Dan Callahan
It began with a little black spot on Dan Callahan’s lower lip. He didn’t think it was anything to worry about. His doctor thought it was cancer.
The doctor was right.
It was neurotropic melanoma, a very rare — and very…
Protesters demand health reform at a rally outside Blue Cross headquarters in Los Angles last month.
Nothing about health care reform has inspired more overheated rhetoric than the so-called public option.
Opponents say it would unleash a government juggernaut against which no…
Who wants a drumstick? The six-foot-tall phorusrhacos longissimus roamed what is now Argentina during the Middle Miocene.
People often talk as if warming temperatures are the only evidence of human-induced global climate change. But the amount of carbon dioxide in the…
Water skiing on the Mississippi River
It takes more than 200 pages of dense, legalistic language to detail the intricacies of the federal Clean Water Act. But the bottom line is simple: Federal and state governments must protect lakes, streams and…
R.J. Matson/Post-Dispatch
The Doe Run Company has been operating a giant lead smelter in Herculaneum for decades. For just as long, elevated lead levels have been found in people, properties and roads around it.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Missouri Department…
About 60 percent of Americans - 175 million people - now live in communities that restrict smoking in public places.
On Nov. 3, voters in St. Louis County can add the county’s nearly 1 million residents to the list by voting…
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, was in a fine fury Tuesday morning. Speaking on the Senate floor, he blasted Democratic lawmakers for a plan to permanently adjust the Medicare formula used to set payment…
If there were a way to save $207.4 million, avoid 30,000 unnecessary hospitalizations and more than 2,000 premature deaths, we’d jump at it, right?
That’s what Missouri would gain if its health system performed as well as the systems in Vermont,…
R.J. Matson/Post-Dispatch
Last April 8, the Missouri House passed a measure that would have given voters the right to change the state’s non-partisan judicial selection process and put politics back in the system.
On Sunday, The Kansas City Star looked at that 85-72 vote…
President Barack Obama speaks after last week's historic Senate health reform vote.
Forget all the angry shouting about socialized medicine and government take-overs. Health care reform is really all about markets, competition and choice.
That’s probably not what you’ve heard. But as…
The King and his court
Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, has declared his latest bogus attempt at campaign finance reform as “squarely in the mainstream” of reform efforts nationwide.
Sadly, he’s probably right. With the U.S. Supreme Court seemingly on the verge of…
To hear some people tell it, the number of people without health insurance in the United States is vastly overstated.
There are the illegal immigrants, the argument goes, and then there are those who can afford to buy insurance but don’t…
Robin Beaton's insurance company cancelled her breast cancer surgery because she didn't disclose she'd been treated for acne.
Health insurance companies launched an 11th-hour assault Monday on a compromise health care reform bill in the Senate. In a new report and a…
Suppose you were asked for a list of the game-changers in modern medicine — treatments that saved the most lives and had the greatest health impact.
You might name organ transplants or drugs to fight cancer and AIDS. Maybe if you…
A home destroyed by beach erosion in the Alaskan village of Shishmaref. It was evacuated because of global warming.
When President Barack Obama was in Copenhagen on Oct. 2, he was trying to attract an Olympic Games for Chicago.
Next time, he…
Missouri’s grim revenue picture got even grimmer last month, with tax collections falling 16.3 percent below what they were in September 2008 — and revenue in September 2008 was lousy to begin with.
The only bright spot in Missouri’s revenue picture —…
Mom always said to be careful what we wished for, lest we actually get it. The warning is apt now that the health care reform debate in Congress seems headed into the home stretch, or maybe just the back stretch.
Several big…
Matson
Poverty is on the rise in Missouri. Over the past nine years, the state’s poverty rate has grown at more than double the national average.
The change has disproportionately affected whites. Poverty remains significantly higher among African-Americans. But the poverty rate grew fastest…
Tim Blacke
When doctors found a tumor in Tim Blacke’s brain, health insurance was the last thing he worried about. That was his first mistake.
For nearly two decades, he’d worked for internationally known evangelical minister Josh McDowell. During that time, Mr.…
This is no way to collect biogas.
About 2 million tons of trash is generated in the St. Louis region each year. Half winds up in landfills. Those landfills could be our own miniature Saudi Arabias.
Buried deep within those landfills are piles of…
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