Author: Lance Garrison
The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been roundly condemned for arguing at a congressional hearing on antisemitism that calls for genocide against Jews are not always susceptible to sanction on their campuses. (Liz Magill of Penn has since resigned.)Less noticed has been how starkly their expectations of Jewish students point up how low expectations are for Black students on many college campuses — expectations low enough to qualify as a kind of racism.Yes, racism, though it’s more of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” that George W. Bush referred to.Many leaders…
Coughs send more people to the doctor’s office than any other specific symptom. And Americans spend billions of dollars every year on over-the-counter medications like suppressants and expectorants to treat them.Clearly we’re concerned about our coughs. Clearly lots of us rely on medications to treat them. What’s unclear is the answer to this core question: Do these medicines work?”We’ve never had good evidence that cough suppressants and expectorants help with cough,” says Norman Edelman, MD, senior scientific advisor at the American Lung Association. “But people are desperate to get some relief. They’re so convinced that they should work that they…
To the Editor:Re “More Seniors Are Choosing Pot Over Pills” (front page, Nov. 17):As a primary care doctor, I have been discussing, recommending and prescribing cannabis to my patients over my entire 25-year career. I have known it was a medicine since I saw it help my brother Danny during his unsuccessful battle with childhood leukemia.My family procured it for him illegally in the early 1970s as they had heard about the benefits. It was transformational, as Danny could now hold down food and, importantly from my perspective, play with his little brothers during the time he had left.As primary…
Dec. 13, 2023 – Going vegan isn’t just good for the planet – the diet has been found to help you lose weight and lower your risk of type 2 diabetes, some kinds of heart disease and cancer, and high blood pressure. Giving up all animal products can also improve your gut microbiota and help people with diabetes manage their blood sugar. And the latest research suggests you’ll start to see benefits in just 8 weeks. So why is it that only about 1% of Americans say they follow a vegan diet?It may just be the word “vegan.”In a new…
To explain why content creators continue to lose at the hands of distributors and platforms, it’s helpful to understand the three mutually reinforcing networks that characterize most tech platforms.A successful tech “content aggregation” platform has three networks: content creators, users and advertisers. Many networks have so-called positive externalities, which effectively mean that growth builds more growth and usability. A telephone network that allows you to call only half your friends would be far less than half as valuable as one that allowed you to call all your friends.The network effects of a platform are more complicated because each component reinforces…
Their only commonality, Ivanov argued,is an autocratic or dictatorial governance and a shared objective to disrupt and undermine U.S. power. All four actors realize that individually or together they cannot seriously challenge American hegemony or compete with its alliance system, but they can wreak havoc, threaten and weaken resolve in their respective spheres of interest.The re-election of Trump would, in Ivanov’s view,Undermine the significant efforts of the Biden administration to rebuild, strengthen and reimagine American alliance system in Europe and Asia — from rallying the Europeans to support Ukraine to a comprehensive strengthening of strategic and military relations with Korea,…
Sitting in on a mediated session with liberals, conservatives and everybody in between, trying to come to terms on family policy.
In Israel and Gaza, war is being fought as wars have long been: with bodies and steel, on land and from the sky.Around the rest of the world, though, the Israel-Hamas war is being waged with propaganda, protest and social media posts, declarations and dismissals, all too often by ideologues speaking to an audience primed to believe them.Nowhere is this more obvious than in the too-long silence about, downplaying and even outright denial of the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas.Allegations of sexual violence on Oct. 7 were raised early on. But the attacks that day were so shocking and the…
Raina Mcmahan, a 42-year-old recovery coach, spent roughly half her life seeking treatment for her own opioid use disorder.She tried detoxing multiple times at different inpatient facilities, but those programs usually discharged her after a week or two without any follow-up care.She paid one doctor $500 to treat her with buprenorphine, a medication that helps reduce opioid cravings, but he administered that medication improperly. When she got sick, he told her she was allergic — a falsehood she believed for years.She tried methadone, another medication used to treat opioid addiction, but the hurdles proved insurmountable. The only clinic that had…
The tentative, lawyerly answers given last week by three university presidents at a House committee hearing investigating the state of antisemitism on America’s college campuses have generated widespread revulsion across the partisan divide. When none of the presidents — representing Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania — could muster a straightforward reply to the question from Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, about whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” amounted to “bullying or harassment,” many prominent Democrats joined Republicans in denouncing the testimony.“I’m no fan” of Ms. Stefanik, the Harvard law professor Laurence…