Valleywide Legal Blog
Bacterial Infection: A Relentless Killer.
They are all around us. The bacteria that cause infections are all around us. They live on our skin, in our guts, on the food we eat, on the surfaces we touch, and in our mouths. They float on the … Read More
Want To Live Longer and Healthier? Think Positive.
My mother lived until just before what would have been her 96th birthday. She had a great attitude about life. She kept busy gardening and volunteering as long as she could. When old friends passed on, she made new, younger … Read More
Another Volley In The Alcohol Is Good/Bad For You War.
There is an old adage, often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, that beer is proof God loves us and want us to be happy. To the extent that old Ben offered an opinion on this issue, he was probably talking about … Read More
Fee For Service Isn’t Working.
Every year it is the same old story. Americans pay more per person for health care than any other developed country in the world and yet our health care outcomes don’t measure up to the other countries. We spend twice … Read More
Posted in Doctors, Fee for Service, Health Care Costs, healthy living, Hospitals, Medical Costs, medical ethics, Medicare, Nurses, Obesity, obesity epidemic | Blood Clots Are On The Rise.
In so many ways our bodies are wondrous machines that work nearly flawlessly for decades before they finally wear out or something goes wrong. Over millions of years, the process of evolution tried out various strategies and discarded the ones … Read More
Are We Headed Back to the Bad Old Days?
My granddaughter and I were looking at songs in a folk singing book the other day and one of them was “Sweet Molly Malone.” If you know the song, you know Molly was a fishmonger in old Dublin, who died … Read More
Want To Live A Long And Healthy Life? Be Born Rich.
I don’t suppose it has ever been different over the course of human history, but our society is unequal. More and more research studies are “finding” that inequality makes a big difference in how healthy you are and how long … Read More
Advances in Diagnosis and Treatment of Melanoma
A diagnosis of melanoma was often a death sentence. It was and remains today one of the most dangerous of the skin cancers. However, as science has marched on, there have been a number of developments in prevention, diagnosis and … Read More
The Good Bacteria
Last week I wrote about some of the dangers of overuse and misuse of antibiotics: they create resistance among the disease causing bacteria and make antibiotics less effective in saving lives. There is an equally important second reason, however. The … Read More
The Danger of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria
We are surrounded by life forms that are constantly mutating and changing. This is particularly true of bacteria. Because they have such short life spans, they can evolve quickly to meet threats. That is exactly what they have done to … Read More