Banking giant JPMorgan’s multibillion-dollar trading loss is blamed on an executive’s absence due to Lyme disease. And a mild winter has some scientists predicting a busy tick season ahead. A panel of experts discuss how the infection is contracted, why it’s often misdiagnosed and the most effective treatment options. Continue reading →

Mark Turek In “Love Alone,” Anne Scurria, left, plays Helen, a woman struggling to understand the sudden death of her partner during a routine operation. Leah Anderson is Clementine, her daughter.Few plays or movies capture the complex emotional and professional aftermath of a medical error. So often, the characterizations and story lines are as facile as a cartoon, with careless and negligent doctors, irrational and vengeful patients and families, and soulless, ambulance-chasing lawyers.“Love Alone,” a new play about a devastating medical mistake and its consequences at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, R.I., breaks this mold.Dr. Pauline Chen on medical care.Written by Deborah Salem Smith, Trinity’s current playwright-in-residence, and directed by Ms. Smith and Tyler Dobrowsky, the company’s associate artistic director, the lucid, deeply nuanced ... Continue reading →

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IBM reportedly has banned Apple's Siri voice service on its network. STORY HIGHLIGHTS IBM bans Siri on its network, according to Technology Review The technology company worries Apple may store voice requests Messages are "sent to Apple in order to convert what you say into text" (WIRED) -- If you work for IBM, you can bring your iPhone to work, but forget about using the phone's voice-activated digital assistant. Siri isn't welcome on Big Blue's networks. The reason? Siri ships everything you say to her to a big data center in Maiden, North Carolina. And the story of what really happens to all of your Siri-launched searches, e-mail messages and inappropriate jokes is a bit of a black box. IBM CIO Jeanette Horan told MIT's ... Continue reading →

DURHAM, N.C. Henry had a problem: The medicine that calmed his mind was hurting his body. A middle-aged man with bipolar disorder, Henry had tried several medications before he became my patient. The only one that stabilized his mood made him crave fattening foods so intensely that after three years on the drug, he’d gained 50 pounds. With this excess weight came diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol, and with them, more drugs to take. At each visit, I urged Henry to keep his weight under control, but he kept gaining. Frustrated, I decided to let his primary-care physician decide how to help him. After all, his mental health was in good shape. Ultimately, his weight wasn’t really my concern. Today, however, no doctor can afford ... Continue reading →

Super slippery coatings seem to be quite popular at the moment. We’ve already shown you the superhydrophobic spray that means no more clothes to wash, and then there was the superhydrophobic film promising to make circuit boards water resistant. Now MIT has come up with another slippery coating, only this one is safe for use with food. Why do we need a non-slip coating on food packaging? Well, have you ever tried to get the last few drops of ketchup or mayonnaise out of a bottle? It’s impossible without you start scooping the substance out with a spoon, and even then you can’t get all of it. Put a non-stick coating on the inside of the bottle though, and the problem disappears. MIT has such ... Continue reading →

Which Do You Think Is Harder To Do Well? Filing your taxes may be a dreaded task. But eating healthy can be an even bigger struggle for many Americans. According to the results of a new survey of more than 1,000 Americans, almost half of us think its harder to eat right than do our taxes. And genderwise, 55 percent of men say it's harder to figure out what you should be eating than it is to figure out how to do your own taxes. For women, it's slightly lower, at 48 percent. The survey comes from the folks at the International Food Information Council Foundation. Given the confusion, it may not come as a surprise that more than half (55 percent) of Americans are ... Continue reading →

Chris Hamilton/American Cancer Society Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, predicts that doctors and patients will continue to be "unscientific" when deciding on testing for prostate cancer. The dust is nowhere near settled over advice that men of all ages should forgo a routine blood test to detect prostate cancer. The harms, such as false alarms and unnecessary surgeries that leave some men impotent and incontinent, outweigh the benefits of the PSA test, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. So the influential group this week made an official recommendation against a regular PSA. To be sure, if doctor and patient want to go ahead with a PSA test, that's OK, as long as there's been a frank discussion ... Continue reading →

First physicians had to hang signs to remind patients not to talk or text on their cellphones so they would not disturb others. Now that cellphone capabilities have expanded, physicians have a choice: Do they extend that warning to taking pictures with a smartphone? Though the ban on telephone conversations was motivated by an attempt to keep down the annoyance factor, the implications of snapping pictures inside a practice can go beyond other patients getting a little irritated. If picture-taking is left unfettered, patients could feel violated and sense that a practice doesn’t take patient privacy seriously. On the other hand, if patients want to break out the smartphone for a few shots, is a practice just picking a fight by instituting a no-pictures policy? ... Continue reading →

Revenue growth at nonprofit hospitals remains tepid and most likely will not improve anytime soon. Median revenue growth at nonprofit hospitals and health systems increased slightly to 5.3% in fiscal 2011 from 4.5% in fiscal 2010, although the figure was still down from the years before the 2007-09 recession. This is according to an annual report published April 26 by Moody’s Investors Service that analyzed preliminary data from 213 organizations. “There’s some improvement, but these numbers are still pretty low compared to historical averages,” said Sarah Vennekotter, assistant vice president at Moody’s and one of the report’s authors. A final analysis will be issued this summer, although the results probably will be similar. Researchers expect these trends to continue long term. Before the recession, revenue ... Continue reading →