“I want to be a doctor.” It’s a bold decision. Some people make the choice when they are in elementary school, and realize how much they love playing “Operation,” and some people will make the same decision when they have long since finished college. People may choose to practice medicine because of a love for…
Images of children’s faces greet passersby who drive past the hospital complex in Central West End–faces on banners that happily announce the “coming soon” of this important center. Smiling faces, gleaming buildings, culminating wholeness. These signs, strung across cement blocks, illustrate a vision for a more efficient, as well as elegant, St. Louis health care…
Title IX is perhaps best known for increasing and protecting women’s participation in collegiate sports. In 2001, more than 150,000 women participated compared to 16,000 in 1966. Surprisingly enough, the original statute made no explicit mention of athletics. In fact, Title IX was introduced for an entirely different reason: its sponsor was not accepted into…
Summer 2014: A time for family fun, sun-tanning on the beach, and dumping buckets of ice water over your friend’s head. Nothing too out of the ordinary, except the last one spurred a deluge of Facebook posts and YouTube videos. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge captured the hearts of young and old alike, spreading awareness…
With the announcement of an upcoming Apple Watch, and for those already wearing Fitbit and Jawbone activity trackers, the excitement over self-tracking technology is once again climbing with a deafening crescendo. But consumers are not the only ones with new devices to brag about. These wearable technologies are making a splash in research fronts traditionally…
Imagine scraping your knee. In the 1900s, before antibiotics (and sanitation laws) were discovered, that wound could have led to bacterial infection and possible death. Today, deaths due to infectious disease have been cut to 5 percent since the dawn of the era of antibiotics. In countries where antibiotics are not prevalently used, strep throat can…
At Whispers, it’s easy to order a black coffee or tea and mindlessly grab one or two yellow packets of Splenda to dump in. A harmless act – after all, it’s almost the same as sugar, right? According to a recent study in Nature, however, artificial sweeteners can actually alter gut bacteria, resulting in glucose…
Drug discovery and production is a business; its purpose is profit. However, the goods produced through this business carry much more value than the price assigned to them. They save human lives. Examining the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that access to medicine is a right afforded to all human beings, not a luxury reserved…
On August 5, 2014 Missouri voters headed to the ballot boxes for mid-term elections. Among several issues, one that stood out to many was a legislatively referred amendment known as the “Right to Farm” Act. The language on the ballot read, “Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to ensure that the right of Missouri citizens…