"In the northern Pacific Ocean, buried 20 meters below the ocean floor, are bacteria that live life in the extreme slow lane. They have not received any fresh sources of food since they were buried 86 million years ago, when dinosaurs still walked the land. Still, they cling to life by using up the little oxygen available to them at an incredibly slow rate."

"So, if you come in because you are pooping blood and it's serious enough that something needs to be done to stop the bleeding, you're in luck! We can do that. But if, say, you come in because you're tired and I notice that you are slightly anemic with a very low-grade lower GI bleed from your as-yet-undiagnosed colon cancer, well, that's unfortunate. Because I will be sympathetic, and I will tell you that you need to go get a GI doctor somewhere to agree to scope you, and good luck with that if you are not insured. Maybe you live in a county with a hospital for the indigent who can do that for you in six months, if you've the fortitude to stick with it through the byzantine process it will take for you to get into their clinic. Hopefully, they'll diagnose you before it metastasizes. But I'm going to give you a piece of paper and send you home. Regretfully, I should add. I care, but I can't give you the care you need in the ER."

"The implication here is that the ER discriminates inappropriately, either undertreating indigent children or overtreating insured children. This is not what the study says. It is, I hasten to add, a valid question, worthy of research. Bias based on socioeconomic status is a real factor in medicine, well documented, and should be looked into. But if you look at the very abstract of the study in question, it concludes: "It is unclear whether these patterns represent appropriate utilization.""

"According to University of Iowa researchers Vincent A. Magnotta and colleagues, any neuroscientist with an MRI scanner could soon be able to measure the acidity (pH) of the human brain in great detail."