Opinion | To Report or Not to Report Suspicions of Medical Child Abuse?
Hatters Friedman and Landess are forensic psychiatry experts. The so-called “Take Care of Maya” trial ended last month with a $261 million verdict for compensatory and punitive damages for the Kowalski family. The jury found Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital of Florida liable for multiple claims, including the wrongful death of Beata Kowalski by suicide, […]
What to Know About the ‘Eris’ Variant
There’s yet another new variant on the block — the so-called “Eris” variant — but it’s still an Omicron subvariant and researchers say there’s no reason to expect it to cause a surge of COVID-19. For the 2-week period ending August 5, the CDC variant proportions tracker projects that Eris, or EG.5, made up 17.3% […]
Medicaid Expansion Seen Lifting Colon Cancer Screening for Low-Income People
CHICAGO — Colorectal cancer screening rates at so-called Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in 2021 were higher in states that had accepted funding from the federal government to expand access to Medicaid compared with those that had not, a researcher said here. But the data also suggested that Medicaid expansion didn’t eliminate all financial barriers […]
Exciting Early Results With Novel Cell Therapy for Focal Epilepsy
BOSTON — Implantation of so-called inhibitory neurons helped two patients with severe, drug-resistant focal epilepsy achieve marked reductions in seizure frequency, researchers reported. Prior to treatment, these patients were experiencing an average of 32 and 14 seizures per month, respectively, over many years, according to investigator David Spencer, MD, of Oregon Health & Science University […]
Let PCPs Guide Post-COVID Care, CDC Staff Urges
When it comes to diagnosing post-COVID conditions (or so-called long COVID), Michael Saag, MD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, referred to the first line of an old Buffalo Springfield song in a call with clinicians on Thursday. “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear,” Saag said. CDC, which hosted the […]
Haunted-house experience scares up interesting insights on the body’s reaction to threats
The so-called fight-or-flight response is evolution’s way of preparing the body to defend itself or flee from a real or perceived threat, like a lion in the tall grass or — in modern times — an overdue performance review. Scientists have struggled to study the effects of genuine threats on people’s mental and physical state […]
House Lawmakers Eager to Boost Vaccine Uptake, Quash Hesitancy
Implementing so-called “regret lotteries,” launching school vaccination clinics, and targeting “microherds” were among the strategies proposed by expert witnesses to address vaccine hesitancy, during a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis on Thursday. “Nearly all of the more than 8,500 Americans who died from COVID-19 last month were unvaccinated,” said Chairman […]