A Strange History Is one of the oldest, cheapest drugs in the international pharmacopeia soon to become the medication that will block Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and MS? Work by Giovanna Mallucci’s laboratory at Britain’s Medical Research Council has shown – in mice – that trazodone and DBM, an anti-cancer drug, appear to stop a common neurodegenerative process which […]
Endless Jet Lag
Body Clocks and Food The world is filled with very different kinds of folks – and I’m not referring to politics. There are night people and day people, owls and larks. Researchers have been trying for decades to determine what else is different about them, from their DNA to their diets. Now there’s new data demonstrating […]
Can Addiction Start in the ER?
Addiction and Pain Pain rots the soul. Opioids can effectively treat pain – and then rot the soul and body. The treatment of pain remains a difficult dilemna for the whole country. A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine highlights the opiod mess in a a new way, demonstrating how one prescription […]
Protecting You From Dangerous Drugs
What do you do when dangerous drugs can’t be sold legally? Change the rules. We may get to see this – nationally. The FDA gets lots of brickbats, and has a tough job. Much of its funding comes from the drug companies it’s supposed to regulate. The process of drug approval is arduous, highly bureaucratic, […]
Why Do Americans Love Sociopaths?
Americans don’t just like sociopaths. We admire them. What is it about a “free people” that makes us appreciate those who lie to us, cheat and steal from us? Is it the psychological attraction of power unbounded by accountability? Yet there are added underlying ideological reasons we find sociopaths so alluring. Many are based on […]