Archive for the 'Health' Category
Editor’s note: This is the fourth story in CNN’s series exploring the issues surrounding childhood obesity.
After losing more than 80 pounds, she taught her kids how to control their portion sizes, shop at the farmers market, eat vegetables with every meal and avoid a lot of sugar.
Her efforts are working. At a time when approximately one-third of American children are overweight or obese, McDonald’s kids are at healthy weights.
So why is every day still a struggle for the blogger and mother of five?
“I have had to deal with teachers who hand out Skittles, candy bars, lollipops and giant frosted sugar cookies to the children in class … before 10 a.m.,” McDonald says. “I think this is setting kids up for failure and un-teaching the healthy habits I have instilled.”
The fact that doughnuts and cupcakes are given out as a reward after soccer practice or dance class is a paradoxical hurdle in the fight against childhood obesity. As doctors and parents struggle to encourage healthy behaviors, our sugar-filled, sedentary surroundings resist every step.
Think about it, says Dr. Stephen Daniels, chief pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Every day kids are exposed to advertising about fast food instead of home-cooked meals. They’re surrounded by vending and soda machines at school. They have hundreds of channels on TV, own three video game systems and live in neighborhoods that were built without sidewalks.
“Our environment is constantly pushing kids in the wrong direction.”
Childhood obesity isn’t just a cosmetic issue, although studies have shown overweight children are often isolated and bullied by their peers.
Obese youth are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, sleep apnea, liver disease and bone and joint problems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Excess fat has also been linked to many types of cancer. About two-thirds of obese children grow up to be obese adults.
Gary Evans is an environmental and developmental psychologist at Cornell University. His latest study, published this year in the journal Pediatrics, analyzed the effects of stress on weight gain in children and adolescents.
Researchers know that both adults and children seek higher fat foods in response to stress. Evans and his team found that stress also damages a child’s ability for self-control, which leads to a higher body mass index as a teen.
Evans examined children who were dealing with stressful situations, such as poverty, single parenthood, housing problems and domestic violence. In the study, stress hormones hurt the brain’s pre-frontal cortex — the one responsible for our ability to plan and avoid temptations — at the cellular level.
See also: How to stop your kids from stressing
It’s kind of a quadruple whammy, Evans notes. Lower income children have less healthy food stores nearby, more junk food available because it’s cheap, fewer places to play outdoors and, as his team found out, a harder time curbing bad impulses.
“If you are born poor, your life expectancy is less,” Evans wrote in an e-mail. “Perhaps even more striking … upward mobility does not remove the ill effects of early childhood poverty on subsequent health and well-being.”
For parents trying to raise healthy kids, this is all kind of depressing.
“What we need to do as a society is work to make the healthier choice the easier choice,” says Daniels.
There has been movement in that direction. Policymakers are issuing new rules for healthier food in schools and local programs are encouraging more activity. But realistically, an environmental overhaul could take years.
There’s a danger in being too pessimistic about the influence we have on the ways our kids live, Daniels says. Research shows that children who lose weight are less likely to gain it back than teenagers or adults.
“As hard as it is to make a change at age 10, it’s that much easier than at 30 or 40.”
Twins Molly and Chris McGann, 15, are perfect examples of this. In third grade, Molly was bullied for being overweight. The McGanns started attending the Shape Down program at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Shape Down’s instructors taught the whole family how to measure their food, cook with different colors — broccoli, red peppers, carrots — and include exercise in their daily lives. Molly dropped the extra pounds and is still at a healthy weight.
Her twin Chris hit a tough spot in middle school when undiagnosed sleep apnea caused his weight to creep up. As a teenager he is finding it more difficult to stay on track because of peer pressure. His school cafeteria, for instance, has a pizza buffet and a long line of desserts available every day.
“My friends eat the pizza and the Little Debbie cakes and they’re all as thin as rails,” he says. “It’s really hard to walk by that stuff because it looks so good. I just think I want to be healthy, I want to lose weight and I know if I eat those things it’s not going to happen.”
