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Steve Heilig
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Steve Heilig is a healthcare ethicist, editor, epidemiologist, environmentalist, and ethnomusicologist based in San Francisco and Marin. Trained in public health, economics, and biology at five UC campuses, he has worked with many nonprofit organizations and hospitals and in biotechnology, and has authored over 500 articles on a wide range of topics, as well as over 100 diverse book reviews. With particular interest in reproductive health and rights, death and dying, environmental science and policy, and addiction medicine, he has lectured at the University of California, Stanford, and Harvard, is a co-editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, and is currently formally affiliated with the San Francisco Medical Society, California Pacific Medical Center, and Commonweal, a health and environmental institute. He is also a widely-published music journalist and author of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism, and a "City Brights" blogger for SFGate. His views here are his own.

Blog Entries by Steve Heilig

Still Drug Crazed After All These Years

(10) Comments | Posted May 15, 2013 | 11:39 AM

Mike Graydied recently, at 77 years of age, with prominent obituaries in some publications due to his status as a successful movie screenwriter -- his most famous screenplay being for The China Syndrome, which was released in 1979 and garnered him an Oscar nomination. The film had considerable...

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Hippocratic Philanthropy? Lessons From International Health Funding

(0) Comments | Posted April 25, 2013 | 6:11 PM

Has the vast amount of money and time spent to help Haiti recover from its devastating earthquake and long-term poverty really helped much? How about in other places worldwide? As national budget crunches spur more debate about "bang for our bucks," "foreign aid" comes under increasing scrutiny -- even though...

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Prince: The King of Everything Rocks On

(0) Comments | Posted April 25, 2013 | 12:52 PM

Prince might have been the oldest guy at his club gig in San Francisco this week. That is a trip in itself, but if his actual show is evidence, he's some sort of positive freak of nature for which age is just a number. Seeing him up close, full of...

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Dig This: Ephemeral Art From an Ephemeral Revolution

(1) Comments | Posted March 28, 2013 | 5:49 PM

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Back in the murky pre-history of San Francisco's fabled Haight-Ashbury, even before the fabled "Summer of Love" in 1967, let alone the ever-ongoing evolving tourisic version of it, were the Diggers. Not the "Digger Indians" or Paiutes -- although those Native Americans were close...

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Into the Wake of the Quake: A Witness to the Japanese Tsunami and Meltdown

(1) Comments | Posted March 21, 2013 | 2:32 PM

2013-03-21-facingwave.jpegTwo years ago this month, an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale off the northeastern coast of Japan unleashed the energy of 600 million Hiroshima bombs, followed by massive seismic tidal waves. The world's media reported intently on the...

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Health Policy Gurus Gather: The UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at 40

(0) Comments | Posted March 19, 2013 | 7:46 PM

At the recent 40th anniversary dinner of the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS) at San Francisco's beautiful City Hall rotunda, a tablemate remarked "If the big quake hit now and this place collapsed, American health care would have to start all over."

...
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Doctors' Orders: Let Gay People Marry -- It's a Healthy Thing to Do

(23) Comments | Posted March 6, 2013 | 9:49 AM

Way back in 2004, I received a semi-urgent request from then-Mayor Gavin Newsom that I show up down at San Francisco's City Hall to help preside over an expected onslaught of weddings. Happy to serve if needed, I showed up as requested. As it turned out, there were plenty of...

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A Belated 2012 Reading List: Some Favorite Titles

(0) Comments | Posted February 6, 2013 | 2:03 PM

This is something of a belated "best of year" list, although there are some older titles I only got to last year included. An eclectic list, modestly offered -- a bit heavy on books on music, but many others, and perhaps something will strike the interest of other readers.

Waging...

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Beat Poets, Acid Gurus, the Governor and Me

(0) Comments | Posted February 1, 2013 | 2:17 PM

A local saloon changing owners is rarely front-page news in the big city, but the recent sale of Tosca, in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, has received much attention. The much-beloved establishment had reportedly been losing money for some time, even though it has a great location on Columbus Avenue...

