April 22, 2014
(Pew Research) – The teen birth rate in the U.S. is at a record low, dropping below 30 births per 1,000 teen females for the first time since the government began collecting consistent data on births to teens ages 15-19, … Read More
April 21, 2014
(Union Times San Diego) – A majority of Americans believe that future changes in technology will generally improve people’s lives. But a survey of 1,001 adults by the Pew Research Center also found lots of public anxiety about the rise … Read More
April 17, 2014
(Washington Post) – Americans agree: It’s immoral to have an affair. Drinking alcohol or using contraception, on the other hand? Nobody cares. That’s according to the results of a new Pew Research Center survey. Interestingly, infidelity was the only category … Read More
April 2, 2014
(ABC News) – For a growing number of gravely ill patients running out of options, social media has become their last bastion of hope. And they’re sharing their private struggles to motivate public action. A young newlywed woman smiles for … Read More
March 28, 2014
(The Atlantic) – The introduction of complex issues into television plots is both a driver and a reflection of cultural shifts. Once a subject gets widespread treatment in scripts, the popular conversation can take on a new urgency, giving people … Read More
March 17, 2014
(Slate) – A good kids’ book delivers knowledge fundamental to living in the world, such as the (now apparently out of print) classic Everyone Poops. But Death Is Wrong, a new children’s title from transhumanist author Gennady Stolyarov, can only … Read More
March 14, 2014
(New York Times) – Nearly 750,000 people, most of them members of a Muslim minority in one of the poorest parts of Myanmar, have been deprived of most medical services since the government banned the operations of Doctors Without Borders, … Read More
February 7, 2014
(New York Times) – By a strange coincidence, two leading medical journals on Thursday published case studies of the same arcane medical mystery. In one, doctors solved the riddle only after the patient, a middle-aged woman, got so sick she … Read More
February 4, 2014
(Wired UK) – Since then, that technique — floating words representing text messages, internet searches, or some other form of technological interface — has become a core element of the series’ identity. And while there are plenty of tech-savvy shows … Read More
January 28, 2014
This year the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on at least two cases that weigh constitutional and statutory law against religious or moral beliefs. Both involve challenges to the Obamacare provision that requires for-profit companies to offer health insurance policies … Read More
January 22, 2014
Rival sides in such conflicts describe each other in ways that deny their shared humanity: they may liken each other to vermin, or pests to be exterminated. The words onlookers use to describe such conflicts – bloody religious factionalism in … Read More
January 21, 2014
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described inequality in healthcare as the “most shocking and inhumane” form of injustice, a U.S. health official says. Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said as America honors … Read More
January 13, 2014
The Justice Department has argued that the nuns’ group is already exempt from providing birth control under the ACA, as long as it certifies its standing as a religious nonprofit. But the Little Sisters of the Poor, represented by the … Read More
January 9, 2014
This year marks the anniversary of two significant events from the last century, perhaps the most significant of any century: 100Â years since the outbreak of the First World War and 75Â years since the start of the Second World War. It … Read More
January 9, 2014
The first Healthcare Worry Scale survey of more than 1,000 Americans nationwide shows that 74% are extremely concerned or very concerned about healthcare, just slightly behind the 79% concerned about the economy and ahead of the 67% about joblessness. In … Read More
December 11, 2013
Most Americans do not deal with end-of-life issues and wishes, a new study indicates. Researchers analyzed data from nearly 8,000 people who took part in nationwide surveys conducted in 2009 and 2010, and found that only about 26 percent had … Read More
November 26, 2013
On the eve of Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary, a bioethics researcher at the University of Leicester claims that one of the Doctor’s most fearsome villains – the Cybermen – represent public concerns about the greater use of technology in medicine. … Read More
November 26, 2013
Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, wrote a dark blog post about how he hoped his terminally ill father would die soon and how he wanted to inflict pain on the people who have voted against doctor-assisted … Read More
November 22, 2013
In his new book, Social Networks and Popular Understanding of Science and Health: Sharing Disparities, Dr. Brian Southwell explores the various reasons why there might be such huge differences in the extent to which health and science information gets “spread … Read More
November 18, 2013
“GROW YOUR OWN… is a new exhibition created by Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin that invites you to consider some of the potentially ground-breaking applications and uncertain implications of synthetic life. Tackling the provocative questions that designing life raises, … Read More
November 12, 2013
John Hopkins Medical Campus 2014 Baltimore Conference Comics & Medicine: From Private Lives to Public Health June 26-28, 2014 Baltimore, Maryland See here for more information.
October 30, 2013
Tell a friend or colleague that your aunt just found out she has lung cancer. Almost always the response will be, “Did she smoke?” Then tell someone else that your aunt just found out she has breast cancer, or colon … Read More
October 29, 2013
Most people wish to live a long and healthy life. But apparently…not too long. That’s among the major findings in a recent survey by the Pew Research Center that looks at attitudes about aging, medical advances and “radical life extension”—the … Read More
October 22, 2013
A friend recently brought to my attention a disturbing question from a psychiatrist working with a transplant team: Should she be checking the sobriety claims of liver transplant candidates by looking on their Twitter and other social media sites? That … Read More
October 2, 2013
This September marked a peculiar anniversary: It’s now been 30 years since Ronald Reagan got fitted for a hearing aid in the Oval Office. Not unlike Katie Couric’s live colonoscopy 17 years later, Reagan’s fitting was a watershed moment for hearing … Read More