Daniels doesn’t talk about dieting or weight loss with his patients. He talks about getting the entire family on board to eat healthier and be more active.
“You have to understand what kinds of behaviors are leading to the problem and the changes to take,” he says. “It’s helpful to go slow. It’s about simple goals. You don’t have to get to a perfect weight in order to have the health benefits.”
For more help conquering your environment, the Mayo Clinic has suggestions on making weight loss a family affair.
May 18 2012 | Health | Comments Off
So what a relief to rediscover Volumetrics, a way of eating that just plain makes sense. By pumping up your diet’s volume in easy ways (more of that to come), you will not only enjoy yummy foods, but also eat a lot of them and still lose weight.
It all comes down to calories per bite. “By choosing foods that have fewer calories per bite, your portion size grows, but your overall calorie count decreases,” explains Barbara Rolls, PhD, the creator of Volumetrics and author of the new book “The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet”. “So you end up with a satisfying amount of food.”
Key word: satisfying. Rolls, a professor of nutritional sciences at the Pennsylvania State University, has spent 20 years studying the science of satiety — that feeling of fullness at the end of a meal — and how it affects hunger and obesity.
Research shows that the amount of food we eat has a greater effect on how full we feel than the number of calories in the food. If you’re sated after eating, you’re likelier to stick with a diet.
Health.com: Eat (yes, eat!) to lose weight
The staples of the Volumetrics plan — water-rich foods like brothy soups, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy, lean meat, and fish — not only help control hunger by filling you up, but they also do it on fewer calories.
Foods that are high in fat and/or sugar are just the opposite: They’re less filling, plus they have more calories per bite.
So the trick is to limit the low-volume foods and eat mostly high-volume ones. Doing so allows you to double, sometimes triple, your portions and still lose weight, says Rolls.
But “volumizing” your meals isn’t simply about piling veggies next to a serving of lasagna or throwing extra tomato slices or lettuce leaves on your cheeseburger. It’s also about packing your recipes with low-density ingredients.
In a study co-authored by Rolls and published in a 2011 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, people who ate an entree made up of 25% pureed vegetables — in this case, squash and cauliflower were blended into macaroni and cheese — consumed 360 fewer calories per “volumize” the dish, tricking your brain into thinking you’re eating more when in fact you’re eating less.
“This simple recipe modification ups your vegetable intake and reduces calorie consumption at the same time,” says Rolls.
Health.com: 25 ways to cut 500 calories a day
Pumping up foods with air also works to increase volume and promote satiety. For example, instead of munching on a handful of potato chips, you can fill up on three handfuls of air-popped popcorn for the same number of calories.
The benefit of that sort of smart swap became apparent during one of Rolls’ studies (ultimately published in 2007 in the journal Appetite). She and her team of researchers served Cheetos to two groups of women.
One group got the original Crunchy Cheetos and the other group was given the airy version, Cheetos Puffs. Because the snacks differed in aeration and, therefore, volume, the Puffs group ended up taking in 73% more food, but 21% fewer calories.
Health.com: 8 tips for controlling portion sizes
Curious to see how you can pump up your meals and sleek up in the process? Here are Rolls’ rules for putting this science to work for you:
Add fruits and vegetables to everything. Volumizing sounds time consuming — all that chopping — but it doesn’t have to be. Rolls suggests multitasking: Do veggie prep while you catch up with your kids or partner. In a pinch, buy them ready-to-go. “Markets sell fresh vegetables already washed, peeled, and chopped,” says Rolls. “Frozen veggies are a good alternative in cooked dishes, and many come already chopped.”
Eat before you eat. You read that right. Fill up on a low-cal soup or way, you’ll get a head start on your goal (to stave off hunger pangs). But again, make it easy: Buy ready-to-go bags of salad greens, and stock up on the fixings for a quick soup — reduced sodium broth, frozen veggies — or buy good-for-you, broth-based ones that are ready-made.
Satisfy your eyes first. The goal is a full plate. Why? Before you even take a bite, you subconsciously take in that sight and your brain registers satisfaction. Realizing you won’t be leaving the table hungry makes you less likely to eat too much of the wrong foods, explains Rolls.
