Nevada

If it sometimes seems like the idea of antibiotic resistance, though unsettling, is more theoretical than real, please read on. Public health officials from Nevada are reporting on a case of a woman who died in Reno in September from an incurable infection. Testing showed the superbug that had spread throughout her system could fend off 26 different antibiotics. “It was tested against everything that’s available in the United States … and was not effective,” said Dr. Alexander Kallen, a medical officer in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of health care quality promotion...

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Marijuana legalization will unleash misery on Arizona, according to a wave of television ads that started rolling out across the state last month. Replete with ominous music, the advertisements feature lawmakers and teachers who paint a bleak future for Arizona’s children if voters approve Proposition 205, a measure that would allow people aged 21 and over to possess an ounce of pot and grow up to six plants for recreational use. “Colorado schools were promised millions in new revenues” when the state approved recreational pot use, says the voiceover in one ad. Instead, schoolchildren were plagued by “marijuana edibles that look like candy”...

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As a nurse practitioner, Wanda Liddell knew it was a medical emergency when she saw one of her patients struggling to breathe last month. But in her backcountry town of Cross City, Florida, the ambulance took 30 minutes to arrive. Even worse, it was another 45 miles to the nearest hospital. Liddell faces this situation often and always wonders, what if? She is one of many medical providers working in towns 30 miles or more from a hospital, a distance that can make the difference between life or death...

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