Interactive Website Highlights Extent Of State's Opioid Addiction Epidemic
State health officials say they hope the site will help residents better understand the effects of the epidemic and help policy makers determine how best to deal with it.
View ArticleTrump's Pick For Health Secretary Generates Some Anxiety In Mass.
Tom Price has helped lead the charge to repeal Obamacare, and he supports major changes in programs that cover the elderly and the poor.
View ArticleAfter Soda Tax Proposals Pass Elsewhere, Issue To Be Raised Again In Mass.
Is soda food? Should it be exempt from the state sales tax? Soda tax measures just passed in several cities, and a Massachusetts lawmaker plans to propose one again.
View ArticleDoctor: I Quit AMA Over Its Endorsement Of Trump's Health Secretary Pick
Dr. Carolyn Sax writes: "Price's positions are repugnant to me and to every other physician that I know."
View ArticleU.N. Chief Apologizes But Does Not Admit Soldiers Brought Cholera To Haiti
The outgoing secretary general apologized to Haiti but didn't admit that it was U.N. soldiers who triggered its cholera epidemic. That omission will make it harder to raise money to help, advocates say.
View ArticleThe Ali-Frazier Fight Of Biotech? Patent Court To Hear CRISPR Oral Arguments
A patent litigation expert says the battle royale over CRISPR -- the revolutionary gene-editing technology coming before a federal patent court this week -- could take years.
View ArticleWinner Of $3M Breakthrough Prize Calls For Defense Of Science 'When Winds...
"When the winds blow against science, it’s all of our responsibilities to defend science and promote fact-based reasoning and rationality," Stephen J. Elledge said in accepting the Breakthrough Prize....
View ArticleNarrating Medicine: When You 'Inherit' A Pain Patient On Opioids, You Need...
"I have not met a single primary care provider who has decided to start opioids for a patient. Rather, we are dealing with the 'inherited' pain patient, who has been prescribed opioids by someone else."
View ArticleIn Memoriam: A 'Very Bright Light' Who Wrote About Life With Cancer, Invited...
CommonHealth honors the memory of Marie Colantoni Pechet, who wrote beautifully about life with cancer -- and just life -- in posts that were a privilege to publish.
View ArticleFlicker Of Hope For Alzheimer's? MIT Research Finds Light Helps Mouse Brains
Listen to "Radio Boston" and "Radiolab" explore the wild finding that light flickering at a specific frequency could help fend off Alzheimer's -- in mice, at least.
View ArticleExhibit At Boston's Logan Airport Shows That Mental Illness Can Affect Anyone
Featuring larger-than-life photographs with personal stories of people struggling with mental illness, the exhibit is designed to shed light on a topic often kept in the dark.
View ArticleEthicist Dad: Passage Of 21st Century Cures Act Fills Me With Both Hope And...
An ethicist and father whose daughter could have been killed by contaminated heparin worries that, while the 21st Century Cures Act could indeed lead to new cures, it could also compromise the FDA's...
View ArticleExpensive Problems: Study Links Early Childhood Brains To High Public Costs...
A study finds that just about one-fifth of people cost "the lion's share" of public money, from welfare benefits to hospital stays, and most showed signs of brain trouble even at age 3.
View ArticleAngelina Jolie Drives Up BRCA Test Rates But Health Benefit Questionable
It doesn't appear that the spike in the number of women tested for BRCA gene mutations led to more detection. The rate of women who had the test and then a mastectomy declined.
View ArticleThe Detective And The Dealer: An Evening With Heroin In Framingham
We go to the streets of the largest town in Massachusetts to find out how heroin and fentanyl end up in the hands of users, and how police battle the problem.
View ArticleThe Angelina Effect: The Power And Perils Of Celebrity Cancer Stories
From Angelina Jolie to Ben Stiller to John Wayne to Michael Douglas, celebrity cancer revelations can be a double-edged sword, an expert says: They inform the public, but without expert insights, they...
View ArticleOpinion: Beware, You Do Not Want Your Doctor Working 28 Hours Straight
Next year, you may notice that your young doctor looks even more sleep-deprived than usual -- if the council that oversees American medical residencies approves a proposal allowing first-year...
View ArticleHarvard Study: Elderly Hospital Patients Live Longer, Do Better With Female...
Says the study's senior author: "Despite that backdrop of lower salaries and less academic promotion, we're finding that not only are women physicians just as good, in fact we're finding that they're...
View ArticleAs New England Ages, Immigrants Make Up A Growing Share Of Health Workers
A growing percentage of home health care workers and nursing assistants in Massachusetts are foreign-born, and that reliance on immigrant labor for health care is only expected to increase.
View Article10 Prescriptions For Smoother Holidays In A House Divided
"No one ever said we had to be in complete agreement to enjoy each other’s company," write two child psychiatrists. "Divided houses are not easy to mend. A divided country is even harder. But all...
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