To create a bountiful plate without adding calories, include ingredients that add water or extra air such as mousse-style yogurt and puffed rice cereal.
Don’t forget protein. It’s key to satiety, but you can eat half a day’s worth of calories if you don’t choose wisely. Opt for small portions of low-fat protein, whether it’s skim milk on your cereal, beans on your salad, tofu with dinner, or lean cuts of beef, chicken, or fish.
Clean your plate (no, really). Since the goal is to feel full at the end of each meal, this is practically required. “Other diets ask you to eat less, but we see that as a half-empty plate,” says Rolls. Not to mention a half-empty stomach.
Health.com: Diet tricks the pros tell their friends
Copyright Health Magazine 2011
May 14 2012 | Health | Comments Off
Story By: by Fred Knapp
Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman vetoed a bill that would spend government funds on prenatal care to illegal immigrants. He has that service for illegal immigrants should be provided by churches and private organizations, not with taxpayer money.
In Republican-dominated Nebraska, government leaders often line up together, but lately a political tornado has ripped through this orderly scene.
A political showdown over taxpayer funding of prenatal care for illegal immigrants has produced some unusual political splits and alliances in the statehouse of the Cornhusker State.
“I am extraordinarily disappointed in your support of taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens,” said Republican Gov. Dave Heineman as he read a letter he wrote to fellow Republican Mike Flood, speaker of Nebraska’s officially nonpartisan Legislature.
Heineman was referring to a bill he subsequently vetoed that would restore publicly funded prenatal care for women in the country illegally. Until two years ago, Nebraska was one of about 15 states providing that benefit.
Nebraska dropped the coverage when the federal government said the state couldn’t use Medicaid funds, though it offered to continue funding under another program. Heineman frames the issue as one of the benefits to illegal immigrants.
Flood, a leading abortion opponent, says pregnant illegal immigrants will ultimately give birth to babies who will be U.S. citizens. He says providing them with prenatal care is consistent with his opposition to abortion.
“If I’m going to stand up in the Legislature and protect babies at 20 weeks from abortion, and hordes of senators and citizens are going to stand behind me, and that’s pro-life, then I’m going to be pro-life when it’s tough, too,” Flood said.
The issue has exposed a fault line between anti-illegal-immigrant sentiment and anti-abortion groups, but it’s also brought together an unusual coalition. Among those supporting the bill is the politically influential Nebraska Right to Life organization.
“We don’t want to distinguish that because … of a baby’s circumstances or in whose womb that baby resides that dictates whether that baby receives care or not,” said Julie Schmit-Albin, the group’s executive director.
Another supporter is the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, which advocates for immigration reform and access to universal health care. Jennifer Carter, the center’s public policy director, says the immigrants are our “neighbors” and should be helped.
“They’re in our communities and they’re helping contribute to our communities,” Carter said. “So we believe providing this kind of prenatal care coverage to their children is appropriate.”
Still, Heineman, backed by what Republican Party polls say is a clear majority of voters, remains adamant in his opposition, though he calls himself strongly anti-abortion.
“Most Nebraskans and I agree, we support prenatal care, but in the case of illegal immigrants, it should be done by churches, private organizations, charities, private individuals â not the use of taxpayer funds,” he said.
Supporters of the bill, on both sides of the abortion debate, cite their own polls in support and say the savings from avoiding intensive care for babies born without prenatal care would outweigh the costs of the program.
With the governor turning up the political heat, the question now is whether enough legislators will vote to override the veto. That vote is scheduled for Wednesday.
April 28 2012 | Health | Comments Off
Story By: Talk of the Nation
Kelly Ward, senior software engineer for Walt Disney Animation Studios, was tasked with bringing Rapunzel’s locks to life in Disney’s Tangled. The hair had to look realistic, but not too real â otherwise Rapunzel would be towing 80 pounds of hair behind her.
