Health

WE DID NOT RECONSTRUCT HARD ENOUGH:

Where You Live in the U.S. Affects How Long You Live (Amy Olson, 12/10/21, Dartmouth)

The team’s initial thought was that the differences in mortality rates across the country might be explained by deaths of despair—suicide, alcohol poisoning and drug overdoses such as from opioids. However, this was not the case. Deaths of despair only accounted for one-sixth of all midlife deaths.

They then looked at whether geographic differences in mortality rates could be explained by differences in education, such as if a person had a college degree, and whether states with more college graduates had better mortality than states with fewer college graduates. Education was not the root of the problem, as health inequality was still present after education at the state-level was accounted for, the researchers found.

The researchers also investigated how state-level income impacted the increased divergence in mortality rates. “Our findings show that over the past three decades, mortality rates have improved in states with initially high incomes in 1990 while the rates in low-income states have lagged behind,” says co-author Ellen Meara, an adjunct professor at The Dartmouth Institute and a professor of health economics and policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “In 2019, high-income states experienced the biggest drop in mortality rates relative to 1968 or 1990, whereas, the low-income states barely budged at all.”

It wasn’t income that drove the great geographic divergence in mortality, the researchers say. Instead, it appears to be the long-term benefits of public health and social policies that were enacted by higher-income states in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly relating to children and adolescents, as they started paying off at midlife in the 2000s and 2010s.

“Investments in public health—higher taxes on cigarettes, expansion of the earned income tax credit for families, and expansion of Medicaid to pregnant mothers in high-income states—are the most likely candidates for why some states gained and others didn’t,” says Skinner.

Meara says, “our results demonstrate how regional investments in health capital over the lifecycle, including policies aimed at adopting good health behaviors, can provide long-term benefits for residents, significantly increasing life expectancy.”

ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

Selling Fear and Half-Truths: The Latest 60 Minutes ‘Exposé’ on Havana Syndrome (Robert E. Bartholomew, March 21, 2026 , Skeptic)

The 60 Minutes segment also failed to mention that social contagion may have played a role in the initial spread of “Havana Syndrome.” CIA analyst Fulton Armstrong would later reveal that the undercover intelligence agent in Havana who first reported the mysterious sounds and believed they were responsible for his health issues, had engaged in a vigorous campaign to persuade colleagues that the sounds were significant. “He was lobbying, if not coercing, people to report symptoms and connect the dots,” Armstrong said.22 The man, who has since been dubbed “patient zero,” later attended a gathering of embassy personnel and played the recording of his “attack,” encouraging them to report their symptoms as he was convinced that they too had been targeted. His recording was analyzed by government scientists and identified as crickets.23 In fact, eight of the first group of victims in Cuba who reported feeling unwell and hearing sounds, recorded their “attacks.” They were later identified as the mating call of the Indies short-tailed cricket.24

Soon American and Canadian diplomats stationed in Havana were on the lookout for strange sounds and health complaints. Eventually the U.S. government alerted all of its active military personnel and embassy staff around the world to be vigilant for mysterious sounds and “anomalous health incidents.” In response, there were over 1,500 reports of possible attacks. The problem with these alerts is that “Havana Syndrome” symptoms are common in the general population and include headaches, nausea, dizziness, forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, tinnitus, fatigue, facial pressure, hearing loss, ear pain, trouble walking, depression, irritability, and even nose bleeds.

One study found that the average person experiences five different symptoms in any given week. Thirty-six percent noted fatigue; 35 percent reported headaches. Nearly 30 percent said they had insomnia, while 15 percent had difficulty concentrating, 13 percent reported memory problems; roughly 8 percent noted nausea and dizziness.25 These symptoms overlap with those attributed to “Havana Syndrome.” When one eliminates claims of brain damage and hearing loss (which were never demonstrated), one is left with an array of exceedingly common symptoms.

DIFFERENCE IS NOT DISORDER:

Autism study is my life’s work. The spectrum has lost all meaning (Madeleine Spence, March 07 2026, Times uk)

Now emeritus professor of cognitive development at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, Frith, 84, is having second thoughts about the framework. “I think the spectrum has come to its collapse,” she says, over Zoom. Her cheerful and gentle manner feels incongruous with the gravity of the point she is making: Frith thinks that the autism spectrum is broken. That our approach is at best no longer relevant and at worst damaging. Not only that, she is also challenging a modern doctrine in science that values inclusivity as an end in itself.

It is this inclusivity, Frith says, that means “there is no longer a common denominator for all the individuals who are diagnosed as having ASD [autism spectrum disorder].

“The spectrum has become so accommodating that I fear that it has now been stretched so far that it has become meaningless and is no longer useful as a medical diagnosis.”

IT’S NO LONGER HIP:

Long Covid Is Down, but Not Out, Study Finds (Ed Cara, March 2, 2026, Gizmodo)

Researchers say that self-reported rates of long covid can still serve as a barometer for its impact on the population.

Fads fade.

ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

How Real Is the Nocebo Effect? (Carol Tavris, February 23, 2026, Skeptic)

Where the placebo goes, can the nocebo be far behind? In This Book May Cause Side Effects, Helen Pilcher, a science writer and TV presenter with a PhD in cell biology, delves into the placebo’s “evil twin”—the myriad ways that our negative expectations affect us. If you had chills, fatigue, or headaches after getting a COVID shot, she writes, they were likely due to your being told those are frequent “side effects.” If you read the list of symptoms that your newly prescribed drug “might” produce, chances are you will experience one or more of them—and possibly decide not to take that drug after all. “If just the thought of eating a certain food makes you feel sick,” she writes, “it’s highly likely that placebo’s evil twin has struck again. Indeed, many of those who believe they have intolerances to certain ingredients, such as lactose or gluten, may well owe their misery to psychological rather than physical processes.” When self-reported “gluten intolerant” people are given gluten-free bread but told that the bread contains gluten, very often they develop gastrointestinal symptoms. “And when some gluten-intolerant people are covertly fed regular bread but told that it’s gluten-free, they don’t get symptoms,” Pilcher writes. “It’s the idea of gluten that they are intolerant to, rather than theprotein itself.”

