At the Gaelic Games in Malvern, PA on July 28, there was one attraction with no clear connection to Irish sports. The Einstein Medical Center of Philadelphia was there, offering free screenings for Tay Sachs Disease for those of Irish heritage. Tay Sachs is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder that can be passed on to children when both parents are carriers of an altered gene. … [Read more...] about Free Screenings for Tay Sachs Disease at Gaelic Games
Medicine
All About Autoimmunity Ask the Expert: Dr. Noel Rose
As a concept, autoimmunity can provoke unease – there’s something disconcerting about the thought of the body attacking itself; the processes that are meant to protect us running haywire and causing harm. Equally disconcerting is the fact that the underlying cause(s) of most autoimmune conditions are still unknown. Autoimmune diseases, a wide range of disorders whereby the … [Read more...] about All About Autoimmunity Ask the Expert: Dr. Noel Rose
The Great Hunger and the Celtic Gene
Thomas P. Duffy MD of the Yale School of Medicine explores why certain people survived the Great Hunger and reasons that the answer may lie in their gene pool. Shortly after the great Irish famine of 1847-49, the initial description appeared, in 1865, of a fatal disorder that compromised the liver and pancreas and resulted in bronzing or hyperpigmentation of the skin. Many … [Read more...] about The Great Hunger and the Celtic Gene
Irish Herbal Medicine
The oldest form of healing, long practiced in Ireland, proved just the thing for writer Jonathan Self. A leafy lane, not much more than a boreen really, dissects the middle of the Kingstons’ farmyard in Church Cross near Skibbereen. On one side lie the whitewashed farmhouse, weathered stone barns and tidy vegetable gardens typical of a traditional West Cork smallholding. On … [Read more...] about Irish Herbal Medicine
The Doctors
A selection of doctors, many of whom have been honored as Top 100 Irish Americans by this magazine, who are working to understand the pressing topics of our time. Neuroimmunology “This is such a hopeful time — a hopeful era for MS. We’ve seen this disease become a treatable disease in the last decade. But clearly the current therapies need to be started as soon as … [Read more...] about The Doctors