April 4th, 2018
Podcast 220: Mumps outbreaks — blame waning protection, not new viruses or bad vaccines
Mumps outbreaks keep happening, even among vaccinated groups. Why? Our guest, Joseph Lewnard, and his coauthor, Yonstan Grad, probed studies of mumps vaccine efficacy carried out over five decades. They show that the fault, dear clinician, is not in our vaccines or new viral strains, but in ourselves. Our bodies slowly lose their immune response after […]
June 10th, 2017
Podcast 208: How inequality kills — David Ansell talks with us about his new book
Dr. David Ansell, a professor of medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, discusses his new book, “The Death Gap: How inequality kills.” What’s the death gap? Look at it this way: you’re getting on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line at “The Loop” in downtown, where the average life expectancy is 85 yrs. Go […]
March 10th, 2016
Podcast 198: Three laws that could reduce U.S. firearm mortality
Implementing universal background checks for gun purchases, for ammunition purchases, and mandating firearm identification could dramatically lower U.S. mortality attributable to firearms, our guest says. In the Lancet, Dr. Bindu Kalesan and her colleagues examined state gun laws associated with the lowest mortality rates and concluded that if three of those laws were implemented at the […]
February 3rd, 2016
Podcast 194: Rising middle-age mortality rates are worrying
Ever since Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last November there has been a spate of commentary over their major finding: mortality rates among middle-aged whites in the U.S. are rising while everyone else’s are improving. The Commonwealth Fund has just published an “issue brief” […]
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