April 23 2012 | Health | Comments Off
Editor’s note: Stephanie Gallman, a CNN assignment editor, was diagnosed with depression last year despite being a frequent exerciser, a fairly healthy eater and an avid fan of Hula-Hoops. Watch Gallman tell her story this Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 a.m. ET on CNN’s “Sanjay Gupta MD.”
The news came as a shock.
“I’m not depressed,” I said defiantly, shaking my head when the doctor deduced that must be what was ailing me.
“I hate depressed people.”
She laughed at my strange reaction, but I was serious. I don’t want to be in that category of people. Everything they take in and spew out just breathes negativity, and they are difficult to be around. I despise these people.
But as she went down a list of symptoms, they were all there — loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, waves of irrational anxiety, crying for no reason, loss of interest in work and hobbies, isolation and seclusion. I had nearly every one of them.
We went over my personal history, which included severe bouts with anxiety as a child, teenager, college student and young adult. I told her I assumed all kids were scared of dying, all teenage girls struggled with weight and eating issues, all college students struggled leaving the nest and everyone had a quarter-life crisis. My severe highs and lows that spanned a long period of time were all red flags.
When I told her my family history of mental illness that included at least one suicide, she threw her pen down on the floor as if this years-long mystery had finally been solved.
“It sounds to me like your body just doesn’t produce enough serotonin,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Her diagnosis sounded quite clinical. We’d only talked for an hour, but she seemed certain, based on our conversation and the briefing she’d had with my therapist, that my body’s chemistry was simply off, causing me to feel down. She threw in slight OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) for good measure, to which I scoffed, thinking of the clothes strewn about my house.
“Your OCD is in your thoughts — you think about things to the point of obsessing about them.”Â
Well, that’s just awesome.
I agreed with her that I had been going through a slump but wondered if her diagnosis was a bit dramatic. I’ve always been a firm believer that happiness is a choice. I’m an optimist, so if I’m not happy, there has to be a reason for it. Could these feelings be the result of job stress? The on-again/off-again relationship I’d been fighting to make work for almost a year?
She nodded as I posed these questions and then said, “Sure, it’s possible that all of these things could’ve contributed to how you’re feeling. But it’s also possible, and quite likely for you, that none of them did.” Â
She advised me, as a frequent exerciser and fairly healthy eater, to continue those activities before she said what I’d feared the most.
“I think an antidepressant might help stabilize some of the chemicals in your brain.”
I continued to challenge her, wanting to know how long I’d have to be medicated. She could tell I was anxious and looking for a solution to this problem that didn’t involve drugs. But she was already writing a prescription and scheduling our next visit.
“For some people,” she explained, “happiness isn’t a choice. You wanting to be happy and expecting it to just happen is the equivalent of someone with brown eyes wanting blue eyes and expecting that to just happen.”  Â
I wasn’t thrilled with the diagnosis, but her explanation made sense to me and made me feel better.
Still, I refused to let myself completely off the hook, and as I left her office, I set forth on a path of self-discovery to identify how my actions might’ve contributed to how I felt — a path that quickly brought up the ever-confusing chicken and egg game.
Did I isolate myself from my friends because I was depressed? Or did I become depressed because I isolated myself from my friends?
I was more hesitant than usual to keep what was going on to myself, telling only my family and those closest to me at the time what the doctor had said. Soon it became clear that I needed the support of more than a select few if I was going to get through this. Plus, it’s not like me not to share what’s going on in my life. And isolating myself, I suspected, was partly to blame for being in this situation in the first place. So, at the inappropriate places and the most inopportune times I could find, I began dropping the “D-bomb.”
That’s usually how I’d open the conversation, “Um, I have to tell you something. It might feel like a bomb, but I’m OK and everything is fine.” As I started to open up about it — I started to feel more like myself — the Stephanie who isn’t embarrassed by life’s setbacks, who tackles difficult situations with humor and honesty.
No surprise, the wonderful people in my life have all been very kind and sympathetic, offering words of comfort and support, but reaction and willingness to talk openly about the disease has varied.
I was raised in a “pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps,” kind of a family, so while hurtful that some people immediately discounted that I was actually sick, it was those people who don’t believe depression is a real thing that I identified (and still identify) with the most.
