The Public Option vs The Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act Recently, Wendell Potter, current whistle-blower and former Communications Vice-President of Cigna Health Insurance, of one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, testified before congress declaring the Public Option the only real option to reign in the insurance industry, control costs and provide...
Yearly Archives: 2009
The Dark Side of $cience Science: knowledge, as of facts or principles, gained by systematic study. In the past century the miracles and wonders of science have helped us understand our world and tap into, channel and use its natural forces and resources. In every field, from physics to chemistry to medicine, etc., scientific discovery...
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Science Fiction In the last 50 years or so a new science emerged that now dominates and influences almost all, if not all, fields of research: corporate science. The name itself exposes the obvious conflict of interests between the corporate profit motive and scientific independence and integrity. This bottom-line driven science leaves little, to nothing,...
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An Interesting Case Study: Phantom Limb Pain A few months ago I read an interesting article, Brain Games, in The New Yorker magazine. A few weeks ago, I saw the author, neuroscientist, VS Ramachandran, give a lecture, On Your Mind, on the fabulous website TED.com. In both, a featured topic was phantom limb pain. Phantom...
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Things are getting seriously ugly as the health care reform debate moves forward. That’s because we have a President who is determined to actually DO something. What it is that he actually CAN do, remains to be seen. Conservative and GOP-backed think-tanks along with the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industrial complex’s media, advertising arms and hired guns/lobbyists have...
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The Miracle of Birth When I heard Krystal’s story of birth it brought me right back to the home births of each of my three children. Natural childbirth is, without a doubt, the most beautiful and magical of life’s experiences. Sadly, the medicalization of birth, and the media’s portrayal of of natural birth as a...
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The Human Brain: Use it or lose it Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a wonderful article: When Our Brains Short-Circuit. The article describes how our brains “systematically misjudge certain kinds of risks.” Above all else, evolution has programmed us for survival. One basic survival mechanism, hardwired into the most primitive part of our brain, is our...
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Health Care Deformed Just how powerful are the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance special interests that oppose health care reform? More powerful than ever, and their power grows daily. During the Clinton administration these special interests were able to squash attempts at health care reform as if the President and First Lady were as insignificant and powerless as gnats....
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