More lefties may also mean more self-expression. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people who are allowed to follow their left-handedness are also more likely to follow other instincts: In one study, gay participants were 39 percent more likely to be left-handed than heterosexual participants.

  More lefties could mean more military innovation: Famous military leaders, from Charlemagne to Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar to Napoleon—as well as Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf—were left-handed.

  So were famous criminals Billy the Kid, Jack the Ripper, and the Boston Strangler.

  It could also mean more art and music greats—Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Pablo Picasso, Ludwig van Beethoven, and, yes, Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney were all lefties.

  It will almost certainly mean better tennis and baseball players. Tennis greats from Rod Laver to Jimmy Connors to John McEnroe to Martina Navratilova have used down-the-line forehands to overwhelm opponents’ weaker backhands.

  And baseball—where “southpaw” comes from (baseball fields are built so batters can face east, to avoid the afternoon sun, which means that pitchers’ left arms face south)—will certainly benefit. Left-handed players can’t play four of the nine positions on a baseball team—as catcher, second base, shortstop, or third base, they’d have to take too many steps to field the ball and throw to first—but for the same reason, they have a distinct advantage in the other five positions. And from Babe Ruth to Ted Williams to Barry Bonds, left-handed hitters have the upper hand: Not only do right-handed pitchers’ breaking balls play to their strength, but their positioning, plus the momentum of lefty batters’ swings, gets them closer to first base.

  More lefties could also mean more humor: Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Bernie Mac, Ben Stiller, and Matt Groening (and his creation, Bart Simpson) are all left-handed.

  And it could mean more executive greatness. Corporate titans Steve Forbes, Ross Perot, and Lou Gerstner are left-handed. So was every U.S. president since Gerald Ford, except Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. (In 1992, America had its first and only all-lefty presidential campaign: George H. W. Bush vs. Bill Clinton vs. Ross Perot.)

  From a lefty’s perspective, consumer relief is long overdue. If you are a lefty or live with one, you know how miserable it is for lefties to try to use scissors, can openers, three-ring binders, grapefruit knives, corkscrews, or other basic items designed for right-handed people. The left-handed co–chief executive of Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, has admitted that with its right-side tracking wheel and scroll button, the BlackBerry was designed with only the righty in mind. But so far, it hasn’t been cost-effective to design one for lefties.

  But now lefties are on the march, growing in numbers—and it won’t be long before marketers stop shunning them and instead grab the edge in the lefty marketplace, with more swappable handles on their products and more alternative southpaw versions.

  The bottom line is that the rise of Southpaws means not just that we’ll have more lefties in school and in the workplace—but also that society is becoming more open, more tolerant, and ultimately more able to build on self-expression instead of suppressing it. The percentage of left-handed people may seem like an insignificant detail, but in fact, a society that tolerates people working with different hands, and encourages parents to let their children develop as feels natural to them, is also likely to tolerate a lot of other freedoms. The percentage of lefties in a society may actually be one of the best indicators we have of whether a society is open and flexible or rigid and overbearing. I, for one, wouldn’t want to live in a society that didn’t encourage handedness of all types.

  DIY Doctors

  In the past twenty years, the number of practicing doctors in America has nearly doubled. So you would think, with all those new doctors running around, that Americans would be consulting their medical professionals at every opportunity.

  They’re not. In fact, the biggest trend in American health care is DIYDs—Do-It-Yourself Doctors. These are people who research their own symptoms, diagnose their own illnesses, and administer their own cures. If they have to call on doctors at all, they either treat them like ATM machines for prescriptions they already “know” they need, or they show up in their offices with full-color descriptions of their conditions, self-diagnosed on WebMD.

  If they can afford it, they buy their own ultrasound machines so they can check in on their fetuses every night. They sit in corporate boardrooms and compare sizes and shapes of skin moles, trading acquired wisdom about the chances of cancer and best practices on removal. In the old days, homemade medical care meant chicken soup and rest. Now, patients are taking their lives into their own hands, and the old doctor-patient relationship is becoming more like vendor-client—at least for a growing niche of patients who think they know what they need to know.

