HFO-1234yf, a climate-friendly alternative refrigerant for car air conditioning systems touted by environmental activists, may instead be a greater problem than the products they insisted was causing pollution.
One way to keep a healthy genetic population is a diverse enough group that there can be a random exchange of material. If that is a big factor, then geographically isolated giraffes on preserves may be at future risk.
It is well established that although acupuncture, chiropractic care, massage therapy, yoga, and meditation/mindfulness market themselves as Asian traditional techniques that will help buyers avoid the same Big Pharma industry that gives us cancer treatments and vaccines, the overwhelming users in America are not Asians at all, they are wealthy white female progressives.
In the 1990s, culture seemed to truly get that cigarettes and the damage they cause are the leading preventable lifestyle killer. Tobacco companies got penalized to the tune of tens of billions of dollars for their part in suppressing data showing the harms of smoking but instead of celebrating the win and using that money to promote smoking cessation and harm reduction, much of it went to trial lawyer yacht payments and the "expert witnesses" they support. Some went to anti-smoking groups, who were now reliant on Big Tobacco money and, you guessed it, then had to get allied epidemiologists to start promoting a new lawsuit, this time for second-hand and even third-hand smoke as causes of cancer.(1)
You may not know it, but the US Department of Agriculture does; if there is detection of an antibiotic in an animal off to the processing plant, the entire railcar full will be destroyed. On the other hand, if you never use antibiotics for a sick animal, you are being inhumane and jeopardizing a whole herd.
A decade ago, automated telephone menus were what everyone hated. It was common to press 0 or yell 'Agent' at the phone because you knew that after inputting everything it wanted, when you got to an agent they were going to ask you for everything all over again.Today, you probably ignore the chat window that opens up on a website, especially if you think it is a bot. A Verizon bot is going to be able to help you with nothing, so going back to find your account number, which means closing the chat window, is a waste of time, when the real agent who replies will ask for it all over again(1)
A short time ago, the National Institutes of Health 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee held its second public meeting to discuss recommended changes. It was very authoritative, they said they were concerned about cancer and chemicals and obesity and they assured us they were looking at all of the new literature. The panel signaled it wants to go after Frappuccinos and aspartame. The problem is that none of those issues are why they were created.
An organ donor waiting list is not just who has been waiting the longest, an equation ranks patients based on age, waiting time, and other checklist. Yet the 'other factors may' mean a secret sauce that leads to disparity the same way EPA panels refusing to disclose data in studies its epidemiologists choose to use leads to erosions in public trust.Transplant centers may be ignoring such secret sauce determinations. A new analysis of 11 centers between 2015 and 2019 found that 78 percent of kidneys offered to these centers were not placed with candidates at the top of the list of around 6,000 transplant candidates - which meant 4,700 transplants.
A new op-ed in Nature argues that countries which have air conditioning owe the world up to $298 trillion. And counting.That figure is virtual money. Like virtual water, or virtual pregnancy, it isn't a real thing, it is a computer model by activist economists who love to use terms like "reparations" because the modern world doesn't have people routinely freezing to death.
In the early days of changes in laws to products like alcohol, some people below the new legal threshold were still able to get it. It was impossible to arrest everyone selling illegally, and there was a certain freedom argument many made, i.e. why can I shoot a Nazi in Europe but not buy a beer in the US?
Calories cause obesity and while everyone wants a magic solution to eating too much for a prolonged period of time, those with the means can make it reality in the form of surgery.COVID-19 set off a panic in much of culture. Schools were closed, people were ostracized if they didn't think flipping masks up and down between sips of water was clinically valid, but decisions were being made in real-time so a lot of things that once again seem silly in hindsight were the Precautionary Principle in all its glorious flawed reasoning.
New food surveys show what you probably knew; if you eat too much, you will get fat, and obesity is a risk factor for numerous health issues.
In the 19th century, charlatans traveled around selling magic potions, tonics, and salves but to stop them no one decided to ban actual medical research.The issue facing "AI", which is short for Artificial Intelligence, is that the only people who will feel bound by top-down control were never going to be a problem in the first place. Large Language Models, termed Generative AI, can be a huge positive in health care, but because it is misunderstood and there is a lot of exploitative media coverage there are ongoing efforts to kill it before it really gets going.
