If you want to help save the North Atlantic right whale, you should give up eating Atlantic lobster. This is according to the advocacy group Seafood Watch, which warns that the ropes used for lobster fishing can “entangle critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.” With just a few hundred whales left, they face extinction unless changes happen quickly. While efforts are underway to create a “whale-safe lobster” standard to identify crustaceans harvested with ropes, the best bet to help now is to avoid or severely limit your lobster intake.

If you want to understand the impact of polio – if you want to comprehend the heartbreak polio victims feel about the return of infantile paralysis – if you want to sense the bewilderment that polio victims feel about vaccine skepticism – then walk a mile in Stacy Smith’s shoes.

DEAR DOCTORS: My wife read somewhere that when kids grow up with a do in the house, it can keep them from getting schizophrenia. I know that having a pet can help kids develop responsibility, but preventing mental illness seems like a stretch. Is this based on psychology — or something else?

My husband, Peter, and I are spending time 'up north' with my parents at their cabin by the lake. Fall is late this year. I mentioned this to Peter on the drive north.