The day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, the schoolteacher Jane Elliott scrapped her lesson plan — teaching her third graders the Sioux prayer about not judging another person until you have “walked a mile in his moccasins” — for an experiential learning exercise. She split the children at…
This briefing has ended. Read live coronavirus updates here. Here’s what you need to know: ImageCredit…Zack Wittman for The New York Times Florida breaks its record for most deaths in a day, and Texas and Arizona are readying refrigerated morgue trucks. After Florida reported a record 132 deaths on Tuesday, a group of mayors from…
In 2017, Victoria O’Connell rented her London apartment via a home-sharing site to a man who looted and wrecked the place during a party that drew the police. He disappeared, but left her a review on the platform, saying, “Great host.” The violation convinced her there had to be a more secure way to share…
I feel it sometimes, like a phantom limb, banging against my side as I move around the house. I sense it nestled in the crook of my arm as I wander from room to room. It was the one-time receptacle of all I held immediately important: purse, receipts, identification, charger, books, tissues (fresh and used),…
When I was in elementary school, I occasionally had trouble falling asleep, and people would tell me to count sheep. I had seen the activity graphically depicted in cartoons, but when I tried it, I never saw anything — just black. I’ve been counting silently into the darkness for years. There were other puzzling comments…
When I’m angry — which is often these days — I pull weeds. Getting my hands in the dirt untangles the knots that form in my stomach. With the first few weeds, I feel my exasperation with those who refuse to wear masks relent. It takes a little more digging and pulling to address the…
The 50-year-old physician dropped into the leather chair in her psychiatrist’s Manhattan office. Her new normal, she announced to Dr. Deborah Cabaniss, was constant fatigue. Cabaniss noted that although her patient looked put together as usual, she could see the exhaustion in her eyes. “You don’t look like yourself,” the therapist agreed. The patient had…
Given the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has on older adults in terms of death and lasting disability, and the impact of common aging-related comorbidities like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, Buck Institute professor and practicing geriatrician John Newman, MD, PhD, can make a compelling argument that those infected with the SARS-CoV2 virus are suffering from an…
In a clinical trial evaluating a novel immunotherapy option for cancer treatment, a child with rhabdomyosarcoma, a form of muscle cancer, that had spread to the bone marrow, showed no detectable cancer following treatment with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells that were engineered to target the HER2 protein on the surface of the cancer…
By now, we’re all aware that COVID-19 is especially dangerous for older adults–the older you are, the higher your risk for serious illness and even death if you contract the virus. Because there is no treatment or a vaccine yet, it’s vitally important that we practice social distancing and wear masks to protect ourselves from…