How fears of parasites drive viral claims for detoxes and cleanses
Removing parasites from the body is a recurring theme in health misinformation on social media. These posts misleadingly suggest that…
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Are claims linking recent U.S. trends in cancer diagnoses to COVID-19 vaccines plausible? A look at the available data
Since it takes several years to gather, verify, and consolidate cancer data at the national level, there’s no real-time way to monitor national cancer trends. Medical experts have also explained that there is no plausible mechanism or data that connect COVID-19 vaccines to cancer.
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How health problems after COVID-19 vaccination are sometimes used to feed misinformation narratives
While illness can occur shortly after vaccination, it doesn’t mean that the vaccine must be the cause. Illness can also occur simply by coincidence, since diseases have existed long before vaccines arrived. Part of evaluating whether a vaccine is the cause of an illness requires determining if vaccinated people are at a higher risk of the illness compared to unvaccinated people—something that anecdotes alone cannot provide.
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“Disease X”: How pandemic preparedness talks spawned conspiracy theories online
On 17 January 2024, public health experts including Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), held…
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Variations on a theme: The evidence refuting the false claim that vaccines cause autism
While there has indeed been a rise in the number of autism diagnoses in the last decade, the evidence points not to vaccines as the cause, but to a broader diagnostic criteria of autism and increased awareness of the condition now as compared to the past.
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What do we know about the safety of COVID-19 vaccine mRNA in breast milk?
The mRNA inCOVID-19 mRNA vaccines can enter breast milk. However, research only detected small amounts of it, which were mostly degraded and non-functional form. COVID-19 vaccines are beneficial to pregnant women because they are particularly at risk of severe disease and poorer pregnancy outcomes. Furthermore, breast milk from lactating women contains antibodies able to neutralize the COVID-19 virus, meaning that vaccinated women can pass on some protection against COVID-19 to their babies.
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Are phthalates causing a decline in male fertility?
Introduction According to an estimate published by the World Health Organization in April 2023, infertility affects roughly one in six…
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Can mistletoe cure cancer?
Introduction Cancer is a leading cause of mortality worldwide. In 2020, an estimated 19.3 million new cancers were diagnosed and…
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Can you achieve a balanced diet by eating only meat? A look at the scientific evidence
While a person may be able to consume some form of the carnivore diet in the short run without many ill effects, it’s clear that the diet comes with significant restrictions that can eventually prove detrimental to human health. Nutritional deficiencies, like a lack of vitamin C, can soon lead to illness, like scurvy. And in the long run, excessive consumption of red meat, which is rich in protein and fat, but deficient in carbohydrates and dietary fiber, increases the risk of heart disease and certain cancers.
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What we know about the safety of mifepristone for medical abortions and the effectiveness of progesterone for “abortion reversal”
Introduction The World Health Organization considers access to safe and affordable abortion services as important for the good health and…