Word: though
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...medical lore when I heard about the latest health craze in Southern California--full-body CT scans of otherwise healthy people. The goal is to find any budding tumors or other internal problems long before they would show up in a regular physical--and without exploratory surgery. Though this sounds like a good idea, in reality the same sort of technology envy that fueled the fluoroscope frenzy seems largely responsible for this latest craze as well. Only this time around, folks who get caught up in the hype could wind up losing peace of mind and a lot of money...
...worried well" wind up paying $500 to $600 out of pocket for their imaging tests. Call me cynical, but in this era of managed care, I can't help noticing how that income stream also serves to pay for a lot of very expensive equipment. I'm more concerned, though, that some folks might consider a "clean" CT scan an excuse to forget about doing the things that we know improve health, like quitting smoking, shedding excess pounds or exercising more...
...when they were homeless and living mostly out of their car. Seven years later, she photographed them again, when they were squatters on an abandoned ranch. In some of the pictures the parents, both heavy drug users, look like pure arsenic--dark-eyed, doped up and listless, though capable of loving gestures, all of which only makes more affecting how much their children seem to need them anyway...
Many of you readers will graduate college this week. More accurately, many of you have grandchildren who will graduate this week, and I ask you to pass this on to them with your cold, brittle, liver-spotted hands. For even though no university, junior college or turtle/pirate/parrot-drawing-by-mail school responded to my offer to deliver a commencement speech, I have advice far more useful than applying sunscreen or respecting your elders...
Maybe now we'll take Alan Greenspan seriously. A perpetual pessimist, the Fed chief has for the past year been nipping at inflation he sees hidden in the economy's weedlike growth. Last week, though, he got serious, boosting interest rates a convincing half a percentage point, to 6.5% on the benchmark short-term federal funds target rate, and making it clear that more increases are to come...