Health

Bonnie Urfer 8-01-2007

Every year, 1 million radioactive shipments crisscross the U.S.

Jim Wallis 4-01-2007
Scripture suggests a clear role for government in ensuring the common good.
Anonymous 3-01-2007

As the parent of a middle-schooler with Tourette's syndrome (TS), I was truly disappointed in the way Amy Sullivan so flippantly referred to the symptoms of TS in the article "Democrats Talk Religi

Ed Spivey Jr. 6-01-2006
One man's personal quagmire, and it has nothing to do with Iraq.
Tom Philpott 5-01-2006

Wander into Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood on a Saturday morning in summer and you’ll see a sight not uncommon in New York City these days: a thriving and well-diversified farmers market.

Neighborhood denizens cluster around stands offering free-range meat, raw-milk cheese, cream-on-top milk, and a whole array of fresh fruit and vegetables—many of them grown right down the block from the market.

Yet unlike most of New York’s bustling greenmarkets, which tend to thrive in upscale residential and shopping areas, this one lies in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Red Hook’s median family income is $15,000—below the federal poverty line of $19,000. Forty percent of the neighborhood’s families live on less than $10,000 per year. The unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds stands at 75 percent.

In fact, not many outsiders wander into Red Hook. When New York City’s legendary city planner Robert Moses patched together plans for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the 1940s, he decided to spare aristocratic Brooklyn Heights and its stately brownstones, sending the BQE along the waterfront at that point. Just south, though, he let the road slice right into working-class Red Hook, leaving it shoehorned between a traffic-choked highway on one side and New York Harbor on the other.

In his landmark book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser reported that, in a global marketing survey, McDonald’s Golden Arches proved to be a more widely recognized symbol than the Christian cross. The arches are second worldwide, after the Olympic rings. The cross comes in third.

Of all the changes that struck American culture in the last quarter of the 20th century, the explosive growth of the fast-food industry would have to count as one of the most destructive. That’s a big claim. We’re talking about a period of history that saw the advent of music videos, infomercials, and call-waiting. But I’ll stand by it.

Foodways are among the most essential defining elements of any culture; in the past few decades, ours have changed almost beyond recognition. Twenty-first century America has, in large part, left behind regionally grown, home-prepared food for globalized, pre-packaged, sweetened, and fatty convenience stuff. Just as we’ve surrendered control of our free time, and even our inner consciousness, to the TV and advertising industry, we’ve turned over responsibility for much of our daily sustenance to a few transnational marketing corporations.

We are what they sell us. And, in exchange, the lords of the fast-food empire have promised to free us from cooking, dishwashing, and (at least briefly) from complaining children. The consequences of this bargain are written across our strip-malled landscape, our low-wage economy, and our increasingly bloated bodies.

Rose Marie Berger 2-01-2006

Prayer can literally change our brain.

The United Methodist Church has decided that its aging and medication-

The United Methodist Church has decided that its aging and medication-dependent denominational constituents can't wait until the fall presidential elections for relief from the high cost of prescription drugs. In a partnership with DestinationRx,

Sharon H. Ringe 9-01-2002

A Bible study on health, healing and justice.

James C. Peterson 5-01-2000

There are currently about 900 genetic tests available. They can be helpful to understand, plan for, prevent, or treat genetically related conditions. With the approaching introduction of "gene chip" technology (which enables biologists to scour huge chunks of genomes in search of the genes that promote disease), large numbers of genetic tests are likely to become quick, relatively inexpensive, and routine.

Such accessible genetic information has many implications. One crucial area is that of employment.

Popular fears have been expressed in novels and movies that employers will use these genetic tests to choose employees not for their ability but for their genetic potential. If the employers did so, they would be misunderstanding human genetics. Human beings are so complex that a rich genetic endowment can be unfulfilled and a relatively poor one can be substantially transcended. Companies seeking to predict future performance would do far better to look at past performance and current-ability-based tests than to look at genetic heritage.

Employers are likely to try to use genetic tests to limit what they spend on medical care. To survive long term, businesses depend on producing more revenue than they consume, either by raising income or reducing expenses. Medical care is often a major factor in company costs.

Most employees in the United States are covered by company self insurance. Many of the others are under experience-based policies where a company’s premium changes with how much medical care employees need. In either case, medical care for employees and their dependents is a significant part of the employer’s outlays. Awareness of this impact is heightened for management by the concentration of medical care expenses in one subset of employees. In any given year, 5 percent of employees incur about 50 percent of health care expenditures, and 10 percent need about 70 percent of these resources.

Joe Nangle 11-01-1999

Heart surgery opened my arteries---and my eyes.