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I’m reading every now and then about the future of robot assisted medicine. Robots have long replaced humans in routine, repetitive tasks like auto assembly, but surgery seems like a bespoke activity beyond the reach of robots. Not so. A few years ago, I had mesh hernia repair surgery. The procedure was robotic-assisted laparoscopy. There were four small incisions in my abdomen, one at my navel. I was under general anesthesia during the operation, so I can’t say for sure what happened, but from what I’ve read, one incision is for a camera to guide the operation. One may have been for the insufflation, introducing carbon dioxide gas to create a working and viewing space by separating the abdominal wall from internal organs. Of course, a surgeon guided the procedure (or so I devoutly hope!), so the robot wasn’t on its own. So far, the results have been fine for me, and the sites of the incisions have healed indistinguishably from the surrounding skin. How many routine surgeries are amena

When alcoholic beverages were illegal in America, drinking didn’t stop. Alcohol smuggling just became lucrative for criminal gangs. Drugs like cocaine and heroin have been illegal for decades. Consumption of cocaine and heroin didn’t stop; smuggling of these drugs just became lucrative for criminal gangs. Making undocumented migration illegal and militarizing the Mexican border didn’t stop undocumented migration. Human trafficking just became lucrative for criminal gangs. The problem of alcohol smuggling during Prohibition was solved by repealing Prohibition. Narcotics and narco gangs continue to be a huge problem in America, since the market for drugs in America amply repays the efforts of the gangs. And the labor market for undocumented migrants? That also continues to be huge in America. All that could be addressed by enforcing the use of E-Verify. As Kevin Drum notes: “[E-Verify is] 98% accurate within 24 hours and 99.8% accurate overall. And it's easy to use. Despite this, few

When I was growing up, fluoridation of water was regarded as a commie plot by the John Birch Society wingnuts. Nevertheless, hundreds of millions of Americans (including my wife and I) have lived with fluoridated water without evidence of harm. I see where RFK, Jr is predicting that the second Trump Administration will recommend against water fluoridation. In a society where many city water supplies are fluoridated and fluoridated toothpaste is widely available, the benefits of putting fluoride in the water are less obvious than they were 70 years ago and are thus being forgotten. Yes, I understand that too much fluoride can kill you. So can too much water. As any pharmacologist will tell you, the dose makes the poison. Artificial fluoridation of water wasn’t some nefarious plot. In places where natural fluoride levels were high, the frequency of dental caries was lower. There’s plenty of epidemiological evidence that artificial fluoridation also results in fewer dental caries. Within

  Agriculture requires photosynthesis to make food. However, the photosynthetic mechanism is slow,  inefficient and requires a lot of resources. A recent paper describes an electro-agriculture technology that combines carbon dioxide electrolysis with biological systems to boost the efficiency of food production. If implemented at scale, such a system could reduce agricultural land use in the United States by nearly 90% and allow food to be grown in urban areas and deserts without the need for light or pesticides. It would also allow more efficient fertilizer use. “The most readily consumable carbon sources produced via CO 2  electrolysis at relatively high efficiencies are ethanol and acetate. Metabolically, ethanol is converted to acetate with alcohol dehydrogenase and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. Both ethanol and acetate can be used to cultivate common eukaryotic organisms such as yeast or mushroom-producing fungi, which are already consumed as food. Acetate can also serve as the sole