Older black people are more likely to die of the virus that their white counterparts – among those lost are prominent black pastors, performers and civil rights activists. --- Coronavirus has claimed more than 45,000 lives in the US as of Tuesday – especially those of older Americans, who represent 91% of all Covid-19 deaths. Within that vulnerable population, older black people are more likely to die of the virus than their white counterparts. And among those lost are prominent black pastors, performers, and practitioners who lived through struggles for civil and cultural rights in their communities.

Like superheroes, each pain reliever has its own set of strengths and weaknesses.

A $3 squirt of CBD oil on your ice cream or coffee? Probably right around 10 mg. You’d need 30 times that amount to get to the levels at which researchers have found stress-relieving results. […] it wouldn’t be fair to say that 5 or even 20 mg of CBD oil in your coffee is proven to do nothing; that hasn’t been proven. It’s more accurate to say that 20 mg of CBD oil in your coffee has never been proven to do much of anything, and related research indicates that’s probably way too low of a dose to have any measurable effect. […] One study found that placebos sometimes work even when the subject knows it’s a placebo. Another, using that same public speaking setup that CBD studies have used, found that anxiety treatments are particularly susceptible to the placebo effect, with 40 percent of placebo-treated patients showing a decrease in anxiety symptoms while tasked with speaking to a crowd. So is it possible that despite all this anecdotal evidence, low-dose CBD is a placebo? Sure, because, say it with me: We don’t know anything about CBD. […] There are big companies and small companies, companies that provide elaborate chemical charts and companies that have no online presence at all. There are companies that run their goods — either as raw materials or as consumer-stage final products — through lab tests. There are those that say they do but provide no information on what the labs found or which labs tested their products. Everyone wants a piece of CBD, and nobody is watching. Remember: There’s no regulation by the FDA or anyone else. […] In 2016, the FDA tested several “CBD oils,” ultimately issuing warnings to eight companies. Some of those oils were found to contain no or barely any CBD, and many contained illegal quantities of THC. […] CBD, though wildly understudied, is not bullshit. In fact, the FDA just approved its very first cannabis-derived drug, a CBD-based epilepsy treatment called Epidiolex. The dosage for Epidiolex starts at around 2.5 mg/kg and is increased to 5 mg/kg, so a 150-pound adult would settle onto a dose of just over 340 mg per day, though the diseases it targets start in childhood. Even some of the claims made by recreational CBD sellers aren’t bullshit, in the abstract. CBD really does show some anti-inflammatory properties. It really does have anxiolytic effects, in certain situations. Of course, it’s the scammy nature of herbal supplements that a seller can say something like “CBD has been indicated to reduce anxiety” (a true statement!), even though the actual product you’ve got in your hand has never been indicated to do so. Nutmeg, for example, will act as a dangerous psychoactive drug at high levels, but it would be deranged to put “scientific research has shown that nutmeg can get you high as hell” on a pumpkin spice latte. It’s correct, but it’s also incredibly misleading. We don’t know how CBD affects the brain in any kind of depth. We don’t know which doses and delivery methods are best for different outcomes. We don’t know how CBD interacts with most other drugs or foods. We don’t know the differences between the effects of isolates and full-spectrum preparations. We don’t even know how many cannabinoids there are. California, for what it’s worth, seems aware and concerned about this whole thing. But a lack of data does not hinder capitalism; it is, rather, a huge help. When nobody knows anything, you can say — or imply — anything. More importantly, you can sell everything.

For any discoveries that Murphy makes, the road ahead is paved with obstacles. Safety testing, animal testing, and then finally, the hope that a drug company and its investors can be persuaded to gamble hundreds of millions on the chemical passing the multiple stages of human clinical trials, before it can be turned into an over-the-counter product. The odds seem slim, but with the annual global mortality rate from antibiotic resistance predicted to hit 10 million in the next 35 years, scientists remain hopeful that the politicians will come to better agreements on how to finance antibiotic development. The question is, will they get around to doing so before it’s too late?

the mortality benefit of mammography is much smaller, and the harm of overdiagnosis much larger, than has been previously recognized.

This 10,000-rpm, no-pulse artificial heart doesn't resemble an organic heart--and might be all the better for it.

‘When it comes to IVF, in-vitro fertilization, nothing is normal. Your world is upside-down. Your doctor compliments your wife on her monkeys. Then, when every dollar and exertion has gone toward a single hour of hope, it begins to snow.’

A ton of scientific studies are flat-out wrong. And most of it doesn't really matter anyway. "‘Science is a noble endeavor, but it’s also a low-yield endeavor,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure that more than a very small percentage of medical research is ever likely to lead to major improvements in clinical outcomes and quality of life. We should be very comfortable with that fact.’"

"Your Guide to Quackery, Health Fraud, and Intelligent Decisions"

"Atul Gawande gave the commencement speech at Stanford’s School of Medicine last week. Here is what he told the graduating class." On the need for building interconnected systems of care in medicine, rather than a hodgepodge of specialists not communicating with each other.

Green, simple healthcare. "Our packaging is made from 100% recycled materials and it is compostable, which means one day, it will probably become a part of a large tree. Maybe you can cut down that tree and make it into a speedboat."

From the US National Library of Medicine, a huge collection of free, public-domain images from anatomical atlases. A great wealth of material. Wish it were designed better and that the books were all scanned rather than some photographed.

A good collection of information.