  One proof of the DIYD trend is in the surge of over-the-counter drug sales. In the past forty years, retail OTC sales have grown nearly 10-fold—from under $2 billion to over $15 billion per year. And we’re not talking just the occasional plop-plop-fizz-fizz. It’s $15 billion worth of analgesics, antihistamines, antacids, laxatives, and lotions. These days, even treatments like Xenical, a fat-absorbing diet pill, are going OTC. In the past, a treatment like that would never have been made available OTC, no matter how safe it was. It would have been left to the doctors. But now, patients want it all for themselves.

  Another indication of do-it-yourself medicine is that Americans are flocking to CAM, or non-doctor-provided Complementary and Alternative Medicine, like chiropractic, acupuncture, and massage. In 1997, Americans spent more in out-of-pocket fees for CAM providers than for all of our hospitalizations. As of 2002, more than 1 in 3 American adults (36 percent) said they have used such alternative medicines.

  Source: ACNielsen, 2005

  Of course, it is the Internet that is making it possible for so many Americans to play a little doctor. While in 2005, 117 million people used the Internet to seek out health-related information, this number jumped to 136 million in 2006—a 16 percent increase in a single year. Health information is now one of the top things people seek out online. And why not? Whereas having a personal medical question used to mean a long, expensive, and potentially embarrassing trip to the doctor, now you can just type into your favorite search engine anything from “bipolar disorder” to “yeast infection,” and in a couple of minutes you feel like you went to medical school.

  Doctors may not like the trend, but they are part of the reason people are turning to self-care. Between 2000 and 2004, deductibles and co-pays involved in doctors’ visits more than doubled. Fully 3 in 5 Americans say they worry about medication errors in the hospital. (As they should—according to the Institute of Medicine, hospital errors kill more people every year than either car accidents or breast cancer. And each year, hospital infections kill five times as many Americans as AIDS.) The truth is, public confidence in people running medical institutions has fallen faster and further than just about any other leading societal institution.

  Source: Courtesy of Robert Blendon, from Harris 1966–2004, Harvard Public Health Review

  So with medicines and medical information directly available—and doctors less well regarded—why not try it yourself?

  At the forefront of the DIYD charge is women, which is perhaps not surprising since women make the health care decisions in over 70 percent of American households. Women also have a history of medical independence—before the rise of professional doctors, it was mostly “old wives” and “home remedy” makers who delivered America’s health care.

  DIYers are young, too. That’s not only because young people are zippier on the Internet, but also because today’s 20- and 30-somethings—having grown up with easy OTCs, and having been treated with more psychiatric medications for depression, anxiety, and attention deficit disorder than any generation in history—think of diagnoses and medicines as a routine part of life. A disturbing number of them even trade prescription meds without their doctors’ help. To them, taking charge of their own health management is as natural as arranging their favorite music on their iPods.

  DIYDs are having a big impact. Drug companies have seen the power of direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads, like the ones that swamp TV nightly for Viagra, Cialis, and “Ask Your Doctor if the Purple Pill Is Right for You.” While they still spend the bulk of their marketing dollars on doctors, the growth in DTC ads has been dramatic: in 1997, drug companies spent about $1 billion on DTC ads; by 2004, it was over $4 billion.

  DIYDs also signal an irreversible shift in the role of American doctors. In 1970, Marcus Welby, M.D. was watched by a staggering 1 in 4 households in America. He was adored for his nurturing, paternalistic style with his (mostly female) patients. But that era is gone forever. Now reared on the Internet, and increasingly distrustful of doctors and hospitals, more and more Americans—especially the women—see themselves as their doctors’ partners at best, and their supervisors at worst. Especially when it comes to children. My mother took our pediatrician’s word as gospel. My wife, on the other hand, consults three or four doctors (and two dozen friends) on whether or not our four-year-old should get a flu shot. Doctors used to field questions only when things went wrong and the lawyers arrived. Now they play 20 Questions just trying to administer a routine vaccine.

