Whenever one paradigm gives way to another in science, the transition is traumatic. Hard-earned knowledge from the earlier perspective cannot be meaningfully compared with new research in the next paradigm, because even the language of the new scientific generation is slightly different. Information is lost or devalued. Such is the price of progress. The coming […]
Health/Medicine
On LWON’s first birthday, Richard Panek asked me to explain why being circumcised makes a man less likely to catch HIV. So I will. Here you go, Richard. Let’s be honest. Foreskin is weird. The rules of evolution suggest that it once conferred an advantage, but I can’t fathom what that advantage might have been. […]
Late Saturday evening, I was cutting jalapeños for the salsa for the next day’s barbeque party. I had a few other things on my mind — like my bean salad, and cleaning the bathroom, and figuring out what to write for this post — and so I forgot the lesson learned the last time I […]
I will never forget the last time I got serious food poisoning. I was a teenager, and my family went out to eat one sunny Saturday morning. Soon after we returned home, I was grasping the toilet bowl, retching in agony. I could still taste the omelet I had eaten for breakfast. To this day, […]
When my husband and I moved to a suburb of Vancouver eleven years ago, many of our friends ribbed us wildly about our decision. Instead of living in a leafy urban neighborhood, a short walk from a good cappuccino, an organic fruit and veg store, and a pilates studio, we had, it seemed, forsaken civilization […]
When antiretroviral drug cocktails hit the scene in 1996, they were so effective they became known as ‘the Lazarus drug.’ Many AIDS patients recovered seemingly overnight. Over the past 15 years, these drugs have saved the lives of millions of people infected with HIV. Several new studies suggest antiretrovirals could save millions more if we […]
A study published last week in Archives of Disease in Childhood is the latest in a long line of research to provide evidence for the benefits of breastfeeding. In the study, researchers analyzed data collected through the Millenium Cohort Study, a long-term investigation of child development that includes a large sample of babies born in […]
Years ago, when her young son was going through a mummy phase, Eve Lowenstein wound up reading a lot of mummy books. A dermatologist and one-time molecular biologist, she was soon hooked on paleopathology, the study of ancient diseases. Her obsession would long outlive her son’s. At first, just curious, she sat down to do […]