"Women's health and life are under fire in the United States and around the world," Laura Newman writes at the beginning of a recent post on her Patient POV blog, using italics to underscore the importance of the message.
She tells the story of "Beatriz," a woman in El Salvador who was unable to get an abortion despite an ultrasound showing that the fetus was missing "most higher brain structures," a condition called anencephaly, which means "no brain." Such fetuses have never lived more than a few hours after birth, Newman writes. Beatriz faced other complications, too–she had lupus and kidney failure, but that carried no weight in El Salvador, "not does it carry much weight with far too many legislators in the United States and elsewhere," she wrote.
Beatriz had what's called a Cesarean section at 26 weeks, and, of course, the fetus died shortly afterwards. Newman quotes a past-president of Catholics for a Free Choice who calls this "extremist anti-abortion medicine."
That post appeared last week. This week, Newman is back with her take on the JAMA Pediatrics study that suggests that overuse of CT scans in children could be increasing the risk of cancer in those children when they become adults. "Nothing less than a paradigm shift will be required if clinical medicine is to succeed in reversing overuse of tests and procedures in children," she writes.
Newman has found a voice that is authoritative and intelligent–and assertive without being strident. If you're looking for a useful take on the big medical issues of the day, bookmark Patient POV.
-Paul Raeburn
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