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Gun Policy and Safety: Doctors Know Best?

(34) Comments | Posted December 13, 2012 | 12:25 PM

Headline: - A lone gunman opened fire today in (San Francisco, Aurora, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Oak Creek...) and shot _____ innocent people, killing _____ people and wounding ____ more. " Politicians offered sympathy, but no solutions. Survivors were left to grieve without hope of change that might prevent more...

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Pro-Choice to the End: Taking More Control of Your Final Days

(1) Comments | Posted November 29, 2012 | 11:15 AM

2012-11-27-polstform.pngNobody gets out of here alive, as somebody said -- we all eventually die. But we don't like to talk about that, even with our doctors. And as the New York Times just editorialized, some politicians like it that way...

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GMOs in Food: Better Safe -- Or, at Least, Informed -- Than Sorry? (Or, Vote 'Yes' on California Proposition 37)

(4) Comments | Posted November 6, 2012 | 2:45 PM

Normally, I don't watch much television, but when the San Francisco Giants made the playoffs I made sure to catch every game. As an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect, I was exposed to many commercials and political messages. The ads -- which must have been extremely expensive ones -- were...

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A (Mormon?) Miracle? An Obama Endorsement From the Heart of Utah

(173) Comments | Posted October 25, 2012 | 12:27 PM

Perhaps the most notable endorsement of a candidate in this year's heated Presidential campaign has been relatively unremarked, and begins like this:

Nowhere has Mitt Romney's pursuit of the presidency been more warmly welcomed or closely followed than here in Utah. The Republican nominee's political and religious pedigrees, his...

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Death vs. Taxes: Does One Delay the Other?

(1) Comments | Posted October 23, 2012 | 5:31 PM

"Sugar, rum, and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessities of life, which have become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation." -- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

Some of the nastiest political battles in the health arena these...

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Stalking the Wild Pathogen: Viral Threats to Modern Humanity

(2) Comments | Posted October 1, 2012 | 5:46 PM

"This is the way the world ends; Not with a bang but a whimper." -- T. S. Eliot

Writers and filmmakers have long liked apocalyptic stories. In the last century the dominant cause of the end of humanity became a nuclear Holocaust, but a giant asteroid hitting Earth has also...

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Bad Bugs From an Unsustainable Meat-Producing Model

(8) Comments | Posted September 17, 2012 | 4:22 PM

"This is the way the world ends; Not with a bang but a whimper." -- T. S. Eliot

Writers and filmmakers have long liked apocalyptic stories. In the last century the dominant cause of the end of humanity became a nuclear holocaust, but a giant asteroid hitting Earth has also...

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9/11: Lessons Unlearned and the Coming Election

(6) Comments | Posted September 14, 2012 | 5:50 PM

On the morning of 9/11, I watched the tragedies in New York City with horror, as did millions. In San Francisco, I live in a neighborhood with some of the fanciest mansions in town just up the hill. Some of them are on a very curvy little one-lane street. Our...

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Marley and Me, Too: A Personal Tribute to the Reggae Icon

(3) Comments | Posted September 13, 2012 | 2:23 PM

Recently I was lucky enough to introduce a screening of the new documentary Marley on the life of reggae icon Bob Marley, at the wonderful Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, Calif. The "HML" has become the community center for that far-flung community, hosting films, musical performances...

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An Open Letter to Paul Ryan: Step Down

(5) Comments | Posted August 22, 2012 | 1:12 PM

Dear Mr. Ryan:

A belated congratulations on being selected as a candidate for vice president. However. One of your colleagues, Representative Todd Akin, is justly reaping his rewards for positing something idiotic and insulting about rape. Your party is justly asking him to step aside. Now, to be not only...

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Buzzard Poetry: An All-Star Tribute to Poetic Icon Lew Welch

(0) Comments | Posted July 20, 2012 | 2:58 PM

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Poet Lew Welch wandered off into the Sierra Nevada mountains back in 1971, leaving a brief note, a few books of poetry and other writings, and many friends and fans. No word has been heard from him since, and very little more of his...

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