Health

Journalist Tina Cassidy was inspired to write about cultural birth practices after hearing many accounts of birth experiences. Cassidy is a former reporter for the Boston Globe and writes for other publications including The New York Times Magazine.

Dr. Paul Epstein is a physician in Boston, and the associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. He's created a niche as an eco-physician, exploring the link between increased illness and global warming. Illnesses such as heatstroke, asthma and allergies are the more obvious outcomes of a warmer and more polluted planet, but Epstein says an increase in infectious diseases such as malaria and West Nile virus may also be linked to the greenhouse effect.

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey is a research psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness. He has authored many books on the subject of mental illness and is president of the Treatment Advocacy Center, as well as associate director for laboratory research at the Stanley Medical Research Institute.

A mother who gave birth to a severely handicapped child has sued her obstetrician for not providing data that would have allowed her to abort the fetus. Elizabeth Weil wrote about the case in The New York Times Magazine.

A middle-aged woman awakens one morning to a sense of dread, a malaise so deep that she studiously analyzes her life — both past and present — to uncover its source. So begins Hilma Wolitzer's new book, The Doctor's Daughter.

Fear and paranoia often take hold when a disease threatens to become an epidemic. Dr. Marc K. Siegel is the author of the new book Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic.

For 100 years, sufferers of leprosy were banished to Molokai, an untamed Hawaiian island. A new book chronicles how paranoia forced thousands of people to live in exile.

Geriatrician Dr. Christine Cassel says physicians and their patients are still adapting to the federal plan to use Medicare to pay for prescription drugs.

The new Medicare prescription drug plan is complex, confusing, and irrational, according to health policy expert Jonathan Oberlander. A month after the rollout of the new Medicare prescription drug plan, many seniors are finding it difficult to get the drugs they need.

Dr. Sandra Horning and Dr. David Johnson are both oncologists. Horning is the current president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the largest group of cancer-treatment specialists. Johnson was president before her. Both of them are cancer survivors — the first to lead the 41-year-old society. Horning practices and does research on lymphomas at Stanford. She is also co-chairman of the oncology society's task force on cancer survivorship. Johnson is deputy director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tenn.