Exporting Obesity

I have been traveling in Thailand this week and one of the things that has stood out to me is how few people are obese. It’s easy to see why, since the diet, even when eating in restaurants a lot, doesn’t include a lot of sugar or starch (beyond rice). The...

America’s Healthcare Subculture

Two things especially struck me about researching my latest BusinessWeek.com column, about Big Pharma’s bullying of small pharmacies to control the market for women’s hormones: 1. Maybe it’s because I’m a man, but I never had any idea so many...

The Media’s Corn Syrup Revolution

When reporters try to be philosophical  about lifestyle, the result is usually something like what was contained in last Sunday’s New York Times (Critic’s Notebook: Be Merry, Not Ancient), to wit: "If living to 99 means forever cutting the...

Doctor-Protection Doors Opening a Crack?

I’ve posted an update to my account of March 20, 2006, about the death of Veronica Glaubach a few hours after she gave birth to a daughter. (Scroll to the March 20 posting, using "Next Page" at the bottom of this page, to view the update.)...

A New Vision of Health Care

Because I spend a lot of time immersed in the 1930s and 1940s, doing research on the World War II period (following up on the Holocaust-releated book I co-authored), I was recently reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about Franklin Roosevelt, "No...

The Great Food Divide

There’s lots of talk in the U.S. about the digital divide, the gap between the computer haves and have-nots. But I wonder if there isn’t a more serious divide–the gap between people with and without access to healthy food. Because I live close to...

“I’m Not an Alternative Medicine Doctor”

I was at Kripalu, the yoga center in Lenox, MA,  over this past weekend, a place I try to visit once or twice a year. I did a lot of yoga, but a major theme running through the weekend was health care. On Saturday evening, physician Mark Hyman, the author of...

Dr. Weil Means Well

Though I believe Dr. Andrew Weil made a major strategic error in deciding to "go commercial"–that is, endorse products and put out his own line of nutritional supplements, per my new column on BusinessWeek.com–I continue to admire him for...