Health and Human Services Sector

List: Longevity Is the Best Revenge

Drug Disposal Bill To Be Introduced Tuesday -- Whether Gavin Newsom Likes It or Not

Note: unused pills do not make appropriate Christmas gifts.​Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi has called off negotiations with drug manufacturers, and will on Tuesday introduce legislation setting up an industry-funded program encouraging consumers to return unused prescription drugs to pharmacies.With Ma ... More >>

New Leaf, LGBT Mental Health Center, Closing Doors

Sadly, New Leaf is being turned over​Exploding costs of health care benefits and leases will force New Leaf -- a 35-year-old San Francisco center serving the LGBT community with mental health, substance abuse, and HIV/AIDS services -- to close in October. The center's board of directors announced ... More >>

Southern Exposure, the Alembic's Free Radical Fighter

Tamara Palmer​The Alembic's version of the classic Southside cocktail includes a weirdly harmonic vegetable addition. Junipero gin, mint, lime, and sugar ― the typical ingredients ― are enlivened by a shot of fresh celery juice, upping the refreshment factor while creating an electric colo ... More >>

Alembic Rolling Out Barrel-Aged Beer Menu

::novocainated::The menu will gradually add all manner of wood-aged and wood-finished beers.​The Alembic is a respite from Upper Haight's head shops and spare changers with adorable pit bull mutts. But the bar known primarily for distinguished cocktails and tasty vittles will soon be offering ... More >>

Free Pulled Pork Sliders at Alembic Today, Starting at Noon

ldandersen/FlickrAs of yesterday, Alembic is serving lunch daily.​Upper Haight's Alembic (1725 Haight at Cole) is serving notice that it's now offering lunch seven days a week by handing out free pulled pork sliders today, starting at noon. The new lunch program kicked off yesterday, actually; ... More >>

Girl v. Autoimmune Disorder

Eating Unnaturally, Naturally

Bogus UCSF Hospital Booksellers Just the Latest Scammers From Shady Company

On Monday, we noted that San Franciscans were reporting door-to-door booksellers claiming to be fund-raising for UCSF Children's Hospital -- which was news to hospital officials. The UCSF Police have since confirmed that Terry Brisendine of the Michigan-based magazine clearinghouse World Wide Circul ... More >>

IHOP Pancake Giveaway to Benefit Local Hospital -- Depending Upon Your Definition of 'Local'

If you like eating pancakes and helping kids -- and don't particularly care where those kids are -- IHOP has a deal for youIn one of the more stunningly bad product tie-ins in recent memory, the good people over at the International House of Pancakes have declared next Tuesday to be National Pancake ... More >>

U.C. San Francisco Reports Young Rapscallion Book-Selling Scam

U.C. San Francisco has put out the word that anyone who receives an offer to buy books to supposedly benefit the city's Children's Hospital should do what those confronted with books did in Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 411: Call the authorities. Hospital officials have received reports of young men goin ... More >>

So Scary

Synthetic Biology Debate

Union, Heal Thyself

Will a lobbyist for a local healthcare union extend a bill proven bad for patients' health?

UCSF Is First Hospital in California with a Musician in Residence

More Proof Caffeine = The Devil

Alliance between SEIU and nursing home chains now defunct

The Darthies

The SF Weekly Noble Villain Awards. And the winner is ... you!

Onward, Christian Lawyers

Why lawsuits filed by anti-abortion activists may be a blessing in disguise for the California stem cell institute

The Politics of Cynicism

SEIU lobbies for nursing home chains. Clint Reilly vs. Jack Davis, redux. Kerry raises money for Reilly's wife. Fabulous. Absolutely Fabulous.

Partners in Slime

The California service employees' union and the nursing home industry join forces to increase corporate profit, grow union membership, and sell out abused nursing home patients

Bioscience Warfare

UC professor Tyrone Hayes found that a highly profitable weed killer causes sexual abnormalities in frogs. Then he found out how nasty a biotech multinational can be.

This Is Your Sport, on Dope

State Sen. Don Perata's bill on drug testing for pro athletes isn't nearly tough enough on doped-up athletes or their enablers

Staying Alive

An AIDS vaccine should be our government's highest priority. So why is one researcher forced to seek funding from the War on Terrorism?

Hospital, Heal Thyself

The rebuilding of the Laguna Honda nursing home is already three years behind schedule and millions over budget -- and the final plans aren't even finished yet

South to the Future

For Baby Boomers, the Doctor Is in ... the Bathroom

Bitter Medicine

How Naiveté, greed, and the new new thing brought Brown & Toland, San Francisco's largest doctors' group, to the verge of bankruptcy

Genes Without Frontiers

The so-called gene chip could revolutionize the way we treat cancer patients. That is, if biotech firms don't keep it out of doctors' hands.

Dirty Laundry

Literally and figuratively, the UCSF-Stanford hospital merger gets fouler every day

Sticking Point

An AIDS vaccine designed by renowned researcher Don Francis is in final testing. The Plague could be over - but the gay and scientific establishments are utterly unenthused.

Science of the Lambs

Buying Dolly the duplicated sheep has brought researchers at the Bay Area's Geron Corp. to the threshold of remarkable frontiers in transplants and cloning. Do we want to follow their lead?

Drug Warfare

A Marin pharmacist sticks up for the little guys, and gets run over

Dog Bites

Sutter's Empire Strikes Back

Two lawsuits allege conflict of interest, sharp dealing

Sutter's Giant Sucking Sound

Sutter Health, which owns one of California's largest hospital empires, is a nonprofit, tax-exempt charity. Critics wonder why Sutter dispenses so little charity, and vacuums so much profit, from the hospitals it acquires.

Daring Daylght Merger

The Merger's Tangled Web

Dog Bites

Unhealthy Debate

There's a new and nasty labor-management war. Health care is the battlefield. San Francisco is the front line.

Temperature Rising

The UCSF-Stanford merger goes under a (symbolic) gun

Pinstriped Medicine

How the UCSF-Stanford hospital merger foreshadows the new -- and sometimes frightening -- world of health care

The Grid

Dog Bites

A Wasting of Time

An existing drug offers hope for AIDS wasting syndrome -- if you can get it

In Sickness and in Wealth

It's merge or be merged out for teaching hospitals like Stanford's and UCSF's

Dog Bites

Topic of Cancer

South San Francisco biotech firm Genentech just says no to women battling breast cancer

As They Lay Dying

Breast cancer activists rage at Genentech for withholding an experimental drug

Hep Help

Why Medi-Cal Makes Doctors Sick

Money, paperwork and stigma