Originally published in OnEarth. The BP blowout caused months of pain and suffering for the people and environment of the Gulf Coast. But Louisiana was in trouble long before the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Its wetlands are disappearing at the rate of a football field every hour due to rising sea level, storm damage, and the […]
Crude Awakening
Right here in North America could lie the answer to our energy needs. But at what cost? Mining the tar sands of Alberta threatens to strip the world’s largest intact forest of its ability to hold carbon and to wipe out the breeding grounds for millions of birds. Originally published in Audubon. ON A BREEZY JULY […]
When Wounded Vets Come Home
As more troops than ever are surviving the fearsome injuries of war, parents are increasingly being thrust into the role of long-term caregiver. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. CYNTHIA LEFEVER DIDN’T GET A CHANCE TO SEE HER SON Army Specialist Rory Dunn before he shipped out to Iraq on 24 hours’ notice in March […]
Putting Science in the Dock
In an effort to exclude dubious experts, judges have assumed unprecedented power—and tilted the system against injured consumers. Originally published in The Nation. ON A CHILLY MORNING IN NOVEMBER 2001, David Healy stood in a witness box in Kansas City, Kansas, and received a sobering lesson on the U.S. legal system. A professor of psychological medicine at Cardiff University […]
When a Woman Goes Bald
A scientist’s painful battle with balding drives her to find the genetic basis for hair loss. Originally published in Discover. ON A FRIDAY MORNING LAST JUNE, Efrat Fadida threw a denim jacket over her white summer blouse and caught a ride with her father from the small Israeli town of Gedera east to Jerusalem. Walking into Hadassah […]
Age in Place… But Not Here
Originally published in the AARP Bulletin. BLANCHE BELL, TO HEAR HER FAMILY TELL IT, had the determination of a bulldog—from studying physics at the University of Michigan in the 1940s because it was the toughest major offered to presiding over a family of six. “She was only 4-foot-11, but she was larger than life,” says her son […]
Prisoners of Pain
Why are millions of suffering Americans being denied the prescription drug relief they need? Originally published in AARP The Magazine. DEBORAH HAMALAINEN WAS FEELING more and more agitated by the minute. Waiting to see her neurologist, she was silently rehearsing a confrontation that had been building for months. She planned to look the doctor directly in the […]
Going Home
The hospital couldn’t save Jack’s life. But hospice gave him something to live for. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. JACK SMITH LOOKED UP FROM THE EVENING NEWS to see two old buddies bounding down the steps to the basement den of his northeast Philadelphia home. At once his tired face broke into a wicked smile. “There’s […]
Lights Out
Can contact sports lower your intelligence? Originally published in Discover. SOME 20 YEARS AGO, IN FRONT OF A FRENZIED and antagonistic crowd, Harry Carson hurled his entire bulk—240 pounds—into an equally massive human body racing toward him across the field at Washington’s RFK Stadium. A middle linebacker with the New York Giants, Carson was a celebrated defensive […]
Less Sleep, More Energy?
New drugs promise to keep us sharp even when we need shuteye—but at a cost. A different version of this article was published in Reader’s Digest. IN AN ANTISEPTIC ANIMAL LABORATORY in Worcester, Mass., 160 rodents in oversized cages are hooked up, via thirty miles of wire, to a bank of computers that continuously record their vital […]
