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I am nosy about a lot of things, most of them deeply petty. I have confronted fellow passengers who are misusing overhead luggage space, and I will gossip for 47 minutes about the wedding of a couple I’ve never met, and the amount to which I don’t mind my own business is astonishing. But I cannot, cannot manage to care what genitalia is between other humans’ legs, and I cannot understand those who do. (Monica Hesse, 10/23)

The Trump administration wants to strip the basic rights of my daughter and millions of other LGBTQ Americans. I am the proud parent of two daughters, one of whom is transgender. This proposed change is ugly, intentional, and un-American. The administration seeks to amend crucial legal definitions to intentionally preclude the transgender community from the basic protections and civil rights all other U.S. citizens enjoy. (Ashley Nurkin, 10/23)

Back in 2010, I had an emotional conversation with a woman I am proud to call my closest transgender friend. She’s Lynn Conway, one of the most important pioneers in the history of electrical engineering and computer science, whose distinguished career spans industry and academia. She’s also a pioneer and a leader in transgender advocacy, having started her gender transition in the 1960s. (Michael Hiltzik, 10/23)

Sandra Day O’Connor announced Tuesday that she has been diagnosed with dementia that is “probably Alzheimer’s disease,” and this is one more service she has rendered her country. Millions of Americans know the special pain of a loved one with dementia, and tens of millions more will in future decades. It can be traumatic to admit even to close relatives, much less to the world, that you are suffering from this terrible affliction. To see the famous jurist, the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, bravely face such a trial will no doubt help others do the same. (10/23)

I’ve worked nearly my whole life in national security, and have seen our country face countless threats, from terrorist attacks to natural disasters. But few crises have been as wide in scale, or as personal, as the opioid epidemic. Last year 72,000 people died of drug overdoses. Particularly devastating has been the growing prevalence of the deadliest synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, which can be over 50 times as powerful as heroin. This trend has hit New England especially hard. In Massachusetts, an astounding 90 percent of fatal overdoses involved fentanyl, according to the state Department of Public Health. So if you ask me what is the greatest threat to our homeland — terror, climate change, pandemics — it would be difficult to ignore the one that is killing our citizens every single day. (Juliette Kayyem, 10/23)

As if people addicted to opioids don’t have enough trouble, shady operators have found a way to exploit them. Across the country, these “patient brokers” troll streets, drug courts and anywhere they might find people with addiction problems to lure them to treatment centers and “sober living homes” — usually illicit ones — in exchange for kickbacks. Internet and TV ads often promote the illegitimate facilities. And some phone hotlines, while offering to connect callers to legitimate treatment, instead collect referrals for facilities, selling them to the highest bidder. The scam is known as patient brokering, with brokers focused on making a buck instead of matching sick people with appropriate treatment. In a country with 2.1 million people suffering from opioid addiction, business is booming. (10/23)

Imagine if women everywhere had access to gene testing that could predict personalized benefits and side effects from each and every contraceptive method. Imagine hearing from your doctor or logging in to a private portal to discover that a hormonal IUD will be 99 percent effective for you, and it will increase your appetite and stop your monthly menstrual periods. And that the pill will be 91 percent effective for you, and give you clearer skin. (Megan Christofield, 10/23)

I never wanted to be a concussion expert. I know some of the world’s leading authorities on head injuries and I’m certainly not one of them, but “expert” is a relative term. My expertise comes from personal experience. During my two decades behind the wheel as a full-time Nascar driver, I suffered more than a dozen concussions. For a long time, I managed to keep most of them a secret, but then my symptoms got too severe to keep up the charade and I was forced to get help. (Dale Earnhardt, Jr., 10/23)

Issue 1 says Ohio will stop sending people who use drugs to prison. It will stop making them felons, a label that forever damages a person's ability to work and create a healthy alternative to a life centered around drugs. (Regrettably, under Issue 1, judges can still send people who possess drugs to jail.) Perhaps most importantly, Issue 1 redirects money away from prison (which often kills) and into treatment (which saves lives). Do I support Issue 1? Of course! I can't save my son, but maybe we can save yours ... or your daughter or cousin or friend or co-workers or next-door neighbor. Not one more. We have all suffered enough. (Laura Cash, 10/22)

Most people have heard of the Hippocratic oath, but not so many know the Maimonides Prayer for the Physician. It calls on doctors to do everything they can to preserve life, and adds something wise: “Grant that my patients may have confidence in me and in my art, and follow my directions and my counsel.” (Lisa DeAngelis, 10/23)