So many press releases land in my inbox that I don’t have time to read them all. But a recent release from the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) caught my eye — “Treatment by naturopathic doctors shows reduction in cardiovascular risk factors. Randomized controlled trial.” This would be big news if it were true. Naturopathic […]
Health/Medicine
We often lament hype in science journalism. But seldom do we worry about underhype – of downplaying the significance of a study. In March, I had reason to worry about this. Just after Nature published a story that I wrote about a massive cancer genetics project, I received an email from my editor: “Should we […]
Last November, I spent the hottest hours of a West African afternoon camped outside Tamba Aruna’s office. He’s a slight, soft-spoken man who listens to the sorrows of others each day. His job – mental health supervisor at the emergency clinic operated by Doctors without Borders (or MSF) in Sierra Leone – makes Aruna a […]
The emergence of the H7N9 bird flu virus has rekindled memories of our last flu pandemic – just as the United States is debating whether it can afford to prepare for the next one. Remember the H1N1 flu scare of 2009? I always will, because pregnant women were vulnerable to becoming severely ill or dying […]
On a chilly February evening, I found myself stepping across the threshold of one of Midtown Manhattan’s many brick high rises. I took the elevator to the sixteenth floor, home of the Meta Center, which describes itself as Manhattan’s “number one destination for Consciousness Raising, Cutting Edge Spiritual & Metaphysical Education, Healing and the Creative […]
Yesterday at The Washington Post, I wrote about a controversy in which a 911 caller who identified herself as a nurse refused to give CPR to an 87-year-old woman who’d collapsed at a Bakersfield, California independent living facility. (Unlike a nursing home, the facility did not employ medical staff, and, according to the Associated Press, […]
Ten years ago this month, the United States invaded Iraq on false pretenses. On December 15, 2011, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared the war officially over. In the March 16 issue of the medical journal the Lancet, researchers examined the war’s consequences for human health. While politicians argue about the meaning of war, one […]
The storytelling begins the morning you wake up with a slight scratch in your throat. Oh, this is nothing, you tell yourself, as if denial was the best antidote to a virus. If I just sip some throat-soothing tea, I’ll be fine. When the runny nose starts, you load up on oranges or Fisherman’s Friend […]