FIRST, DO NO HARM:

Christians welcome decision to pause puberty blockers trial (Christianity Today, 2/23/26)

Simon Calvert is Deputy Director at The Christian Institute, which has opposed the trans agenda for well over two decades. He was among the critics welcoming the pause while urging the government to go further and cancel it completely.

“It is dangerous and immoral to use children as guinea pigs for drugs that we already know are harmful for them and useless at treating gender dysphoria,” he said.

“In the overwhelming majority of cases, childhood confusion about gender typically resolves during puberty. So these drugs block the very process which relieves that confusion.

“We must hope and pray this outbreak of common sense is permanent and that the trial never goes ahead.”

Puberty blockers for people under the age of 18 questioning their gender have been banned in the UK since 2024.

James Esses, a therapist and leading campaigner against the puberty blockers trial, recently joined with other opponents to launch High Court action aimed at stopping the trial from going ahead.

He said, “This is a huge victory but now we must compel them to abandon it completely. This poison must never enter another child’s body.”

BRITAIN’S TUSKEEGEE STUDY:

What happens next after the MHRA halts puberty blockers trial? (Hannah Barnes, February 22 2026, Times uk)

Dr — now Baroness — Hilary Cass’s four-year inquiry into NHS youth gender services painted a shameful picture of what had taken place at the now-closed gender identity development service (Gids) at the Tavistock in north London. All under the eye of NHS England, politicians and healthcare regulators. Youth gender medicine was “an area of remarkably weak evidence,” Cass said. There was “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress”.

Among the most damning of her observations, though, was that the NHS had allowed the routine prescribing of puberty-blocking drugs to gender-distressed children for a decade, without any robust data to support that decision. […]

Perhaps the most surprising omission from the protocol, was acknowledgment that puberty blockers are highly unlikely to be a standalone treatment. Rather, they are part of a pathway towards medical transition. And with that comes a very real risk of infertility. There is no evidence that blockers on their own impact fertility (partly because so few children have come off the drugs, and gender clinics haven’t bothered to try to find them). But worldwide studies show in excess of 90 per cent of those who commence treatment with puberty blockers continue on to masculinising or feminising hormones. Early puberty blockade followed immediately by hormones means there is no opportunity for children’s eggs or sperm to mature.

The MHRA — which approved this trial in the first place — has now acknowledged these points, and more. “The expected effects of the drugs include the sterilising effect of puberty blockers followed by cross sex hormones,” the regulator said unequivocally in a letter to KCL. Treatment with puberty blockers beyond a year could “result in persistent and potentially permanent bone structural change,” it added. A government spokesperson described the MHRA’s intervention as raising “new concerns — directly related to the wellbeing of children and young”.

Let’s be clear, these concerns are not “new”. They have been raised in recent months by concerned medics, ethicists, clinicians and journalists. And they have been known for years.

TEST LESS:

99% of adults over 40 have shoulder “abnormalities” on an MRI, study finds (Beth Mole, Feb 17, 2026, Ars Technica)

In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine this week, 99 percent of adults over 40 were found to have at least one abnormality in a rotator cuff on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The rotator cuff is the group of muscles and tendons in a shoulder joint that keeps the upper arm bone securely in the shoulder socket—and is often blamed for pain and other symptoms. The trouble is, the vast majority of people in the study had no shoulder problems.

In other words, it’s normal.

HEAL THYSELF:

Exercise can be as effective as medication for depression and anxiety – new study (Neil Munro, James Dimmock, Klaire Somoray, Samantha Teague, February 10, 2026, The Conversation)

We found exercising had a high impact on depression symptoms, and a medium impact on anxiety, compared to staying inactive.

The benefits were comparable to, and in some cases better than, more widely prescribed mental health treatments, including therapy and antidepressants.

SUCK IT UP, BUTTERCUP:

‘What I see in clinic is never a set of labels’: are we in danger of overdiagnosing mental illness? (Gavin Francis, 10 Feb 2026, The Guardian)

Research tells us that the human brain hasn’t changed much in the past 300,000 years, and mental suffering has surely been with us for as long as we have experienced mental life. We are all vessels for thoughts, feelings and desires that wash through our minds, influencing our mental state. Some patterns of feeling are recognisable across the millennia, but the labels we use to make sense of the mind and of mental health are always changing – which means there’s always scope to change them for the better.

The subject is important, because according to modern psychiatric definitions, the 21st century is seeing an epidemic of mental illness. The line between health and ill-health of the mind has never been more blurred. A survey in 2019 found that two-thirds of young people in the UK felt they have had a mental disorder. We are broadening the criteria for what counts as illness at the same time as lowering the thresholds for diagnosis. This is not a bad thing if it helps us feel better, but evidence is gathering that as a society it may be making us feel worse.

We have developed a tendency to categorise mild to moderate mental and emotional distress as a necessarily clinical problem rather than an integral part of being human – a tendency that is new in our own culture, and not widely shared with others. Psychiatrists who work across different cultures point out that, in many non-western societies, low mood, anxiety and delusional states are seen more as spiritual, relational or religious problems – not psychiatric ones. By making sense of states of mind through terms that are embedded in community and tradition, they may even have more success at incorporating our crises of mind into the stories of our lives.

Pretend illness beats personal responsibility.