Category: Medical
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Will Third Trump Surgeon General Nominee be the Charm?
by Sharon Rondeau (Apr. 30, 2026) — Early Thursday afternoon, President Trump revealed on Truth Social his nomination of Dr. Casey Means for U.S. Surgeon General was withdrawn, attributed to a lack of support from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a medical doctor who has not been wholly supportive of the Trump agenda and, Trump reminded…
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Certain U.S. Senators Do Not Understand Measles—and They Do Not Understand Secretary Kennedy
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Apr. 23, 2026) — There is a difference between disagreement and distortion. Several senators crossed that line in their attacks on Secretary Kennedy’s measles testimony. They did not merely disagree with him. They used Senatorial rhetoric to treat a technically demanding surveillance problem as though it were morally…
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Dr. Erica Schwartz and the Only Question That Matters: Will Trump’s CDC Pick Break Regulatory Capture, or Rebuild It?
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Apr. 20, 2026) — The press keeps asking the wrong question about Erica Schwartz. Is she conventional? Is she confirmable? Is she a stabilizing choice after institutional chaos? Those questions are trivial. The real question is whether the next CDC director will preserve the old machinery of regulatory…
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Why You Dream: The Neuroscience of the Strangest Thing Your Brain Does
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Apr. 13, 2026) — Every night, your brainstem paralyzes you. This is not a malfunction. It is one of the most elegant protective mechanisms in vertebrate biology — a dedicated circuit that suppresses your voluntary muscles while your visual cortex, your limbic system, and your motor areas run…
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SPECIAL FEATURE: Fast Food Medicine Is Exactly That
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Apr. 6, 2026) — American medicine has been industrialized — standardized, franchised, and value-engineered in ways that maximize throughput and revenue while systematically reducing the quality of care delivered to individual patients. This is not primarily the product of malicious actors. It is the emergent property of incentive…
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A Public Message to Anthony Fauci
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Mar. 25, 2026) — In what can only be described as a New York Times public image rehabilitation attempt, former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci comes across as a Pontius Pilate – his hands washed of any responsibility for his central role as a, if not the primary, driver of public…
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Policy Critique: Vitamin K Shots at Birth are a Universally Applied Therapy Not Everyone Needs – And in the U.S., Shots are a Monopoly
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Mar. 23, 2026) — When does “Standard of Care” cross over into “monopoly enforcement of medical therapy given without indication”? It’s true: infants are nearly always born with low Vitamin K. But the low levels are consistent across all mammals to varying degrees. Some researchers argue this may be physiologically intentional —…
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Why Food and Supplements Might Be the Answer to Your Brain Fog
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Mar. 15, 2026) — Imagine sitting down to work and realizing you cannot hold a thought long enough to finish a sentence. You reread the same paragraph three times and still cannot absorb it. Words you have used for decades suddenly hover just out of reach. For millions…
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Making the Statins Mess Clear, Once and For All
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD and Dr. David Brownstein, ©2026 (Feb. 24, 2026) — (NB: I am grateful for Dr. Brownstein’s continuous objectivity on the true status of the science on statins. He raises the bar above rhetoric. Here, he joins me in an earnest attempt to describe precisely why doctors who think statins are generally useful or…
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Iatrogenic Origin of Addiction From, and Dependence On, Non‑Opioid Medications Used in Pain Care
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Feb. 23, 2026) — The U.S. intelligence community has just assisted the Mexican government in a military operation against a Mexican drug cartel. It’s about time they join in the fight against illegal drug prescription and over-prescription of pain medications. Many people assume that only opioid pain medicines…
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How HHS Recognizes that Vaccines Can Cause Encephalopathy
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Feb. 14, 2026) — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), has formally and publicly recognized that encephalopathy—a serious neurological condition involving acute and chronic brain dysfunction—can be caused by specific vaccines. This recognition is not speculative or contingent.…
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Vaccine Manufacturers Put on Dramatic Notice: FDA Rejects Moderna’s Flu Vaccine Application
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Feb. 12, 2026) — We suspect that Moderna’s refusal is an attempt to avoid giving FDA the data it needs for age-specific approval and recommendation by restricting its options to proceeding in a way that would force the FDA to lower its standards. FDA called Moderna’s $750M bluff.…
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Rational Discourse Is Hard at Work at the FDA
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Feb. 10, 2026) — In June 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration instituted what is formally known as a class Safety Labeling Change to the prescribing information of mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines, requiring updated warnings about the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis following administration of these products. In conjunction with…
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Is the Measles Scare Over?
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Feb. 8, 2026) — As of early 2026, a glance at the CDC’s measles rash-onset curve suggests the storm may be passing. The final few bars are low. But whether it is ending takes a bit more time. To assess whether the measles situation is truly resolving, we…
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Biology and Common-Sense Triumph Over Radical Transgender Ideology
by Dr. Michael Brown, New American Prophet, ©2026 (Feb. 8, 2026) — Two major events within the last week signal that, at last, the radical transgender house of cards is starting to fall, marking the triumph of biological reality and plain common sense. The first major event was a legal decision, where two million dollars…
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A RATIONAL MOMENT: The Double Standard at the Heart of the Vaccine Debate
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Feb. 6, 2026) — Scott Gottlieb’s Washington Post essay is rhetorically powerful and personally moving. It is also structurally incomplete—and that incompleteness matters, because it reproduces a double standard that has distorted U.S. vaccine policy, medical practice, and research priorities for decades. The core claim of the piece is uncontroversial: viral…
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Evidence of Harm and Lack of Evidence of Improved Health Brings Down Pre-Pubertal Transitioning in Europe
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Feb. 3, 2026) — In the early 2010s, several European countries emerged as “pioneers” in offering gender-affirming medical interventions to minors experiencing gender dysphoria. These interventions included puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and in some cases, surgical procedures such as double mastectomies for adolescents. Clinics in the Netherlands, Sweden,…
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Moderna Quits Vaccines over Effective Regulatory and Prosecutorial Climates. Here are a Few Reasons Why.
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Jan. 27, 2026) — In a development as symbolic as it is strategic, Moderna has publicly scaled back its investment in vaccine development, citing a regulatory climate that no longer guarantees impunity. The announcement came during a January 2026 interview with Bloomberg TV, reported by Reuters, in which Moderna…
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An Earned Reckoning: Fired Scientists Cannot Pretend Surprise When Trust Runs Out
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2026 (Jan. 21, 2026) —The human cost is visible, and it is not to be minimized. Researchers cry in federal parking lots, their belongings packed into bags. Lifelong scientific vocations rupture in a single administrative notice. Labs go dark. Careers flatline. Nature’s latest feature on the fallout from U.S. science…
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The Environmental Exposures Associated with Parkinson’s Disease – And How to Avoid Them
by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2025 (Dec. 26, 2025) — Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a chronic, progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects movement, balance, cognition, and autonomic function. With more than 10 million people affected globally and over 1 million in the United States alone, Parkinson’s has emerged as one of the most urgent public…