AltWeeklies Wire
Hey Right-Wingers! Please Save Us From ObamaCare!

America desperately needs smart, strong opposition to ObamaCare. The worst part of this bad plan is its "mandate," which requires the uninsured to buy insurance at hyper-inflated prices from greedy for-profit private corporations.
Scientists Fight to Explain High Childhood Leukemia in Sierra Vistanew

In 2001, Pat Durkit's granddaughter, Jessica, then 2 years old, was diagnosed with leukemia. In 2004, Jessica's half-sister in Phoenix, Kellie, was given the same diagnosis. Their father and Pat's son, Dale, grew obsessed with finding a cause for the disease.
Tucson Weekly |
Tim Vanderpool |
03-03-2010 |
Science
Journalist T.R. Reid Makes it Plain: Universal Coverage is the Answernew
The take-home lesson, repeated frequently during an hour-long conversation with the Independent, boils down basically to this: Provide universal health care, and the rest will follow.
Colorado Springs Independent |
Anthony Lane |
02-25-2010 |
Science
The Insurance Company Didn't Give a Damn, and the Jury Gave $37 Millionnew
Time Insurance is about to discover just how badly it has miscalculated: about the routine business of taking away people's health insurance, about a Boulder jury, about its own by-the-numbers defense — and, most of all, about Jennifer Latham.
Health-Care Practitioners Explain Why They're Willing to Go to Jail for Health-Care Reformnew
As the discussion about health care has shifted from coverage for all citizens to a system that will force people to purchase private health insurance (without the "public option") pockets of unlikely activists are mobilizing.
Baltimore City Paper |
Erin Sullivan |
02-09-2010 |
Science
A Professor Investigates Africa’s Most Dreaded Disease: Malarianew

At first glance, UVM assistant professor Arne Bomblies seems like an unlikely person to be conducting research on malaria, an illness that kills more than a million people worldwide each year, most of them African children, at a rate of one every 30 seconds.
Seven Days |
Ken Picard |
01-22-2010 |
Science
Medical Marijuana Activists Unhappy With Proposed New Regulationsnew
Local medical marijuana activists are expressing displeasure with proposed new legislation that would change the state’s medical marijuana law. The activists gathered Tuesday at Gone Wired Café on Michigan Avenue in Lansing after the proposed legislation was discussed in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
City Pulse |
Neal McNamara |
01-21-2010 |
Science
Does the Flu Vaccination Policy at Children’s Hospital Violate Employees' Rights?new

Gillian Kirkpatrick thinks the hospital’s new flu vaccination policy goes too far. The policy requires that all staff either get a shot for H1N1 and seasonal flu or don the badge and mask. It violates her privacy, she says. And parents have been giving her uneasy looks.
San Diego CityBeat |
Peter Holslin |
01-13-2010 |
Science
New Mammograms Guidelines Have Women Confusednew

The new guidelines say women in their 40s shouldn’t be routinely screened for breast cancer — unless they have reason to believe they’re at higher risk. Why the change from 2002, when a federal task force called for these women to get routine mammograms every one to two years?
New Haven Advocate |
Jenny Blair |
01-12-2010 |
Science
Confined to His Home For a Decade, Doug Lindsay Knows What Ails Himnew

Doug Lindsay suspects his adrenal glands produce too much epinephrine (a.k.a. adrenaline). He wants to correct the problem by doing away with the region at the center of each gland, the medulla. It's a dicey proposition.
Riverfront Times |
Kristen Hinman |
01-08-2010 |
Science
Hello, Cancer: One Madison Woman Tells What She Learnednew
I remember that she wore red shoes. Her feet were tiny and she was wearing pantyhose. She examined the lump on my neck for all of 20 seconds before leaning back in her swivel chair and pronouncing: "This is probably a lymphoma."
A Massive Free Clinic Takes the Pulse of Health Care in Americanew

Familiar rhetoric: "We have the best health care in the world!" Anyone who has actually said that in the last year is probably not at Bartle Hall December 10. The weather hasn't kept away a couple of thousand people who need help. It has just made it harder for some to get here.
State of Emergency: The Disappearing Primary-care Doctornew

It's a not-uncommon story: someone goes to the doctor for a checkup or for a minor complaint, but while they are there, the doctor notices something else. If the number of primary-care physicians continues to drop, the situation could be different a decade from now.
City Newspaper |
Tim Louis Macaluso |
12-16-2009 |
Science
Genetic Detectives: Find Out Where You Fit on the Family Treenew

I'm one of more than 300,000 people who have sent cheek cells to the Genographic Project, an effort of the National Geographic Society and IBM that hopes to assemble a database of DNA samples to better understand the migrations of humans tens of thousands of years ago.
Tucson Weekly |
Jim Nintzel |
12-10-2009 |
Science
Health Care or Hell? A Diary of H1N1new
I asked myself what other business in civilized society would allow a customer to sit in their lobby for an entire day. Waiting. Hour after hour. No apologies, no apparent attempt to speed things up or call in extra help. I actually thought it was normal...for the first six hours.
Weekly Alibi |
Michael P. D'Arco |
12-08-2009 |
Science