Posted on Feb 22, 2023 | Comments Off on Gadolinium Rare Earth Metal Used In MRI Contrast Agents Can Be Detected, But Is That A Problem?
If you have ever had a CT scan using a contrast material like iodine, you were probably told to drink plenty of fluids to flush it out of your system. It is one-size-fits-all advice more to protect people who may have received a lot of them, because the dose makes the poison, or those who have chronic kidney disease. Allergies can happen but claims of build-up or toxicity in otherwise healthy...
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Posted on Feb 10, 2023 | Comments Off on Forget Miracle Diet Claims – Successful Weight Loss Plans All Avoid This
A lot of people went into 2023 hoping to lose some weight. It's no surprise. Putting it on is easy and rich countries make delicious food at affordable prices while our culture has not yet overcome our biological mandate to eat because animals are programmed to be unsure when the next meal will be.If you went into 2023 trying some miracle diet - keto, gluten-free, Mediterranean, et al. - you have...
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Posted on Jan 23, 2023 | Comments Off on Epidemiologist Claims Bacon Causes Type 2 Diabetes
Do you believe bacon causes diabetes? Cancer? If not, you may be an apostate in 2023, when we've just exited a period during which any skepticism of epidemiology(1) is met with the 2020s equivalent of 'Do you even Science, Bro?'There is just one problem. Epidemiology isn't science. It is instead, in the best circumstance, a statistical effort to point scientists in the right direction. That is...
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Posted on Jan 4, 2023 | Comments Off on EU COST Action Hopes To Replace Impossible Standards With Risk-Based Meat Inspection
Vegetables have had a lot of foodborne outbreak scandals, but two times since the 1980s they have also impacted meat in a big way. Mad Cow disease in 1986 and Listeria in 2019 killed people. Mad Cow disease was due to poor quality control and a lack of coherent meat-chain understanding - the annual Burns Supper is coming up but you still can't buy haggis from Scotland - while more recent...
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Posted on Sep 16, 2022 | Comments Off on Disease Spillover Risk Was Oversimplified During The COVID-19 Pandemic – And It’s A Chronic Problem In Science Journalism
SAR, R0, these are all terms that became part of the pop culture lexicon during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, because they were used in simplistic fashion they were more helpful for those engaged in wedge politics than the public.Part of the problem can be laid at the feet of social media. COVID-19 was the third coronavirus pandemic of the last 17 years but it was the first to truly...
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Posted on Jul 25, 2022 | Comments Off on Survey Results Show That For Many, Vaping Was A Fad And Not An Addiction
Vaping devices, e.g. the unfortunately named e-cigarettes, were a valuable tool for smoking cessation and harm reduction, with better results in ending smoking that nicotine patches and gums.Then suddenly they were everywhere, a market so large that a tobacco company whose primary business was cigarettes spent billions for a small stake in Juul, which had become the leader in vaping products. Now...
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