Author: Arsen Mayer

An American minor was recently infected with the swine flu A (H1N2) variant virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Saturday. The child, from Michigan, caught the virus at an agriculture fair. Swine flu is a zoonotic disease that circulates among the pig population in many parts of the world. Humans generally catch it […]

The Lancet, one of Britain’s most prestigious medical journals, is no less interested in Israeli physicians’ worries about the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform than our own doctors are. It has just published an article by Israelis and an expert from Washington, DC that calls it a “threat to the Health in All Policies Approach” (HiAP) […]

Microwaving your baby’s bottle may be exposing them to high levels of harmful micro- and nanoplastics, according to a new study. The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, examined how baby food containers release micro- and nanoplastics under different conditions and the possible health effects of such plastic particles. Researchers from […]

United Hatzalah released a YouTube video this week starring founder Eli Beer cautioning parents against leaving children in hot cars and driving the point home by cooking Beer’s own schnitzel recipe using the heat of a closed car. In the video, Beer, pretends to be hosting a cooking show until he reaches the frying stage […]

An Australian anthropologist claims that our faces are “becoming more and more inferior” and names, among the culprits for this, the modern diet, sleep patterns, and light exposure habits. Humans are becoming uglier – and it has nothing to do with aging, claims a plastic surgeon and expert in facial surgery, who explained the theory […]

Most lung cancer patients are smokers or have kicked the habit. There are also nonsmokers who develop lung cancer as well, and they can be treated effectively with new drugs on the market. But these medications tend to lose effectiveness as time goes on because the malignancies develop secondary mutations in a gene called EGFR […]

The first survey of its kind in Israel about teens playing online games presents a worrisome picture of exposure to unsuitable content, violence, obscenities, and dangerous offers.  More than 40% of the youth playing online games were exposed to very inappropriate content. About 66% of them complained to a parent or somebody else about how […]

The Knesset Health Committee headed by Shas MK Uriel Busso wants to change the name of physicians’ assistant (ozer la’rofeh in Hebrew) to physicians’ associate (amit rofeh). This, according to dozens of medical societies in the Israel Medical Association (IMA) who petitioned against the change, gives the misleading impression that the person is almost a […]

It isn’t only their smokers’ lungs that get filthy from tar, nicotine, and about 70 other toxins known to cause cancer. In rooms where smoking has taken place regularly, tobacco’s imprint lingers on indoor surfaces – even long after regular smoking has stopped.  The leftover residues, known as “third-hand smoke,” can be a long-term source […]

People who take acid reflux medications called proton-pump inhibitors for four-and-a-half years or more could have a higher risk of dementia compared to people who do not take these medications, according to research just published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.  Acid reflux occurs when stomach acid flows into the […]