Medicine & Health

Dr. Norman Rosenthal is an expert on seasonal affective disorder a/k/a SAD. Commonly called the winter blues, Rosenthal talks about why many people get depressed during the winter months and how light therapy can help. His book "Winter Blues: Seasonal Affective Disorder, What it is and How to Overcome it." by Guilford Press.

Dr. Hoosen Coovadia is a Pediatrician in Durban, South Africa. In his practice, 40 percent of the kids he treats are HIV positive. He'll discuss the rise of HIV in South Africa and other parts of Africa where he has traveled. Coovadia will serve as the Chairman of the next World Aids Conference in the year 2000. He heads the Pediatrics and Child Health Department at the University of Natal Medical School.

Dr. Mehmet Oz is the author of "Healing from the Heart: A Leading Heart Surgeon Explores the Power of Complementary Medicine." (Dutton) He is a cardiovascular surgeon at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. He combines leading western medicine with ancient methods of self healing. The result is faster recovery for patients. He believes our physical health is linked to our spirituality, psychological make-up and emotional well being.

Robert McCrum suffered a stroke in 1995 at the young age of 42. He has written in detail about his experience and his recovery. Terry Gross talks with McCrum and his wife Sarah Lyall who was key in his recovery. His new book is "My Year Off: Recovering Life After a Stroke."

Pediatrician Lawrence Diller specializes in child development and behavior. He's evaluated hundreds of patients for attention deficit disorder, for which the drug Ritalin has often been prescribed. His new book "Running on Ritalin: A Physician Reflects on Children, Society, and Performance in a Pill." (Bantam Books). After seeing more and more parents come into his practice asking for Ritalin for their children, Diller became concerned, and wrote an article in 1996 that started a national debate about the use of the drug.

Dr. Jonathan Mann, the founding director of the World Health Organization's Global Program on AIDS, died this week in the Swiss Air plane crash. Last year, Terry Gross interviewed him about the state of AIDS across the globe, as well as the speculations at that time about a possible AIDS vaccine. He was the Dean of the School of Public Health at Allegheny University of Health Sciences in Philadelphia. This interview was originally aired 12/1/97

Emily Colas has written her first book, a memoir, "Just Checking: Scenes from the life of an obsessive-compulsive." (Penguin-Pocket books). She writes about her many worries and fears about germs, and food poisoning, and her compulsion to trace the design of a star in her head, while having conversations with people. Colas eventually was treated for the disorder.

President and co-founder of The Long Island Alzheimer's Foundation, Janet Walsh. As a teenager, she watched her father suffer with Alzheimer's. Later, when genetic testing became available for Alzheimer's, she took it and discovered that she is at the highest risk for genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's. Walsh will talk about how she choses her conduct her life with this knowledge, and her efforts to make the lives of Alzheimer's patients better.

A 1995 study by the American Psychiatric Association reports that families play a significant part in the recovery of depressed people. Mary Wallace and Rose Styron are the wives of journalist Mike Wallace and writer William Styron, who both suffered from bouts of depression. They'll talk about what it was like to help their husbands thru depression. Mike Wallace and William Styron will appear in the upcoming documentary "Dead Blue: Surviving Depression"

Cheryl Chase, executive director of the Intersex Society of North America. The society was set up to serve and provide peer support and medical information for hermaphroditic people who, at birth, exhibited some sexual organs of both genders. Chase was classified male at birth, but was "reassigned" female at 18 months.