The media hits keep coming. Here's where we appeared in recent days.
(1) Dr. Alex Berezow and Dr. Josh Bloom were invited by Newsweek to discuss the measles outbreak in Washington State. Measles is not a harmless disease; people actually died from it before the MMR vaccine was invented. In the op-ed, Drs. Berezow and Bloom declared that "the right of anti-vaxxers to be sick ends where the public’s right to health begins." Because of this article, Dr. Berezow was interviewed on the Michael Medved Show. (Interview begins at the 20:00 mark. Subscription required.)
(2) Dr. Berezow's article on how the measles vaccine has saved 20 million lives since 2000 was cited by New York Daily News. Obviously, the measles outbreaks are garnering a lot of national attention. People seem to have forgotten that, at one time, measles killed thousands of Americans every single year. To this day, measles kills more than 100,000 people around the world annually. But vaccines save lives.
(3) Dr. Jamie Wells discussed drug prices in a segment for Newsmax TV. The media has been buzzing with the announcement that pharmaceutical companies will be raising U.S. drug prices despite President Trump’s call to lower them. The pharmaceutical industry routinely gets demonized as the only villain in terms of drug pricing, but the reality is a lot more complicated. Dr. Wells discusses some of that complexity here.
(4) Dr. Wells' article "The Steady Demise of Pediatrics" was listed in Doximity's Most Popular of 2018. The article discusses how healthcare options for children have been decreasing.
(5) Dr. Berezow's article debunking the conspiracy theory that the FDA and Big Pharma are suppressing a cure for cancer was cited by the mythbusting website Snopes. Snopes is an extremely popular website, and it has been around for a very long time. Its mission is to quash internet rumors, hoaxes, urban legends, and other nonsense. In other words, it shares the key mission of debunking junk with ACSH. In Snopes' article, the author addressed a rumor about St. Jude's Hospital.
(6) Dr. Bloom co-hosted a one-hour radio show with Tom Kline, a pain management doctor in North Carolina who is also one of the leading pain advocates in the country. Various topics were discussed, including genetic differences in opioid metabolism.
(7) Dr. Wells' article on "tree man syndrome" was cited by Times Now of India. The bizarre disease manifests as disfiguring tree-like growths on the body, and it may be the result of a rare defect in cell-mediated immunity.
(8) An op-ed by Dr. Berezow in the Wall Street Journal about a backup system for GPS was cited by the Mountain Democrat, a newspaper in California. GPS is more than just a navigational system. This vital technology is used as a global timekeeper, which means that everyone from meteorologists to stockbrokers rely on it. The U.S. desperately needs to build a land-based alternative in case something catastrophic occurs to the GPS satellite system.
(9) Dr. Berezow continued his twice weekly segment, "Real Science with Dr. B," on a Seattle area radio program hosted by Kirby Wilbur. In his most recent segment (beginning at 19:09), he discussed measles, vaccines, and the science of winemaking.
