Public Health
Tough cannabis policies do not deter young people – Study
March 11th, 2019 There is no evidence that tough policies deter young people from using cannabis, writes Mattha Busby for The Guardian. Analysing data about cannabis use among more than 100,000 teenagers in 38 countries – including the UK, US, Russia, France,...
Smokers misunderstand risks of smokeless tobacco product snus
March 11th, 2019 American smokers mistakenly think that using snus – a moist snuff smokeless tobacco product popular in Scandinavia but newer to the United States – is as dangerous as smoking tobacco, according to a Rutgers University study published in the...
Studies underestimate effects of alcohol consumption on younger people
March 11th, 2019 Studies of the health effects of alcohol consumption may underestimate the risks of imbibing, particularly for younger people, according to a US study. This is because cohort studies generally do not encompass the full age spectrum of adults or...
Truth telling about tobacco and nicotine in an e-cigarette era
March 11th, 2019 Debate among public health professionals over approaches to tobacco and nicotine regulation has intensified with the rise of vaping. Researchers at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation explore the contours of the debate and the need to...
How safe are e-cigarettes? The debate continues
March 11th, 2019 A clinical review from the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland recently summarised the latest evidence concerning the use of e-cigarettes, writes Dr Catharine Paddock for Medical News Today. But with research on e-cigarettes in its infancy, it...
Comprehensive study debunks, again, the MMR/autism link
March 6th, 2019 A massive 13-year followup study of more than 650,000 children strongly supports previous findings that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, does not trigger autism in susceptible children, and is not associated with clustering of...Teens may smoke less pot in states with medical marijuana laws
When medical marijuana becomes legal in a state, teenagers there may be slightly less likely to use the drug, Reuters Health reports a US study suggests. Even though medical and recreational marijuana laws restrict use to adults, access for adults...
The Lancet Commission on Obesity recommendations 'deeply problematic'
February 27th, 2019 The Lancet Commission on Obesity, three years in the making, has just been released. It is an infringement of personal freedoms and based on the misconception that government knows what's best for us, writes Ivo Vegter, columnist and author in...
Ticking boxes instead of actually doing something to save SA's ailing health system
February 27th, 2019 This is an illness we have as a country: we convene summits, appoint task teams, create war rooms, and hold press conferences, but very rarely does it make a difference. Anso Thom, editor of Spotlight, writes in the Daily Maverick, on...Number of suicide deaths increased since 1990
The total number of deaths from suicide increased by 6.7% globally between 1990 and 2016 to 817,000 deaths in 2016, finds a study. However, when adjusted for age, the global mortality rate from suicide decreased by almost a third (33%) worldwide...
NHS research shows HPV screening practical and more efficacious than cytology
February 13th, 2019 Screening for high risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) infection works well in practice and is more sensitive than cytology (smear) testing – offering greater protection against cervical cancer, confirm researchers. Their findings therefore support...
Is marijuana as safe as we think?
February 11th, 2019 Permitting pot is one thing, promoting its use is another, writes Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker. Especially since a cloud of mystery surrounds cannabis – including its medicinal value, its possible relationship to mental illness and...
What a breakthrough e-cigarette study illustrates about addiction
February 11th, 2019 The first large, systematic study of whether e-cigarettes help people to quit smoking was published on 30 January in the New England Journal of Medicine, and covered by The New York Times, the BBC and many other major outlets, writes psychologist...
Delay in release of private health sector report 'bad news'
February 6th, 2019 The release of a final report about the state of competition in South Africa’s private health sector has been delayed again, writes Wezile Chitha, assistant dean of strategic affairs in the faculty of health sciences at the University of the...
Fake news and celebrity fads 'put lives at risk’ — joint editorial
February 6th, 2019 The editors of more than two dozen cardiology-related scientific journals worldwide have published a joint editorial to sound the alarm that medical misinformation is putting lives at stake. Meanwhile, NHS England’s national medical director has...