504 Plans for Special Needs Children: The New Normal
Every fall I meet with teachers and school officials to review my children’s 504 plans to protect them from anaphylactic shock. This back-to-school ritual has become so routine that we hardly give it a second thought. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 protects people with disabilities and other qualifying health conditions from discrimination […]
Half of Americans Will Be Diagnosed With Cancer by 2030
Cancer is an “abnormal growth of cells.” That is perhaps the most succinct description of the disease, which is really more a group of diseases since there are more than 100 types of cancer. Cancer cells are malignant—meaning that they can invade and spread to different parts of the body, forming solid tumors (masses of […]
America’s ‘Good Medicine’ Mindset
The idea that you can give someone a disease, or something worse than that disease, by giving them a medicine designed to cure that disease or prevent the patient from contracting it and spreading it to others is so counter-intuitive, so unethical, so downright insane that it is unthinkable, unconscionable, unbelievable. After all, isn’t the first principle of medicine to “first, do no harm”? And yet… I think one of the greatest songs of all time is the one by…