Public Health

The sanitary emergency presently affecting most countries across the World is highlighting the duties that each of us, as a member of a collectivity of individuals who share commodities, services and infrastructure, is called at times to attend to. In a well-functioning society paying taxes should not be enough to earn the right to be a citizen. Indeed, the "social contract" also demands us to, e.g., abide to laws.  Unfortunately, the legislative system is sometimes too slow to adapt to sudden changes or situations that demand citizens to respond in coherent, constructive ways for the…

There are calls to ban vaping because it has pleasant flavors and an addictive component and that combination may lead to disease but while there are zero deaths attributable to nicotine so far, there is an actual socially acceptable carcinogen that also uses flavors to increase use - alcohol. Yet the future looks bleak if recent survey results hold true. They find that compared to just a generation ago, college students - and alcohol, like smoking, is most often a pediatric condition - are drinking less alcohol. But that may not translate to increased public health because marijuana is still…

This year’s Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for a genuine revolution in modern science. The Crispr-Cas9 gene-editing tool allows scientists to precisely alter DNA by cutting and pasting sections of it. It has led to many discoveries in medicine, particularly in the development of new cancer therapies, and has the potential to treat or even cure genetically inherited diseases such as sickle cell anaemia, cystic fibrosis and hereditary blindless, all of which affect millions of people around the world. The prize was given to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, who refined the…

When e-cigarettes - vaping - began to gain in popularity in the early part of this decade, critics like Dr. Stan Glantz at UC San Francisco claimed they were only going to be used in addition to cigarettes, so risk reduction and smoking cessation would not happen. Former smokers dismissed both him and his Johnson  & Johnson funding - they make nicotine patches that compete with vaping - as a little too convenient, and data since has shown his claims were unfounded.  A new study under the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation (ITC) project found that among New Zealand…

With COVID-19 and worries about the SARS-CoV-2 virus keeping millions of people at home, activists and lawyers are hoping to resurrect worry about a problem dismissed by scientists as a money grab; third-hand smoke. Smoking is a carcinogen and a risk factor for many diseases, that science is settled, but after extracting hundreds of billions of dollars from tobacco companies in a settlement for a real killer, lawyers hoping for more began to claim secondhand smoke also killed. Obviously, any vapor can be worrisome for people with respiratory issues, Lysol or perfume can send asthmatics…

Bill Gates doesn't make vaccines. There are now 176 vaccines from many different countries, thirty four of those already in clinical trials and eight in phase 3. Some may be approved soon, and none are made by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation does provide funding for some vaccines. In particular they are amongst the funders for the vaccine alliances GAVI and COVAX, the vaccine pillar of the “Access to COVID19 Tools” ACT accelerator. The aim is to make sure that as a top priority many vaccines are distributed to the places that are worst hit and…

People often adopt vegetarian or even vegan diets because they are told it will make them healthier, but the same epidemiological correlation that tried to link butter with heart disease claimed trans fats would prevent it, and now statistical links claim just the opposite.  Without a plausible biological mechanism for how meat or trans fats might impact health, such claims always remain "exploratory" but in a 24-hour news cycle a big name like Harvard School of Public Health or International Agency for Research on Cancer will get media attention, and most covering science journalism don…

Consumers have been so saturated with vague marketing claims that nearly 50 percent can't correctly identify what is claimed to be a "healthier" option on packages. That sounds bad, except buying whole grain or white bread or fancy crackers are not making any difference in health anyway. A new paper finds many people can't make any sense of labels at all, but the authors then argue that even more labeling created by government committees is the solution. That would take a muddy situation, labels and food claims have become as political as everything else, and make things even less clear.…

The public was sold a false bill of goods by “grassroots” anti-vaping activists when they crusaded against e-cigarettes and e-cigarette flavors in front of city councils, state houses and the U.S. Congress throughout 2019. We were told that the seductively delicious flavors of Juuls and other e-cigarettes were luring youngsters to dangerous nicotine products. To curb underage vaping, the government needed to get rid of the flavored nicotine replacement products. Failed presidential candidate, prolific nanny-stater and billion dollar donor to anti-vape campaigns Michael Bloomberg wrote in the…

Men who live alone and have a smaller social network are less likely to be obese than women who have the same lifestyle, according to results found in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging survey. This debunks the cultural trope that marriage is worse for women and better for men when it comes to health. The data used were the social ties of 28,238 adults aged 45 to 85 and their waist circumference, body mass index and general obesity. These results are only exploratory, they cannot create a causal link and since they are based on surveys have numerous confounders. Women who were single,…