ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Anthony Olson wanted a career, children, a partner with whom he could hike Montana’s trails. Despite the diabetes diagnosis at age 4, the anemia, the kidney transplant that failed at age 29, the dialysis, he clung to those dreams. He attended...
KINGSPORT, Tenn. — Jerry Qualls had a heart attack in 2022 and was rushed by ambulance to Holston Valley Medical Center, where he was hospitalized for a week and kept alive by a ventilator and blood pump, according to his medical records. His wife, Katherine Qualls, said his doctors offered little hope. In an interview and a written complaint to the Tennessee government, she said doctors at...
President-Elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services is cause for celebration for anyone who cares about the pharmaceutical industry’s influence over regulatory agencies, and the deleterious effect it has had on the health of Americans. It is nearly impossible to express just how remarkable and potentially world-changing this is....
An age-appropriate strength training program can have significant benefits for children and adolescents. The Good Brigade/DigitalVision via Getty Images ~~~~~~ “Aren’t they a little young for that?” This is a question I used to hear regularly from parents when I’d recommend strength training for the kids I worked with, whose ages ranged from 6 to 18 years old, in youth sports. During my four...
Sociologist Elena Portacolone was taken aback. Many of the older adults in San Francisco she visited at home for a research project were confused when she came to the door. They’d forgotten the appointment or couldn’t remember speaking to her. It seemed clear they had some type of cognitive impairment. Yet they were living alone. Portacolone, an associate professor at the University of...
As I explored in two recent posts (“The Managerialist Revolution in Medicine” and “Why We Are Sick“), our medical institutions—from hospitals and licensing boards to medical schools and professional societies—are failing us. The complex of problems in many of these institutions makes reform or repair, in the short term at least, impractical and perhaps impossible. Too many vested financial or...
