Daniel Teich is a sophomore from Newton, MA. He can be reached at dteich@wustl.edu
Imagine you are beginning the second semester of your freshman year at Washington University. As you return to class in the winter, you very quickly become sick from a terrible virus. Student Health Services is overwhelmed, with little or no time to help you, as the virus has made over a third of the students…
On March 23, 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act, also known as ACA or colloquially as Obamacare, was signed into law by President Obama. It passed with heavy Democratic support and no Republican support in the U.S. Congress, and for the past seven years, Republicans have aimed to repeal and replace the bill…
Every day, Amy returns home from work with severe aches. The pain in her back and legs is hardly bearable. She has finished an eight-hour shift and has taken the gradually increasing pain for as long as she can manage. Fighting back tears, she enters her home, goes to her bedroom, opens a small bottle…
The water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan has made nationwide news in the past two months but has been an ongoing problem for nearly two years. Between the nationwide scramble to donate clean water, the ongoing questioning of government officials involved in the crisis, and the effort to provide medical support to impacted citizens, the…
On October 5, 2015, the annual Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to three elderly doctors. William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura received the prize for the discovery of Avermectin, a drug that proved to be very effective at treating parasite-based diseases, such as River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis. The third recipient…
The 2014-2015 flu season is drawing to a close, and looking back, there is no doubt – it was a bad year. While millions of people were quick to get a flu shot, many of them ended up getting the flu nonetheless. According to CDC data, this year’s flu vaccine was only 18 percent effective!…
In 1990, the National Health Institute and U.S. Department of Energy laid out a proposal for a project that was expected to take fifteen years. The goal was to create a map of the complete human genome, then use the information to develop future DNA testing technologies and study the possibilities of genome sequencing. Thirteen…
“What would you do with your life if you only had a month to live?” I have had this conversation with friends before. It usually turns into a joke, where everyone tries to one-up each other with their fantasies of the craziest adventures fathomable. The joke is always based on several illogical assumptions: that we…
“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…