Although Americans may be having less sex, it’s getting riskier than ever, with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that new cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis spiked for the fourth consecutive year in 2017 to a record high of nearly 2.3 million diagnoses. “We are sliding backward,” Jonathan Mermin, a doctor….
Continue ReadingGynecology
For women, more reasons to consider HPV test, while fertility rates decline
Women and their doctors may need to give even more consideration to a test for the human papilloma virus (HPV) because research increasingly shows that it detects precancerous cervical changes sooner and better than the long used and widely accepted Pap smear. The latest findings on the HPV test’s benefits could lead to improvements in….
Continue ReadingDangerous doctors rip off Medicare, creep out coeds, harm transplant patients
Callous institutional inertia can allow dangerous doctors to keep harming patients. But media digging deserves credit for raising needed alarms when professional caregivers and others fail to step up to protect individuals as disparate as taxpayers, seniors, coeds, and heart transplant recipients. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and MedPage Today performed a public service, reporting that they….
Continue ReadingWhy do we tolerate up to 80,000 mothers each year suffering big injuries in childbirth?
Here is a sobering public health angle on Mother’s Day. Experts on international health and development, including the likes of Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent and columnist Nick Kristof, long have argued that a key way to major improvements in distant lands rests in boosting the lot of women and girls. It’s an issue that clearly also….
Continue ReadingPrincely birth underscores how poorly U.S. moms fare in comparison
The birth of Prince Louis Arthur Charles brought joy to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, but the regal baby’s arrival also provided cause for harsh comparisons of maternal costs and safety for more ordinary expectant moms on this side of the Atlantic. Two magazines — Foreign Policy and the Economist — both poked at….
Continue ReadingGymnastics scandal offers a tragic reminder of challenges in protecting kids
His basic credentials would come under fire, but they were sufficient for the “doctor” to insinuate himself into major institutions, and, worse, into the lives of hundreds of girls and young women on whom he inflicted a tragic toll. His combination of enthusiasm — he was a rah-rah kind of guy— extreme controlling conduct, and horrific “treatments”….
Continue ReadingWhat’s a key factor in black moms’ high death rates? Segregated hospitals
The bad news for expectant black moms isn’t confined to those living in the nation’s capital: A new investigation has found higher risks of harm for women in New York, Florida, and Illinois when they deliver at hospitals that disproportionately serve black mothers. ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative site, analyzed two years of hospital inpatient….
Continue ReadingWhy worry about gung-ho approvals for medical devices? FDA’s own record
The Food and Drug Administration has closed out the year by issuing a new white paper reaffirming the agency’s three-year-old warning to surgeons and women to avoid in general the use of a surgical device called a morcellator in “key-hole” or laparoscopic gynecological operations. It wasn’t a surprise that the FDA retained this caution. That’s because the….
Continue ReadingExperts find cancer-causing HPV a widely spread infection among U.S. adults
More Americans ages 18 to 59 may be infected with the human papilloma virus (HPV) than previously had been known, with 1 in 4 men and 1 in 5 women carrying high-risk strains, federal experts say. The new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may become a key part of campaigns to….
Continue ReadingPot may be more legal and common, but it’s still unwise for pregnant moms
Although marijuana is marching toward legalization across the United States, expectant moms may wish to think long and hard still about smoking or ingesting a substance that has become as ubiquitous in some households as aspirin or a bottle of chardonnay. The New York Times has delved into this discussion, even as other news outlets….
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