Curious Dietary Supplement for Your Brain
Dietary supplements are a large part of the alternative medicine universe, with annual sales of more than $70B in the United states and much more than that in the rest of the world. I have followed the supplement business since tryptophan, a canonical amino acid marketed as a sleep aid, caused an outbreak of eosinophilia-myalgia […]
Read more...For Health Apps, Questions Over Privacy and Efficacy
Apps that track health data or help provide care may be beneficial, but experts worry about the lack of regulation.
Read more...More Trump Punishment of the Poors: HHS Eliminates Office That Sets Poverty Levels Tied to Benefits for 80 Million People
Yet another Trump gutting of a whole swathe of programs, here by eliminating the experts who knew how to determine poverty thresholds.
Read more...Blockbuster Deal Will Wipe Out $30 Billion in Medical Debt. Even Backers Say It’s Not Enough.
A program that purchased medical debt at a deep discount, while effective, still reinforces a predatory system.
Read more...Coffee Break: The Powell Memo Kills American Science, Driving While Nonwhite Is Hazardous, and Science Can Recover but It Will Take Patience and Persistence.
Can medical science recover from the Powell memo and Project 2025 via slow science?
Read more...Medicare Advantage Is Covering More and More Americans − Some Because They Don’t Get to Choose
Another layer of the ongoing campaign to get more Americans to use private and generally inferior Medicare Advantage over Traditional Medicare
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