United States
I'm a former staff writer and editor for the Washington Post Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, Mother Jones, MS., and others. I've also been a reporter and freelance writer for dozens of other magazines, newspapers, online media outlets, and non-profit organizations both large and small.
I'm a storyteller, a keen observer and thoughtful listener. I'm interested in reporting that shows the history and context of events. Often that requires finding the telling detail, the overlooked individual, or the hidden connections behind the policies and people that shape our lives.
NINA PHAM, a nurse at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, was assigned to treat Thomas Eric Duncan in the intensive care unit. Duncan, a traveler from Liberia, became the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S... Pham says she was assured she was at "no risk" of contracting Ebola. Three days later, she woke up with a fever of 100.6 degrees. By midnight that day, she had tested positive for Ebola.
By any measure influenza is a serious public health threat. Every year, more than 36,000 Americans die of the flu and its complications, and more than 200,000 are hospitalized. Vaccine shortages have plagued the nation for decades. Few drug companies still make vaccines, because they are not a high-profit item.Extreme shortages force medical personnel to make untenable choices. “Do you give it to the kid with cystic fibrosis, or a transplant patient?" one epidemiologist asked.
They lined the halls of the Russell Senate Office Building, snaking down the corridors, around the corners, hundreds and hundreds of them, reading books, doing crossword puzzles, munching on pizza, waiting to get their nasal passages swabbed for anthrax. More than 2,000 people—congressional staffers, messengers, lobbyists, reporters, tourists, photographers—stood in lines for hours to get tested. After 28 Capitol Hill staffers tested positive, no one wanted to take chances.
Soon, a sea of survivors had descended on the Astrodome, and doctors were seeing 150 patients an hour. Some needed dialysis, others had been off high blood pressure or diabetes medication; many were wounded and infected.On his last night at the triage center, Dr. Earl Miller treated a patient who was so grateful that she kissed his hand. “That was the most powerful thing I have ever experienced as a physician,” Miller says.
The answer may lie in the new science of 'Volumetrics'
"I was seeing kids and families coming in with repeated, prolonged respiratory illnesses, " one doctor said. All of them were living in FEMA trailers" The price tag the government paid for the trailers after Hurricane Katrina was more than $2.6 billion. But the interiors were fabricated from composite wood, particle board and other materials that emit formaldehyde, a carcinogen and a powerful respiratory irritant. There is no consensus on whether any "safe" level exists.
The job was essentially Mission Impossible I. The IRS modernization effort involved overhauling over 400 systems that administer more than 200 million taxpayer records. “The technical complexity was staggering," Spires says. It took four and a half years. He worked hard and Spires needed a break. But his break did not last long. In 2009, he got a call from the incoming Obama administration asking him if he was ready to take on Mission Impossible II.
Crackers that fight heart disease. Cheese that helps you lose weight. “Better for you” foods are a $246 billion business.These products have an eager audience. As an aging and increasingly overweight population focuses more attention on health, “better for you” foods have become one of the most lucrative areas of the food industry. Close to 60 percent of all processed and packaged foods now bear some sort of health claim on their labels. But does the science behind their claims hold up?
When the safety monitoring board pulled the plug on the hormone replacement portion of the Women's Health Study, over six million American women were taking HRT. Certainly, they wanted relief from hot flashes, and other menopausal symptoms. But most believed what they had been told for decades: that they were protecting themselves against the No. 1 female killer--heart disease. They weren't. "We were wrong," says Stanford medical professor Marcia Stefanick. "We were just wrong."
The link between good health and fish emerged in 1978, after a group of researchers from Denmark reported that the Inuit of northwest Greenland had one-tenth the death rate from heart attack as that of their Danish neighbors.