Subject: Medicine

• Court Says No Sir to YesSIR

  July 14, 2008

• A Rally for Health Care Reform in Downtown Nashville

  September 29, 2008

• Carrington's Holiday Wish List (WARNING: May Contain Nuts)

  October 6, 2008

• Will Obama Seal the Fate of Abstinence-Only in Tennessee?

  Seeing as our privileged playboy turned born-again Christian president is now out of office, perhaps it's time to get down to brass tacks and relegate abstinence-only sex education to the trash bin where it belongs. Obama is level-headed enough to realize what a failure abstinence-only is. For the good of young people everywhere, I hope he'll move our schools toward comprehensive sex education. Study after study has shown that once kids get older, they're just as likely to have have sex as if th

  January 20, 2009

• Would Bredesen Want HHS Job If It's Offered?

  The governor is revving up his PR machine to lobby for the HHS position. But lost in all the hubbub is this question: Would he want the job if the president offered it? He has stated repeatedly that he wants to lead President Obama's health-care reform initiatives, not merely run the giant HHS bureaucracy: "If it were a case of really being able to help in some fundamental way, something I really believe in which is to create universal health care, I certainly would think about it and talk abou

  February 10, 2009

• MoveOn Calls Bredesen 'a Bad Choice for Health Care Reform'

  MoveOn, the web-based liberal advocacy organization that raises megabucks for the Democratic Party, is telling supporters who the president should pick to run the Health and Human Services Department. MoveOn's answer? Anybody but Bredesen. In an email, MoveOn asks supporters to kneecap our governor. How can you tell who's a real health care champion? We need someone who's going to support visionary progressive health care reform; someone with a track record of standing up to the insurance and p

  February 10, 2009

• World AIDS Day Observance at The Renaissance Center

  November 27, 2008

• Vaccination Nation

  March 27, 2008

• Colonoscopy for Hire

  Like a lawn or laundry service—only with laxatives

  March 20, 2008

• A Breath of Fresh Air

  It’s time to ban smoking for good in Metro Parks

  October 25, 2007

• The Righteousness of Science

  A local writer makes the case for stem cell research

  October 18, 2007

• October Surprise

  Tennessee begins the long goodbye to smoking in public places

  June 21, 2007

• A Face in the Crowd

  November 4, 2004

• Big Tobacco's Last Gasp

  Cigarette makers try to snuff out tax bill

  March 29, 2007

• King John

  Drug wars at the State Capitol

  October 7, 2004

• Art With Heart

  Artrageous is on the frontline in the fight against HIV/AIDS

  November 9, 2006

• A Face In The Crowd

  January 15, 2004

• The King Is Dead

  Tobacco’s heyday is long gone in Tennessee. While farmers lament, what does that mean for the rest of us?

  August 3, 2006

• Love-Hate Mail

  March 30, 2006

• Puff, Puff, Pass

  An inspired statehouse debate indicates that a smoke-free Tennessee isn’t just a pipe dream

  March 23, 2006

• Dancing Their Disease

  Vanderbilt professor explores role of music in fighting AIDS

  March 16, 2006

• Pod-casting

  Nashville artist Patricia Jordan explores the aging process and finds within it cycles of death and rebirth

  March 2, 2006

• Puff Free Zones

  Nashville could join the country’s smoke-free movement if not for an arcane state law beholden to the ever-weakening tobacco industry

  December 15, 2005

• A Dream Unfulfilled

  Nashville Theatre Works' sad, sobering Dream Book explores HIV/AIDS with poetic language

  June 10, 2004

• Keeping Up the Fight

  With its upcoming production, Rhubarb Theatre Company hopes to dissolve our complacency about AIDS

  June 9, 2005

• Cancer Babe

  UT grad pens memoir of cancer at 23

  June 9, 2005

• The Pelvic Floor Monologues

  Physical therapy brings hope and relief to women with pain "down there"

  January 13, 2005

• Let 'Em Smoke

  December 2, 2004

• Sick Thoughts

  For a while, at least, a flu shot wasn't so hard to come by—so what's a person going to do now?

  October 28, 2004

• Wanker of the Week

  Here's where Bill Frist can stick his flu shot

  October 21, 2004

• Pain in the Ass

  The Tennessean’s hemorrhoid scoop is the wave of the future

  February 5, 2004

• When Your Body Hurts

  Live with pain long enough, and eventually you’ll find some kind of relief; for me, it was at Tracy Caulkins Physiotherapy Centers

  January 22, 2004

• Urology Group Vouches for SUV Owners

  Putting an end to rumors of shortcomings

  September 25, 2003

• Surgical Strike

  Man with an earache accidentally gets a vasectomy, illustrating Jabo Jowers’ Rule No. 1: Never trust anybody

  August 28, 2003

• A Face In The Crowd

  April 17, 2003

• No Soliciting

  The Johns School goes after prostitution demand, not supply

  December 5, 2002

• A Drugged State

  Pharmaceutical costs are skyrocketing in Tennessee

  March 7, 2002

• Swine Flu: The Pandemic Du Jour

  Should we be worried about pot-bellied pigs, too?Any reporter who's walked any sort of public safety beat has probably written the requisite pandemic readiness story: On what timetable will vaccines be ready for staggered distribution? How will far-flung towns supply themselves if trucking grinds to a halt? And how many vaccines will be left for everyone else after first responders and health care providers have been dosed up?In the mid-Aughts, flocks of birds became menacing, winged vectors. No

