For-Profit Universities: The Yugos of Higher Education
Who wants to buy a Yugo when it costs more than a Honda? Students at for-profit colleges take out many more student loans than regular college students, and they default on those loans at dramatically...
View ArticleWhooping Cough Epidemic: Blame The Anti-Vaccination Movement
California is suffering its worst outbreak of whooping cough in 60 years, with thousands of people falling ill and 9 deaths, all of the infants. The anti-vaccination movement is partly to blame.
View ArticleOsteopathic Physicians Versus Doctors
Osteopaths, or doctors of osteopathy, claim to be a separate but equal branch of medical care in the United States. Is this true?
View ArticleSecond Thoughts On Osteopathic Medicine
Osteopathic doctors have a different degree from conventional medical doctors, but their training and practice is largely identical.
View ArticleThe Feds Come Out Against Gene Patents. It's About Time.
The Justice Department has filed an amicus brief in the case challenging the patents on the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. For the first time, the U.S. government has stated explicitly that...
View ArticleAIDS Drugs – For Profit Or Not?
The debate of a dozen years ago still remains: Should the market have a place in finding health solutions for the world’s poorest people? Although the lack of functional, sustainable healthcare systems...
View ArticleMerck Does The Right Thing
It would be great to have a new drug that had a wonderful effect on lowering cardiovascular risk with incurring any untoward risks. Might such a drug be around the corner?
View ArticleA Double Whammy for Remote Patient Monitoring
What happens to patients after they leave the hospital is becoming a national focus for health care organizations. We have discovered that patients return to the hospital at an distressingly high rate...
View ArticleHomeopathic Flu “Cures” and Dead Ducks
Oscillo is a preparation made from the hearts and livers of ducks, diluted to vanishingly small amounts, and sold as a flu remedy. The claims made by its manufacturers are simply nonsense, but that...
View ArticleAnti-Vaccine Ads at the Movies
Anti-vaccine activists have produced a new ad that they are trying to run in movie theaters this holiday season. They want to scare people away from getting vaccines with misinformation and...
View ArticleNon-GMO Foods? Nonsense.
Organic foods are sometimes labelled as "non-GMO." This label makes no sense, because virtually all our foods have been genetically modified.
View ArticleWhy Do We Need To "Recontrol" Whooping Cough?
A new advisory panel for the CDC is recommending that doctors give booster shots against pertussis to anyone who might be in contact with young children. Whooping cough epidemics in California and...
View ArticlePracticing Medicine Against the Evidence: The Case of Implantable Defibrillators
Cardiology is famous for producing more evidence about our clinical strategies than any other medical field. These clinical trials, in which patients are randomly assigned to various treatment...
View ArticleObamacare And Price Controls
If they survive judicial and legislative challenges, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s big ticket health insurance reforms – the individual mandate, Medicaid expansion, creation of...
View ArticleBig Study Linking Chronic Fatigue To Virus May Be Fatally Flawed
Recent reports that a virus is the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome have turned out to be erroneous. The initial results, it turns out, were caused by laboratory contamination. The search for the...
View ArticleObamacare Deficit Debate is a Red Herring
The law is only deficit neutral because of the inclusion of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program.
View ArticleWhy Doctors Still Don't Know Which Heart Drugs Work Best
I'd like to let you in on a little secret in medicine. We know a lot less than you might think about the effects of medications and, in particular, how they compare with each other. Last week an...
View ArticleSaving One Mother at a Time
Johnson and Johnson, the corporate giant perhaps best known for manufacturing children’s shampoo and pharmaceuticals, has decided to take on the maternal (and child) health challenge with gusto. Last...
View ArticleFixing Medicare's Failed "Physician Compare" Website
The launch of Medicare's Physician Compare website at year-end should have been a watershed event in the long campaign for health care transparency and patient empowerment. Instead – and it pains me to...
View ArticleShould Everyone Take Statins?
A new scientific review looks at the evidence for prescribing statins to people at low risk for heart disease. The findings show a small benefit for everyone, but the authors of the review remain...
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