Our lack of progress in developing effective treatments for the majority of cancers suggests that the dominant framework used to understand the origin and progression of cancer—and so its potential causes and treatments—is flawed. The rationale for precision medicine, gene-targeted therapies, and immunotherapies is based on the premise that cancer is a genetic disease according to the somatic mutation theory. Yet evidence indicates that the mitochondrial metabolic theory can explain cancer’s origins better than the somatic mutation theory. It is unlikely, if not impossible, that effective cancer therapies will be developed if the origin of the disease is misunderstood.

“These guidelines writing activities are particularly helpful in promoting the careers of specialists, in building recognizable and sustainable hierarchies of clan power, in boosting the impact factors of specialty journals and in elevating the visibility of the sponsoring organizations and their conferences that massively promote society products to attendees. However, do they improve medicine or do they homogenize biased, collective, and organized ignorance?” —John P.A. Ioannidis, MD, DSc

From Nicaragua to Miami, cases of chronic kidney disease of unknown origin (CKDu) share a common setting: sites where agricultural work takes place in severe heat. Independent research on the cause of CKDu points to chemicals used in sugarcane agriculture, the physiological response to intensive work in the heat, and the sugary beverages commonly consumed by laborers. But researchers receiving millions in funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Central American sugar industry have failed to discover the disease’s cause—or investigate some of the leading suspects.

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This small clinical trial, published by Christopher L. Chapman et al. of the University of Buffalo, considers the impact of soft drink consumption (Mountain Dew) on kidney function during and after activity, specifically simulating the impact of soft drink consumption on physical labor in heat. The study found that “consuming a soft drink during and following exercise in the heat reduces renal function and increases markers of AKI compared to when consuming water.”

"The medicine ball is somewhat less intimidating than a bar, weighs less and seems to be more suggestive of the practical functionality of the clean than is the clean with the bar. The medicine-ball clean efficiently demonstrates to the developing athlete the critical sequence of the hip accelerating the object to maximum extension, the hip retreating toward the squat, and, finally, the hip squatting the object to full extension."  —Greg Glassman (adapted)

"Studies that fail to find a positive result are often filed away, never to see the light of day, which leads to a publication bias that compromises the credibility of scientific literature. An analysis now suggests that registering and peer-reviewing study protocols before research is conducted could improve this ‘file-drawer problem’, and help to correct the existing publication bias towards positive findings."