Thursday, January 19, 2012
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Sometimes researchers remain stubbornly wedded to their ideas even when their own work begins to unravel the fabric they have woven. I believe such is the case with Dr. Phillipa Darbre of the University of Reading in England. Back in 2004 Darbre achieved tabloid fame with her allegation that antiperspirants were implicated in breast cancer because they accosted breast tissue with preservatives known as parabens. These compounds have estrogenic properties [To read more click on Title.]
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
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I like Carey Price. He’s become the heart of the Montreal Canadiens. Carey is an excellent goaltender with a lot of gumption. But something he doesn’t have is a scientific background. That of course is par for the course for most athletes. But Carey is now set to become the spokesperson for Oscillococcinum, a homeopathic product that claims to treat the common cold as well as the flu. Don’t do it Carey! [To read more click on Title.]
Saturday, November 26, 2011
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Agatha Christie's "The Crooked House" is a great story. The plot revolves around an elderly tycoon who requires daily insulin shots. He also suffers from glaucoma for which he has been prescribed eyedrops. Everything is fine until someone in the "Crooked House" switches the eyedrops with the insulin. Murder most foul!
Does the chemistry make sense? Let's do a little detective work of our own. [To read more click on Title.]
Sunday, November 13, 2011
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It is a very small molehill. But to the folks at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC) it seems more like Mount Everest. This organization’s recently released report features a cute baby smothered in lather, sitting in a bathtub under the headline “Baby’s Tub Is Still Toxic.” What is this all about? Acrylic monomers leaching out of the tub? Lead in the water? Chemicals out gassing from the shower curtain? Reactions to mould on the grout? Nope. [To read more click on Title.]
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
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The dog has been called man’s best friend. But rats certainly have never been referred to in that endearing fashion. Yet, they can save lives as well as dogs; maybe even better. How? By using their remarkable sense of smell. Dogs of course have a great sense of smell. A lady’s dog saved her life a couple of years ago by constantly sniffing at a mole on her leg which turned out to be a malignant melanoma. [To read more click on Title.]
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
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Your grandmother, if you were lucky enough to have one, probably told you to eat your fruits and veggies. And now it seems that those grandmothers who meddled with our dietary habits and urged kids to eat their peas and carrots were bang on. Grandmas have been joined by a plethora of scientists who tell us that we should be eating anywhere between five and ten servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Grandmothers went by instinct, but science progresses through [To read more click on Title.]
Sunday, October 09, 2011
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It’s a fingernail biting problem. You would like to have nice, long, shapely nails but yours just won’t grow properly. Time for a little chemical help. You know you can avail yourself of the latest acrylic technology at your local nail salon, but you have a lingering concern about safety. You’ve heard about the nasty things that methylmethacrylate can do. Redness, swelling, itching, blisters, lifting of the nail from the nailbed, irritation of eyes [To read more click on Title.]
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
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Recently I wrote a column on hot dogs that are advertised as having no synthetic preservatives. The reference is to nitrites that are used to prevent botulism. I pointed out that these “natural” hot dogs actually use celery juice as a preservative because of its high nitrite content. In the column I also objected to a billboard funded by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine that equated eating hot dogs to smoking cigarettes [To read more click on Title.]
Monday, September 12, 2011
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Mention cranberry juice and “urinary tract infection” springs to mind. Most women and many men are familiar with the frequent urination and accompanying burning sensation that signals a bacterial invasion of the urinary tract. Today antibiotics solve the problem, but what did people do before? “Flushing the system” seemed a logical approach. All sorts of beverages were tried, but by the mid-1800s books on folkloric medicine were suggesting the use of cranberry juice[To read more click on Title.]
Thursday, August 25, 2011
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Don’t get scared just because you can’t pronounce it. If you like chocolate you’ve probably eaten it. Let me fill you in on the story. I think the first medicine I ever heard of was “Ricinus,” a liquidy concoction that came in a brown bottle. My mother would ply me with it when she suspected I was constipated. Although I can’t imagine why as a child I would have had such a problem since our diet in Hungary back then included generous doses of goose fat[To read more click on Title.]