VegetarianInBoston
Maynard S. Clark's Veggie and Boston Blog talks about vegetarian topics AND Boston-related topics, often intersecting them interestingly.
Maynard S. Clark is a long-time and well-known vegan in Greater Boston, who often quips in his 'elevator pitch':
"I've been vegan now for over half my natural life, longer than most human earthlings have been alive."
Investigation of the benefits of a vegan lifestyle may for some deep doubters need to come from someone incredibly hip and stylish. I don't care much for Woody Harrelson, and when he appeared on a late night comedy TV show this past week, I had no idea he was and is consistently vegan, but I learned that the next day from online postings the next day. Could he persuade anyone to tumble head over heels for tofurkey?
Here's what Wynter Mitchellsays in his blog (these are NOT my words):
In this month's Maxim, actor Woody , who stars in next month's "Zombieland," discusses how a chance meeting with a girl made him become a vegan. When the stranger promised him it would cure his chronic acne, he claims the decision turned his life around.
The actor claims a meat and dairy diet ruined his skin and left him lethargic and sluggish. He's been on a raw food diet for 25 years. He tells the monthly, "I used to eat burgers and steak, and I would just be knocked out afterward; I had to give it up."
"The first thing was dairy. I was about 24 years old and I had tons of acne and mucus. I met some random girl on a bus who told me to quit dairy and all those symptoms would go away three days later. By God she was right."
Recently on "Top Chef Masters," the chefs were challenged to provide a vegan lunch for charming and Zooey Deschanel and about 20 of her friends. Simple right? Except she's gluten intolerant and doesn't eat soy. In other words, everything on her plate has to be totally raw. Explains her dewy skin and cheery outlook.
It got me thinking, who are some of the coolest vegans in Hollywood? And more important, will they have any impact on my rather bad eating habits? Here are Hollywood Top Ten Coolest Vegans That Could Talk Me Into A Raw Food Diet:
10. Prince (especially if he put it into song)
9. Alec Baldwin
8. Olivia Wilde
7. Lenny Kravitz (see Prince)
6. Shania Twain
5. Fiona Apple
4. Kathy Freston
3. Zooey Deschanel
2. Casey Affleck
1. Ginnifer Goodwin
So, if anyone is interested in giving me a lesson in converting my junk-only diet into something of value and worth, and you are one of the top listed above, I'm available. photo courtesy of veganbenalaru.files.wordpress.com
Today at lunchtime I attended an HSPH presentation on www.mocamobile.org (MIT and HSPH developers for global health applications by cellphone/wireless devices that transmit photos and patient info to secure servers) and www.dossia.org (employer-insured systems that collaborated with MIT and HSPH developers - builds in patient incentives to personal responsibility for maintaining and developing personal wellness).
Today at lunchtime I attended an HSPH presentation on www.mocamobile.org (MIT and HSPH developers for global health applications by cellphone/wireless devices that transmit photos and patient info to secure servers) and www.dossia.org (employer-insured systems that collaborated with MIT and HSPH developers - builds in patient incentives to personal responsibility for maintaining and developing personal wellness).
Dr. Leon Eisenberg, who conducted some of the first rigorous studies of autism, attention deficit disorder and learning delays and became a prominent advocate for children struggling with disabilities, died on Sept. 15 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 87.
Dr. Leon Eisenberg
The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Dr. Carola Eisenberg.
The field of child psychiatry was dominated by Freudian psychoanalysis when, in the late 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Eisenberg began conducting medical studies of children with developmental problems. Working at Johns Hopkins University with Dr. Leo Kanner, who first described autistic behavior, Dr. Eisenberg completed the first detailed, long-term study of children with autism, demonstrating among other things that language problems predicted its severity.
In a similar study among children who were developing normally, Dr. Eisenberg showed that reading difficulties early in school predicted behavior problems later on.
In the 1960s, he performed the first scientific drug trials in child psychiatry, testing stimulants like Dexedrine and Ritalin to soothe the behavior of children identified as “delinquent” or “hyperkinetic.” These studies, which became the basis for drug treatment of what is now called attention deficit disorder, ran counter to psychoanalytic theories on the most effective treatments.
“Leon took a very courageous stand and denounced the way psychiatry treated children, this whole system in which we had a few rich kids and their parents getting psychoanalysis five days a week and still not being cured,” said C. Keith Conners, a professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. “No one even knew what a cure looked like. He had this conviction that nothing was being done for the bulk of children who needed help, and that we had very little scientific data to guide us.”
Dr. James Harris, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Johns Hopkins University, said that Dr. Eisenberg was “the pivotal person in 20th-century child psychiatry who moved the field from simple descriptions of childhood disorders to actually looking at the science behind both the diagnosis and treatment.”
Leon Eisenberg was born in Philadelphia on Aug. 8, 1922, the eldest child of immigrants from Russia. He earned his undergraduate degree and, in 1946, his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, before taking an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where he developed an interest in psychiatry. He completed his psychiatric residency at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Towson, Md.
After two years in the Army teaching physiology (Carey incorrectly said psychology), in 1952 he began a residency at Johns Hopkins and his collaboration with Dr. Kanner. In 1967, he took over as chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he continued to publish and, among many other projects, helped formulate and carry out affirmative action policies at Harvard Medical School.
In 1980, he established the medical school’s department of social medicine, with the aim of applying the tools of social science to improving access to and practice of medicine worldwide.
In addition to his wife, a co-founder of Physicians for Human Rights, Dr. Eisenberg is survived by two children from a previous marriage, Kathy and Mark Eisenberg; two stepchildren, Alan and Larry Guttmacher; two sisters, Essie Ellis and Libby Wickler; and six grandchildren.
For two days last week, Harvard lowered its flags to half-staff in honor of Dr. Eisenberg.
In his later years, Dr. Eisenberg became increasingly alarmed at trends in the field he helped establish, criticizing what he saw as a cozy relationships between drug makers and doctors and the expanding popularity of the attention deficit diagnosis.
The diagnosis “has morphed from a relative uncommon condition 40 years ago to one whose current prevalence is 8 percent,” he wrote. “Correspondingly, the prescription of stimulant drugs has gone up enormously. The reasons are not self-evident.”
