Recently, I accompanied my sister to a pediatrician’s office — for the first (of many) vaccination appointment for her twin 8-week old girls. Fortunately for my sister, the nightmare ended after a few pokes of the needle and a few throaty bawls of protest. Sadly, not every parent’s ordeal ends the same way. Each day, parents around the world take their children on this routine with faith that this will protect their children against deadly and potentially life threatening infections. But what if this very tool that is intended to protect becomes a lethal source of disability? Read more →

Tonight my son ate a sweet potato. And a few pieces of pasta. And a sauteed mushroom. And some watermelon. And a few kidney and Garbanzo beans. Oh and a few bites of chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

It was a good eating day. Some (read between the lines: most) days sitting down to eat looks more like a game of throw your food on the floor than it does anything else. And then there are the days that he doesn’t throw his food but he only wants to eat one certain thing… a whole lot of cantaloupe or crackers or, my attempt at a somewhat healthy snack, an organic, no-sugar added fruit roll-up thing. Usually those are the days that I don’t have a lot of that one certain food he wants. Of course. Read more →

President Bush stated that federal funds would be awarded for research in the filed of stem cell research in 2001. Seven years later, this issue still raises multiple questions and is a highly debated topic. These questions range from the “What” to the “How” and most importantly to the “Why” of stem cell cultivation and development. The first two types of questions are easily answered with theories and facts, but the third sets the stage for strong ethical and moral debates. A country of more than 300 million people is bound to have strong and diverse opinions on this matter. Read more →

I’m glad I’m not in college. You see, the price of tuition at some U.S. universities has been increasing and my alma mater is one of them.

When I do research on the various college savings funds available for my son, I always run into a few articles that discuss the need to save for retirement over saving for your child’s college. Of course if you don’t have to choose between one or the other, all the better. But for many people, especially in the current economy, sacrificing one for the other is a necessity and according to experts, retirement wins out. Read more →

When I initially read the article Radical Muslim doctors and what they mean for the NHS, I thought about the Catholic Church. Now, before anyone gets all upset, let me clarify: I am not in anyway connecting Catholic and radical Muslim ideology. Instead, I see a historical connection between the political clout the Catholic Church once had and the religious influence many Muslim doctors now have. Let me explain.

The British Medical Journal article mentioned above attempts to answer timely questions regarding doctors and extreme Islamic ideology and actions. When it became public knowledge that several doctors were alleged leaders of the 2007 attempted bombings in London and Glasgow, it shocked many. Muslim terrorists are nothing new; Muslim terrorists who are also medical doctors, well, that’s a whole new story. Read more →

Sometimes, disconnecting our theories from our healing practices and clinical understanding can be a good thing to do. When Bruno Bettelheim convinced many psychotherapists and psychological theoreticians that autism was caused by bad parenting in the form of “refrigerator mothers,” he was stuck on a theory. He was proven wrong, but it took some time for these clinicians to let go of their theory and see that the cause of autism was not known.

For that duration, we can thank Bettelheim for causing an extraordinary amount of suffering because of his unscientific, though well-meaning, thinking. Countless mothers were blamed for their children’s autism. What a thing to live with! Read more →