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In late 2016, a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers took the stage at the year’s largest gathering of their colleagues to talk up a promising new target. For 30 minutes, they laid out arguments linking the popular weedkiller Roundup to cancer. An arm of the World Health Organization had pegged Roundup’s main chemical ingredient as a probable carcinogen the year before, and it was quickly becoming a focus of the plaintiffs’ bar. Some product-liability lawyers in the audience in Las Vegas were skeptical. Tying exposure from everyday products like Roundup to cancer often is less straightforward than linking illness to medications or medical devices, said Chase Givens, a lawyer with the Cochran Firm who attended the event. (Randazzo and Bunge, 11/25)

The human brain is hard-wired to manage conflicting thoughts and emotions. We know drinking alcohol can cause liver damage and burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment, but many of us still drink alcohol and still buy gas-guzzling vehicles. Most people have generally accepted that playing football, in addition to teaching life lessons about teamwork and dedication, can lead to long-term brain damage, like any activity that involves a lot of collisions with other human beings or crashes with the ground. (Lawrence, Cardenas and Futterman, 11/26)

Even after Myrtle Lewis’s mother reached her late 90s and could no longer drive or care for herself, she insisted on remaining in her home in Northeast Washington. Lewis, who was helping care for her mother, arranged for her to have a live-in companion, another older woman, named Kizzie. But watching her mother’s world shrink as she knocked around a too-big house clarified a few things for Lewis, now 76. “After a while it just became she and Kizzie. They’d go to bed at 6:30,” she said. (Bahrampour, 11/25)

Scientists say they’ve developed a framework to make computer algorithms “safer” to use without creating bias based on race, gender or other factors. The trick, they say, is to make it possible for users to tell the algorithm what kinds of pitfalls to avoid — without having to know a lot about statistics or artificial intelligence. With this safeguard in place, hospitals, companies and other potential users who may be wary of putting machine learning to use could find it a more palatable tool for helping them solve problems, according to a report in this week’s edition of the journal Science. (Khan, 11/23)

About half of middle-aged Americans believe they’re “somewhat” or “very likely” to develop dementia, a survey suggests, and many try to beat the odds with supplements such as ginkgo biloba and vitamin E that aren’t proven to help. Researchers examined data from the University of Michigan’s 2018 National Poll on Healthy Aging, a nationally representative survey of adults 50 to 80. Overall, 44.3 percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat likely to develop dementia, and 4.2 percent said they were very likely to develop dementia. (11/26)

When phlegm invades Andy Shecktor’s face or chest, he says he knows if the culprit is a bacterial infection. ...But on these occasions, Shecktor, a 63-year-old man from Berwick, Pennsylvania, doesn’t go see a doctor, and he doesn’t get a prescription for antibiotics. Instead, he pulls out a stash of medicine from his fridge that is clearly marked — not for human consumption. It's for fish. (Chen, 11/26)

Use of screen time explodes between 12 months and three years in the United States, and most Canadian preschoolers between the ages of two and three are not meeting World Health Organization recommendations for appropriate use of television, computers and other screens, according to two new studies published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. (LaMotte, 11/25)

“Where am I?” the 68-year-old man asked. His daughter explained again: He was at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut. He had been found on the ground in the parking lot of the grocery store near his apartment. The man nodded, as if taking it all in, but minutes later asked again: Where am I? He had never had any memory issues before, but now he couldn’t remember that it was Saturday. Didn’t remember that he spent the morning moving the last of the boxes he had stored at his daughter’s house to his new apartment. He didn’t even remember that he had spent the past few months hashing out a pretty messy divorce. (Sanders, 11/26)

The courtroom looks more like a preschool than a command center for dismantling the city’s foster care system. A stuffed penguin perches above the judge’s bench. A bookcase is filled with children’s favorites. And dozens of stuffed animals — teddy bears, polar bears, pandas — are scattered around the room. Juvenile Court Judge Ernestine S. Gray gives each child who appears before her a bear and a book. She believes it makes what can be the worst day of their lives just a little easier. (Webster, 11/25)

Physician Hemant Sharma has worked at Children’s National Hospital for 11 years and serves as its chief of allergy and immunology. The 44-year-old Howard County, Md., resident commutes daily to Washington and rotates between four of the hospital’s facilities, treating patients, teaching and mentoring younger physicians, overseeing administration, and conducting clinical research. He’s aware of how so many demands might affect his well-being and believes addressing burnout is a vital issue for the medical profession — and others. “I think a number of professions now are facing this challenge, where the chronicity of our daily stress is preventing us from giving 100 percent of what we want to the populations that we’re serving.” (Carefoot, 11/25)

Diabetes, whether Type 1 or Type 2, may be the most underappreciated, misunderstood and poorly treated of all common medical problems, and many of the more than 30 million Americans affected by it are paying dearly with their health and lives as a result. Contrary to what many people think, diabetes is not just a disease of abnormal blood sugar control caused by a lack of insulin or an inadequate response to this crucial hormone. (Brody, 11/25)