The sadness that comes from depression is not rooted in anything real. I’m not sad because of anyone or anything. I don’t know why I am sad. I just am. I don’t know why I worry about things that are so far out of my control. I just do. And I so wish that I didn’t.
Most people who don’t believe in depression also don’t believe in being medicated for it. Their warnings to me ranged from mindful caution to downright fear that I’d become addicted to pills and turn into a zombie. Â
Instead of drugs, they’d say, why don’t you “do more of the things that you enjoy?”Â
“Tend to your garden.”
“Find a project, something to focus your attention on.”
“Read, ‘The Secret.’ “
Bite me.
These patronizing (“The Secret”? Are you serious?) prescriptions infuriated me, as if the reason I wasn’t happy is because I hadn’t tried hard enough.
A lot of the people reacted to the D-bomb the same way I did — “You’re depressed?! You? Stephanie Gallman? But you’re one of the happiest people that I know! You Hula-Hoop in Walmart!” (I really do Hula-Hoop in Walmart — every time I go.)
These are the people I wanted to reach out and hug; they made me feel like I hadn’t turned into Debbie Downer.
It’s true, to the outside world, I do appear happy. And I realize this is hard to grasp, even for me, but I am happy most of the time. I am fully aware of how blessed my life is and express gratitude for it daily. I have worked hard not to let what’s going on with me on the inside affect the way I present myself on the outside.
I guess you could say, I’ve become a Hula-Hoop in Walmart on the outside, want-to-crawl-into-bed-on-the-inside kind of gal; depression, until now, was my dirty little secret.Â
My happy-go-lucky cheerful attitude is the element of my personality that I am most proud of. This other part — that obsessively thinks about things I cannot control, is self-loathing and uncertain — is also a part of who I am; unfortunately, it’s the part that has been screaming the loudest lately.Â
The third, and perhaps the most popular reaction to my dropping the “D-bomb,” has been the barrage of friends divulging their personal connections to mental illnesses.
“My mom has bipolar. … My uncle has been clinically depressed for years.” Â
I was dumbfounded. I wanted to scream like Adam Sandler in “The Wedding Singer”: “Gee, you know that information … really would’ve been more useful to me yesterday!” Why isn’t anyone talking about these illnesses that affect our most important body part — our brain?Â
Last summer, I bought a poster that said, “Everything is OK. Maybe not today, but eventually.” I framed it and hung it near my bed where I wake up every day and see it.
On my best day, I believe that quote to be absolutely true. I am attacking this diagnosis with every bit of energy and every resource that I have.
On my worst day, I feel like a different person — tired and unfocused and desperate to feel like the real, fun, positive Stephanie I know is somewhere trapped inside me. I feel let down by the world but too exhausted to go out and change it.
Admitting I suffer from depression and anxiety has, at times, made me feel weak — like I’m admitting defeat. I am hard on myself for no reason. I’m pissed that despite having every reason to be happy, sometimes I’m not.Â
My relationships have suffered — some ruined completely — because of this disease; some are of my own doing, not trusting those dearest to me and asking for help when I needed it. Others bowed out, not interested in riding this difficult and often unpredictable journey. I can’t blame anyone for making that decision, but I’d like to think that even at my worst, I’m worthy of honesty, compassion and understanding.
Anyone who would judge me for this weakness that I’ve identified and am treating probably isn’t someone I would want to work for or date anyway.
I am someone who struggles with her brain the way that others struggle with their heart.Â
I love deeply and laugh loudly.
I work hard; I play harder. And I always Hula-Hoop at Walmart.
For information on depression and treatment, go to the National Institute of Mental Health website.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Stephanie Gallman.
April 16 2012 | Health | Comments Off
Story By: by Nancy Shute
How to test reading ability in children who can’t read has been a problem for researchers.
For people with dyslexia, problems recognizing words can make life difficult. Children usually aren’t diagnosed until elementary school, when it becomes clear they’re struggling with reading. But scientists say it could be possible to diagnose and help kids much earlier by identifying problems with visual attention â long before they learn to read.
