Articles

Ferida Wolff writes: Our periwinkle has blossomed again, as it does each year, a groundcover that takes its mission seriously. Last year we planted four different kinds of tomatoes and feasted on red, yellow, and mottled varieties. We also set up a small greenhouse that had a way of breaking loose from its boundaries despite the spikes we used to hold it down. It flipped over uprooting our peas and beans but the tomato plants were least affected. We couldn't figure out if an animal pushed it over or some of the neighborhood kids were having fun but it isn't going back up this season. more »

Drs. Groopman and Hartzband (also husband and wife) reveal that each of us has a 'medical mind,' a highly individual approach to weighing the risks and benefits of treatment. Are you a minimalist or a maximalist, a believer or a doubter, do you look for natural healing or the latest technology? Drs. Groopman and Hartzband explain how pitfalls in thinking and the way statistics are presented in pharmaceutical advertisements, the media, and even scientific reports can mislead all of us. Streaming at NCCIH and a YouTube at the Aspen Institute. more »

House and Senate Bills Introduced; V: H.R. 2101—Rep. Jim Cooper (D-CA)/Energy and Commerce (4/29/15)—A bill to provide for expedited review of drugs and biological products to provide safer or more effective treatment for males or females, to enhance the consideration of sex differences in basic and clinical research. A bill to clarify the ability to request consumer reports in certain cases to establish and enforce child support payments and awards. more »

Sonja Zalubowski writes: The scenes stirred something in my bones, my blood, my very genes. This sense of witnessing how the world must have been once at the very beginning. The Serengeti is not far from the Olduvai Gorge where Mary Leakey in 1978 discovered the footprints of our earliest known ancestors, the hominids known as Australopithecenes from more than three million years ago. No cattle drivers or farmers here. The animals were doing quite well at maintaining nature's balance all on their own. I felt humbled, reverent and in awe. But, I also recognized how raw and dangerous and right there in front of us all this was. more »