Human Hearts
Great post! My mom had a heart attack a while ago and I definitely know how it feels to have ...
Gender-Free Baby: Is it O.K. for Parents to Keep Their Child’s Sex a Secret?
If pregnancy were a musical composition, finding out whether you're having a boy or a girl would be the coda. Indeed, "Do you know what you're having?" is probably the question lobbed most frequently at pregnant women, right up there with, "When are you due?" So news that a Canadian couple is raising their third child "genderless" in what amounts to a grand social experiment has set parental tongues a-wagging.
Gender is so central to parents' concept of their unborn children that most moms- and dads-to-be can't even wait until delivery day to learn what they're having. A 2007 Gallup poll found that 66% of 18-to-34-year-olds said they would choose to learn their baby's sex before seeing their newborn's birthday suit for the first time.
Yet Kathy Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, have kept their baby Storm's gender a secret. The only people who know are one family friend and Storm's older brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2. (Not surprisingly, the two midwives who delivered Storm on New Year's Day are in the know as well.)
A lengthy feature last week in the Toronto Star profiled the family and their quest to raise their baby unfettered by the rules of pinks and blues. The couple began by sending out an email after Storm's birth: "We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...)."...
Black Couple Shocked After Having A White Baby
Black and white family: Francis and Arlette with Seth and Daniel
A black couple told yesterday of their shock and mystification when their son was born with white skin and blond hair.
Francis Tshibangu admitted: ‘My first thought was “Wow, is he really mine?”.’
He and his wife Arlette already have a two-year-old boy, Seth, whose features reflect his African parentage. But it is thought that baby Daniel, now 11 weeks old, has a slight genetic mutation. He is not an albino.
Congo-born Mr Tshibangu, 28, said his ‘jaw dropped open’ when Daniel arrived at Leicester Royal Infirmary.
‘I was too stunned to speak and I could see the doctors looking at each other, thinking the baby couldn’t be mine.
‘Then Arlette and I looked at each other and smiled and I knew he was. I have been with my wife for three years and there was never a question of infidelity, but seeing his white skin was a surprise to say the least.’
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BPA Linked to Childhood Asthma
Endocrine disruption, diabetes, obesity—to the list of ills potentially associated with exposure to the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), you can add one more: childhood asthma. In a new study presented over the weekend at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Denver, researchers from the Penn State College of Medicine found that if pregnant women are exposed to BPA, their children may end up at a higher risk for developing asthma early in life.
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When New York City’s health department revealed last weekend that three people had contracted cholera, it was a reminder that the city is not just a world capital of arts, business and the like — but also of exotic diseases.
If a disease has cropped up in the world, there is a good chance it will eventually find its way to New York City through the diverse travelers who cross the city’s borders.
For instance, several people every year are found to have a biblical disease, leprosy, though health officials say no one has to fear catching it in the subway. In 2002, bubonic plague, more commonly associated with the 14th century, found its way to New York City through two travelers who came from a ranch in New Mexico, where the disease is endemic in flea-bitten wild animals like prairie dogs....
The medical intern started her presentation with an eye roll. "The patient in Room 3 had some blood in the toilet bowl this morning and is here with a pile of Internet printouts listing all the crazy things she thinks she might have."
The intern continued, "I think she has a hemorrhoid."
"Another case of cyberchondria," added the nurse behind me.
In the end, the patient did, indeed, have a hemorrhoid. She was safe to go home with a treatment plan and some reassurance. But I wasn't so sure if what doctors call the "Google stack" (the printouts listing all the potential and worrisome diagnoses) was really such a problem. After all, her symptoms were scary — she may very well have come to the ER regardless of her Web search. The real problem was with my team: we weren't well equipped to deal with her online homework — and it became a distraction. ...
John Steinbeck observed that "a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ."
That insight, now confirmed by epidemiological studies, is worth bearing in mind at a time of such polarizing inequality that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 percent.
There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.
That’s the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument....
If you're acting stupid because you're a stoner, you might just be playing to type. That is, it may be your expectations about marijuana's long-term cognitive effects — rather than any real effect of the drug itself — that is to blame, particularly if you're male, according to new research. The study, which was published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, explored the effect of "stereotype threat" — the idea that performance is affected by conventional images of minorities — on marijuana smokers.
Earlier studies of stereotype threat have found that when African Americans are asked to identify themselves by race before being tested, they tend to score worse than blacks who weren't reminded of their race — in line with racist stereotypes about blacks doing poorly in school.
Explains study co-author Mitch Earleywine, professor of psychology at the University of Albany–SUNY: ...