Henry Miller shares updates about the latest news on the Wuhan flu outbreak. The first case of the new strand of flu from China was confirmed in the United States this week and the region where the coronavirus originated, near the city of Wuhan in China, has been put under quarantine. ...
Did you catch the story about the swarm of 25,000 bees that had to be captured and removed (by a special police unit, no less) from the Staten Island Ferry Station in New York City? After many years of media reports about honeybees and wild bees dying off, you’d think they were nearly extinct — so what were 25,000 of them doing at a ferry terminal in one of the world’s most densely populated cities? Maybe they heard that New York was...
Influenza, “the flu,” is more than a bad cold. Seasonal outbreaks yearly cause not only tremendous misery and debility but huge numbers of hospital admissions and deaths. The last flu season, which ran from October 2018 until May 2019, caused up to 42.9 million flu illnesses, up to 647,000 hospitalizations and up to 61,200 flu deaths, according to preliminary numbers from the CDC. Those figures are only slightly higher than the average over the past decade. What can we expect this year? Well,...
Every so often, we scientists encounter something that is so misguided, so wrong-headed, so perfectly idiotic it takes our breath away. It offends us. Such an example is a docudrama film called “Modified.” Disguised as a tender, sentimental story of a Canadian woman learning over many years from her mother the value of home-grown, homemade food—a sort of culinary version of “Anne of Green Gables”—it is nothing more than an anti-social screed providing fodder for the anti-science, anti-corporate echo-chamber that...
Influenza — the flu — is more than a bad cold. Seasonal outbreaks mean not only misery but increased hospital admissions and deaths. The last flu season, from October 2018 until May 2019, caused up to 42.9 million illnesses, up to 647,000 hospitalizations and up to 61,200 deaths, according to preliminary numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those figures are slightly higher than the average over the last decade. What can we expect this year? Australia’s flu season, which...
First the good news: You no longer need to worry about mortgages, student debt, career advancement, or saving for retirement. Depending on the brand of snake oil being peddled by different environmental activists, we’re headed for a “climate apocalypse” in 10, 13, or 20 years. It is undeniable that the United States cannot control the 84 percent of energy usage that occurs outside our country. Looking at trends in coal (which accounts for about 38 percent of fuels used worldwide), led by India...
Genetic engineering has delivered monumental scientific, technological, and humanitarian achievements – from producing human insulin in bacteria and gene therapy to treat genetic diseases to increasing food security and reducing malnutrition in developing countries. But it continues to face brickbats, sometimes from unexpected directions. The most recent were directed at an extraordinarily important product that helps reduce populations of the invasive mosquito species Aedes aegypti. This non-native, introduced pest transmits viral diseases, including Zika, dengue fever, chikungunya, West Nile, and yellow fever. For most of these,...
When there’s an outbreak of deaths or illnesses from injected street drugs, do public health authorities demand diabetics and doctors stop using syringes? Of course not. Yet a host of public officials — from President Trump to Gov. Andrew Cuomo to members of the Squad — are taking just that sort of approach in responding to the spate of vaping-related illnesses and deaths around the country. Cuomo, for example, went on a tear Sunday about vaping, calling it “a burgeoning health crisis” and...
Much of the medical progress in the past half-century has involved expensive, high-tech diagnostic tests and therapies. But it would be a mistake to gainsay the value of inexpensive, low-tech innovations. Consider the problem of falls, which are both a cause and effect of declining health in the elderly. They are the leading cause of injury-related visits to U.S. emergency rooms and of accidental deaths for Americans over 65. Preventing falls or reducing their impact would help millions of people and...
Politicians talk a lot about farming but seldom about “pharming,” even though the latter can also have a big impact on Americans’ pocketbooks—and their health. The punny name refers to genetically modifying plants such as corn, rice, tobacco and alfalfa to produce high concentrations of pharmaceutical ingredients. Many common medicines already come from plants, including morphine, the fiber supplement Metamucil and the cancer drug Taxol. Yet heavy-handed federal regulations have frozen out pharming efforts, making it far too difficult for...
The Trump Administration on July 31 announced steps that could lead to the importation of prescription drugs from Canada, where prices are lower. This strategy is favored by President Trump but has long been opposed by many Republicans. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that the policy would enable Americans to “get the benefit of the deals that pharma themselves are striking with other countries.” The fate of this initiative is uncertain after the failure of the administration’s last two proposals...
A smarter way to curb drug prices through imports By Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. and John J. Cohrssen The Trump administration last week announced steps that could lead to the importation of prescription drugs from Canada, where prices are lower. It is a goal supported by President Trump, but long opposed by many Republicans . . . Instead of pushing for piecemeal steps that will continually run into political opposition and legal challenges, the administration should take a broader approach — by establishing...
California’s Office of Administrative Law (OAL) recently made it official: Your morning cup of coffee won’t give you cancer. Next week’s newsflash probably will be, swallowing an orange seed doesn’t cause a tree to grow in your stomach. After more than a year of legal wrangling, OAL signed off on a proposed rule exempting coffee from Proposition 65, a decades-old voter-approved measure that requires warning labels on products that contain chemicals the state has deemed potentially carcinogenic. So that means cancer warning labels...
Cures for Cancer Could Grow on Trees By Kathleen L. Hefferon and Henry I. Miller Politicians talk a lot about farming but seldom about “pharming,” even though the latter can also have a big impact on Americans’ pocketbooks—and their health. The punny name refers to genetically modifying plants such as corn, rice, tobacco and alfalfa to produce high concentrations of pharmaceutical ingredients. Many common medicines already come from plants, including morphine, the fiber supplement Metamucil and the cancer drug Taxol. Yet heavy-handed...
This year’s debate over Senate Bill 276 (Pan) has generated significant controversy in an area where there should be none – the importance of vaccinating all children from often deadly or debilitating communicable diseases. This debate comes as infectious diseases that used to claim the lives of one in six children before their fifth year are making an alarming comeback in California and nationwide. The culprits are parents who should know better – and the politicians who accommodate them. Parents of small...
In its international edition on April 25, the New York Times ran a blatantly anti-Semitic political cartoon that portrayed a blind President Trump wearing a yarmulke being led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was depicted as a dog wearing a collar with a star of David. It was, of course, outrageous, and seemed to me symptomatic of the Times' cluelessness about many things. Putting it another way, its editors, reporters, and columnists often don't know what they don't know....