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When it Comes to Taking Medicine, It’s Not Only a Matter of “What,” but also “How”

27 Sep 2023

Serendipitous discoveries are legendary in science. Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, Perkin’s of mauve, Silver’s of post-it notes, Roentgen’s of x-rays, Fahlberg’s of saccharin, Plunkett’s of...

Fighting Fire with Fire: how a Nobel Prize Winning Scientists Used Malaria to ‘Cure’ Syphilis

22 Sep 2023

The history of science is full of disproved experiments, revised textbooks, and rewritten hypotheses. Even Nobel prize-winning research, which is often viewed as the best work science has to offer,...

The Microbiome and Its Myth-Making Machine

11 Aug 2023

As promising new discoveries are made in the health sciences, the telephone game begins. Scientists put their best foot forward when presenting their results. The public relations department at...

The Doomsday Prophecy of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche

24 Mar 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has attracted a swarm of vocal contrarians like little else in the recent past. These public commentators, often bedazzled with advanced degrees, have painted themselves as...

DYK: Penicillin used to be recycled from urine

3 Jun 2020

After Alexander Fleming’s 1928 discovery of a mold that inhibited Staphylococci bacteria growth and the first treatment of a patient with penicillin in 1942, demand for this antibiotic grew rapidly...

Treating the Flu with Tamiflu

11 Mar 2020

Flu season means a lot of people are going to be getting sick. The CDC estimates that there have been 29 million flu cases, a quarter million hospitalizations, and 16,000 deaths so far this season....

We Still Prescribe Too Many Antibiotics

26 Feb 2020

This article was first published in The Montreal Gazette.

Antibiotic Prophylaxis and Dentistry

8 Jan 2020

As most dentists can attest, the mouth can be a scary place. Despite impassioned assurances from patients, we know that not all flossers are created equal. Lurking in this often-hostile environment...

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