Medicine

Saving Bobby [PDF]

Newsday, February 26, 2006

The North Bellport father backs his family’s Dodge Durango down the driveway on a snowy morning in February and accidentally crushes his young son’s head. One year later, the 3-year-old boy is alive and remarkably well. Not because there was any one defining moment in the struggle to save Bobby Palange. But because there were so many.

A cancer screening crisis for transgender patients

Cancer Cytopathology, July 10, 2019

Discrimination, patient unease, provider ignorance, and a highly gendered health care system are impeding cancer screening and risk assessment in the transgender population (Part 1 of a 2?part series on how clinicians can begin to address these barriers).

Taking the lead

Cancer Health, March 18, 2019

A new breed of patient advocate is reshaping the future of cancer research.

The unexpected effects of the HIV prevention pill

Mosaic, November 27, 2018

PrEP is great at blocking HIV, but as its use grows, so do fears that people will be more sexually reckless and spread other STIs. Researchers, though, are coming to think that the opposite could be true.

The case for empathy

Cancer Cytopathology, August 14, 2017

Researchers differ on the finer points, but largely agree that stronger skills in empathy are needed for effective patient care (part 1 of a 2-part series on the push for more compassionate care and the growing evidence for positive patient outcomes).

The lifesaving treatment that’s being thrown in the trash

Mosaic, March 27, 2017

Diagnosed with leukemia in his early 40s, Chris Lihosit was saved by umbilical cord blood from three babies. But why is cord blood banking still the exception rather than the norm?

Dysphagia: it’s like being waterboarded 24 hours a day

Mosaic, March 14, 2016

This is the harsh reality of dysphagia: it’s a major symptom of multiple diseases, disorders and injuries, it can strike both young and old, and yet its repercussions often flummox doctors and play out far from public view. Advocates call dysphagia an invisible disorder and a silent epidemic.

In the blink of an eye

Mosaic, September 8, 2015

Most causes of eye pain – a stray eyelash, a chemical burn, a dirty contact lens – are obvious and short-lived. But what happens if the source isn’t immediately apparent and the agony doesn’t stop?

In debating the right to die, a shift in tone among physicians

Cancer Cytopathology, June 12, 2015

As laws legalizing physician-assisted suicide gain ground in Canada and elsewhere, physicians readjust their stance to retain a say (part 1 of a 2-part series on the medical profession’s recalibrated response to physician-assisted death).

Medicine’s dirty secret

Mosaic, April 29, 2014

Poo is a decidedly imperfect delivery vehicle for a medical therapy. It’s messy. It stinks. It’s inconsistent, not to mention a regulatory nightmare. But it can be incredibly potent.

Heeding the hard lessons of Chernobyl

Cancer Cytopathology, August 12, 2011

Twenty-five years after the worst nuclear accident in history, the world watched in horror on March 11, 2011 as a colossal earthquake and tsunami killed tens of thousands in Japan and crippled its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, threatening to unleash another disaster.

A new front in the debate over HPV vaccines for boys

Cancer Cytopathology, December 12, 2010

The HPV vaccination ad begins predictably enough. Paired with an image of an adolescent girl is the warning: ‘It could affect your daughter.’ Then it veers into largely uncharted territory with the follow-up line: ‘It could affect your son.’

Stem cell researchers face down stem cell tourism

Nature Reports Stem Cells, June 5, 2008

In April, a paralyzed man returning to Colorado from experimental stem cell therapy in India said he could feel the waistband of his pants for the first time in years. Like others before him, he couldn't say how many cells he had received or how his treatments had worked. Nor had his doctor published any details.