Month

Conversation with nutritionist Wendy Myers for her site Live to 110.

(*Update on 11/19/13: Friend and science reporter Brandon Keim takes my critics to task for sloppy journalism. [And me, too, for not sufficiently caveating.] I repeatedly urged him not to get involved, but he wouldn’t be deterred. It’s an interesting read and an interesting take. But I have to ask: Do I really not have a big enough science writer gang? Does that really matter? ) Some of my critics are rai

Allergies are often seen as an accident. Your immune system misinterprets a harmless protein like dust or peanuts as a threat, and when you encounter it, you pay the price with sneezing, wheezing, and in the worst cases, death. What prompts some immune systems to err like this, while others never do? Some of the vulnerability is surely genetic. But comparative studies highlight the importance of environment, beginnin

I have a piece in the NYT Sunday Review on the observation that children who grow up on farms, and who drink raw milk, often seem to have a lower prevalence of asthma and allergic disease than their nonfarming peers. This is usually called the “farm effect.” Enough people have heard of it by now that I think it’s been embedded in a vague way in our collective (un)conscious(ness). The reason I wrote this piece,