Reading Time: 2 minutes I have primary progressive multiple sclerosis. One of the main symptoms is a lack of balance. As the body attacks the central nervous system—the informational messaging highway connecting the brain and body—the messages fail to reach their destinations. One destination is “the feet.” When the feet fail to be told what to do, they stay […]
health
Posted inLeaving Religion
A journey through chronic illness to freethought
Reading Time: 17 minutes Take yourself back to the mid-nineties, if you’re able to. We’re in a British Christian evangelical youth meeting, in a long white canvas tent on an agricultural showground a few miles North of the historic Cathedral city of Lincoln in the East of England. It smells of trampled grass and teen sweat. A sweet soaring […]
Posted inIdentity
If you know someone is adopted—tell them
Reading Time: 6 minutes I had never met these two little girls before—flesh and blood relatives—but when I did, it was a lot of fun. They were full of energy and cuteness. It was 40 years ago. I was 15. My parents had taken me back East one summer, to the Bronx, to the neighborhood where my father grew […]
Posted inHealth
COVID-19 now haunts flu season: What other long term impacts can we expect?
Reading Time: 11 minutes It’s been a rough few days for anyone following flu season data. While China has eased zero-COVID restrictions in the face of protests, despite currently experiencing a surge in case count (along with Japan), North American hospitals face what the American Medical Association is openly calling a “tripledemic”: a wave of flu, Respiratory Syncytial Virus […]
Posted inHealth
What we can learn from Selma Blair’s departure from Dancing with the Stars
Reading Time: 5 minutes I didn’t know that Selma Blair, who has been very open about her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis, was on Dancing With the Stars, so I was surprised when I heard that doctors had advised her not to continue appearing after being on the dance floor for four weeks. It’s not that I was surprised she […]
Posted inHealth
What’s driving panic around the BQ COVID variants?
Reading Time: 3 minutes On Friday, October 14, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released weekly COVID-19 data with a new breakdown of dominant strains for infections. These included the “sudden” emergence of BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, which had been recorded under BA.5 in earlier data, and were now prominent and rising strains when recorded separately. Together with […]
Posted inPseudoscience
Why are pseudosciences so appealing?
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s only natural for us to try to find certainty and protection from our fears. Pseudoscientists take advantage of this yearning.
Posted inHealth
New studies implicate long COVID in type-1 diabetes and brain injury
Reading Time: 2 minutes We’re in a complicated season of the COVID-19 pandemic. While health officials struggle with messaging around prevention, and politicians are eager to call an end to the era, new data has been surging around the long term impacts of COVID-19. All year, we’ve been seeing reports about the uptick in type-1 diabetes among children who […]
Posted inHealth
Hey preachers! The demons aren’t making you masturbate
Reading Time: 2 minutes Masturbation is both super and natural, but there is nothing supernatural about it. Not even in a good way. Your desire to pleasure yourself is not caused by angels or demons, but simply by your own wonderful physiology. But Christian preachers such as Vlad Saychuk, speaking at a National Deliverance Training Conference hosted by the notorious […]
Posted inCritical thinking
A tale of two vaccines: How tribalism fuels science denial
Reading Time: 3 minutes HPV, or the human papilloma virus, can be a huge bummer for both women and men. More so for women. When I was 18, precancerous cervical cells were detected during a routine cancer screening. I had the cells removed and was informed that the issue was likely caused by the HPV virus. It wasn’t a […]