Word: bladder
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Take aim! Fire!" The guns roared. My bladder emptied reflexively. A moment passed. I awaited the impact, searched for the pain. Another moment. Was I dead? Then there was a surge of emotion, the realization that they had not shot me. I cried uncontrollably. My blindfold was ripped off and the mullah was yelling, waving his finger in my face. But I could not hear a word. I was dazed, my vision blurred, the shouted order to fire and the crack of the rifles echoed ceaselessly in my head. I babbled insanely as they dragged me back to my cell...
Each year about 20 million operations are performed in the U.S. Though surgeons claim that at most only 1% of these are unnecessary, some observers put the figure at more than 15%. Among the procedures said to be the most overdone: hysterectomies, tonsillectomies, gall bladder removals and operations on the the spine. To cut down on excessive use of the scalpel and, not incidentally, soaring medical-care costs, in the past few years federal agencies and insurance companies have been urging patients to get an independent second opinion whenever nonemergency surgery is recommended. Now comes the surprising suggestion that second...
...partial adrenal insufficiency." Dwight Eisenhower was the exception. After he was felled by a heart attack, he and his physicians chose full medical disclosure, issuing daily bulletins that went so far as to describe presidential bowel movements. Lyndon Johnson was generous with details of his 1965 gall bladder operation-and, as a now-famous photograph attests, he even showed off his scar for the nation...
...alternative approach is to expose laboratory animals or even individual cells to chemicals. Often such experiments will produce unwelcome changes-say, mutations in bacteria or bladder cancer in rats (as was the case with the animals fed huge amounts of saccharin). But what causes problems in one species may not be dangerous to another. In Michigan, researchers found that cows that licked barn wood treated with the preservative pentachlorophenol were starving to death. It turned out, explains Jerry Hook of Michigan State University's new Center for Environmental Toxicology, that "this substance is toxic to the bacteria...
Heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, gall bladder disease, cervical cancer, benign tumors, blood clots, diabetes: all have been linked to the Pill. Now a twelve-year study of 16,000 women in California suggests that the fears about oral contraceptives may be exaggerated. The findings to be published this summer may well be disputed once they are examined by other researchers. But the study's research director, Dr. Savitri Ramcharan, argued last week that "the risks of the Pill, if they exist at all, are negligible...