  April 27, 2009

• Hedy Weinberg Predicts SJR127 Will Pass House This Session

  Hedy WeinbergThe ACLU's Hedy Weinberg predicts SJR127 will pass the House this session. On Liberadio(!) this morning, Weinberg said: "The agenda of the legislature this year is to take away women's reproductive rights. ... It's taken them about six years, but I'm afraid this year they will pass in both chambers SJR127. ... I have to admit that this is unfortunately getting bipartisan support. Republicans are not the only ones who are anti-choice in Tennessee." Roe v. Wade is safe, especially

  May 4, 2009

• Controversy lingers after premiere of Nashville director's AIDS documentary

  May 7, 2009

• Hubbub Surrounding Nashville Director's AIDS Film Not Likely to Die Soon

  Judging from the above video of audience reaction to the world premiere of Nashville filmmaker Brent W. Leung's House of Numbers at the Nashville Film Festival, you'd think the film received a unanimously positive reception. But if you read Jim Ridley's piece "Controversy lingers after premiere of Nashville director's AIDS documentary" in this week's Scene, in which he examines the uproar surrounding the screening and the contentious Q&A that followed, you'll know the truth is anything but.

  May 7, 2009

• Health Care Enemy No. 1: Rick Scott Leads Fight Against Obama Reforms

  Here's a TV ad by Conservatives for Patients' Rights. Doesn't Rick Scott make a really credible spokesman? Liberals are slapping their knees in delight over the choice of Rick Scott (of Columbia/HCA infamy) to head up Conservatives for Patients' Rights, a new group planning to spend $20 million to derail President Obama's health-care reforms. If they want to lose the PR war on this one, the opponents couldn't have picked a better spokesman. Scott is truly Health Care Enemy No. 1, as The Natio

  May 11, 2009

• Cooper Derides Colleagues as Hillbilly Dumbasses in the Washington Post

  Wipe that smile off your face!There he goes again. Jim Cooper is making friends and influencing people as only he can, this time telling the Washington Post that a lot of his hillbilly colleagues in Congress are big dumbasses who don't know the difference between Medicaid and Medicare. Routinely. for example, a lot of my rural friends will say we can't recruit doctors to rural areas because Medicare pays too little. But Medicare pays pretty much market rate. Medicaid pays much less than that.

  June 10, 2009

• Tonight's Cline Cellars Tasting at Amerigo Benefits Cancer Research

  Amerigo restaurant will host a wine tasting tonight from 6 to 8 p.m. to benefit breast cancer research. The event is $25 per person and includes light appetizers and tastings of the following wines from Cline Cellars in California: Cline Oakley Five Reds Cline Viognier Cline Oakley Four Whites Cline Cashmere (Cline Cellars donated $25,000 towards Breast Cancer Research from proceeds of the Cline Cashmere.) The tasting takes place in the lounge of the restaurant at 1920 West End Ave. No reserv

  June 25, 2009

• Art Through the Eyes of Autism at Vanderbilt's Kennedy Center

  April 23, 2009

• MoveOn Tries to Pressure Cooper

  ​MoveOn is trying to put the heat on Jim Cooper over health care reform. Lord knows, he needs it. But since he's one of the Blue Dogs working to weaken the president's public health insurance option, why would he sign a letter of outrage over the deal? Pith is confused. Anyway, here's MoveOn's email blast to the Coop's constituents: The heart of President Obama's health-care reform plan--the public health insurance option--is under attack. And your representative, Jim Cooper, has a chance to

  July 31, 2009

• Cooper Fires Back at Daily Kos

  ​Congressman Jim Cooper is lashing out today at the liberal blog Daily Kos, which is touting a poll purporting to show he's ignoring the wishes of his constituents on health care reform and vulnerable to a reelection challenge from the left. According to the Daily Kos survey, which the blog conducted in association with the independent polling firm Research 2000, 61 percent of all Cooper's constituents and 80 percent of Democrats in his district favor creating a new public health insurance pl

  August 24, 2009

• Medicare Disadvantage

  ​Today's City Paper cover story on Nashville-based HealthSpring shows how the firm's core business model -- owning and operating Medicare Advantage insurance plans -- is vulnerable to health care reform that could cut or eliminate federal subsidies for those plans. Although CP writer Walker Duncan's piece highlights an interesting local example of the tension between for-profit insurance and health care cost control, it underplays the larger policy controversy surrounding Medicare Advantage pl

  August 24, 2009

• Cooper For Public Option Before He Was Against It, Or Something

  ​In a stock letter from Blue Dog Rep. Jim Cooper, posted on the comments section of the Daily Kos, a constituent gives us a glimpse into the health care reform obstructionist's baffling reasoning. It goes something like this: Even though I have stood, arms locked with the GOP, in the path of a public option, I don't really have a problem with the public option even though the bill I'm pushing does not provide for a public option. So I can say I'm not against a public option and do everything w

  August 24, 2009

• Sobering News on Women's Health

  Rachel Walden over at Women's Health News links to the 2009 Tennessee Women's Health Even this is only fun until it turns on you. Tennessee has a "D" in breast cancer deaths.​Report Card. I feel like I should try to come up with something snarky and smart-ass to say about this, but holy god, these numbers have stunned me to the point that I can't see anything remotely funny.We've failed to improve the number of babies born at very low birth weight. We got a 'D' in infant mortality. We have a '

  August 26, 2009