Medical Treatments and Procedures

Meningitis Outbreak Accelerates in NYC Gay and Bi Communities

Department of Health calls for 100,000 vaccinations as fatalities climb in 2013

Getting The Meningitis Vaccine Wasn't Easy

With the warnings out about how every active gay man in NYC should get the meningitis vaccine, I assumed it would be a breeze to make this happen for myself. But my doctor didn't even have the vaccine for people my age. He had to call it into a pharmaceutical chain and wait for them to get it, sinc ... More >>

M.D.'s Are the New Pain-Pill Crime Wave

Dr. Dealer

If You're A Man Who's Had Sex With A Man You Met On The Internet, You May Want A Meningitis Vaccine

If you're a man who's had "intimate contact with another man" whom you met on the Internet, the New York City Health Department recommends that you get a meningitis vaccination following a recent spike in the rare/potentially fatal disease.In addition to Internet rendezvous, the Health Department sa ... More >>

Should Health Insurance Providers Pay For Sex-Change Operations?

Yesterday, the group Transgender Legal Defense & Education announced that an insurance company has agreed to a settlement that will require it to pay for a sex-change operation for a transgender person.Ida Hammer, 34, was born a man but has been living as a woman for the past several years. Acco ... More >>

Andrew Cuomo Orders Massive Overhaul Of New York Horse Racing Regulations

Horse racing in New York state is about to change thanks to Governor Andrew Cuomo's response to a report from a state commission tasked with reviewing regulations governing the state's horse racing industry.Cuomo announced this afternoon that the New York Task Force on Racehorse Health and Safety -- ... More >>

Are You Going To Die From Whooping Cough?

If you have been following the news, you are probably aware of the whooping cough outbreak, and probably wonder why there is an outbreak in the first place, considering there's been a vaccine for the disease for some 70 years. But you are probably also wondering: WTF is whooping cough and is it go ... More >>

Virginia Might Not Forcibly Wand Women's Vaginas

And now for some good news and some bad news. The good news: Virginia might not forcibly wand women's vaginas after all. The bad news: Virginia had thought that forcibly wanding women's vaginas was a good idea in the first place. Let's rewind a bit. Last week, Slate reported on a bill passed by ... More >>

Rick Santorum Opposes Prenatal Testing, Women

​Rick Santorum doesn't think that insurance companies should have to pay for a simple diagnostic test that determines whether a baby will be born sick or severely disabled. Santorum, who is so anti-abortion that he would make his own daughter carry a rape-baby to term, thinks that amniocente ... More >>

We Would Like to Make a Motion to Institute 'Tweet That You Have Had HPV Day'

​HPV: Have you heard of it? You probably have, because in the last few days and weeks it's been talked about a lot -- often incorrectly -- by people like Michele Bachmann and, most recently, tweeted about by Ayelet Waldman, wife of novelist Michael Chabon. In Bachmann's case, she's using HPV v ... More >>

Today in El Diario: Women Dying For Mammograms

​Audit: Women might die waiting for their mammograms City Controller John C. Liu said that hundreds of New York's women will face dangerous waits for mammograms, according to the Spanish-language daily. Liu's announcement is the result of an internal audit of nine Health and Hospitals Corpo ... More >>

Volunteer in an HIV Vaccine Study

​ Fucking around might be some people's idea of volunteering in an HIV study, but believe me, there are better ways. The other night at Lips, Peppermint and friends brought together an illustrious gang of club favorites to toast each other and to promote Project Achieve's vaccine study, which ... More >>

MEDICINE FOR THE MELANCHOLY

A punk quick fix

Autism Via Vaccine Study is an 'Elaborate Fraud'

Jenny McCarthy is wrong​A British study claiming that autism could be contracted from childhood vaccines, a cause championed most famously by actress Jenny McCarthy, has already been deemed a scientific mess full of errors, but a new report from a British medical journal contends that its inte ... More >>

Whooping Cough, There It Is: 2010's Big Epidemic.

