April of every year marks Earth Month. This coming Tuesday, April 22, marks Earth Day. Washington University in St. Louis talks a lot about the environment, about sustainability, about going green, saving energy, and protecting the earth. But it does not always talk about the people on the earth burdened by environmental issues. Perhaps you…
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as the ACA, PPACA or Obamacare, is the single largest attempt at health care reform since the introduction of Medicaid and Medicare in 1964. Some of the main goals of the ACA are to provide comprehensive, affordable coverage to the estimated 84 million Americans in…
A doctor getting dragged away in handcuffs might be something we see in a movie, but we rarely think of it as a real-life occurrence. Dr. Charles van der Horst proves that assumption wrong. Last May, Dr. van der Horst, Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at UNC-Chapel Hill, was arrested at the North Carolina…
“Are you sure you want to be an MD? Your interest in holistic medicine makes me think a D.O. might be a good fit for you,” said a Career Center advisor, as we discussed my passion for nutrition and hopes for attending medical school. I wasn’t sure of how to respond except that I had…
A forthcoming study hopes to shed new light on how tango impacts the progression of Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Gammon Earhart, PT, PhD, at the Washington University School of Medicine, leads this effort, combining traditional Argentine tango with the latest fMRI procedures to uncover how dance can rewire the brain to improve locomotor function. Earhart said…
A recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has killed 101 people out of 158 suspected cases, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report released April 10. There are no known treatments or vaccines for this disease, and the fatality rate differs widely, from 25 to 90 percent. According to WHO, Ebola transmission among humans occurs…
On good days, St. Louis’s Air Quality Index sits on the high end of green—polluted, but not dangerously so. During these days, the city’s air is often just about to slip from the green “good,” to the yellow “moderate.” As summer intensifies, the year-round pollution caused by the coal industry, tobacco use, and radon gas…
About four years ago, news that Ameren, the company that provides power to 1.2 million customers across Missouri, purchased 1,200 acres of land in the Missouri floodplains caught the attention of a local women’s book club in Labadie, Missouri, a small community located in the Missouri River floodplain. The purpose of this transaction was to…