Insights

<p><strong>J&amp;J Woes:</strong> After recalls more than 100 million bottles of Tylenol and other popular medicines made by Johnson &amp; Johnson, the feds inspect another J &amp;J plant that makes over-the-counter heartburn meds, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/22/AR20100… Washington Post reports</a>.

<p>Emergency room doctor <a href="http://www.nonviolenceandsocialjustice.org/About-Us/Team-Bios/36/#corbi… Corbin</a> was tired of stitching up the same gang members over and over, only to send them back out to Philadelphia’s most violent streets. So he did something novel: he started talking to them. He challenged his own assumptions. And he helped to start <a href="http://www.nonviolenceandsocialjustice.org/Healing-Hurt-People/29/">Hea… Hurt People</a>, a program that links young people treated in the ER for intentional injuries to social workers and mental health professionals.

<p>Here’s what we’re reading (and listening to) today:</p> <p><strong>Rural Health:</strong> KQED’s Health Dialogues program focuses on <a href="http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201007222000">rural health issues</a> including long distances to health care, lack of specialists and poverty.</p> <p><strong>Anthrax:</strong> Who knew you could contract anthrax by <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5928a3.htm?s_cid=mm5928a3_e"… on an animal-skin skin drum</a>? Some folks at a New Hampshire drumming circle found out the hard way.</p>

<p>Here’s what we’re reading (and listening to) today:</p> <p><strong>Embargo Break:</strong> Did the Financial Times break a journal embargo in reporting the tenofovir microbicide story coming out of the Vienna &nbsp;HIV/AIDS conference? Ivan Oransky says yes <a href="http://embargowatch.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/financial-times-breaks-sci… at his blog Embargo Watch</a>.</p>

<p>Let me tell you a little story about my first husband.</p><p>We met when I was in graduate school. He was a foreign journalist working in America and I interned where he worked. I left town, finished my degree, moved back. We reconnected, got married, and were considered enough of a catch -- two sharp young thrusters, an investigative reporter and an editor -- to be head-hunted by a large paper in the Midwest.</p>

<p>Wikipedia has no entry for the term “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&amp;redirs=0… mill</a>.”</p> <p>Antidote offers the following: <em>A physician’s office where people suffering from injuries or chronic diseases are given high doses of addictive drugs to keep them returning for more and where people already addicted to painkillers can obtain drugs with no questions asked. </em></p> <p>Exhibit A is the Bloomington, Indiana office of Dr. Larry Dean Ratts.</p>

<p>Last week, the USC/California Endowment National Health Journalism Fellows were knee-deep in seminars and conversations about international trade, urban violence and community campaigns. As it turns out, these are all <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/blogs/reinventing-health-beat-local-im… for a health beat</a>. The National Health Journalism Fellows and Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism grant recipients convened in Los Angeles to expand their reporting horizons.

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p>

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p> <p><strong>Alzheimer’s:</strong> The New Scientist Magazine offers a <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19193-briefing-new-ways-to-diagno… Q&amp;A</a> on what the first new diagnostic guidelines in 25 years for Alzheimer’s disease could mean for doctors and patients – particularly when few new treatments are on the horizon.</p>

<p>Jeanne Bouillon nearly bled to death after a gynecological procedure went awry. When she found out that the doctor who had performed the procedure had been sued several times to the tune of more than $700,000, she started fighting in Illinois and in Washington D.C. for better disclosure laws that would allow patients to see a physician’s malpractice and disciplinary history. One piece of legislation she fought for, the <a href="http://www.tubal.org/SJBreportMarch02hearing.htm">Patient Right-to-Know Act</a>, eventually made its way into law in 2005.</p>