Alzheimer’s Disease scares people, and it should. It is one thing to lose your life – it’s another to lose your mind. Alzheimer’s rates rise with age, and people are living longer. Recent studies show that many Americans now in their fifties will live into their late eighties. Alzheimer’s rates get particularly frightful around age […]
You May Never Get Out of Bed Again
If 85% of Americans die in bed, you might think people would regularly want to get out of them. Beds are wonderfully designed for sleep and sex. But do you want to use them (much) for anything else? The commercial answer is yes! World industry is moving heaven and earth to create devices that will make it possible […]
Will Your Next Doctor Visit Be With a Robot?
Autonomous robot surgeons now do a better job of stitching than humans – at least in animals. Will your next medical visit be with a robot? Perhaps not – though your doctor may already feel like one. For roboticization of work, particularly through “innovative” IT, is rapidly coming to control your health care. Bright New Robots […]
Zika is Coming; Get Ready
Zika may soon be coming to a home near you. The virus spreads through mosquito bites, blood, and sex. In the womb it laces rapidly through early brain cells of infants, destroying enough of them to create small heads, or microcephaly. In adults the virus can provoke Guillain-Barre disease, a horrible neurological condition where the white […]
Why It’s Better to Be Rich
“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” So said Sophie Tucker, long ago. It’s still true. A recent study in JAMA demonstrated that if life expectancy was extrapolated from age 40, American males in the top 1% of income would live 15 years longer than the bottom 1%; among women the life expectancy difference […]