ACSH Science Dispatch – Details, episodes & analysis

In a strange turn of events, The Lancet—one of the world's oldest medical journals—has taken a line you might expect to hear from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., declaring "ultra-processed" food a driver of chronic disease. Is there any evidence behind this association, or are we just dealing with academic snobs who can't appreciate the benefits of convenient, abundant food?

With highly potent and (sometimes) legal marijuana widely available across the US, emergency rooms are reporting an increase in cannabis hyperemesis syndrome (CHS), an unpleasant condition characterized by screaming and vomiting—"scromiting" in the vernacular. The condition is yet more evidence that marijuana’s reputation as a low-risk drug is undeserved.

The trillions of microbes that live in and on the human body—collectively known as the microbiome—appear to have profoundly important effects on our health. This raises a potential concern: some of our most significant public health interventions—vaccines, antibiotics, sanitation—are designed to kill or limit exposure to harmful germs. Have we gone too far in our war against microbial exposure? Let's take a closer look.

Roadside drug tests are unreliable, so why are they so widely used in the US? Researchers who make "health disparities" the focus of their work sometimes misrepresent their results. Here's a textbook example from a study that used pulse oximetry to measure disparities in COVID treatment.

Flu shots perform inconsistently because it's hard to anticipate which strains of the virus will be circulating in a given year. So far in 2023, it appears that the latest round of vaccines are working well.

The FDA has determined that Sudafed PE doesn't work. Questions and accusations are flying as a result: why were we sold a useless decongestant in the first place? And more importantly, who's to blame for this public health blunder?

Evidence suggests that Tylenol isn't an effective pain reliever in many cases, so why do doctors rely on it post-surgery? When it comes to treating and discussing COVID-19, do doctors have the right to speak freely, even when they dissent from accepted medical wisdom?

In the wake of hurricane Katrina in 2005, a physician was charged with manslaughter for administering morphine and another drug to patients who couldn't leave the hospital during the disaster. Was she alleviating their pain and anxiety or trying to kill them? Many news outlets are paid to slant their science coverage. How did that happen?

Some indicators suggest that we're in for a potentially serious fall COVID surge. How fearful should we be? On a lighter note, are you risking your health every time you eat raw oysters? Maybe not, but at least one scientist thinks this particular seafood is "gross."

Recent breakthroughs in stem-cell research have raised the prospect of one day "breeding" humans and growing organs in a lab. How realistic are these scenarios? Netflix just released an embarrassing miniseries about the opioid epidemic. Let's take a closer look at the show's claims.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer's (IARC) conclusion that the sweetener aspartame "possibly" causes cancer is definitely stupid. You can eat a diet consisting of 91 percent 'ultra-processed' food and be healthy, according to a new study. Let's take a closer look.