Health

Art Caplan is the director of the Center for Bioethics, and chief of the Division of Bioethics, at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. Sherry Glied is the chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

Terry Gross speaks with Chris Butler, chief marketing officer for Independence Blue Cross of Southeastern Pennsylvania. The insurer is set to raise its rates as much as 50 percent. Butler will give is a sense of the healthcare industry's viewpoint on rising costs and changes in policy.

He is a pioneer in the field of medical-imaging technology. In a new book, From Conception to Birth: a Life Unfolds, he collects images of the fetus in every stage of its development. The three-dimensional color visualizations are culled from a variety of medical-image techniques and then reconfigured on the computer. Tsiaras is also a photojournalist and an artist. His previous book is The Death Rituals of Rural Greece. He is also president and CEO of Anatomical Travelogue, Inc.

Doctors Quentin Young and Marcia Angell of Physicians for a National Health Care Program (PNHP). They advocate a single-payer health insurance plan, in which the government finances health care, but choice of provider remains mostly private. Young is Senior Attending Physician at Michael Reese Hospital and serves as National Coordinator of PNHP. Angell is head of the Physician Working Group and is a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Economist Karen Davis, president of The Commonwealth Fund. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine's panel studying ways to improve health care. She supports improving on existing plans such as Medicare and employer coverage. She served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy in the Department of Health and Human Services from 1977-80 and was the first woman to head a U.S. Public Health Service Agency.

Bruce McEwen is a pioneering expert on the ways in which the brain influences the body. He is the author of ""The End of Stress As We Know It" (with Elizabeth Norton Lasley, published by Joseph Henry Press). The book examines the response of the body to stress, what happens when the body's stress response turns against us, and how to keep that from happening. Dr. McEwen is head of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University in New York City.

Journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell has written a new book, The Hungry Gene: The Science of Fat and the Future of Thin. Shell is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Discover and other publications. She's an associate professor and co-director of Knight Center for Science Journalism at Boston University.

Doctor Elaine Abrams and Doctor Stephen Nicholas are pediatricians who work with babies born with HIV. While many children have died, some have survived into adolescence. Abrams is the director of the Family Care Center at Harlem Hospital Center, and Dr. Nicholas is the director of pediatrics there. They treated the first wave of babies infected with HIV at the height of the epidemic in Harlem in the 1980s. They have studied the effects of the virus on the children's physical and mental health as well as the toll on the community. Some of the children spent years in the hospital.

Ugandan Aids activist Noerine Kaleeba. She works with UNAids, a United Nations organization in Geneva. Shes also on the Ugandan committee on Aids, and founded The Aids Support Organization in Uganda. Kaleeba lost her husband to the disease; four of her siblings are HIV positive as are a number of their children. Kaleeba is also author of the book, We Miss You All: Noerine Kaleeba - Aids in the Family (Women & Aids Support Network).

Dr. Lynn Amowitz is a researcher for Physicians for Human Rights. Amowitz specializes in internal medicine, women health and epidemiology. Last month she was in Afghanistan interviewing displaced women as B-52s were bombing just six miles away. Previous to that visit, Amowitz researched and compiled the report on the condition of women under the Taliban in the report "Women Health and Human Rights in Afghanistan." Amowitz specializes in working in war torn communities. Over the years she worked in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Zaire, and Nigeria.