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Only in America, as the song says—only in America are there enough mass shootings in a single week to allow pundits and philosophers to make complicated points about the nature of responsibility and guilt that elsewhere might exist only in the realm of gruesome thought experiments. Having instructed us that the first of this week’s mass shootings was free from any ideological taint at all—that the Planned Parenthood killings were the work of a lone nut, completely...

W hen I speak in my capacity as a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University or as an entrepreneur with a company worth $1.3bn, there is an assumption that I had a privileged background, one of affluence. In fact I grew up in poverty on public assistance with an alcoholic father and a mother impaired by a stroke who was chronically depressed and attempted suicide many times. My father was jailed repeatedly and we were evicted from our home on quite a few occasions. [For more of this...

It’s a debate that comes up over and over again, particularly right after tragic mass shootings like the one that took 14 lives Wednesday at a social services center in San Bernardino, California. Opponents of gun control argue that if the employees at Inland Regional Center had been armed, they could’ve protected themselves. Advocates say the key isn’t more firearms, but more gun control. So what does science say about whether gun ownership makes us safer? It says very...

The first time I heard a preschooler explaining a classmate’s disruptive behavior, I was surprised at how adult her 4-year-old voice sounded. Her classmate “doesn’t know how to sit still and listen,” she said to me, while I sat at the snack table with them. He couldn’t learn because he couldn’t follow directions, she explained, as if she had recently completed a behavioral assessment on him. Months before either of these children would start kindergarten,...

When a family has been divided by divorce, it creates added stress during the holidays with regard to visitation, gift giving and attending year-end school events. But it doesn't have to be that way. Divorced parents can set aside their differences; focus on communication, cooperation and compromise; and make the holidays less stressful on everyone. This was Ted and Linda's goal when they split up. "Since our separation happened just before Thanksgiving, Ted and I realized we needed to...

A s if it weren't enough to experience abuse, neglect, homelessness, hunger, or some combination of all of those things, many children face a world of adults who don't really understand how to help. Study after study documents the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on a person's health and brain development. Most recently, research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that the more ACEs people had, the higher their risk of suffering heart disease,...

An international group of scientists meeting in Washington called on Thursday for what would, in effect, be a moratorium on making inheritable changes to the human genome. The group said it would be “irresponsible to proceed” until the risks could be better assessed and until there was “broad societal consensus about the appropriateness” of any proposed change. The group also held open the possibility for such work to proceed in the future by saying that as knowledge...

In 2013, an obese man went to Hvidovre Hospital in Denmark to have his stomach stapled. All in all, it was ordinary bariatric surgery — with one big exception. A week before the operation, the man provided a sperm sample to Danish scientists. A week after the procedure, he did so again. A year later, he donated a third sample. Scientists were investigating a tantalizing but controversial hypothesis: that a man’s experiences can alter his sperm, and that those changes in turn may...

Nearly half of U.S. homes don't have a landline and rely on cellphones instead, according to a federal report out this week. The number predictably has been climbing over the years, now surpassing even the households with both a landline and a mobile phone. And it's tracked by of all agencies the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [For more of this story, written by Alina Selyukh, go...

Twenty years ago — under threat from Congress — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped studying gun violence. That didn't stop Dr. David Livingston and his colleagues: In a new study, the researchers in Newark, N.J., found — among other things — that over a 12-year period, gunshot wounds have gotten more lethal, and that more patients had multiple wounds. Livingston explains the results. [For more go...

Connecting with ACEs Connection has helped me to see and meet so many caring, compassionate people. Every time I visit this site I find something enlightening and positive for me to think about. Thank you Jane and all of you who have shared your insights and your hearts and souls with me. I am bird with wings–with song

The San Francisco Bay Area—stretching from San Jose and Silicon Valley in the south to Oakland, Berkeley, and the city of San Francisco in the north—is the world’s foremost tech hub. But the city and region also suffer from deepening urban challenges such as an acute housing affordability crisis and rising inequality. Congestion in the area is rising, commute times have become unbearable, and long-time residents and even members of the creative class are being priced out of...