Dog attacks are a major public health concern worldwide. In the United States, dogs bite more than 4 million people each year, occasionally resulting in fatalities. In an issue of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine (2009;20:19-25), Ricky Langley from the Division of Public Health in Raleigh, North Carolina published an article entitled, “Human Fatalities Resulting From Dog Attacks in the United States, 1979-2005.”
The statistics are instructive. In the years studied, there was an average of 19 deaths each year from dog attacks. Not surprisingly, males and children less than 10 years of age had the highest rate of death from dog attacks, with Alaska reporting the highest death rate. The number of deaths and death rate from dog attacks appear to be on the rise, perhaps for no other reason than there are more people and more dogs, in both absolute numbers and in proximity.
I am a dog lover (of friendly dogs), but am aware both as an owner and as an emergency physician that dogs will sometimes bite people, sometimes with serious consequences. Read more »
Last November, the National Football League devoted the entire month to breast cancer awareness. Players like Reggie Bush wore pink gloves, armbands, even shoes, to promote efforts to fight the disease.
There were some heartwarming moments. Players brought their mothers, grandmothers, and other women who’d battled breast cancer to the games, all of them wearing attractive pink game-day jerseys. Announcers told their own stories of “courageous” battles against the disease waged by friends and family members.
It’s powerful and inspiring, these overpaid hulks of manhood showing they’re secure enough in their masculinity to don feminine-ish garb to support their sisters and mothers.
But try to imagine the NFL — or any sports league — launching a similar campaign to fight HIV and AIDS. Which player would trot out a brother, sister, or father who’s HIV positive? Which television announcer would proudly point to the afflicted and speak of their “inspirational” battle with HIV?
In an NPR interview last week, Theresa Skipper talked about why she concealed her HIV diagnosis for 19 years: Read more »
Sometimes in this job you just get lucky. You have an elusive and/or dangerous diagnosis just dropped in your lap. Something devastating that you would never have been able to tease out otherwise just gets handed to you by the patient. There’s a catch, though: you have to be smart enough to know when to listen to the patient, when not to blow off their crazy talk as just crazy.
So it was recently when I saw a guy with back pain. From the chart, it didn’t sound like anything complex: a middle-aged to older guy, maybe 60 or so, with a history of chronic back pain and multiple surgeries for the same. He was on Oxycontin 80 mg three times daily (a very high dose, and a red flag for an ER doc naturally suspicious of drug-seeking behavior). I went to see him, and it was clear in seconds that this dude was JPN: Just Plain Nuts. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
I first heard about the female condom in 2006. I was in Seattle to see what was happening at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the many impressive projects it was supporting was at PATH, a non-profit organization that was developing and promoting a new female condom. The sad, age-old reason: the health of millions of women around the world is threatened by irresponsible men. Read more »
Yesterday I introduced my friend Charles Roth. Charles was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 2003 and was already in bad shape. He had been tested as healthy the previous year, but the disease struck quickly, hospitalizing him for a week and keeping him out of work for a month and a half. He returned to work but repeated illnesses due to AIDS meant that by 2006, he was unable to work full-time. A bank executive, Charles still tries to find occasional contract work or odd jobs like résumé writing and tax preparation, but with the recession, these jobs are low-paying and hard to come by. For the most part he makes do with a tiny state disability check and food stamps.
So how typical is Charles’s case? We’ve all heard of success stories like Magic Johnson, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1991 and still has not developed AIDS. But clearly neither case tells the whole story. Read more »
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Dog attacks are a major public health concern worldwide. In the United States, dogs bite more than 4 million people each year, occasionally resulting in fatalities. In an issue of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine (2009;20:19-25), Ricky Langley from the Division of Public Health in Raleigh, North Carolina published an article entitled, “Human Fatalities Resulting From Dog Attacks in the United States, 1979-2005.”
Last November, the National Football League devoted the 