Scientists have argued for decades about why 10 percent of the world’s population has dyslexia. Theories include difficulties recognizing chunks of words or problems processing visual signals or issues ignoring extraneous sounds. People with dyslexia are often bright and verbal, but have trouble with the written word.
Many programs have been devised to help children and adults with reading difficulties, but none solves the problem. Since learning to read is such a big part of early childhood, it makes sense to think that identifying children with dyslexia as preschoolers, before they learn their ABCs, could lead to new and better ways to help.
But how to test reading ability in children who can’t read has remained a barrier. Researchers at the University of Padua in Italy say kids who have problems with visual attention in preschool are most likely to have difficulty reading later on.
The scientists tested 96 kindergartners who hadn’t yet learned to read, asking them to identify specific symbols amid distractions. The youngsters also were asked to identify syllables, name colors quickly and remember things they were told. Researchers continued to test the children over the next two years as they learned to read.
The kindergartners who struggled with the visual attention test were the ones who later had trouble with reading. The results were published in the journal Current Biology.
If preschoolers are screened with a simple visual attention test, the researchers conclude, children with dyslexia could get help much earlier and potentially avoid years of struggle in school and adulthood.
Indeed, many adults with dyslexia were never diagnosed as children. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz says he figured it out only after his 7-year-old son was diagnosed with the learning disorder.
Schultz told NPR’s Audie Cornish that he didn’t learn to read until he was 11. He still has to be very selective in what he reads, he says, because it’s so painful.
“The actual neurological â if I may use that word â act of reading, I don’t enjoy,” Schultz said. “I have to often read the same sentence over and over before I understand it. And I have to convince myself that what I’m reading is so enjoyable and so exciting and so good for me that it’s worth the effort.”
Other research has shown that entrepreneurs are far more likely to have dyslexia. One theory is that they develop formidable skills at working with people to compensate for their problems communicating using the written word.
April 12 2012 | Health | Comments Off
The UK fertility regulator is seeking to reduce the taboo around egg and sperm donation.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) says people should feel the same about it as they do about altruistic, or living, organ donation.
It is launching a new drive to encourage more donors to come forward to help infertile couples have a child.
But critics say egg donation is an invasive process, and women should be warned of the risks.
Infertility affects about one-in-six couples in the UK, and when other fertility treatments fail, they sometimes turn to egg or sperm donors for help.
But because of a shortage in donors in the UK, a number go abroad for treatment, sometimes to unregulated clinics.
The HFEA is trying to increase the number of national donors because of concerns about the safety of treatment abroad.
Last year it agreed to increase the levels of compensation given to egg and sperm donors.
Now it is bringing together a group of experts to help develop ways of increasing awareness of gamete donation in the UK, and to encourage people to regard it as a positive contribution to society.
'Extraordinary gift'
"Donating eggs to another woman is the most extraordinary gift," said HFEA chairwoman Lisa Jardine.
The HFEA is also worried that some fertility clinics may discourage donors by making them wait and failing to return their phonecalls.
"It's important to make sure donors are really valued and looked after at clinics," said Laura Witjens of the National Gamete Donation Trust, which helps couples seeking egg or sperm donors.
The HFEA said it was going beyond its usual remit by bringing together a National Donation Strategy Group to look at how to raise awareness.
But critics argue that donors should not be given more encouragement to come forward.
Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said egg retrieval was an invasive process that posed potential health risks.
"It's one thing to incur risks for your own fertility treatment," she said, "quite another to be exposed to those risks for the benefit of other mothers."
April 08 2012 | Health | Comments Off
Story By: by Joe Palca
by Adam Frank
New observations from a spacecraft reveal the planet did not form the way scientists thought.
A new, man-made visitor has arrived in orbit around the planet Mercury.
So instead, it used the gravity of other planets to slow it down with respect to the sun. In a trajectory worthy of Rube Goldberg, Messenger looped once around the Earth, then made two close encounters with Venus. When it arrived at Mercury in 2008, it was still going too fast, so it flew by Mercury three times, slowing down a little more each time. “The fourth time it came by Mercury it was slowed down enough that when we fired the main engine, Mercury’s gravity field was able to capture it,” says Zuber. Messenger has been orbiting Mercury since March 2011.
Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution for Science is another one of Messenger’s principal scientists. He says the spacecraft’s original mission was supposed to end after one year, but things were going so well they persuaded NASA to extend the mission. “Just on Sunday we began the Messenger extended mission,” he says.
The extended mission is scheduled to last another year, so astronomers expect they’ll have more to say at next year’s meeting.
The reports presented at today’s conference will also appear in this week’s edition of the journal Science.
March 26 2012 | Health | Comments Off
Story By: by Nina Totenberg
Solicitor General Don Verrilli grew up in Connecticut and received his law degree from Columbia Law School.
- Don Verrilli, who will present the Obama administration’s case on the health care law
“The inadequacy of representation really jumped out at me,” Verrilli says. “That troubled me, and so once I finished clerking, I said to myself that I was going to devote some portion of my time and energy as a lawyer to trying to do something about that.”
He did, arguing five death penalty cases at the Supreme Court and winning two. Perhaps the most celebrated of these was a case in which a death row inmate’s lawyer failed to introduce evidence of a horrific and brutal childhood, including physical and sexual abuse. By a vote of 7-2, the court agreed that the failure to introduce that information as mitigating evidence amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel, and the court set aside the death penalty.
“Many of my most fulfilling experiences came out of those kinds of cases,” says Verrilli, who ticks off the wide variety of cases that rewarded him professionally but not financially. “I represented Teach for America and I negotiated a settlement of a big public housing discrimination case, and I even represented a Peace Corps volunteer who didn’t get her medical benefits.”
Success in private practice was not enough for him though, and by the time Barack Obama was elected in 2008, “I would have taken any job, including sweeping the floors, to work in the Department of Justice,” Verrilli recalls. “The reason I felt that way was I settled in Washington in the 1980s because I wanted to do public service. And I woke up 25 years later not having done that, and so I thought the time had come.”
He took a job that many of his colleagues thought was not important enough for someone of his age and professional stature. He became the associate deputy attorney general, the deputy to the deputy. But he quickly won the admiration of career lawyers and political appointees alike for his balanced approach to the most difficult and complex questions.
Indeed, his unflappability and keen intellect were so appreciated by the White House that the president stole Verrilli for his own staff, making him deputy White House counsel. Those who knew his work sang his praises, while he remained largely unknown to most of official Washington. When it came to nominating a new solicitor general to replace now-Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, there was never much doubt in the West Wing as to who would get the job. For “no drama Obama,” the quiet and intellectual Verrilli was perfect.
A special crossword puzzle, inspired by the reporting of legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.
For Verrilli, the new job is quite a change in pace. He was so used to the wild ride of the White House, with its constant demands, that when he became solicitor general and his beeper stopped going off all the time, he thought his BlackBerry was broken.
He soon settled down, however, to a different kind of wild ride, as the guy responsible for coordinating all the government’s appeals, arguing the most important ones in the Supreme Court and, from time to time, telling the president or his subordinates that no, they can’t do something.
“I know how to say no and I have said no,” he says firmly. “If I have to say no in the future, I will.”
In the last analysis, though, Verrilli’s job is to defend federal laws and actions. He says he has no difficulty arguing positions that are exactly the opposite of the positions he likely would have argued as a private lawyer. In private practice, his clients were typically large communications companies and in representing them, he usually opposed any government regulation of speech.
As the government’s lawyer, he is often defending those rules limiting speech. Most recently, he defended a federal law making it a crime to lie about having received a military medal. During the argument, many of the justices expressed some doubts about the government’s interest in criminalizing a lie that is nothing more than personal puffery. Verrilli responded with force.
“The honors system is about identifying the attributes, the essence, of what we want in our servicemen and women â courage, sacrifice, love of country, willingness to put your life on the line for your comrades,” Verrilli said to the justices. “And for the government to say this is a really big deal and then to stand idly by when one charlatan after another makes a false claim to have won the medal does debase the value of the medal in the eyes of the soldiers.”
