On a hot and humid day in October, a man wandered through the city of Mirebalais, Haiti. He was naked, but his neighbors didn’t pay much attention. The man had always been crazy. In fact, townspeople called him “moun fou” — lunatic or fool. He headed toward the bank of the Latem River, where he […]
Health/Medicine
This is how it happens for me: I’m completely asleep, and then something terrible creeps across the room, reaches spindly, pincer-like fingers for my hand, and pinches. That pinch is what wakes me up in terror, gasping and whimpering and trying desperately to pull my arm under the covers. But I can’t. I can’t do […]
Britain in March 1946 was a dank, hungry, but optimistic place as people grappled with winter, rationing and the aftermath of World War 2. It was also the time that the country gave birth to something historically and scientifically remarkable. 13,687 babies born during one March week were weighed, measured and enrolled into what has, […]
On June 26, 2000, three famous men — one president, two scientists — made a big announcement at the White House. Two independent teams — one public, one private — had published a first draft of the human genome, or as one of the scientists called it, the “book of life.” It was a feat. […]
When is a sin a virtue? When the sinner is an assasin, and the sin is laziness. In cancer, however, it’s diffiult to know which tumors will be slothful and which will be aggressive. This is the dilemma behind the ongoing controversies in screening and treatment for conditions such as breast and prostate cancer.
A few weeks ago I read the November 2011 newsletter of Roll Back Malaria – a partnership sponsored by the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the World Bank. It contained the following headline: “Nearly a third of all malaria affected countries on course for elimination over the next decade.” I’m not saying the […]
In September, a rash of stories appeared about a study contradicting the claim that a class of proteins called sirtuins might be a possible anti-aging cure. “Longevity genes challenged,” Nature declared. “Longevity Gene Debate Opens Trans-Atlantic Rift,” wrote Nicholas Wade at The New York Times. “New study debunks longevity link for GSK’s sexy sirtuins,” wrote […]
This past summer, I spent two weeks sitting, working and, once, sleeping next to a hospital bed, trying and failing to communicate with my father. He had called for an ambulance on the evening of July 25 because he couldn’t breathe. With end-stage emphysema, he often couldn’t breathe, but apparently that night he was frightened […]