Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed

The Washington Post: How Mississippi May Be The State To Topple Nearly 50 Years Of Abortion Rights In America 
The battle plays out in dueling soundtracks. On one part of the sidewalk, longtime antiabortion demonstrator Coleman Boyd belts out a steady stream of Christian music, with lyrics about Jesus’s love for the unborn. “Your precious baby is going to be murdered in this place,” Boyd, a physician, preaches between songs. Nearby, supporters of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, turn up their own playlist of “Jagged Little Pill,” by Alanis Morissette, and other female empowerment anthems. (Wax-Thibodeaux and Cha, 8/24)

The Washington Post: Activists With ADHD Push For A World More Friendly To Those With The Disorder 
Jessica McCabe crashed and burned at 30, when she got divorced, dropped out of community college and moved in with her mother. Eric Tivers had 21 jobs before age 21.Both have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and both today are entrepreneurs who wear their diagnoses — and rare resilience — on their sleeves. With YouTube videos, podcasts and tweets, they’ve built online communities aimed at ending the shame that so often makes having ADHD so much harder. Now they’re going even further, asking: Why not demand more than mere compassion? Why not seek deeper changes to create a more ADHD-friendly world? (Ellison, 8/21)

AP: Clean Needles Depend On The Blue Blood Of Horseshoe Crabs
It’s one of the stranger, lesser-known aspects of U.S. health care — the striking, milky-blue blood of horseshoe crabs is a critical component of tests to ensure injectable medications such as coronavirus vaccines aren’t contaminated. To obtain it, harvesters bring many thousands of the creatures to laboratories to be bled each year, and then return them to the sea — a practice that has drawn criticism from conservationists because some don’t survive the process. (Kinnard, 8/20)

AP: Mental Health Online: Police Posts Of Crises May Traumatize
The videos are difficult to watch. In one, a man dangles over the edge of an Oklahoma City overpass, his legs swinging in midair as police grab his arms and pull him from the brink. In another, a woman hangs high above the Los Angeles Harbor as a half-dozen officers drag her, head-first, up the side of the bridge. The panicked voices of cops cry out, “We got you, we got you!” just before they pin her to the ground and pull out handcuffs. The short clips were posted on official law enforcement social media accounts, part of a longstanding practice by police agencies to showcase their lifesaving efforts online — especially in 2021 as desperation grows for positive press amid accusations of excessive force and racism following George Floyd’s murder, and rising gun violence and killings. But with renewed attention on officer interactions with people who are suffering from mental health issues, experts and advocates are taking another look at these posts with an eye toward whether they exploit the very victims law enforcement just saved. (Dazio, 8/23)

The Washington Post: The Cause Of This Baby’s Collapse Was Worse Than Anything His Parents Imagined 
Blair Fox awoke with a jolt as she realized that her 2-day-old son was no longer in her hospital room. While she was napping, Teddy Joe Fox, born Sept. 18, 2018, in Los Angeles, had been taken for a routine heart test in preparation for discharge, then transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit. Doctors, she was told, had found something that merited further investigation, although nurses tried to reassure her that “it most likely wasn’t anything to be concerned about.” “It felt very scary and confusing,” recalled Blair, now 37, as she and her husband Adam, 36, waited anxiously for the results of their son’s echocardiogram. The ultrasound of the newborn’s heart revealed a small hole, a finding the couple was told was common and would probably close on its own. (Boodman, 8/21)

The Washington Post: Metabolism Isn't To Blame For Middle-Age Weight Gain 
A lot of Americans have been fretting about the extra pounds they’ve put on during the pandemic. But if you believe your sluggish middle-aged metabolism has been contributing to your weight gain, it’s time to rethink. Researchers who conducted a study recently published in Science have new and surprising insights into how metabolism actually works as we age. “Our paper provides the first road map of metabolism across the life span,” says study co-researcher Herman Pontzer, professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and author of “Burn.” “Metabolism is incredibly steady from 20 to 60 years old, despite the widespread perception of our metabolisms slowing as we age,” Pontzer says. (Rosenbloom, 8/26)

The Wall Street Journal: Elizabeth Holmes’s Trial Could Reveal Her Side Of Theranos Story 
Since Theranos Inc. began to unravel in 2016, the blood-testing company’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes, has sought to tell her side of the story, even pursuing the possibility of a lucrative book deal. Now, at her coming criminal fraud trial, Ms. Holmes finally will get her best shot to tell it. After Theranos began imploding five years ago—with federal investigators building cases against her for allegedly misleading investors and patients about the company’s technology—Ms. Holmes remained convinced she had done nothing wrong, people close to her at the time recalled, and wanted a venue to profess her innocence. (Weaver and Randazzo, 8/26)

The Washington Post: Joey Chestnut Has Eaten 19,200 Hot Dogs. A New Study Says He Has Lost 1.3 Years Of His Life.
By his count, Joey Chestnut has eaten an average of 1,200 hot dogs a year for the last 16 years — but he insists he’s healthy overall. On Monday, the competitive eater who holds the world record for hot dog eating had a radish salad, some grilled chicken and a protein shake. “The only way I can continue doing it is by being healthy,” Chestnut, 37, told The Washington Post. “If I start gaining weight and start having issues with my body, then I won’t be able to push my body.” (Mark, 8/25)