Electroshock Sans Anesthesia: Inside an Iraqi Hospital
June 18, 2008
From abcnews.com
By Nick schierin
In this country, in this city, in this hospital, where the danger has driven the doctors away, Mohammad Rashid is as much patient as psychiatrist.
“It takes more than two hours daily to come from my place to the hospital. And the road, I see many scenes, I face many confrontations with the guards, with the American soldiers,” says Rashid, one of four psychiatrists practicing at Baghdad’s Ibn Rushid hospital. “I have the same worries about my children when they go to their school — I call my wife three or four times daily just to reassure that they came back safely. So it’s not easy. We are fighting. We are fighting to live.”
Selling longer life — or snake oil?
June 12, 2008
From MSNBC
By Brian Alexander
In 1931, Dr. Paul Niehans opened Clinic La Prairie in Clarens, Switzerland. There he experimented with something he called “cellular therapy.” By injecting human patients with the living cells of fetal sheep, he promised, people could be rejuvenated, their body’s tissues literally made young again.
La Prairie quickly gained an elite clientele. Actress Gloria Swanson, the King of Morocco, Saudi Arabia’s founder King Ibn Saud, Pope Pius XII and many wealthy Americans and Europeans flocked to Clarens for the treatments, buying into one of the most ancient hopes of man — restored youth. Niehans had joined a long line of would-be saviors who came before and after. Some transplanted monkey, dog or goat testicles into men, or their ovaries into women. Others touted various elixirs, like one called Gerovital, popular in the 1950s. In the 1980s and early 1990s, hopes were placed on dietary supplements like beta-carotene, often in massive amounts. Nothing worked.
Regimens: Wine May Help Keep Liver Healthy
June 11, 2008
From New York Times
BY NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Recent reports suggest that red wine is a potent force in increasing lifespan, and a new study offers still more good news for wine drinkers. A glass a day, whether white or red, may reduce the risk of developing the nation’s most common liver disorder, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Researchers studied 7,211 nondrinkers, and 3,598 people who drank a glass a day of wine, beer or liquor, testing them for elevated blood levels of alanine aminotransferase, or ALT, a finding that indicates liver damage.They found above-normal levels in 3.2 percent of nondrinkers, 3.5 percent of beer drinkers and 2.3 percent of daily hard-liquor drinkers.
But among those who drank a glass of wine a day, the rate averaged only 0.4 percent.
Risky Ritual: 21 Drinks At Age 21
May 20, 2008
From cbsnews.com
By Kelley Colihan
How did you celebrate turning age 21? A study shows that most students at one Midwestern university drank, with some celebrating with a risky ritual of consuming 21 drinks.
Researchers at the University of Missouri found that when they asked 2,518 students at an unnamed university in the Midwest how they celebrated turning 21, most of them celebrated with alcohol.
“This study provides the first empirical evidence that 21st-birthday drinking is a pervasive custom in which binge drinking is the norm,” notes researcher Patricia Rutledge.
Birthday Binge Drinking
The study shows that four out of five students drank to celebrate turning 21. And women were more likely to drink to celebrate than men.
