Genetically Modified Facts
Don’t buy food from the center of the supermarket. That’s were processed and packaged foods live. However, you might feel better about buying processed and packaged food labeled as containing natural and organic ingredients at grocery chain stores such as Whole Foods Market®, which has spent considerable effort at developing a reputation for “selling the highest quality natural and organic products.” Continue reading
Toxic Culture
In 2012, cigarette packages will have graphic pictures of the health consequences from smoking. One of the images is of a corpse. Also in 2012 we’ll celebrate the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published a few years after the US Surgeon General officially warned us that cigarette smoking is hazardous to health. Despite all that, we remain at risk from tobacco and industrial chemicals—and for much the same reasons. Continue reading
Inside, Outside
Researchers at Harvard are working on a way to predict adverse drug effects. You might think that clinical trials should do this since clinical trials are the basis for FDA approval. But that’s not how it works. Continue reading
Lead Poisoning Large and Small
With austerity politics in full bloom, governments at all levels are eliminating a wide range of activities. Most of these affect our health. For example, over the last two years the state of Massachusetts has eliminated funding for the prevention of lead poisoning. According to the Boston Globe, the US Congress is likely to eliminate these programs as well. Continue reading
Depressed Children
“Can Preschoolers Be Depressed?” asked the title of a long article in last week’s New York Times Magazine. “Good grief,” I thought. “I know where this is headed.” So I set the article aside. But it kept calling to me, so I read the first page. It was about a four-year old named Kiran who, among other things, spent a day at a children’s museum but couldn’t remember anything fun that he’d done. His life seemed to be awash in that kind of feeling. And so I had another reason not to read the article—I was not drawn to reading about children in that kind of emotional pain. But still it called. Continue reading
Off-target Effects
A study has shown that Metformin, a drug widely used in treating diabetics, is likely to reduce the risk of breast cancer. The researchers introduce the study by noting that it is now acknowledged that diabetes increases the risk of breast and other cancers—something we discussed two years ago in our book.
Standing in Line
When my daughter Laural started school, a friend of mine asked what she was learning. After a moment, Laural answered, “How to stand in line and how to take tests.” There you have it: social order and stability are the foundation of education—which should make us ponder the relationship between education and learning.
Continue reading
Who’s Smoking?
Why are people still smoking? Don’t they know it’s bad for their health? Continue reading
Environmental Determinants of Health
When I was studying environmental economics in graduate school, a prominent scholar in the field made the argument that environmentalism was a middle class issue. The implication was that all the fuss about saving the whales and whatnot was nothing more than a consumer preference that people with enough money could afford to have and as a consequence should not be taken seriously in the same way as poverty. Continue reading
Prostate Politics
If you had cancer, wouldn’t want to know?
That’s the Siren’s call of cancer screening: don’t you want to know? Continue reading
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