BUSINESS
By Jay Hancock | March 7, 2010
A s the century's sleazy first decade coasted to a finish, medicine was perhaps the only profession to emerge unslimed. Wall Street and bond raters caused 10 percent unemployment. Businesses cooked books. Journalists fabricated. Priests abused. Intelligence analysts found fantasy nukes. But doctors, again near the top of last year's Gallup "honesty and ethics" poll, may be prepping for their own Enron moment. Allegations that hundreds of patients at St. Joseph Medical Center received what might have been unneeded heart stents would, if true, combine Bernard Madoff-style fraud with Toyota-style injury.
NEWS
March 9, 2011
The Supreme Court's decision in the Westboro Baptist case follows our constitutional protections for free speech. Why don't people exercise that right by picketing there? Go to Westboro! Same-sex couples and veterans should join in a show of support for slain soldiers and denounce this bigotry with many rallies right on Westboro's doorsteps. Aren't there VFW's in Kansas? Where are they? Freedom of speech goes both ways. Ron Kuhns, Nottingham
HEALTH
By Susan Reimer | March 11, 2010
M y husband the sports writer calls it "Team Reimer," and he says it has more members than the supporting casts behind any Olympic athlete he's ever covered. I tell him that if I was as young and fit as the athletes he writes about, I wouldn't need a team to keep me on the road. But I'm not, and so I have a yoga trainer, a massage therapist, the best hair-colorist in my town, a manicurist, a general practitioner to whom I am devoted and an aesthetician. Not that my husband knows what an aesthetician is. Now there is a new member of Team Reimer.
FEATURES
April 24, 1991
The results of yesterday's survey on medicine and medicine cabinets show an even split between people who store their prescriptions in the bathroom and those who choose a cooler, drier place. Professionals say that the light and moisture of a bathroom are harmful to medicine.Most people, however, do indeed follow prescription-bottle directions explicitly. Only a third of 207 callers said they bend the rules.Finally, a slight majority (54 percent) admitted to hanging on to expired prescriptions"It's Your Call" represents a sampling of opinions from certain segments of the community, but it is not balanced demographically as would be done in a scientific public opinion poll.
NEWS
By Fernando Mosquera | March 11, 2002
FOR MOST, the question of whether to legalize medical marijuana use in Maryland is an abstraction. Not for me. The Maryland House of Delegates literally will be voting on my right to live a normal, healthy life when it considers the Darrell Putman Compassionate Use Act. The bill would legalize the medical use of marijuana for seriously ill Marylanders. There is strong scientific evidence for medical marijuana's safety and efficacy. The Institute of Medicine reported in 1999, "Nausea, appetite loss, pain, and anxiety ... all can be mitigated by marijuana."
FEATURES
By Joe Graedon and Dr. Teresa Graedon and Joe Graedon and Dr. Teresa Graedon,King Features Syndicate | August 1, 1995
Everyone makes mistakes. The clerk at the store may give out the wrong change, or the post office may deliver your letter to the wrong address. And who hasn't gotten a wrong number on the telephone?Such errors are inconvenient or annoying. The mistakes people make in hospitals and drugstores, however, could be life-threatening. Unfortunately, they appear to be all too common.A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals a high rate of adverse drug events in two of the country's finest hospitals.