Pharmacology

A whole lot of classic liberals have discovered how goofy their progressive cousins have been for 25 years. All it took for this sudden embrace of critical thinking was for a Republican to say 'maybe he is right on food and medicine' about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It's not new. When Dr. Alex Berezow and I were writing "Science Left Behind" in 2011, our publisher asked if they could title it something like "The Democratic War on Science" or "The Liberal War on Science" for better sales but we said no, the problem is anti-science progressives, not all liberals or Democrats. If we tried to lump in…

"I feel your pain" is a common empathy cliché but we know the opposite is true in some, and it changes how they interact with the world.  After Dutch film director Theo van Gogh put out "Submission: Part 1" , which criticized the treatment of women in Islam, he was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, who ranted about a "Jewish cabal" and later directed to van Gogh's mother, "I don't feel your pain, because I believe you're an infidel." Racism and intolerance take away empathy for others,(1) but so does alcohol. It is challenging to find anything good to say about alcohol. For a brief period…

Cannabis and THC, its main psychoactive compound, have been endorsed by people suffering from anxiety, sleep problems, epilepsy, and cancer pain. What is missing from such claims is a plausible biological hypothesis for how it can be everything to everyone, which means scientifically it is still just a placebo. Science or not, while a placebo is not medicine and anyone prescribing one should lose their medical license (like you, osteopaths who tell people to use homeopathic products), even if it is not valid clinically if it works for you individually, that is fine. A new paper suggests that…

Quality by Design (QbD) is  a decade-long approach that was first introduced by quality expert Joseph M. Juran. Juran proposed a “Juran Trilogy”, of which quality and innovation were two of the pillars necessary to ensure breakthroughs in developing new products, services and processes. Quite simply, Juran believed and evidence has shown that companies could plan for quality and innovation. These principles have been embraced in the automotive industry and even by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While the pharmaceutical industry has somewhat implemented QbD, a combination…

A health data simulation has concluded that a single dose of the Modified vaccinia Ankara-Bavarian Nordic (MVA-BN) was 58% effective in protecting again mpox infection, a disease caused by infection with the Monkeypox virus, which is most likely in men who have sex with men and which causes a rash, along with other symptoms.  After an mpox outbreak in 2022, Ontario, Canada introduced the vaccine as a protective measure for individuals at high risk of exposure. To reach as many as possible, a single dose was used. That seems to have been enough. An analysis of adult men with a…

American health care is expensive as are drugs. Both are due to government involvement. If a company is forced to spend 10 years and a billion extra dollars in clinical trials that don't improve safety, they are just placebos so government can say they held companies "accountable", that raises costs for everyone. Other countries exploit America that way. They wait until the costs are incurred and approval is set in the US, and then tell the company they can only sell in that country for less. The company has to get its biggest profit in the country that made the success possible and Americans…

A recent paper did something interesting with data from 100 hypertension trials around the world - it compared blood pressure reductions by the type of healthcare professionals who led the interventions. The results were that pharmacists achieved the greatest improvements, followed by community health workers. The authors believe that, unlike in the government-controlled medical environment, especially if patients are subsidized or free under the Affordable Care Act, doctors and nurses don't spend much time, while pharmacists and community health care workers have calmer, more empathetic…

If epidemiologists were held accountable for the high costs, drug shortages, and food and chemical misinformation they cause, nonsense like claiming a type 2 diabetes drug that is popular off-label for weight loss in rich people also prevent dementia would stop. Yet the reason so many "studies" by epidemiologists are being pushed onto the public now is because it is a fad. Fads, creating them or capitalizing on them, is big business for lawyers on one side and corporations on the other, and epidemiologists capitalize on that. Consumers pay the price. A so-called Oxford "study", language…

Scientists led by Dr. Pamela Ting have reported the discovery and characterization of the first molecular glue degraders of the WIZ transcription factor for fetal hemoglobin derepression in Sickle Cell Disease, which means a pill-based therapy for humans could begin development. Sickle Cell Disease is a genetic life-threatening condition caused by mutation in β-hemoglobin. Inducing fetal hemoglobin safely has been the goal for years but has remained out-of-reach. The discovery of dWIZ-1 and dWIZ-2 molecular glue degraders of the WIZ transcription factor that induce HbF in erythroblasts is a…

Online supplement marketers prey on consumers by exploiting the margins of President Bill Clinton's 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which exempts supplements from FDA oversight if they state in fine print, "This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease" right after making claims that read like they replace medicine. FDA can only act if they poison or kill someone or overtly claim they cure something like cancer. That means every dangerous fad that comes along puts…