Medical

Dr. Lorna Breen, who died by suicide on April 26, was the canary in the coal mine. You can see it in her eyes, and in her smile. I didn’t know her, but I’ll bet she sang. One of her causes was successful communication with autistic patients, something beyond most emergency physicians. She was a…

When former U.S. President Richard Nixon officially declared his crusade against drugs, notoriously referred to as his so-called “War on Drugs,” on June 17, 1971, America’s police-prison-profit industrial complex could at best prognosticate and at worst balefully pray for the downstream disproportionate impact criminalization of narcotics would have on certain communities from then until now.…

The United States has been the most impacted country in the current COVID-19 crisis. Is COVID, the only common denominator? What else is common to the over 100,000 deaths in the United States, who is collecting and analyzing the death data comprehensively apart from the snapshot of admission and discharge diagnosis from death certificates? Out…

For well over 30 years, physicians have understood the role of LDL (low-density lipoprotein, or “bad”) cholesterol in the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD). LDL cholesterol levels are directly correlated with increasing CVD risk and, as summarized in a recent blog post, lowering LDL cholesterol levels, through both lifestyle changes and medications, has been shown…

How did coronavirus become so widespread? By the time Dr. Zhang Jixian first reported the cases, it is thought that 180 patients were already infected. The problem with this is that SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes, COVID-19, presents in many different ways and spreads in patients with no symptoms. By the time we were…

When news started coming in that throngs of protestors were gathering in Chicago to protest the horrific killing of George Floyd, my initial feelings of anger were tempered by a hope that maybe this time things would turn around for our black brothers and sisters.  Quickly, as the protests became infiltrated with violence, and I…

Much has been written about the response of the governmental agencies in the foreseeability of COVID-19 spread and management in the United States. Travel restriction from mainland China seemed to be a very timely intervention. However, instead of considering it as an initial step in a prolonged exercise of vigilance in preventing the disease from…

Thank you for listening to the podcast. There were some audio difficulties during this interview, which I hope you can overlook. It certainly does not take away from Dr. Syed’s message and her wonderful interview. “An essential part of daily living for many people is faith. No matter what faith you belong to, people practice…

To contain COVID-19 and re-open the economy, the U.S. should be performing 500,000 tests per day. We are nowhere near that number. Widespread implementation of CRISPR-based testing would address deficits in the current testing landscape. The most common method of testing for COVID-19—reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)—costs $100 per test, takes four-six hours to run,…