The Andrew Pollack piece which I hinted at came out a few days ago: Consumers Slow to Embrace the Age of Genomics. For what it’s worth, I think this chart from Dr. Daniel MacArthur is right on:

This too will pass. I believe that like the internet the knowledge and analysis of our genetic information is […]

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As some of you may have noticed, things have been a weeeeeeee bit quiet here at Culture Dish.  This is what happens when a person embarks on a totally insane book tour.  I’ve been on the road for two months straight since the publication of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, giving talks, signing books, […]

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Ethan from Starts with a Bang has an interesting post up about scarcity of helium. He writes:
In addition to being lighter than air, Helium is incredibly useful, scientifically, in its liquid form! With a boiling point of only 4 Kelvin, liquid helium is used to cool some of the most powerful electromagnets on Earth, including […]

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Health supplements can be incredibly confusing - not to mention misleading. Many have no proven efficacy, yet they’re touted as miracle cures for everything from weight loss to hot flashes to insomnia. So what’s the scientific consensus - what should you believe, and which supplements should you buy? Who would you even ask?
Enter David McCandless […]

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You’ve no doubt heard that genetic tests are important to screen newborns for serious diseases, to diagnose illnesses, and to customize treatments. While genetic tests aren’t a panacea, there’s a lot of excitement about their potential, especially as more studies examine patients’ whole genomes. People are starting to see their DNA as an essential part […]

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sourceI recently introduced a paper on the discriminative stimulus properties of cathinone analog drugs with reference to the recent emergence in the popular media of an analog called 4-methylmethcathinone (4-MMC), mephedrone (2-methylamino-1-p-tolylpropan-1-one), Meow-Meow, MMCAT. The name “plant food” is what 4-MMC is apparently being marketed under in the UK, given that the compound itself is […]

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The Lese of the Ituri Forest raise food in gardens, and they exchange various things for wild animal meat hunted by the Efe (Pygmy) foragers with whom they live in close economic and social association. But the Lese also hunt and gather, to varying degrees, with some individuals never doing it, others often engaged in […]

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The New York Times’ Well blog caught my eye yesterday with an intriguing post connecting good conversation with mental health. It seems that a new study by Matthias Mehl and colleagues in Psychological Science suggests that participants who have more deep, substantive conversations are significantly happier than those who make more “small talk.”
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Kent Heckenlively shows us why AoA is “not anti-vaccine”:
Bruesewitz v. Wyeth has the potential to move all that in a new direction. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act simply states, “No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable . . . if the injury or death resulted from side-effect that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was […]

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Given the resurgence of the mercury militia over the last week or so in response to the Poul Thorsen case, I was amused to have found what looks to me to be the cure for autism.
The cure?
Well, if you’re a member of the mercury militia and believe that thimerosal-containing vaccines cause autism, isn’t the cure […]

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