I am very much of Helen Branswell’s mind that the world’s effort on Ebola, including that of the United States, should be focused on West Africa. That’s the fire; the U.S. patient is a spark. To stop sparks, snuff the fire. In the meantime, however, the U.S. response to the appearance in Dallas of what is essentially our Patient […]
Continue reading →It is 5:30 a.m. on Saturday—the second day of the Wise County RAM clinic—when Brock begins allowing people into the clinic’s makeshift tents. Hundreds of people—many of them with their children in tow—have spent the entire night waiting outside or in their cars to get treatment, and they push forward and crowd the entrance. First, […]
Continue reading →Anne Fausto-Sterling is killing it lately on the brain and gene beat. She does so again here with On Maggots and Brain Scans What do brain images really tell us? What critical questions can a layperson ask to avoid being sucked into a brain vortex or wowed by new words such as “connectome”? Can we really […]
Continue reading →An unprecedently large genetic study of schizophrenia has linked a bunch of new genes to this confusing ailment. This’ll take years, decades maybe, to sort out, partly because if you repeated the study with a different set of 36,989 people, you might find a different set of 80 genes associated. NIMH director Tom Insel says […]
Continue reading →My journalist friend and colleague David Goodman had me on his radio show “The Vermont Conversation” this past Wednesday, over at WDEV’s fine studios in Waterbury, Vermont, and we spent a few minutes discussing writing about science; my review of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance; depression and neurology; and my mother’s lover. My segment starts shortly after the 2-minute mark and runs to about minute […]
Continue reading →The modern idea of stress began on a rooftop in Canada, with a handful of rats freezing in the winter wind. This was 1936 and by that point the owner of the rats, an endocrinologist named Hans Selye, had become expert at making rats suffer for science.… What was interesting to Selye was that no […]
Continue reading →That’s what this story from the LA Times appears to say. If that’s true, seems something is amiss. Surely a POW being debriefed has some a right to confidential psychotherapy? If anyone knows (really knows, not guesses), kindly comment below or write me at [email protected]. Would be grateful for clarification to know this. Under investigation for possible desertion, Sgt. […]
Continue reading →Rose Eveleth on a long string of virtual visits to the real town that shares her name In what was once a lively town, the mining industry collapsed, the population thinned, and businesses went away. Between 1900 and 1910, Eveleth’s population grew 155 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. At its peak, the town […]
Continue reading →Best of the Week: Developmental Plasticity and the “Hard-Wired” Problem. by Patrick Clarkin. We’ve built a wall between genes and environment. Clarkin tears it down. And in Does Nature Need to be Nurtured?, Eric Johnson shows why such questions are important. The Racism Beat, by Jefferson Cord. Important and heartbreaking. Lean Out: The Dangers for Women […]
Continue reading →Harry Leslie Smith, who lost a sister to a world without public health care and then saw the National Health Service arise in the wake of World War II, laments the decimation of one of the finest products of Britain’s finest hour: My sister’s body was committed to a pauper’s pit and interred in an unmarked grave along with a dozen […]
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