I like to check out the CDC.gov website at least every other week to catch the latest Vital Signs and outbreak warnings. I’ve become accustomed to the posts about Ebola and measles, but on July 9, the CDC headlines were about a rare but serious illness I’d never heard of before – acute flaccid myelitis, […]
Currently, the right to abortion is protected under landmark US Supreme Court decisions, Roe v. Wade (and its lesser-known companion Doe v. Bolton decided on the same day) in 1973 and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. “Viability” is defined to occur when a fetus is sufficiently developed to live, with artificial aid, outside the […]
It’s not surprising that academic researchers have tried to define and even quantify love, but it is somewhat surprising that they only have been doing so since tentative explorations in the 1970s and more substantially in the 1980s. Leading researchers on the subject Clyde and Susan Hendrick devoted a chapter to “Love” in Liking, Loving, […]
Still the second leading cause of death in the United States, cancer is evolving to become a disease of socio-economic status, according to a major report published Jan 8 by researchers at the American Cancer Society. Cervical cancer, which is highly preventable by HPV vaccination, is about twice as likely to kill women in poor […]
Since 2008, federal law has required “parity” for most health insurance coverage of mental illness (including substance abuse) on the same terms as physical illness, and many states including Rhode Island impose additional requirements on nearly all health insurance coverage even in cases that would be exempt from federal rules. The Affordable Care Act of […]
Life expectancy is not supposed to decline in wealthy First World countries. As I wrote two years ago reporting that 2015 saw the first decrease since 1993 at the height of the AIDS epidemic (“American Life Expectancy Unexpectedly Declines”, Jan 11, 2017), “Life expectancy is a measurement that summarizes almost everything about quality of life […]
My friend of some years asked to remain anonymous as she explains the dangers of the federal government policy of separately detaining children, even infants and toddlers, of families crossing the border into the US, a policy now in chaos with promises to end it but no clear plan to reunite the 2,000 or so […]
Skin cells continuously shed and regenerate, so how does the ink of a tattoo stay permanent? While the outer layer of the skin, the epidermis, regenerates and sheds throughout a person’s life, a deeper layer, the dermis, does not. Tattoo ink penetrates into the deeper dermis where more permanent cells, as well as blood vessels, […]
Richard Rosol wants to eliminate the phrase “tattoo regret” from our lexicon. “Tattoos can be more like a piece of jewelry that you don’t like anymore. You don’t regret buying it, you just don’t want to wear it.” Rosol is the owner and medical director of TattooMedics Skin Solutions, a PVD-based office that safely and comfortably […]
With the sheer number of other horrifying diseases plaguing mankind, most of us have come to think of the flu as just another inconvenience – a few days off from work, a box or two of Kleenex, and some over-the-counter remedies from the drugstore. We’ve forgotten the flu pandemic of 1918-1919 that killed somewhere between […]