A team of researchers inside Pfizer made a startling find in 2015: The company’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis therapy Enbrel, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 64 percent.
The results were from an analysis of hundreds of thousands of insurance claims. Verifying that the drug would actually have that effect in people would require a costly clinical trial — and after several years of internal discussion, Pfizer opted against further investigation and chose not to make the data public, the company confirmed.
Researchers in the company’s division of inflammation and immunology urged Pfizer to conduct a clinical trial on thousands of patients, which they estimated would cost $80 million, to see if the signal contained in the data was real, according to an internal company document obtained by The Washington Post.
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Pfizer’s arthritis drug appeared to reduce the risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease. The Washington Post’s Chris Rowland explains why Pfizer did not pursue it.(Luis Velarde/The Washington Post)
The share of teens with driver’s licenses peaked in 1983, when 72 percent of Americans aged 16–19 were legally approved to drive. Today, only about 50 percent are.
The decline has stupefied many a baby boomer and Gen Xer, who can’t imagine why young people today don’t want to hit the open road. Writing in The Atlantic in May 2018, Penn State professor Gary Cross fretted about the loss of that “magical age of 16, when suddenly a world opened up.” The Washington Post in 2015 dedicated more than 2,000 words to how America’s love affair with cars was “cruising towards oblivion” because those damn kids don’t want to drive.
What do teens actually say? According to a University of Michigan survey, the two most common reasons given for not having a driver’s license were being “too busy” to get one (37 percent) and thinking that owning a car “is too expensive” (32 percent). Most of the teens surveyed (70 percent) said they planned to get a license eventually.
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I live in explicit defiance of the rules of good sleep hygiene. Rule one: Don’t expose yourself to the blue light that’s emitted from phones and computers before bed. (When else am I going to catch up on the day’s hot takes?) Rule two: Sleep in a darkened bedroom. (I had’t considered this when buying my gauzy curtains, which are sufficient to keep my neighbors from peeping but definitely not to block out their overactive security floodlights.) Rule three: No afternoon coffee. (Ha!)
Since middle school over a decade ago, my terrible sleeping habits have manifested in various literal failures to launch: waking up for an early-morning run is a laughable concept. I hit the snooze button, on average, four times every morning. My record is eleven. Lately, my energy’s been peaking later and later—I do my best thinking and running starting around 4:30 p.m. In my one attempt to have a consistent sleep schedule after college, I tried to be in bed by 10 p.m. But I often ended up just staring at my ceiling for hours, wondering who the hell is able to fall asleep in 10 to 20 minutes, which is evidently the average.
According to the 2018 State of Women-Owned Businesses report, the number of women-owned businesses increased by 58 percent from 2007 to 2018.From this, businesses owned by African-American women grew by 164 percent, which is equal to 20 percent of all women-owned businesses. Not only does this provide a huge boost to the economy, it can create jobs in local communities. Food Tank has compiled a list of 14 African-American female entrepreneurs who have incorporated sustainable food production practices into their business motto.
Though some of us consider ourselves to be “clean” people, there are parts of our homes and spaces that end up being neglected. While lots of us clean regularly, most of us avoid doing a “deep clean” until we have company or there is some sort of special occasion.
But you don’t have to keep avoiding cleaning up those cracks and crevices. Get the job done quickly and easily with these deep cleaning tricks.
The southern right whale is a baleen whale, one of three species classified as right whales belonging to the genus Eubalaena.Approximately 10,000 southern right whales are spread throughout the southern part of the Southern Hemisphere.
In America, the conventional wisdom of how to live healthily is full of axioms that long ago shed their origins. Drink eight glasses of water a day. Get eight hours of sleep. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Two thousand calories a day is normal. Even people who don’t regularly see a doctor are likely to have encountered this information, which forms the basis of a cultural shorthand. Tick these boxes, and you’re a healthy person.
In the past decade, as pedometers have proliferated in smartphone apps and wearable fitness trackers, another benchmark has entered the lexicon: Take at least 10,000 steps a day, which is about five miles of walking for most people. As with many other American fitness norms, where this particular number came from has always been a little hazy. But that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a default daily goal for some of the most popular activity trackers on the market.
Now new research is calling the usefulness of the 10,000-step standard into question—and with it, the way many Americans think about their daily activities. While basic guidelines can be helpful when they’re accurate, human health is far too complicated to be reduced to a long chain of numerical imperatives. For some people, these rules can even do more harm than good.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Tips For The Deepest Clean
Southern Right Whale
