Measles: An Old Bad Disease Returns
JOHN G. SCOTT FEB 28, 2026 Epidemiology of Measles Measles is the world’s most infectious disease. It has a basic reproductive number (R₀) of 12-18. That means that each infected person infects 12-18 other non immune people. As a result, 90% of susceptible people will get measles from exposure to 1 person with measles. The…
The New Food Pyramid – Confusing and Not So Healthy
I am starting to use Substack for blog posts. My Substack address is drjohngscott.substack.com. I will continue to post on this site also for the time being, but I will eventually switch over completely to Substack. Substack is more flexible (and also free!). Try it out. FEB 11, 2026 New dietary guidelines were released in…
Pertussis (Whooping Cough): Resurgence of a Deadly Disease
A recent article in the journal Pediatrics reported a surge in cases of pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough. Unfortunately the article is only available to subscribers to the journal. Here is a link to a description of that article in a medical news service called Medscape. Pertussis is a bad disease. See below. History…
Assault on Science
I recently read a very interesting book called Science Under Siege. The authors are Peter Hotez, pediatrician and vaccine researcher at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas and Michael Mann, the prominent climate researcher who found strong evidence for manmade global warming. It is an excellent book and I highly recommend reading it. Public confidence…
Autism: Is There An Epidemic?
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr has declared that there is an epidemic of autism and that there must be some environmental toxin that is causing it. The evidence says otherwise. I will review the evidence in this post. Increased diagnosis of autism There is no question that autism is being diagnosed more frequently than…
mRNA Vaccines – Truth vs Misinformation
Robert F Kennedy Jr has stopped funding for research to develop new mRNA vaccines because he says they don’t work well for respiratory diseases. He also claims that mRNA vaccines induce mutations in respiratory viruses. He says that even one mutation makes mRNA vaccines ineffective. Here is a link to his video post on X…
Empathy vs Compassion
I recently read a fascinating book by psychologist Paul Bloom called Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. In this post I will discuss this book in more detail as well as review other evidence about the difference between empathy, theory of mind, and compassion. I will also discuss how Bloom’s book has been misused…
MAHA Fact and Fiction
We have all lately heard a lot about MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) from Robert F Kennedy Jr. Some of the things he is advocating probably would improve the health of Americans, but many would not only not improve health, but would make it worse. In this post I’m going to try to identify the…
Trump Administration Assault on Health Care and Research
The Trump administration along with its rubber stamp republican controlled congress is conducting an unprecedented assault on US health infrastructure and on medical research. In this post I will write about the details of that assault and the current and likely future effects on people in the US and around the world. HIV Funding Cuts…
Water Fluoridation
This is another post responding to misinformation promulgated by HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. Misinformation seems to proliferate faster that true science-based information. Perhaps one way to combat this is for readers of these blog posts to share them as widely as possible to people they know. Secretary Kennedy is opposed to adding fluoride to…
Is Sugar Poison? Do Food Dyes Cause cancer and ADHD?
In a March 28 speech in West Virginia, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said “So the loneliness, the dispossession, the crisis that we have in mental health, in suicide, in ADD, ADHD, all of these are linked — and particularly to the dyes,” Kennedy also said in that same speech, given alongside Gov. Patrick Morrisey, “It’s…
Autism: Is There Really An Epidemic?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr has reported that there is an epidemic of autism. It is clear that autism is being diagnosed more frequently in the last 10 years, but does that represent an increase in the incidence of autism or better diagnosis? In this post I will review the literature about autism in order to…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.