Public Health

Micronutrient deficiencies pose health problems for a third of the world's population. Worldwide, zinc deficits are more problematic in the rural areas of developing countries, where diets are largely limited to vegetable products grown in soils suffering from low nutrient availability. Biofortification, the process of bolstering the nutritional value of crops by increasing the concentration of vitamins and minerals in them, has arisen as a remedy for this problem.  Recent trials determined that foliar application, applying liquid fertilizer directly to leaves instead of the soil,…

There are billions of vaccine doses coming along later this year. Biden says he will give excess doses to other countries, so the US is expected to be a huge donor later this year. Even if the US fully vaccinates everyone, adults and children, twice over, now and in the fall, the US has secured so many doses for 2021 that it will be able to fully vaccinate 1.3 billion people outside the US as well. However, many countries are facing big problems right now. The US has stockpiled tens of millions of unused AstraZeneca doses that it will probably never use. COVAX is asking if any country with…

We have major bottlenecks with producing the vaccines, but the WHO say that it doesn't have to be like this. We already have millions of extra doses of COVID today because of the early technology transfer by AstraZenecs at the end of last year. This empowers the rest of the world to make the doses, which greatly increases vaccine supply and helps to end the pandemic fast. Novavax is also in the process of transferring technology in the same way, ready for when it gets approved. However most vaccine manufacturers are not doing this and as a result we are missing out on many millions of doses…

The US has enough doses to vaccinate its entire population twice over and have enough left to fully vaccinate 1.3 billion people outside the USA by the end of 2021. It's not going to run out of doses. As most of you will know, Biden has committed now to roll out 200 million doses to the USA in his first 100 days in office. The USA is making huge steps forward with its own population. However at the same time 20 countries have not yet been offered any early doses yet; they are ready to roll out the vaccine but COVAX hasn't yet been able to offer them doses. The USA has been one of the main…

We have major bottlenecks with producing the vaccines, but the WHO say that it doesn't have to be like this. There are many companies that could have produced them if they had been authorized to do so. There are things we can do to ease the bottlenecks right now and we could hugely increase vaccine production capacity a few months from now through technology transfer. We are getting scary stories claiming that though the US / UK / Israel / EU / UAE etc will be vaccinated fast, reaching all adults well before the summer, that the rest of the world will not be vaccinated until 2024 or some…

Having a single primary care physician is statistically correlated to increased treatment adherence and decreased hospital admissions and mortality risk. A new paper finds it may also lead to costly unnecessary tests. Male patients who have a single general physician were more likely to receive a prostate cancer screening test during a period when the test was not recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force. Greedy doctors? No, the tests don't pay enough money to be meaningful, it is that doctors invariably prefer to side with patients over insurance companies or government…

Tracey Woodruff, PhD, MPH, of the University of California San Francisco, frequent collaborator of anti-vaccine activist and organic industry trade group head Gary Ruskin (US Right to Know) and sue-and-settle attorney Raphael Metzger, is back with a new paper claiming they can 'detect' chemicals in pregnant women. Well, we can detect anything in anything by now so that is no surprise. It is only "proof of concept" that technology has improved so whereas parts per million used to be 'zero' now it is parts per quadrillion. It would be more of a surprise if I couldn't detect a proton of…

Schizophrenia can cause hallucinations, delusions, trouble with thinking and other behaviors that impact daily functioning. Though it affects less than 1% of the public, 60% of schizophrenic smoke cigarettes, a known carcinogen and risk factor for numerous diseases; a 500 percent increase over the general population, where smoking has plummeted thanks to greater awareness of its harms plus smoking cessation tools like nicotine gums, patches, and vaping. In a small pilot study, scholars used a high-strength nicotine e-cigarette to modify smoking behavior in people with schizophrenia spectrum…

Rather than making affordable health care reality, the Affordable Care Act sent costs for many privately-insured people up as much as 700 percent. The federal government allowed insurers to pass through their new losses to everyone else and even with that, many insurers fled states due to the program being insoluble. Perhaps the solution is not to have people pay 700 percent more, but to force hospitals to be transparent about costs. And that would mean more realistic pricing without a reduction in quality. When I was a young person, it was common to see 'X needs $10,000 to get an…

There are a few known risk factors for heart disease; age is the big one, and then genetics and smoking. Everything else is instead a risk factor for a risk factor for heart disease or even more circumstantial. So butter was a risk factor for cholesterol which was a risk factor for high blood pressure which was a risk factor for heart disease. Such constant crisis mode correlation eventually caused a lot of distrust in epidemiology - the field that showed smoking kills - among the public, during a pandemic when people need to trust science. Many people jaded by non-stop Miracle Vegetables and…