In the past few months, I bet you’ve seen at least one ad like these. When I first saw these ads, I was impressed.
Most direct-to-consumer drug advertising is loathsome, filled with moronic non sequiturs–what does kayaking have to do with a nucleoside analog used to treat herpes–or simply build up anxiety about a problem, offering [...]

In my week of carefully recording my weight and diet, using the excellent CRON-o-Meter program, I gained a half pound–from 163.5 to 164.0 pounds in the seven day moving average. Just to emphasize, I wasn’t trying to lose weight, rather just to record what a typical week of eating was like for me.

A few things [...]

Since moving to Seattle I’ve gained thirty pounds.
On my slight five-foot-ten frame, that represents about a fifth more of me since 2001. How did that happen? Very slowly, and with both fat and muscle gains contributing.
Arriving at 135 pounds to Seattle, I was close to being underweight, my BMI above 18.5. Now at 165, I’m [...]

As the New York Times reported today, a higher than ever percentage of children are surviving until their fifth birthday.
This public health triumph has arisen, Unicef officials said, partly from campaigns against measles, malaria and bottle-feeding, and partly from improvements in the economies of most of the world outside Africa.
So, with more babies surviving through [...]

… to triple drug therapy for HIV.
While the new therapy started in 1996, it was on September 11th 1997 when the first report was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Here is a lovely manuscript–a proper randomized double-blind and controlled study.
The trial patients were grouped by CD4 T cell counts, and then randomized [...]

See if this makes sense to you:
Weight is an intrinsic trait, determined mostly by our genes. Yet, globally the number of obese people has nearly doubled since 1980–faster than alleles can redistribute in the population.
The amount we eat is strictly controlled by regulatory systems. Each of us is endowed with an energy set-point; forced overeating [...]

After attending a retreat yesterday, I returned home to a night (and morning) of violent vomiting. Quick quiz: what causes rapid-onset food poisoning, as defined by profuse vomiting less than six hours after eating? Anything with pre-formed toxins, of course!
Our selections:
1. Staphylococcus Aureus (from snot)

2. Bacillus cereus (from improperly cooked and refrigerated starches)

Snot or rot. [...]