Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Health Care Bias Even in Canada

March 25, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Callers to Canadian clinics had a significantly smaller chance of getting an appointment if they posed as a homeless person or welfare recipient. (PHOTO: BRIAN EICHHORN/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Single-payer healthcare solves a lot of problems—dizzying insurance premiums, preexisting condition jeopardy—just not all of them. Prejudice, like diabetes, is a condition for which no drug yet exists, and as a new bit of research in the Canadian Medical Association Journal demonstrates, even physicians working in a universal care system aren’t immune to its effects. Stephen Hwang, an internist at the University of Toronto, wanted to know just how endemic socioeconomic discrimination was in local clinics. “I provide care for a number of people who are homeless and marginalized in ... Read More

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Rebates Aim to Foster Healthier Eating in South Africa

March 21, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: PITI TAN/SHUTTERSTOCK)

The best public health stratagems are often the least overt ones. Consider New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent campaigns to cap the size of soft drinks and keep cigarettes out of view of young customers. Instead of picking up a sledgehammer—publicly shaming the industries’ heavyweights, or declaring an outright war on soda and tobacco—Bloomberg went for the ball-peen: he sought to redefine in New Yorkers’ minds the size of a “regular” Coke, from 16 to eight ounces, and to remove the visual cues that encourage us to make impulse buys, whether Marlboros or Reese’s ... Read More

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Snack Food, Star Appeal

March 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Footballer-turned-snack-spokesman Gary Lineker (PHOTO: INGENIE)

It’s good to be Gary Lineker, once Britain’s national football star and forever her beloved son. In the decades since leaving the pitch, Lineker has launched a media career—announcing matches for the BBC and voicing a cartoon character known as Underground Ernie—married a Maxim model, made a cameo in “Bend It Like Beckham,” attracted more than a million Twitter followers, and since 1995, served as the celebrity spokesman for Walkers potato crisps. (For a time, his favorite flavor was rebranded “Salt-and-Lineker.”) That Lineker is, according to everyone, an all-around nice ... Read More

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Doulas Do It Better

March 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: MICHAELJUNG/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Here’s a quick medical quiz: What’s the most common reason for hospitalization in the United States? Take a stab. Respiratory distress? Cardiac arrest? Try childbirth. As researchers at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health observe, more than four million babies are born in American hospitals every year, and from maternal checkups to newborn care, moms-to-be rack up more charges than any other patients. In 2009, those costs totaled nearly $30 billion. Maternal health care is a big burden on Medicaid, which pays the expenses of low-income patients and annually foots ... Read More

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Bloodthirsty Charities

March 14, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: WELLPHOTO/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Have you given blood lately? Donated to a local non-profit? Do you remember the appeal that moved you to open your vein or pocketbook? Odds are, it was a dire message (“Help prevent a needless death”) rather than a cheerful one (“Help save an innocent life”). That’s the key finding from a collaborative study between the Red Cross and researchers at Northwestern and the University of Virginia. The emotional psychology of a charitable call to action has everything to do with its efficacy, authors Eileen Chou and J. Keith Murnighan report, and humanity’s well-documented “loss ... Read More

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Big Data, Big Brother and the ‘Like’ Button

March 12, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Facebook Like

That Facebook can’t keep a secret is the secret to its profitability. Where you live, what you eat, who you date, how you spend money—what more could an advertiser ask for? As the Canadian developer Andrew Lewis has observed, “If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product.” But what if your most naked data aren’t the details you furnish directly—favorite film, religious views, alma mater—but the little slices of self you reveal every time you click the “Like” button? As it happens, what you “Like” on Facebook says a lot about who you ... Read More

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Wanna Save the Rhino? Legalize Horn Farming

March 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
The African White Rhino (PHOTO: JASON PRINCE/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Like the dodo, the dinosaur, and the pig-footed bandicoot (maybe), the western black rhinoceros is now a thing of the past, hunted to extinction for its horn. And small wonder. Despite being banned in 1977, the rhino horn trade is flourishing. Twenty years ago, a kilo of horn went for $4,700. Today, it sells for $65,000, making it more valuable than either gold or cocaine. Poaching is on the rise, and by some accounts, the number of endangered (but not yet extinct) white rhino killed doubles each year. By 2035, African wildlands could be devoid of the animal. As parties to the international ... Read More

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Organic Food Fight, Part Two

February 26, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: FOODPICTURES/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Stanford researchers caused a minor scandal in natural-foodie circles last fall when they published a meta-study refuting the nutritional benefits of organic produce. The online commentariat quickly divided into two camps—the vindicated (“I told you so!”) and the aggrieved (“You’re missing the point!”)—and web editors gleefully posted story after link-bait story about the findings. The big footnote to that research, of course, is that the researchers were focused primarily on organic veggies’ nutritional content and not their small environmental footprint or lack of noxious ... Read More

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How Speed Bumps Help Predict Appendicitis

February 21, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: STACIE STAUFFSMITH/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Time is a killer when it comes to appendicitis. Ignore that howling stomachache long enough, and you risk a burst appendix and infected belly. But the condition is notoriously difficult to diagnose—maybe it’s gas, maybe it’s cramps—and emergency surgery carries risks all its own. For doctors, it’s a choice between two lousy options; the rate of “negative appendectomy,” where the sac is removed only to be found uninflamed, is as high as 42 percent. As with many diseases, early-stage diagnosis is something of a guessing game. Does the pain seem to migrate from your belly button ... Read More

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Milk a Genius Makes

February 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: MIKHAIL HOBOTON POPOV/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Reading Pacific Standard when you should be filing TPS reports? Don’t worry—even serious scientists find ways to avoid working. That’s the takeaway from a report by two British neurologists which finds that the more milk a country drinks, the more likely it is to produce Nobel prizewinners. The letter, from the February issue of Practical Neurology, builds on a previous bit of silly science about Nobel laureates and chocolate consumption. In that study, which I wrote about for NPR, Franz Messerli, a cardiologist at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, plotted the per-capita chocolate ... Read More

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