During the Obama administration, he was concerned about vaccines causing autism and it showed when it came to guidance about swine flu vaccines. His administration banned multi-use vials because of his party's insistence that preservatives caused the disorder.
Ben&Jerry's is not going to roll out ice cream derived from geneticaly modified cells in a lab any time soon - their buying demographic hates science (although their parent conglomerate Unilever loves it) - but the public wants it now.
Viking 1, an unmanned U.S. probe headed for Mars, was launched on this day in 1975 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, which is Brevard county on the Atlantic Ocean and across the Banana River east of Merritt Island where Kennedy Space Center is which is itself east Titusville across the Indian River.Yet even though Viking 1 took off from Cape Canaveral, formerly called Cape Kennedy, it did not take off from its more famous adjacent site, Kennedy Space Center, formerly called NASA Launch Operations Center. It instead took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station headquartered at Patrick Air Force Base, actual Cape Canaveral, not Merritt Island, which had once been renamed Cape Kennedy Air Force Station. Sound confusing?
In 2006, when Science 2.0 began, it felt like the world was ready for a writing network composed of scientists. There had already been two attempts, one failed and one wildly successful, albeit more focused on cultural issues than science.The reason it felt time was because the public didn't trust journalists, who were (and are) often overtly partisan while scientists didn't trust journalists because they were (and are) often wrong. Why not make scientists the journalists?
A recent paper claims the ketogenic diet (basically the Atkins diet, except you can't sell new diet books using old names) will help with migraines.Other more dangerous claims are that it will help with schizophrenia and epilepsy. The reality is that if the ketogenic diet could do any of those things, meal plans would be in double-blind clinical trials right now. Those diseases are a trillion dollar market.
If something is free, do you use it more? It seems so, in New York City ambulance usage for minor injuries (abrasions, minor burns, muscle sprains) rose by 37 percent after the Affordable Care Act was implemented.An ambulance for a scrape? Yes, nearly 3,000 more each year of them, and that is just in one city. All paid for by everyone whose premiums went up.
If you are worried about climate change and don't embrace natural gas as a bridge to whatever energy wins the future - solar, hydrogen, nuclear - you don't understand energy density and emissions.
The never-enacted Obama Clean Power Plan was scuttled by the Supreme Court in 2016 and its defense later abandoned by the Trump administration. Though it is fashionable to claim that means Republicans hate climate science, the reality is it was an expensive mandate without a problem to solve.
Comments opened on the recent EPA nominations to serve on the Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) established under section 25(d) of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), since three member terms will expire during the next year.
Decades ago, Velveeta had to be labeled “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product" so that customers could have truth in labeling. It was not "cheese", said the government. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission even even told Kraft they could not even advertise that their "singles" contained five ounces of milk because of the implication the cheese might have as much calcium as 5 ounces of milk when it only had as much calcium as 3.5 ounces of milk. Government was all about mandating consumer trust in labels then.
Smoking kills, there is no question on that, but as the smoking rate began to drop and the settlement with cigarette companies due to expire, trial lawyers turned to secondhand smoke as a new target. But they needed real evidence, not statistical correlation. Though asthmatics and people with respiratory issues suffer during any air quality change, from wildfires to heavy perfumes, the most authoritative study of secondhand smoke ever done couldn't document a greater risk of death.Though the effort failed (you still shouldn't smoke around kids, for other reasons) that didn't prevent the migration a few years later to thirdhand smoke - the belief that particulate matter left behind from smoke could cause cancer.
If you are a soldier, you may believe the worst thing that can happen is being shot. There is no upside to it, you are wounded or die.A new psychology paper says soldiers who've actually been shot are not as traumatized as other soldiers who either saw it or heard about it. They contend that soldiers who experience suffering and death without being in any danger report more post-traumatic stress symptoms than soldiers who were actually in life-threatening situations.
Fibromyalgia is an ill-defined chronic pain condition and claims around the gut microbiome are the latest craze in science-y sounding speculation about lots of health issues, following the fad of linking everything to what your grandparents ate at dinner, epigenetics. While in severe cases, microbiota are obviously important, last week the FDA warned the public about fecal transplants when a person died. The agency suspended clinical trials.Chronic pain sufferers who can't get a specific diagnosis have dealt with woo promises from corporate marketing for a lot longer.