​While "Whooping Cough" sounds like something you catch on The Oregon Trail right before your oxen die of dysentery from trying to cross the river, it's actually a deadly cold that's currently killing babies in California right now at a rate not seen since 1955. Why's this happening, and how d ... More >>

Change-of-Sex Surgeries at Johns Hopkins: About 20 Done So Far

​Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives. November 6, 1969, Vol. XIV, No. 56 Life's Such a Drag, They'd Rather Switch by Charles W. Slack For the past five years or so, the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore has been offering a change-of-sex service to certain carefully scree ... More >>

Man Who Received World's First Full Face Transplant Shows New Face on TV

​The world's first full face transplant patient appeared on TV today for the first time since surgery to thank the donor's family and his doctors. His name is Oscar, and "he spoke with difficulty," which is only to be expected considering his extreme surgery, which took 24 hours during which d ... More >>

Health alert issued for mumps outbreak in Brooklyn

​The city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has issued an alert (pdf) to healthcare providers in response to a record mumps outbreak in New York and New Jersey. The CDC traced the path of infection back to an asymptomatic 11-year-old boy who carried it from an epidemic in England to an ... More >>

Free flu shots

​Saturday's free flu clinics were much more popular than the kids-only version last week, with city officials reporting that more people had been vaccinated by 1 pm than the total number vaccinated last weekend. Shots are available for anyone between 4 and 24, pregnant women, caregivers of in ... More >>

State backs down on mandatory H1N1 shots

​New York State is no longer requiring healthcare workers to take the H1N1 vaccine or risk firing, but only because they don't have enough of it.

Swine Flu Vaccine PANIC: Do We Have Enough, and Will It Kill Us?

Swine flu vaccines will be in New York schools next week -- unless they run out: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius admits there's not enough to go around at present. "Demand is ahead of the yield," she says; Senator Joe Lieberman says there are 30 million doses available, as oppo ... More >>

NYS healthcare workers get a restraining order against mandatory flu shots

​The State Supreme Court granted a restraining order to a public employee's union on Friday blocking an emergency regulation mandating seasonal and H1N1 (swine) flu shots for nurses, doctors, aides, and non-medical personnel who have patient contact. The Public Employees Federation represents ... More >>

Get Ready for Swine Flu 2 with Dangerous Vaccines, Video Game

​Those of us who remember the Swine Flu PANIC of '09 may be interested to learn from the Associated Press that "NYC schools prepare for 2nd outbreak of swine flu." These epidemics historically come in pairs, and the second is usually worse. AP mainly notes anecdotal portents -- "Sharing water ... More >>

Bloomberg Turns Over His Next Campaign to Blagojevich's Ex-Deputy

Undertaker Gets Cremated

A Newark funeral director has lost his license after being caught in a scheme to harvest the body parts of his clients and sell them to organ tissue banks. Stephen K. Finley, who owns Berardinelli Forest Hill Memorial Home, Cremation at a Low Cost, and Funeraria Santa Cruz, all located in Newark, ha ... More >>

Shock and Awe

The stunning comeback of electroshock and other harrowing treatments for the mentally ill

Plastic Surgeon to the Scars

Brad Jacobs went from shaping Playboy bunnies to defending himself against charges of butchery

Shots in the Dark

New worries about HPV vaccine for kids—other than foes' warnings of promiscuity

The Slut Shot

Will the HPV vaccine encourage sexual freedom or right-wing lunatics?

See Tom Be Jane

The country's youngest transgender child is ready for school. But is school ready for her?

Daddy Bush's Gulf War Still Makes People Sick

Down With the Flu

Bush takes a shot at answering the big question about vaccine

The DEA's War on Pain Doctors

Hormonal Outrage

The Menopause Industry's Marginalized Critics Are Finally Proven Right

Spin Doctor

Grim Diagnosis for Times Science Scribe

Round Up the Unusual Suspects

A New Health-Emergency Law Raises Concerns for the Immune Compromised

Reviewer Afraid

Watts Up

More New Yorkers Getting Zapped by Court-Ordered Electroshock

Magnets Unplugged

Is the force field for real?

'Mujeres' Power

Tackling Cultural Taboos About Breast Cancer

Injecting Big Brother

New Vaccines May Drug-Proof Kids

Harvard Mafia Lives!

Andersen Taps 'Spy' Lawyer for 'Inside'

Dialysis Deals

Private Companies Lease Space in Public Hospitals

Part 6: Ending the Epidemic

African Prostitutes May Play a Crucial Role in Developing an HIV Vaccine

Part 4: The Virus, Past and Future

There Are Two AIDS Epidemics—and More May Be Coming

A Real Man

Brooklyn girl grows hair on her chest

Letters

Rise of the Vaccine Nation

'The New Yorker' Joins the Campaign for a Disease-Free America

Casualties of War

In Congo, civil strife allows polio to survive

Unsung AIDS Advance

One Vaccine Breatkthrough Overshadows Another