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Jan. 22, 2008, marks the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. If you would be interested in sharing your experience with abortion, pro or con, for a possible article, please e-mail me. Thanks!

My Sunday article on dialysis patient Waymond Blackmon is online here. You can use the comments to this post to comment on the article. I've gotten a couple of e-mails on it from readers and am awaiting their permission to post excerpts.

UPDATE: Reader Glenn Millis writes: "You kept saying people last for a long time on dialysis. Some people do. Young people mainly. Other's beat the odds. But the fact is that about 40% of the people starting dialysis at age 50 are dead in 5 years and 90% are dead in 10 years. One of the things many people think is that people can just do dialysis forever. They can't. They die. They end up being too sick to receive a transplant. Not all. But especially older people."

While I can't vouch for Millis's exact figures, he's right about depressed life expectancy for dialysis patients. My article said some people have lived on dialysis for decades, and that's accurate, but I should have made clearer that many dialysis patients don't, particularly older ones.

The U.S. Renal Data System has a report online (*.pdf file) that compares overall life expectancy at various ages with life expectancy at those same ages for dialysis patients (p. 8 in the 18-page report).

The numbers are sobering. Among the general population, people in the 25-29 age group can expect to live another 51.7 years, but among dialysis patients people in that age group can expect to live an average of 12.6 years. Members of the general population in the 50-54 age group can expect to live another 26.8 years, while dialysis patients in that group have an average life expectancy of 6.2 years. (The chart also includes life expectancy for people who have received transplants. As you would expect, the life expectancies are considerably longer for those patients than for dialysis patients.)

If the cardinal rule of medicine is "First, do no harm," what role, if any, should physicians have in state-sanctioned executions?

The New England Journal of Medicine recently hosted a round-table discussion on that topic. Although most of the Journal's online content is behind a pay firewall, they've got a transcript of that discussion out for public consumption. If you prefer, you can download the audio.

What do you think? Should physicians be involved in state executions? Can executions be carried out without them? And what's a state to do if physicians refuse to be involved?

(The Journal also has online an interesting article about the aftereffects of mild traumatic brain injury in soldiers returning from Iraq.)

Tomorrow and Wednesday I'll be taking part in the 14th annual Greater Greensboro Society of Medicine mini-internships. In this program, interns are paired up with primary-care physicians (1 day) and surgeons (1 day) and get to follow them ... well, basically everywhere, with very few exceptions. The idea is to give lay people in the community (my fellow interns include business people and clergy, among others) a first-hand look at how health care works from the doctor's perspective.

If there's anything in particular you're curious about, leave a note or question in the comments and I'll see if I can get an answer or description for you.

Mothers' Day has just come and gone and Fathers Day is coming up. I'd be interested in talking to couples who have been struggling with infertility. If you're in that situation and would be willing to talk about it for a story, or if you know someone who is, please get in touch.

I have been contacted by an area woman whose son, serving in the Army, does not wish to receive the mandatory (for soldiers such as he who are being deployed to high-risk areas) vaccination against anthrax. He is worried not only about reports of problems associated with that vaccine, particularly because he has a history of adverse reactions to other vaccines, including a seizure after a childhood DPT injection, the mother says.

I've found some Web sites and blogs that SAY the vaccination is dangerous, but so far I've not found any journal articles or government reports that address the safety question directly. Meanwhile, the soldier, who has received the first of three injections, is planning to refuse the others even at the risk of likely disciplinary action.

(In case it matters, I should point out that according to the mom, this soldier sought and received a transfer from the reserves to the regular Army specifically because he wanted to serve in Iraq. Not all soldiers must receive the anthrax vaccine, but those being sent to actual or potential trouble spots, such as the Middle East and Korea, must do so. This soldier's mom, however, says the recruiter told her son that the vaccination was purely optional. I have no evidence on that claim either way at this point.)

Can anyone out there point me in the direction of some disinterested research into the issue of anthrax-vaccine safety, or recommend experts to whom I can speak?

Cathy Rose, the nonsmoking woman I wrote about who was dying of lung cancer and spent her last weeks advocating for more spending on lung cancer research, died this morning. My condolences to her family.