I love the smell and taste of freshly cooked bacon. That said, I very rarely eat bacon, for the same reason I rarely eat sausage, ham or bratwurst. Preserved meats are associated with a higher risk of colon cancer. But if you *do* eat bacon, can you afford to? Not according to Donald Trump, who […]

In a previous post, I called attention to the decline in the number of medical students who choose pediatrics as a career. Some of the slack can be taken up by nurses and physician assistants, but access to pediatricians is a growing problem. So, too, is access to pediatric care at hospitals: “Pediatric hospitals have […]

If you want to make the big bux as a physician, you need to do procedures (e.g., endoscopies, colonoscopies, surgery). Among the most poorly compensated branches of medicine are pediatrics and geriatrics. And yet: “Pediatricians attend the same medical schools as those who enter other specialties, and education is expensive. Almost half of those who […]

When I was in junior high, most girls took home economics and most boys took shop. What I recall hearing about home ec is that it taught some cooking and sewing skills, and how to shop for food. It may have also taught how to balance a checkbook. I ended up learning those things on […]

I came of age scientifically at the beginning of the cloning era. As various genes associated with human genetic disorders—sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, Huntington’s—were cloned, the papers reporting these successes always ended with some statement that now the door was open to therapy. These prophecies proved to be wildly optimistic. Now, with […]

I got my first COVID shot in August 2020 as part of the Moderna Phase III trial. Since then, I’ve had four additional jabs. Today, I’ll get another booster with the latest Moderna vaccine. I’m looking forward to it. I did contract COVID last November during a trip to Colorado. I tested positive for a […]

The last decade has seen many initiatives toward clean, green, and low-carbon energy, as well as a global shift toward electric vehicles and automation. Many of these initiatives were enabled rare earth magnets, which is why rare earth magnets are heavily used now and will continue to be used in the future. When my dad […]

Pandemics are bad for economies. Vaccinations are an important bulwark against pandemics. But all viruses and all vaccines are not alike. In the case of the annual flu vaccine, annual vaccination against flu variants can be a problem: antibody-producing memory cells crowd out new antibody-producing cells, and people develop relatively few neutralizing antibodies against the […]

One of the challenges with aging is keeping up with, and adapting to, change. Stuff you believed is true at one time can be falsified by additional experiments. That’s how science works, and how science is different from religious dogma. And thanks to the intertubes, checking for updates is fast and easy. I posted here […]

For all the dads and old guys, one of my favorite John Hartford songs: Let him go on mama