If you have cooked a steak or a hamburger you know that by the time you are ready to serve it, and certainly after you cut or bite into it, there will be liquid that oozes out of it. 

Anti-meat groups know it isn't blood(1) but they use that imagery to try and sway people to their cause. And groups who make substitutes for meat also use that imagery, because they think that's important to meat eaters. Because marketing groups have long used it, people think it's blood, and even use the term "bloody."

Have you read this week a claim by the Harvard School of Public Health that Food Z is linked to cancer or from our U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) claims Chemical X is linked to Harm Y?

It's technically true, though in high-profile cases like with the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France, what they leave out is that to create their statistical hazard, they use studies with up up to 10,000 times the normal dose. To create hazard, they torture data but because they were able to get a p-value>.05 they declare it statistically significant.

In the Chinese science fiction film The Wandering Earth, recently released on Netflix, humanity attempts to change the Earth’s orbit using enormous thrusters in order to escape the expanding sun – and prevent a collision with Jupiter.

The scenario may one day come true. In five billion years, the sun will run out of fuel and expand, most likely engulfing the Earth. A more immediate threat is a global warming apocalypse. Moving the Earth to a wider orbit could be a solution – and it is possible in theory.

Beinecke MS 408, commonly called the Voynich manuscript (after Wilfrid Voynich, a book dealer who bought it in Italy), has long been dismissed as gibberish by most, but beginning in 1915, and certainly since the 1960s, it has also been a source of fascination for people who believe it must be a code. Or a recipe book. Or something. It is actually a proto-Romance language, according to a new paper. It just had never been written before because educated people used Latin, says Dr. Gerard Cheshire.

So uneducated people wrote in a language from 2000 years earlier?

Advocates for getting rid of gasoline love to use images from the 19th century, asking why the public is not using modern alternatives. They try to allege it is a corporate effort to suppress competitors but the argument doesn't work very well when they also argue in other areas that companies are only inventing new products to have something to sell.

An entire generation of parents was brought up believing that if hospitals used antimicrobial soap, then homes deserved it too. An entire generation of doctors were brought up in a defensive medicine culture and taught that if a patient really wanted something, like antibiotics for a flu, they had to get it, or lawyers and politicians would be using them for media soundbites. An entire generation of the public were taught that every drug should have the lower cost of generic versions, which has stymied creativity. An entire generation of regulators told us that the solution to a drug like Vioxx harming anyone was to double the cost and time of studies needed for approval.

You have probably seen the headlines “One million species threatened with extinction and humans to blame” and such like. But did you know, the UN study that lead to those headlines analysed the reasons we continue to lose species to extinction, and found a solution? Not only that, they found a solution that is practical, feasible, makes economic sense, and has preliminary government interest too, to the extent that over 100 governments were happy to sign off on their conclusions as a “summary for policy makers”.

In a world where "antibiotic resistance" has been a concern, not just among those opposed to medical science but by mainstream consensus, it may seem odd to discuss the benefits of preventative antibiotics, but a large randomized trial indicates that the World Health Organisation and other national organizations should change antibiotic guidelines, at least for assisted childbirth.

In 2016, an estimated 19,500 women died because of pregnancy-related infections globally. Even in high-income settings, infections account for 1 in 20 maternal deaths, and as many as 1 in 8 in the USA. For every woman who dies from pregnancy-related infection, another 70 women develop a severe infection and survive often with long-term health consequences.

With summer just around the corner in Europe and America, it's time to think about the risk of too much sun exposure.  One greater hazard has less risk - melanoma - but though it is less common than some other types of skin cancer, it is more likely to grow and spread. 

In 2019, an estimated 96,000 new melanomas will be diagnosed and men are far greater impacted than women. About 7,000 people will die, nearly twice as many men as women. It is 20X more common in people of Caucasian descent than people of African descent. Though the average age of diagnosis is 63, it defies the cancer stereotype in young people, being one of the most common cancers in young adults.