Vending machines have carried all kinds of chips, snacks, drinks, and OTC pharmacy items, but the one located in the student health center at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania raises the ante to a controversial new level. For a reasonable $25, students and faculty can buy a single dose of Plan B out of a dispenser.
A recent study by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati, published online in the Journal of Pediatrics, cites an alarming increase in the number of children under five years of age poisoned at home by accidentally ingesting medications. Approximately 95% of those poisonings were the result of children taking medicines […]
Everybody has pain. In hard numbers, about 75 million American suffer from chronic pain, including epidemic proportions of people with “invisible” causes, like fibromyalgia, lupus, or Crohn’s disease. People with pain, especially those without a visible cause, often face skepticism, derision, and exasperation from families tired of hearing excuses. It’s difficult for other people to […]
There have been a spate of recalls this year, including ground turkey – twice – alfalfa sprouts, papayas, bologna, hazelnuts, and, most recently, cantaloupes. Wait…cantaloupes? It sounds a little reminiscent of “The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” How could an innocuous, non-exotic fruit like cantaloupe be deadly? But on two separate occasions this year, there […]
Dry little warnings printed on the package didn’t do the job. Thirty years of dire public service announcements didn’t get it done, either. Education isn’t working, even though the statistics should be enough to ensure nobody ever smokes again, anywhere on earth. Despite all this effort, and despite the fact that 5.4 million people die […]
HCG is the latest magic bullet in the weight-loss battle, and like all those that came before, it has its ups and downs. Dieters desperate for anything that seems like a solution are jumping on the bandwagon in droves, but is it healthy?
Consider what happens to small businesses when a big retail operation like Wal-Mart or Home Depot moves into a city. Individual mom-and-pop shops simply can’t survive against the deep-pocketed, heavy-handed tactics used by major chains. It doesn’t take long before historical main streets once lined with shops like Joe’s Hardware and Miller Family Drugs are […]
In 1943, Jonas Salk first injected a chicken egg with flu virus and purified the killed virus to make a vaccine. You may be surprised to learn that very little has changed. Scientists examine virus strains and decide which three new viruses are likely to be the most infectious. Once that determination is made, they […]
