“In their 2004 essay ‘The Death of Environmentalism,’ activists Michael Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus famously declared, ‘We have become convinced that modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live.’ What killed environmentalism? Man-made global warming. The pair argued that the problem of […]
“The Medicare doughnut hole is the federal provision that older Americans love to hate. And that is not expected to change next year, when the ‘doughnut hole’ — the nickname for a big financial gap in each person’s Medicare prescription drug coverage — gets slightly larger. If the past is a guide, many people […]
“Some alarming, awe-inspiring, news today out of Washington, D.C., and no, it’s not Trent Lott’s resignation. The results of a study, the first of its kind, of HIV cases in the nation’s capital are out, and they show that AIDS has reached ‘epidemic’ proportions in D.C. In the five-year test period in question, ending in […]
“Sixty years ago, Americans smoked, drank, and ate too much of the wrong things — then died of heart disease and stroke at higher and higher rates. The town of Framingham turned things around with the help of researchers backed by the National Institutes of Health. The Framingham Heart Study exceeded expectations and changed the […]
“In the Middle Ages, the alchemists believed someday they’d find a magical tool that could transmute lead into gold, metals into medicines and plants and animal tissues into powerful elixirs — a panacea that would cure all diseases and prolong life indefinitely. This week, it appears that the object of their long-ago yearnings has been […]
“Ever wonder how much of a role politics might play in medicine? If you consider an event that took place this summer, you might start to think it’s rather significant. Patients with diabetes have telephoned and visited my office in droves during the past few months. All had been rattled by the news they’d heard […]
“Illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries are 50% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to use hospital emergency rooms in California, according to a study published Monday in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. The cost of providing healthcare and other government services to illegal immigrants looms large in the national debate over […]
“The insurance agent fielded questions from a prospective customer for about 20 minutes before he sensed the man knew a little too much about the managed care plans he was being asked to buy. ‘You’re a shopper, aren’t you?’ the agent finally said. Kerry Weems was busted. Weems acknowledged that he wasn’t just a shopper. […]
“Dr. David Bor, chief of medicine at the Cambridge Health Alliance, had been concerned for years about the financial cost of the rampant use of CT scans. But several months ago, after a conversation with the system’s head of radiology, he started to worry about another kind of cost: radiation exposure to patients. Bor sent […]
“A company official on Tuesday said Tamiflu is safe for children, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is looking into reports that the medication, and others like it, may cause neurological problems in youths. ‘We’ve done an extensive review on all of the available data,’ David Reddy, global team leader for Roche’s Tamiflu, […]
