Welcome. If you're new here, this is the page to start with.

I'm Justin Yamashita, MSc. I've worked in clinical research at three levels of the pipeline: running experiments at the bench, working with patients at clinical research sites, and now running global studies at a contract research organization. Most people see one of those rooms. I've seen three.

Root to Rx shows you how a medicine actually gets made, how to check a health claim for yourself, and how to talk about it with someone you love without losing them.

We follow one health claim at a time, in layers. Read the first layer and you'll have the answer. Keep going and you'll have the proof.

Plain Talk. Every issue opens in the Root Room, a short story where you watch a real health claim try to work on a real person, in the rooms of clinical research most people never see. Then the claim gets taken apart in plain language, with one analogy you can repeat at dinner and the Skeptic's Toolkit applied, and it closes with a verdict. Right now Plain Talk is running Small Doses: twelve viral health claims, taken apart one small dose at a time.

The Informed. An occasional deep dive, published when a claim needs more than one issue can hold. The full mechanics, every source, and a For the Record section for anything corrected or still unknown.

The Open Site File. The view from inside a clinical trial site, told through Nani's path from nurse to coordinator. Written for anyone working in clinical research, or thinking about it.

The Roots. A letters column on LinkedIn and Substack for people who work in or around clinical research and get asked the hard questions by family and friends.

The Skeptic's Toolkit is ten questions you can run on any health claim, from any source, without a science degree. It doesn't tell you what to believe. It tells you what to look for before you decide.

The OPEN and PAUSE cards are for the harder moment, when someone you love believes something that isn't true. They live in the Field Guide, free, with no login.

Curious how you naturally read a health claim? The Skeptic Type quiz takes about two minutes.

Issue 001: Why Your Distrust Is Rational. The trust frame everything here is built on.

Issue 003b: Vaccine Myths, Set Straight. The Skeptic's Toolkit, put to work.

Issue 004: From Molecule to Medicine. How the drug development pipeline actually works.

After that, browse the full archive and follow whatever pulls you in.

Want to look for a trial yourself? Start with the clinical trial registries page. Keeping track of your own health? The free patient logs cover medications and supplements, medical history, and symptoms.

Seen a health claim you're not sure about? Send it in. Every submission gets read, and the ones that come up most become Plain Talk issues.

Root to Rx used to run five separate tracks. They now live in fewer, fuller issues. The Root Room is the story that opens every Plain Talk. The Black Box Warning, where we name a misinformation tactic, sits inside that story. The Verdict, where a claim goes on trial and gets a label, closes every Plain Talk. Nothing was lost. It's just easier to follow.

Talk through each issue with other readers in the Root to Rx Lab on Facebook, and follow along on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Thanks for being here.

Justin Yamashita, MSc.

Root to Rx, part of Open Label Media LLC

Disclosure: Root to Rx is published independently by Open Label Media LLC. Views expressed are personal views of Justin Yamashita and do not represent his employer or any affiliated organization. No employer resources or proprietary information are used. Every claim is sourced from publicly available materials.