The League of Iowa Human & Civil Rights Agencies

SACRAMENTO — In the three years since her son Diego was given a diagnosis of autism at age 2, Carmen Aguilar has made countless contributions to research on this perplexing disorder. She has donated all manner of biological samples and agreed to keep journals of everything she’s eaten, inhaled or rubbed on her skin.

Read full story in the New York Times

A woman in her mid-30s wearing a hijab, the traditional Muslim head covering, comes to an urgent care center complaining of leg pain. The first thing she asks: “Are there any woman doctors around?”

She declines to be alone in an exam room with a male doctor. She does not want to be touched by a man who is not a family member, even as part of a medical examination.

It’s a hypothetical situation, recounted in a new paper in The Journal of Medical Eth...

Deciding on Care for Elderly Parents in Declining Health

By Lesley Alderman

Published: March 12, 2010, New York Times

TWO years ago my father, then 83, became very ill. Until then, he had been living alone in a pleasant one-bedroom apartment on the Hudson River, an hour’s drive from my home in Brooklyn. After a couple of months i...

3 Ruling Find No Link to Vaccines and Autism

By Donald G. McNeils, Jr.

Published: March 12, 2010, New York Times

In a further blow to the antivaccine movement, three judges ruled Friday in three separate cases that thimerosal, a mercury preservative, does not cause autism. The three rulings are the second step in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding ...

Student loan overhaul seems likely to join Senate health-care bill

By Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 11, 2010; 4:49 PM

Senate Democrats said Thursday that they are inclined to add an overhaul of the nation's student loan program to the final health-c...

Speed Reading of DNA May Help Cancer Treatment

By Nicholas Wade

Published: March 8, 2010, New York Times

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a way to monitor the progress of a patient’s cancer treatment using a new technique for rapidly sequencing, or decoding, large amounts of DNA. In the proces...

Better health doesn’t seem to explain why so many young people forgo health insurance. Rather, income does, according to new survey data released by Gallup. First, some background. One of the explanations for rising health care costs is that relatively healthy people are taking their chances and going without insurance. The relatively sick pool of insured customers who remain drive up the cost of premiums, at least if there is any form of risk-sharing (like community rating) within that...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Higher Medicare copays, sometimes just a few dollars more, led to fewer doctors visits and to more and longer hospital stays, a large new study reveals. With health care costs skyrocketing, many public and private insurers have required patients to pay more out-of-pocket when they seek care. The new study confirms what many policymakers had feared: cost-shifting moves can backfire.

T.J. Utterback started out as a military police officer before a stint as a National Park ranger. The past 25 years, he's worked in the nursing field at Mercy Medical Center - first as a flight nurse and more recently as a house supervisor overseeing night shift operations at the main campus, Mercy Franklin Center and when needed, Mercy West Lakes. He also taps his skills in law enforcement and nursing in his role as a medical examiner investigator for Warren County.

WHEN Jeff Sell’s twin sons were found to have autism 13 years ago, he, like so many other parents in the same situation, found himself with a million questions: Will my children be able to function? What are the best treatments and where do I find them? How will this affect the rest of my family? And besides those monumental worries, Mr. Sell kept asking himself another fundamental question as he began the long string of doctor and therapist visits with his sons: “How in the world...