Insights

<p>The transaction was quick. </p><p>In the parking lot of a pastry shop, a patient handed Dr. Kachun ClementYeung $400. Yeung handed the patient a prescription for 800 milligrams of OxyContin. It took less than five minutes.</p><p>The exchange was part of 23,000 milligrams worth of the addictive painkiller that Yeung prescribed to patients who were never properly diagnosed with chronic pain during a 168 day period in 2002.</p>

<p>Justina Wang at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle tackled a topic that seems to scare most local publications: food safety. </p><p>With each food poisoning scare, local reporters cover what's happening at their corner stores. Few examine the root causes. With school board meetings, octuplet moms and a weekender due tomorrow, how could one possibly get to the bottom of our fractured food safety system?</p>

<p></p><p></p><p></p><p><i>We seem to be gripped by a national state of shock at the news that Nadya Suleman, a single mother with no job and six children, was able to have eight embryos implanted in her uterus, all of which resulted in children. </i></p><p></p>

<p>Health care reporters know how rarely hospitals suspend a doctor's privileges. Those rights are granted and revoked by other doctors, and doctors are loathe to set a precedent by saying a botched surgery or missed diagnosis should bar a doctor for life.</p><p><br /><br />That's why it was a big deal when the Reston Hospital Center in Virginia took away Dr. Bahram Tafreshi Moshiri's right to practice there in November 2001.</p>

<p>One would think that everything that could possibly be said about lead poisoning has been printed, broadcast and e-mailed around the globe countless times. </p>

<p>Sometimes, all a doctor with a checkered past wants is some peace and quiet.</p><p>Dr. Paul William Anderson had a little trouble with a medical malpractice lawsuit in Nebraska. The Medical Board of Nebraska wanted the radiologist to explain why he had failed to diagnose a tumor that ended up blinding one of his patients. </p>

<p><i>Update: Dr. Gupta removed himself from the list of candidates on March 5, telling CNN's Larry King, "I</i><i> think for me it really came down to a sense of timing more than anything else. This job...takes us away from our children for so many years at once, and I sort of came to grips that I'd probably be away for several years of their lives."</i></p><p>Dr. Sanjay Gupta appears to be the first surgeon general picked not for his public service but for his public image. </p>

<p>When more than half of American families sampled in a recent poll say they're skimping on medical care to save money, that's a story by any measure - and one that's easy to localize. A new <a href="http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/posr022509pkg.cfm">study</a&gt; from the <a href="http://www.kff.org/"&gt;

<p>The <a href="http://www.gatesfoundation.org/">Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation's</a> $100 million grant to the <a href="http://www.ipm-microbicides.org/index.htm">International Partnership for Microbicides</a> is big news for HIV prevention researchers frustrated by years of skimpy funding and scientific setbacks. The United Kingdom Department for International Development kicked in another $28.5 million.