A researcher takes samples of well water in a rural community of Sri Lanka. Tests indicate that the active ingredient in Roundup may be interacting with the area’s hard water to cause epidemic levels of chronic kidney disease. Credit: Jake Ulrich

For the past couple of decades, tens of thousands of people living in rural Sri Lanka have been devastated by kidney failure due to unclear causes, also known as CKDu. Similar incidences of mysterious kidney diseases have emerged in tropical farming communities around the world.

A massive field study of the wells supplying drinking water to the Sri Lankan communities, conducted by researchers at Duke University, has identified a possible culprit – glyphosate, the active compound in Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world.

The results of the study were published in Environmental Science and Technology Letters on September 13, 2023. Continue reading →

Half of the surveyed adults reported difficulty affording their health care, and a large proportion said they delayed or avoided care or medication because they couldn’t afford it, often leading to their health problems worsening.

Half of working-aged adults in the United States report it is somewhat or very difficult to afford their health care costs, according to new data published by the Commonwealth Fund, and these financial pressures can lead them to delay or forgo care, resulting in worse downstream health outcomes. [1] Continue reading →

(Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Johnson & Johnson has sued four doctors who published studies citing links between talc-based personal care products and cancer, escalating an attack on scientific studies that the company alleges are inaccurate.

J&J’s subsidiary LTL Management, which absorbed the company’s talc liability in a controversial 2021 spinoff, last week filed a lawsuit in New Jersey federal court asking it to force three researchers to “retract and/or issue a correction” of a study that said asbestos-contaminated consumer talc products sometimes caused patients to develop mesothelioma. Continue reading →

A trainee pharmacy staff member puts in order medications on shelves at Monklands University Hospital in Airdrie, Scotland, March 7, 2022. (Andy Buchanan/Pool via Reuters)

European and other developed countries that have imposed drug-price controls are free-riding on the research and development (R&D) investment of the U.S. and a handful of other countries, a new study has found.

Stephen Ezell, vice president for global innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told National Review that while many countries around the world are willing to invest heavily in combatting climate change because they see it as an existential global threat, the same zeal falls away when it comes to public health and developing new, life-saving drugs.

Countries that have instituted drug-price controls do not pay market value. For example, the European countries pay around 30 percent less, said Ezell, adding that “historically it’s been the American consumer that bears the real cost of [these] innovative drugs.” Continue reading →

The death of a patient led to the end of a scam that robbed Medicare for years.

A chiropractor’s office stole from Medicare for years. Here’s how crimes like this affect you

It was a Friday afternoon and Debbie Dillinger was hoping for a pain-free weekend. Car accidents had left the 47-year-old mother of three with chronic neck pain and headaches, and to deal with it she was visiting Dolson Avenue Medical, a clinic in Middletown, New York.

Around 5 p.m., Dillinger swung through the glass front door of the office. She checked in at a curved reception desk in the clinic’s large, open treatment area, where patients lay on massage tables and exercised on a variety of equipment. Behind the desk, a floor-to-ceiling mural of a waterfall, trees and a soaring eagle set a serene tone. Continue reading →