Supreme Court advocate Tom Goldstein, founder of the leading Supreme Court blog, calls Verrilli “the Democrats’ John Roberts,” respected by the court as a gentleman and a scholar in the same way that now-Chief Justice Roberts was when he was a private lawyer.
Goldstein acknowledges that Verrilli may not be quite as smooth as Roberts, but adds that “ironically, in the Supreme Court, the justices don’t admire smoothness and high rhetoric.”
What the justices are looking for, Goldstein says, is “real substance,” and “they really trust him. They knew him for a long time in the way that they knew John Roberts as a private advocate. And you can just tell in the tenor of their questions that they believe this guy.”
The dirty little secret, though, is that Verrilli’s measured public veneer is just that â a veneer. His family and close friends all say he is a passionate Italian, as his name might suggest.
So, does he work at that dispassionate veneer? His answer is an emphatic “yes!”
“I think that I’ve learned over the years that in order to be effective both professionally and personally, it’s important to be passionate or angry â whatever the emotion is â at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons. And that being that way indiscriminately is usually counterproductive,” says Verrilli.
It’s a personal policy that has served him well throughout his life. In 1988 he married Gail Laster, a legal force in her own right. The marriage was unusual for only one reason back then: He is white and she is black. Both sets of parents were supportive, but a bit worried. His parents were concerned that an interracial marriage might limit his professional opportunities.
“It was a reasonable fear, I guess, but they weren’t right about it,” Verrilli says, adding that his parents were also “worried about the ability of our children to make a way in the world as children of an interracial couple, and, so far at least, that doesn’t seem to have been an insurmountable obstacle …
“The thing is,” Verrilli says, “you love who you love.”
“I’ve been amazingly fortunate to have had the life that I’ve had,” he adds.
The philosophical tone of that answer still belies Verrilli’s emotional nature.
To better gauge that, a more direct question seemed in order: What makes him cry?
With a sheepish grin, Verrilli admits, “almost anything, actually,” even “a stupid movie or television show.”
“In addition to trying to make sure that I’m angry only when appropriate, I have to work on being emotional only when appropriate, too,” he says.
He’ll have those emotions firmly in check at the Supreme Court next week.
March 24 2012 | Health | Comments Off
Snoring can be an irritation for partners who experience disturbed nights.
But Dr Keith Prowse, honorary medical adviser for the British Lung Foundation, warns if it is extremely loud, with regular pauses and gasps, it can be a sign of sleep apnoea – a serious condition which can lead people to feel excessively sleepy during the day – which can lead to dangers if someone is driving or using heavy machinery.
In this week's Scrubbing Up, Prof Prowse warns many with the condition are undiagnosed – but says it is easily treatable.
Known risk factors include excessive weight or a high neck circumference (eg collar size above 16). Although commoner in men it can affect anyone at any age.
Once a diagnosis is made, treatment is relatively cheap and simple.
It may involve use of a CPAP machine at night (CPAP = Continuous Positive Airways Pressure). This blows air under low pressure through a nasal mask into the air-passages preventing them from closing.
The response is immediate and obvious after only a few hours or one night.
Other treatments may involve a small device which fits into the mouth at night and holds the jaw forward or removal of obstructions such as large tonsils.
Apart from the obvious dangers, the socio-economic effects and the effects on professional and personal life of the continuous mental and physical exhaustion, sleep apnoea also hastens and provoke other serious health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and stroke.
The costs of undiagnosed untreated sleep apnoea to the NHS are high.
Better awareness and recognition by health professionals is essential in improving early diagnosis and in relieving much of the misery which the condition produces.
Simple tests are available for GPs and others to help distinguish the condition from other causes of excessive tiredness. Another uses a monitor on the finger to record the changes in blood oxygen at night, usually giving a clear indication of the condition.
Greater awareness and early diagnosis of sleep apnoea is very important in tackling this potentially dangerous but treatable condition.
March 24 2012 | Health | Comments Off
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