The Old Numbers Racket One way to keep a population unhealthy is to endlessly worry them about getting sick. For the last few decades, purveyors of cholesterol as the core of heart disease have created a medical industrial complex that has been hard to suppress. Now that complex is changing its spots again with new […]
Does Depression Age You? (12/2/13)
The Tale of the Telomeres If you ever get depressed, you will age much faster. Or at least that’s what some recent articles proclaim. The latest – a study from Amsterdam of 2400 people and their genes – looked at their telomeres, the “buffers” of DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes which prevent them […]
Make It (Money) While You Fake It (11/11/13)
Herbal or Verbal? We’ve said it before but it’s more true than we knew – herbal medicines often don’t contain what they claim. New research looking at “DNA barcoding” found widespread fraud in herbal medicines. How Do We Know? Researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario did a blind DNA test on 44 herbal […]
Lust In the Dust (10/21/13)
Must Sex Lead to Death? Never heard of the dasykaluta? The phascogale? Don’t be surprised. Small marsupials rarely get favorable media attention. Look at how we treat mice. But these otherwise insubstantial, arthropod ingesting (that includes roaches) rodents deserve our interest and perhaps our piteous respect. For they show the lengths evolution can go to […]
No Treatment, No Problem (10/14/13)
Without Care If you’re psychotic and you don’t want treatment it’s no problem. At least until you harm or kill somebody. Navy veteran and computer contractor Aaron Alexis killed twelve people at the Washington Navy Yard. By all evidence he had been psychotic for weeks or months. He told his friends and neighbors that their […]