Doctoral

Marine biologist Dan Madigan stood on a dock in San Diego and considered some freshly caught Pacific bluefin tuna. The fish had managed to swim 5,000 miles from their spawning grounds near Japan to California's shores, only to end up the catch of local fishermen. It was August 2011, five months since a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami had struck in Japan, crippling the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Madigan couldn't stop thinking about pictures he'd seen on TV of Japanese emergency crews dumping radioactive water from the failing reactors into the Pacific Ocean.

Oprah Winfrey recently informed the nation on "Good Morning America" that she "blew out her thyroid" at the end of last season because of stress. But that isn't exactly a medical term. No one blows out a thyroid, says endocrinologist Dr. Terry Smith of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. "What is that? Like a right rear tire on a Ferrari?" he asks.

Joe Paterno shifts uncomfortably on the couch of his office at Penn State University and makes a confession about his holier-than-thou image. "It scares the heck out of me," booms the hallowed football coach. "Because I know I'm not that clean. Nobody is that clean." "I don't want to appear to be any more than I am," says Paterno, now speaking in a near whisper. "And that's a good, hard-working coach who is a decent guy, a family guy, who doesn't want to cheat." "I lose my temper sometimes.

ONLY in the beauty world would something akin to electroshock therapy have a wait list. And a $300 price tag. But microcurrent facials have acquired near-mythical status among the Hollywood and fashion crowds and are now making their way into the mainstream. One of the more fabled practitioners, Joanna Vargas, decamps from Manhattan once each month, setting up shop in a discreet bungalow on the grounds of the Chateau Marmont.

President Kennedy's Addison's disease, which came to light only after his election in 1960, was most likely caused by a rare autoimmune disease, according to a Navy doctor who reviewed Kennedy's medical records. The disease, autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2, or APS 2, also caused Kennedy's hypothyroidism, according to a report published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Hard though it is to believe these days -- when a celebrity's smallest sneeze is analyzed -- Kennedy's family and advisors were able to keep his medical history virtually secret.

Frustrated with a changing healthcare system that has resulted in longer work days and less time with patients, a growing number of doctors in California and across the nation are turning to a new type of practice — concierge medicine. The model is simple: Doctors charge their patients an annual fee and in turn, give them more time and attention. Rising costs and shrinking insurance reimbursements have prompted doctors to search for innovative ways to keep their solo practices afloat.

In a rare case, a Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million in compensatory damages to a Porter Ranch doctor who contended insurance giant Anthem Blue Cross retaliated against him for being a strong patient advocate. The jury ruled late Monday in favor of Jeffrey Nordella, 58, an urgent-care and family-practice doctor who alleged that Anthem barred him from its network in 2010, when he applied to be a preferred provider. The damages could climb higher Friday, when the 12-person panel reconvenes and considers punitive damages against Anthem, a unit of insurance giant WellPoint Inc. The jury found that Anthem, the state's largest for-profit health insurer, violated Nordella's right to "fair procedure," and the company did so with "malice, oppression or fraud.

The PSA test should be abandoned as a prostate cancer screening tool, a government advisory panel has concluded after determining that the side effects from needless biopsies and treatments hurt many more men than are potentially helped by early detection of cancers. At best, one life will be saved for every 1,000 men screened over a 10-year period, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. But 100 to 120 men will have suspicious results when there is no cancer, triggering biopsies that can carry complications such as pain, fever, bleeding, infection and hospitalization.

A growing number of doctors are now convinced that for many people, too much iron in the blood is a bigger health problem than too little. "For years we were getting, 'Rah, rah, the more iron the better.' Now that has changed around completely," said Richard Stevens, a cancer epidemiologist at University of Connecticut Health Center who has studied the potential health risks of elevated levels of iron.

Should statin drugs be put in the water, or what? More than 13 million Americans are taking these medications to lower their cholesterol and hopefully stave off heart disease -- a job the drugs appear to excel at. Statins can lower "bad" LDL cholesterol by 20% to 60%. Over time, this can lower the risk of having a heart attack by about the same amount. For many years, it was believed that statins worked solely by reducing blood cholesterol, which can build up in sticky plaques in the arteries that supply blood to the heart, potentially blocking blood flow and causing heart attacks.