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Thirty years ago, Bernie Siegel, a physician and assistant professor of surgery at Yale, began to explore the “care” in health care. His investigations led him to found Exceptional Cancer Patients, a form of individual and group therapy designed to help people heal themselves through behavioral changes. As a leader in the mind-body-medicine field, this Brooklyn-born Bernie also sought to redefine what it meant to be a doctor.... Read more

Six years ago in 2002, when they first popped up on the Vermont political stage, yours truly dubbed them “The Nasty Boys.” They were two twentysomethings, born and raised in Vermont, who got the Washington political bug and went off to college in the nation’s capital.

Neale Lunderville, “The Boy Wonder,” was GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Douglas’ bright and savvy campaign manager.... Read more

About three hours after last week’s edition of Seven Days hit the street, yours truly got a call from a certain mysterious international political figure “reportedly” considering a run for governor of Vermont.

We had noted in last week’s “Inside Track” that Peter Galbraith, 57, the distinguished author and former diplomat, had not put in an appearance at either of the two weekend Burlington labor events that were politician-heavy, nor had he returned our phone message seeking comment.... Read more

You’ve got a nasty infection that won’t heal, so you go to your local ER. The doc examines you, shoots you up with antibiotics, and sends you home with instructions to visit your primary physician for follow-up. Then you talk to your friend who lives a couple of hours to the south. Something like that happened to him last month, he says — only his hospital admitted him for overnight observation. They ran a lot more tests and had him see a specialist, too.... Read more

Surprise, surprise! Rep. Topper McFaun’s health-care-reform bill — the one the powers-that-be said was absolutely, positively not coming off the committee-room wall — is going to get two days in the spotlight next week, after all!

H.304, the Vermont Hospital Security Plan, would guarantee hospital coverage for all Vermonters while cutting $60 million in annual spending. Pretty radical stuff, eh?... Read more

Vermont’s lone voice in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrat Peter Welch, paid his second visit to Iraq last week and came home with a dismal view of the way things are still going there under President George W. Bush almost five years after his unjustified invasion.

In a Tuesday chat with “Inside Track,” Welchie had nothing but praise for the work of the U.S. military, but strong criticism of the way the Bush administration is expanding its duties.

“What I saw over there,” warned Welch, “was mission creep.... Read more

Emma Ottolenghi and Judy Tyson want Vermont women to remember how it used to be. Back in the years before 1972, getting an abortion wasn’t a matter of making an appointment at the local clinic. In those days, a Vermonter with sufficient funds and savvy could get a referral from the Clergy Counseling Service to a big-city provider, usually a doctor working in an unmarked room. Or she could fly to England to have the procedure. The U.K. legalized abortion in 1967.... Read more

The turkey was titanic: a 28-pounder, the largest I’d ever cooked. After brining it, lifting it out, drying it off, stuffing it, trussing it, and sticking it in the oven, I thought I was done wrestling with mammoth poultry. But I’d miscalculated the number of meat-eaters at our Thanksgiving meal: A projected 25 guests had dwindled to nine, and six were vegetarians. After dinner, I hauled the leftover meat into cold storage. Over the next few days, I moved heavy pots of mashed potatoes, tried to empty the brining container solo, and made about 16 quarts of turkey soup.... Read more

Act II of what promises to be a less than productive legislative biennium kicks off this week under Montpeculiar, Vermont’s beautiful golden dome. Everybody — Republican, Democrat and Progressive — wants to reduce the property-tax burden, lower health-care costs and protect the environment.

But don’t get your hopes up.

In fact, the loudest and clearest voices pointing us in the directions we need to go are coming not from our elected officials who winter in Montpelier, but from folks who work outside of the state capital.... Read more

BURLINGTON — When Fletcher Allen Health Care announced in September that it would be axing the Claire M. Lintilhac Nurse Midwifery Services, the news took patients and nurses by surprise. Even the program’s namesakes didn’t see it coming. The decision meant that FAHC would no longer provide 24-hour nurse-midwife services to several dozen expectant mothers.... Read more