It turns out that the best way to stop the spread of chickenpox may be right out in your backyard. Or above your backyard, rather. Going outside and getting lots of sunlight may be the best way to stop chickenpox, and its later and meaner cousin, shingles, from spreading: If you look at the evidence […]
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I’ve argued previously that the real culprit behind clamping down on soaring healthcare costs is the lack of pricing transparency. The only industry more opaquely priced than healthcare is the mattress industry. Josh Barro thinks that we should require transparent pricing from hospitals in order to create competition where none currently exists. Switching to a […]
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What if your doctor couldn’t use scientific research about the drugs she was prescribing to you in order to ensure that you received the proper dosage of medication? What if a doctor had to navigate a complex thicket of procedural patents simply to treat her patients? Well, according to Tim Lee, the Supreme Court is […]
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Nearly every country in the developed world has some form of universal access to health insurance. The glaring exception to this rule is the United States. As a proponent of free markets, I find this to be a glaring failure on the part of American policy makers and business leaders. So we see Occupy Wall […]
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Don’t tell Michelle Bachman, but trials of the new malaria vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline have met with great success: Final-stage trial data released on Tuesday showed it gave protection against clinical and severe malaria in five- to 17-month-olds in Africa, where the mosquito-borne disease kills hundreds of thousands of children a year. “These data bring us […]
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Amanda Marcotte is taking the GOOD Magazine health challenge and she, like yours truly, has no patience for faux-naturalistic health tips that aren’t grounded in scientific evidence. Unfortunately, on day eight of the challenge she ran into just such a tip: Cord Jefferson surprised me by writing an anti-soap screed, sincehe recently wrote an evidence-based […]
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Since I spilled a bunch of ink on climate change and science denialists recently at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, I thought I might as well take on a few of the other big science vs. anti-science issues. For the right kind of skepticism, take James Randi on homeopathy. Randi has recently offered one million […]
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