Kim Tingley writes: It’s simple, we are often told: All you have to do to maintain a healthy weight is ensure that the number of calories you ingest stays the same as the number of calories you expend. If you take in more calories, or energy, than you use, you gain weight; if the output is greater than the input, you lose it. But while we’re often conscious of burning calories when we’re working out, 55 to 70 percent of…
Katherine J. Wu, Ed Yong, and Sarah Zhang write: For nearly two years now, Americans have lived with SARS-CoV-2. We know it better than we once did. We know that it can set off both acute and chronic illness, that it spreads best indoors, that masks help block it, that our vaccines are powerful against it. We know that we can live with it—that we’re going to have to live with it—but that it can and will exact a heavy…
Peter Nicholas writes: When president Joe Biden rolled out his plan requiring vaccinations on a mass scale, he sounded a bit like a gambler at a point of desperation. Biden’s presidency, and much of his legacy, hinges on defeating the prolonged pandemic. During a dismal summer of rising infections and deaths due to vaccine holdouts and the Delta variant, the pandemic seemed to have defeated him. Under the new rules, Biden hopes to pressure about 80 million more Americans to…
Nature reports: Six months ago, Miles Davenport and his colleagues made a bold prediction. On the basis of published results from vaccine trials and other data sources, they estimated that people immunized against COVID-19 would lose approximately half of their defensive antibodies every 108 days or so. As a result, vaccines that initially offered, say, 90% protection against mild cases of disease might only be 70% effective after 6 or 7 months. “It felt a little bit out on a…
The Scientist reports: While researchers have found plenty of gene variants that seem to increase the risk of an autism diagnosis, it’s not clear why some people carrying these mutations develop autism spectrum disorders and some do not. In a study published today (September 17) in Science Advances, researchers point to a potential answer: severe infections during early childhood. After an early immune challenge, male mice with a mutated copy of the tuberous sclerosis complex 2 (Tsc2) gene developed deficits…
Instagram’s emphasis on filtered photos of bodies harms girls’ self-image. Thomas Barwick/DigitalVision via Getty Images By Christia Spears Brown, University of Kentucky Facebook officials had internal research in March 2020 showing that Instagram – the social media platform most used by adolescents – is harmful to teen girls’ body image and well-being but swept those findings under the rug to continue conducting business as usual, according to a Sept. 14, 2021, Wall Street Journal report. Facebook’s policy of pursuing profits…
An editorial in Nature, says: Next week, world leaders will gather for the United Nations Food Systems Summit. The event will be hosted by UN secretary-general António Guterres, with the aim of giving a much-needed boost to efforts to get the agency’s flagship Sustainable Development Goals back on track. One of these goals is to end hunger by 2030. Nearly 700 million people (almost 9% of the world’s population) go hungry; of those, 250 million are potentially on the brink…
Science Alert reports: When we take medicine, there are often unintended consequences. In the most common scenarios, these are known as side effects. But ‘side effects’ don’t begin to encompass the multitude of strange things that can happen when various compounds enter our system. Sometimes, these unintended consequences occur after drugs physically exit the body, with medicine finding a second life in animals accidentally exposed to the formulations downstream. Yet even before drugs have a chance to leave your body,…
The New York Times reports: None of the data on coronavirus vaccines so far provides credible evidence in support of boosters for the general population, according to a review published on Monday by an international group of scientists, including some at the Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization. The 18 authors include Dr. Philip Krause and Dr. Marion Gruber, F.D.A. scientists who announced last month that they will be leaving the agency, at least in part because…
David Zweig writes: At least 12,000 Americans have already died from COVID-19 this month, as the country inches through its latest surge in cases. But another worrying statistic is often cited to depict the dangers of this moment: The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States right now is as high as it has been since the beginning of February. It’s even worse in certain places: Some states, including Arkansas and Oregon, recently saw their COVID hospitalizations…
Scott Gottlieb writes: This pandemic will eventually be over, and the Delta surge—in which most of those not yet vaccinated against the coronavirus could become infected—may well be America’s last destructive wave. But just because we’re eager to move past the virus doesn’t mean it’s finished with us. In our large, open, and globally connected society, getting to zero COVID, the goal that Australia and New Zealand have pursued, is as politically unrealistic as it is biologically implausible. Americans are…
USA Today reports: Throughout the pandemic, public health experts have frequently pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts to justify state vaccine mandates. But experts say that case is unlikely to have much influence over the legal challenges raised to the new Biden administration policy. Henning Jacobson, a pastor from Cambridge, Mass., refused a smallpox vaccination during an outbreak of the disease in 1905, citing bad reactions he had to shots in the past. He was…
The Guardian reports: Healthy boys may be more likely to be admitted to hospital with a rare side-effect of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine that causes inflammation of the heart than with Covid itself, US researchers claim. Their analysis of medical data suggests that boys aged 12 to 15, with no underlying medical conditions, are four to six times more likely to be diagnosed with vaccine-related myocarditis than ending up in hospital with Covid over a four-month period. Most children who…
Science reports: When early farmers of the Vinca culture first sowed barley and wheat 7700 years ago in the rich soil of the Danube River and its tributaries, they changed more than their diet: They introduced a new way of life to the region. They crowded together in mud huts, living cheek by rump with aurochs, cows, pigs, and goats—and their poop—in settlements that eventually swelled to thousands of people. Togetherness brought a surge in diseases such as influenza, tuberculosis,…
Sarah Zhang writes: When London vanquished cholera in the 19th century, it took not a vaccine, or a drug, but a sewage system. The city’s drinking water was intermingling with human waste, spreading bacteria in one deadly outbreak after another. A new comprehensive network of sewers separated the two. London never experienced a major cholera outbreak after 1866. All that was needed was 318 million bricks, 23 million cubic feet of concrete, and a major reengineering of the urban landscape….
A provision of the Affordable Care Act makes it easier for patients to receive preventive care. Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/Digital Vision via Getty Images By Paul Shafer, Boston University and Alex Hoagland, Boston University Many Americans breathed a sigh of relief when the Supreme Court left the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in place following its third major legal challenge in June 2021. This decision left widely supported policies in place, like ensuring coverage regardless of preexisting conditions, coverage for dependents…