Author: Lance Garrison
By Aleksandra Rachitskaya, MD, as told to Hallie LevineIt can be devastating to be diagnosed with an inherited retinal dystrophy (IRD). These rare, inherited eye diseases cause progressive vision loss, and sometimes even blindness. Here at the Cleveland Clinic, we’ve seen more patients than ever before with IRDs. Our numbers have risen from 327 patients in 2015, to almost 800 in 2019. The reason? We’ve become much better at both diagnosis and treatment.Over the last 2 decades, we’ve learned that there are around 300 genes associated with IRDs. Thanks to advances in genetic testing technology, we’re able to diagnose the…
To the Editor:Re “If Everyone Gets an A, No One Gets an A,” by Tim Donahue (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Oct. 23):Mr. Donahue illuminates the problem of grade inflation in contemporary education. Yet the essay seems hung up on an outdated system of ranking student performance and an outdated solution: modestly tougher grades.Doubling down on this grading system misses the opportunity to reiterate the real goal of a quality education: learning, which letter grades, as he points out, do not measure in a meaningful way.We know that the richness of learning cannot be reduced to singular data points. Several alternatives…
By Brenda Kong, as told to Shishira SreenivasI developed psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (PsA) at the same time when I was 12 years old. I’m 41 now. My psoriasis diagnosis was easy, but the PsA diagnosis was not. Because I played sports as a teenager, doctors attributed my aches and pains to that. Unfortunately, I wasn’t fully diagnosed until I was 21.By then, we couldn’t turn back time on all the joint mutilation I already had. For example, something that had bothered me since I was 12 was my middle finger joint on my left hand. I said, “Hey, this…
By Dwayne McClellan, as told to Kara Mayer RobinsonI’m 56 and I live in Baltimore, MD. Last year, I discovered I have psoriatic arthritis (PsA). I used to be a software systems engineer, but I’m no longer working because of my disability.My journey started in 2014, when I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. As my condition got worse, I also developed PsA.Getting the DiagnosisI was diagnosed with PsA in 2020.I’d started complaining to my rheumatologist about pain in my leg. One the symptoms of PsA is you start having pain in your major joints, like your shoulders, elbows,…
The day Hamas attacked Israel, I unexpectedly reunited with my best friend in Kyiv.Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February last year, our paths had barely crossed. As a lecturer, researcher and volunteer, I went back and forth between Ukraine and Britain. My friend, meanwhile, traveled across Ukraine as a local producer for foreign journalists covering the war. It was important work. But on Oct. 7, a media trip my friend had been organizing to eastern Ukraine was canceled. The crew instead left for the Middle East.“They leave Ukraine because the front is moving slowly,” my friend told me when we…
By Jose Scher, MD, as told to Hope CristolPsoriatic arthritis is a condition that brings many challenges, both for patients and for doctors. One of the most important ones is that you need to have patience with this disease. There’s not a simple path to either your search for answers or your search for relief. The journey to a psoriatic arthritis diagnosis is not a linear one. It can take years for people to get an accurate diagnosis. That can be frustrating, of course, but it’s also common. That’s because psoriatic arthritis is such a complex and varied disease. Different Health Issues,…
U.S. democracy is clearly in crisis. It’s entirely possible that in less than two years dissenters will face the power of a government with an authoritarian bent; if that sounds to you like hyperbole, you aren’t paying attention.But is America beyond the political realm also in crisis? Are the very foundations of society eroding? Many people on the right apparently think so. A recent essay by Damon Linker in The Times profiled conservative intellectuals whose writing, he argued, helps explain where the MAGA right is coming from. What struck me, reading some of their work, is the dire portrait they…
By Jasvinder Singh, MD, as told to Sonya CollinsWhat attracts me to research into psoriatic arthritis and other rheumatic diseases is that the discoveries we make can improve function and quality of life for people. It can give them the opportunity to once again enjoy life fully, spend time with their loved ones, and do the other things that bring them pleasure.I’m a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a physician at the Birmingham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and I co-authored the guidelines for the treatment of psoriatic arthritis.A Revolution in Treatment OptionsPsoriatic arthritis…
Psoriatic arthritis flares are part of living with the condition. Find out how one woman deals with psoriatic arthritis flare-ups.
A lot of Democrats are bewildered by why their party isn’t doing better in campaigns against a Republican Party that is deeply dysfunctional. A new paper by three economists proposes a fresh explanation that seems persuasive to me. It says the Democrats went astray right around … 1976.The argument, in a nutshell, is that the Democratic Party has gained educated voters but lost less educated voters because of a change in how it tried to help the working class and the poor. Instead of trying to prevent market forces from generating inequality, it has leaned toward giving free rein to…