Public Health

When I have done workshops for aspiring science journalists/writers, I have three pieces of advice. The first is: Don't defend science. It doesn't need defending. But it's easier said then done. If you spend some time in science media culture, you will invariably find a person saying something pithy like "Science: It works, bitches" but then raging about some attack on science and defending it with shrill verbage and name-calling and conspiracy theories. If science works, you don't need to defend it with claims that Big Oil is funding climate denial or that homeopaths and Big Organic fund…

A comparison of two hospitals and pertussis, one of which followed standard procedures and another that implemented a physician opt-in order initially and then a standing order for new mothers to receive the tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid and acellular pertussis vaccine (Tdap) before discharge, found that there was a 69% increase in the new mothers' pertussis vaccination rate, providing protection for themselves and their newborns against the disease, commonly known as whooping cough. Anti-vaccination sentiment is becoming common in states like California and Washington,…

There is good news for smokers; a cigarette is apparently no more harmful for us than a chicken wing. Or it's bad news for those Paleo diet people - they might as well be smoking cigarettes. Or if you have seen scare journalism and miracle vegetable claims based on population statistics for more than a few years, you just take the whole thing with a grain of salt (but not too much salt!) and keep doing what you are doing. A longevity analysis may not be drawing conclusions you like - if you eat meat in middle age you are 4X more likely to get cancer practically practically screams for a…

With over one-third of American children overweight, the search is on to figure out why. Happy Meals get blamed, as do sodas, trans fats and just about everything else. A new study even blames television - not necessarily how much time is spent watching it, but having it in the bedroom. The paper in JAMA associated a bedroom television with weight gain in children and adolescents, and say it is unrelated to the time they spend watching. Their evidence: a telephone survey in 2003 of 6,522 boys and girls (ages 10 to 14 years) that asked about bedroom televisions. Body mass index (BMI) at…

Think back on February: what was the pattern of your drinking or the drinking of a person you love? Five drinks on weekend nights, or sucking back a six-pack with a side order of self-loathing every evening, or the on-again, off-again of drinking at night alternating with crushing guilt in the morning that keeps you sober...until tomorrow? Sometimes we think about problem and addictive drinking as a homogenous thing – as if there’s either a problem or there is not – but a study recently published in the journal Addictive Behaviors shows that’s not the case at all: problem drinking comes in…

If you work in politics or culture, you are probably quick to attribute fast-food consumption as the major factor causing rapid increases in childhood obesity. Scholars the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill report that fast-food consumption is simply a byproduct of a much bigger problem: poor all-day-long dietary habits that originate in children's homes. The analysis led by Barry Popkin, W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of nutrition at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health, found that children's consumption of fast food is only a small part of a much more pervasive…

The risk of a kidney donor developing kidney failure in their kidney is much lower than in the population at large, even when compared with people who have two kidneys, according to new Johns Hopkins research. The results describe what is believed to be the largest study ever conducted of kidney disease risk in living kidney donors, encompassing all such donors in the United States over a 17-year period. The same researchers reporting in the same journal also showed in 2010 that the risk of death from any cause for kidney donors is extremely low. Both findings are likely to be due to the…

Nobel laureate James D. Watson, the co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, has published a hypothesis on the causation of type 2 diabetes - that diabetes, dementias, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers are linked to a failure to generate sufficient biological oxidants, called reactive oxygen species (ROS). Watson does not question that pancreatic tissue in people with type 2 diabetes is indeed inflamed. But he does present a novel theory of why. "The fundamental cause, I suggest, is a lack of biological oxidants, not an excess. The prevalent view of type 2 diabetes is that…

In June 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) answered the question “Is BPA safe?” with a simple and unambiguous answer – “Yes.”  In contrast, countless words have been written over many years suggesting exactly the opposite.  To get to that straightforward answer, FDA initiated an in-depth research and testing program on bisphenol A (BPA) about five years ago.  Although there is more to come, the 15 studies published so far, most recently including one of the most comprehensive studies on BPA ever conducted, provide strong support for that one-word answer.…

Bisphenol A (BPA) has been used for decades in a wide variety of consumer products, like metal food and beverage containers, thermal paper store receipts, and dental composites. Though the FDA has found BPA safe after numerous studies, because it can exhibit hormone-like properties the public has grown concerned about conflicting claims. There have been studies that have found exposure of rodent fetuses, infants, children or adults can cause cause abnormalities, including cancer, as well as reproductive, immune and brain-behavior problems.  Researchers at the University of Missouri are…