  In the future, expect more egalitarian relationships between doctors and patients, including greater e-mail correspondence. In 2005, only 8 percent of adults said they use e-mail with their doctors—but 81 percent said they would like to. Doctors will have to figure out a way to charge for e-mail consults first—they would no doubt like to help patients this way, especially existing patients, but perhaps not at the expense of all their office visits. Once the payment system catches up, though, look for more e-consults.

  We can also anticipate even more pressure on the Federal Drug Administration to move more medicines from prescription-only to OTC. Already, we can get about 700 more medicines OTC today than we could thirty years ago, but that may not be sufficient for hard-core DIY Docs.

  Is DIYD a good trend? Since people can’t sue themselves for malpractice, we may never know. Of course, we may see more lawsuits against drug companies for insufficient disclosure of information, which is even more critical in self-treatment. (Although, really, how much longer or more detailed could those drug warning labels be?)

  DIYDs certainly free up a lot of doctor time, if people treat themselves instead of coming in. And since for every person out there studiously investigating his or her own medical condition, there are probably at least a few others failing to just follow the doctor’s orders—docs might be able to spend more time being proactive with those who need it.

  But a rise in self-medication will no doubt mean a rise in misdiagnoses and drug errors, as well as delays in going to a doctor who might have picked up critical early-warning signs. While it is ultimately up to patients to weigh those risks against the chances of doctor error, and against their increasing suspicion that they know as much as their doctors, it is the doctors who may have to contend with lawsuits that blame them for mishaps anyway. It’s one thing to happily move the DIYDs off the docket when it comes to weight loss, baldness, and erectile dysfunction—and the drug companies are just as happy to have those people as direct customers. But when patients are second-guessing doctors on cancer treatments, DIYDs are a whole new challenge.

  Nevertheless, DIYDs are here to stay. And while Web sites are getting better at providing medical information, it’s still not really a well-oiled system. Patients don’t really know when they can take charge and when they should get to a doctor’s office ASAP. They don’t really know when they are right and the establishment is wrong. And like all do-it-yourselfers, they don’t really know what they don’t know. Years ago, basic first-aid was a mandatory course in schools and camps—perhaps it is time for a course in Web medicine, so that young people can acquire guidelines for self-treatment, and learn how to navigate the health care maze. Maybe DIYDs—like nurse practitioners but on a smaller scale—can even become certified to practice DIY medicine. It wouldn’t let their Moms brag that Junior is a doctor—but it might make them feel better about the fact that Junior never goes to one.

  Hard-of-Hearers

  A 2006 survey found that Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have the highest favorability ratings of any U.S. presidents in the past forty years. Here’s what else they have in common: They are the only two sitting presidents to have admitted they were hard of hearing.

  When they announced it, people sat up and listened, because it was happening to them, too. In 2000, the number of Americans with hearing loss reached almost 30 million, more than double what it had been in the 1970s. That’s 1 in every 10 Americans, straining to hear, or missing out on sounds entirely.

  Source: American Speech-Hearing-Language Association, 2007

  A generation ago, the most common sensory problem in America was poor eyesight. First, contact lenses made glasses practically obsolete, and now Lasik is making contacts practically obsolete. Maybe you heard about how the Navy can’t staff submarines anymore, because the sub jobs used to go to sailors whose bad eyesight disqualified them for pilot jobs. But now that eye surgery is not only routine, but free, at the U.S. Naval Academy, everyone wants to be a pilot.

  What myopia was for all those prior generations, hearing loss now is. Hearing devices may be small enough these days that schoolkids who need them won’t be taunted with cries of “Four Ears”—but deafness is definitely the hot new sensory malfunction in America.

  Most hearing loss in the U.S. is sensorineural, which means it’s caused by damage to the inner ear or to the pathways between the inner ear and the brain. Since a lot of that happens with aging, our hearing loss incidence is of course increasing. We have more people over 65 in America than ever (about 35 million), and something like one-third of people in that age range are hard-of-hearing. About half of all people aged 75 and older are, too.

