'Natural' is a word that has become unmoored by its meanings. If you go into a vitamin shop, things are natural, and people look at that, and they think it's good. It's no different than any other thing you swallow. — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
Someone told me that they didn't want to take a flu shot because they didn't want to put a foreign substance in their body. What do they think they do at dinner every night? — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
Until the Nineteen-Eighties, when Deng Xiaoping designated the area as China's first special economic zone, Shenzhen had been a tiny fishing village. Suddenly, eleven… — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
There are people who could watch a hurricane like Sandy blow out of the Atlantic every other day and blame it on anything but… — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
We're lying ourselves into believing things are untrue, like organic food will solve all our problems, or vitamins will make us healthy, or we… — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
I started to write about science and medicine at the 'Washington Post,' in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
Clearly, some of the reason people embrace alternatives and reject vaccines is that they are angry and mistrustful of government and of pharmaceutical conglomerates.… — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
The numbers matter: underreporting of Lyme disease obscures the true burden of the illnesses, on individuals as well as on health-care systems. It also… — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
There is a major problem with reliance on placebos, like most vitamins and antioxidants. Everyone gets upset about Big Science, Big Pharma, but they… — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
Denialist arguments are often bolstered by accurate information taken wildly out of context, wielded selectively, and supported by fake experts who often don't seem… — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
Your dollar cheeseburger isn't a dollar if you factor in what it's going to cost in health care. — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
To suggest that organic vegetables, which cost far more than conventional produce, can feed billions of people in parts of the world without roads… — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
The history of agriculture is the history of humans breeding seeds and animals to produce traits we want in our crops and livestock. — Michael Specter Copy Share Image
