This past week, the New York Times heralded a new theory of brain development as providing "psychiatry with perhaps its grandest working theory since Freud." ("In a Novel Theory of Mental Disorders, Parents' Genes Are in Competition," November 11, 2008) Even if the theory is flawed, the Times noted,...

This past week, the Bush administration reported a most welcome 30 percent drop in the number of chronically homeless people living in the nation's streets and shelters. According to a front page article in The New York Times, it attributed "much of the decline to the 'housing first' strategy that...

Ten years ago, while reading Ron Rosenbaum's Explaining Hitler, I came across a fact that was, to me, a revelation: Hitler's doctor, it seemed -- a man named Eduard Bloch -- was Jewish, and had lived in the Bronx all through World War II. So grateful was Hitler to his...

When a surveillance video surfaced on July 1 of Esmin Green collapsing and dying on the emergency room floor of Kings County Hospital's psychiatric ward while hospital workers stood idly by, city and hospital officials were outraged. They immediately fired people deemed responsible for the incident, and promised "significant...