The bone-crunching violence of football is part of the appeal. (I submit as evidence the fact that this YouTube video, which consists of three minutes …
Month: December 2009
Breastfeeding may offer protection against diabetes
More news about the benefits of breastfeeding for moms. A Kaiser Permanente study shows that breastfeeding significantly lowers a woman's risk for metabolic syndrome, a …
H1N1 flu and emotional epidemiology: What if they gave a vaccine and nobody came?
A few weeks ago I posted a link to one of several articles describing the spread of what was rumored to be a particularly virulent …
Concern over health reform and keeping down costs
A Time article today asks where real health reform went, and what happened to the goal of decreasing national health-care spending. Writes Karen Tumulty: ...What …
Dramatic new film on Kristof's search for social change
Last night I previewed a new HBO documentary, Reporter, in which New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof takes viewers on an astonishing journey in his …
Gains in life expectancy could be outweighed by increasing obesity rates
Failure to address the growing obesity epidemic in America could result in an erosion of the steady gain in life expectancy and quality of life …
Slate takes on the battle against bacteria
In the midst of alarming stories and studies on the rise of drug-resistant bacteria, an article posted today on Slate discusses how developing strategies to …
Taxing cosmetic surgery
As the overhaul of the nation's health care system continues on Capitol Hill, some of the debate has the pop of prime-time medical dramas. One …
First human embryonic stem cell lines approved for funding under new guidelines
President Obama galvanized the research community on March 9 of this year, when he called for a new, much-less restrictive set of guidelines for federal …
Medicine is theme of current Lapham's Quarterly, a scholarly journal of old and new
The fall Lapham's Quarterly is a theme issue on medicine, pulling together all kinds of textual treaures if you're interested in medical history and literature. …
UCSD to begin studying brain of famous amnesiac
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego are beginning today to examine the brain of H.M., an amnesic patient who was studied for decades …
Mobile phone 'alcohol tracker' released in the UK
According to this BBC story, the United Kingdom's National Health Service has released a mobile phone application to help revelers monitor their holiday eggnog consumption: …
Can you catch loneliness?
The New York Times' Well Blog has an interesting post about a 10-year study of 5,100 people showing that negative emotions can spread to others, …
H1N1 has peaked but will it return?
According to numbers just posted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, new infections of the H1N1 virus continue to decrease across the …
Study shows smart phones speed up diagnosis
Need to review a CT scan from remote? There's an app for that. A study performed at the University of Virginia indicates that CT scans …
Some sobering reflections on World AIDS Day
On World AIDS Day, I typically take time to reflect on the people I have met who have been affected by this ongoing crisis. They …