SPORTS
June 19, 2011 | Jerry Crowe
Only months after wrapping up a 16-year major league career, Robin Ventura could barely walk without a cane. So intense was the discomfort in his right ankle, mangled in a slide earlier and deadened with painkillers thereafter, that the former All-Star third baseman found he lingered in bed a little longer each morning, unwilling to step into the day. "I didn't go places for a long time," Ventura volunteers, "because I didn't feel like getting...
HEALTH
April 25, 2011 | By Shara Yurkiewicz, Special to the Los Angeles Times
We enter the gross anatomy lab at 8 a.m. and spend the next two-and-a-half hours palpating bodies, cutting through skin and subcutaneous fat, probing muscle layers and searching for nerves and blood vessels. Before our first day, our anatomy professor spoke briefly about the special — and privileged — experience that lay ahead. "You will remember where you were standing," she said. "You will remember the first cut. " That cut was not our first interaction with the cadavers.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
March 19, 2011 | Sandy Banks
Helen Yoshikawa walked into the courtroom in downtown Los Angeles armed with four pages of talking points. Kathy Pahlow came loaded with questions. They knew they'd already lost their case, but this was their one chance to address UCLA's lawyers ? to explain that their dead parents were more than body parts and their failed lawsuit about more than money. "I wanted to have the satisfaction," Yoshikawa said, "of looking them in the eye and telling them who we were. I know some people would say it's a lost cause, but it didn't feel that way to me. " Pahlow and Yoshikawa were among dozens of family members who sued UCLA after a scandal erupted over its body donation program.
ENTERTAINMENT
September 2, 2010 | By Amy Silverstein, Special to the Los Angeles Times
This may be the 88th year that Angelenos have enjoyed the Los Angeles County Fair, but it may be the first year one can eat a ton of deep-fried novelties, work it off dancing to live music and finally see how that whole process happens in a display of real human cadavers. Adding a lot of science and a little bit of sideshow freakiness to the festival atmosphere, the exhibit "Our Bodies: The Universe Within" is making its first, non-museum debut at the fair this year. Opening Saturday and running until Oct. 3, the L.A. event is the biggest county fair in the nation, with an average attendance of 1.3 million people for each of the last five years.
SCIENCE
August 25, 2010 | By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
An experimental synthetic cornea implanted in 10 patients may be a potential alternative to cadaver corneas for curing vision loss due to corneal inflammation and scarring, researchers said Wednesday. Eye surgeons currently use primarily cadaver corneas for transplants, but that requires the use of anti-rejection drugs and presents a risk of infection. Plastic corneas can also be used, but they present other problems and are generally tried only when tissue transplants have failed.
HEALTH
August 10, 2009 | Steve Dudley
The first time I saw a dead body I was groping around in the dark in 125 feet of water looking for a drowning victim. A few members of my diving club had volunteered to help the grieving family find her: Collectively, we had enough brashness coupled with the insouciance of ignorance to go looking for this poor soul after the sheriff's divers said it was too dangerous at that depth. That's testosterone at work for you. We fanned out across the muddy bottom, holding onto a guide rope.