  But according to the Deafness Research Foundation, about 1 in 3 cases of hearing loss in the U.S. is not about aging, but is purely about noise. And we are bringing it on ourselves. In the old days, when we used to lose our hearing to noise, it was from manufacturing equipment or artillery fire. Advances in technology, and the mainstreaming of protective gear, pushed those causes way down. But now, the hard-of-hearing numbers are actually higher, and it’s all about leisure and entertainment.

  Have you been to a teen movie lately? I can’t even sit through the previews without earplugs. It’s like when a country with runaway inflation decides to revamp its currency, and suddenly 10,000 rupees becomes 1 rupee. Sitting in the movie theater, with the teens happily munching the popcorn and not even seeming to notice the volume, I feel like someone has suddenly changed the baseline on what amount of noise is “normal.”

  Here’s how aurally toxic our daily life is. Noise reaches the potential for permanent damage at about 85 decibels. Now look at our daily lives. Hair dryers, which some people use every day for many minutes at a time—oblivious to ringing telephones, crying children, and eloquent spouses—come in at 90. A snowmobile comes in at 100. The noise on a subway platform is 105. In an airplane cabin, it’s 110. A rock concert is 120. Apparently, nine seconds into a rock concert, you experience hearing loss.

  And the verdict on iPods is still out. With 100 million of these portable music players around the world tucked into people’s ears, lawsuits, and lawmaker inquiries about their effects on hearing loss, have already begun. The French government recently outlawed the sale of MP3s that can play over 100 decibels. Apple, iPod’s manufacturer, has upgraded its software to allow consumers (or their parents) to put a volume cap on individual machines.

  But whether it’s music, movies, hair dryers, or travel, our daily lives are fraying our auditory nerves. Demographically, it’s worse for men than for women, with almost 12 percent of men aged 65–74 experiencing tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. Blacks have better hearing than whites or Hispanics. There are geographic differences, too. Southerners have tinnitus at almost twice the rate of Northeasterners. Could it have something to do with being outdoors more?

  Entrepreneurs are working hard to capture the growing hard-of-hearing market. When President Clinton went public with his hearing loss, he was already sporting a sleek little digital hearing aid planted deep in the ear canal. It was a far cry from the “Mickey Mouse Ears” that used to hang off a person like a telephone, literally funneling sound deeper into their ears. But even in the past decade, hearing aids have gotten much smaller and more effective. There have also been big advances in surgery that let people with profound hearing loss hear things they never would have.

  But as deafness climbs among the boomers, and among vocal young people, there’s bound to be a great deal more. Look for bionic ear processors, single-chip implants that can be placed in a body and run without battery replacements for fifteen years. Look for the development of antioxidant drugs, which reduce the presence of free radical oxygen molecules that kill the delicate hair cells of the inner ear. Look for stem cell researchers to tout the possibility of regenerating damaged inner ear cells.

  And look for a public health campaign against noise. Like tobacco addiction and sun damage, if it gets you when you’re young, you will probably never recover. It’s a ripe issue for public activism—except, of course, for the challenge of being heard in Washington without shouting.

  Already, the hard-of-hearing and deaf community has moved quite mainstream. The first deaf Miss America, Heather Whitestone, was crowned in 1995. Both the National Football League and Major League Baseball have fielded deaf players—Kenny Walker of the Denver Broncos, and William “Dummy” Hoy of the old Washington Senators. In 2001, Rush Limbaugh announced he had suffered sudden hearing loss, caused by an autoimmune inner ear disease. And deaf actress Marlee Matlin, who at 21 was the youngest person ever to win a Best Actress Oscar (for the deaf-themed Children of a Lesser God), has since had cameo appearances as everything from the hearing-impaired embryologist on Law and Order: SVU, to the hearing-impaired tennis lineswoman on Seinfeld, to—my personal favorite—the hearing-impaired pollster on The West Wing.