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The (sort of, partial) Father mRNA Vaccines Who Now Spreads Vaccine Misinformation (Part 1)
By DAVID WARMFLASH, MD Robert W. Malone, MD MS, is a physician-scientist who will live in infamy, thanks to the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast boosting his visibility this past December regarding his criticism of COVID-19 vaccines, particularly the mRNA vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech). Subsequently, Malone was banned from Twitter, which further boosted his celebrity status. Describing himself as the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, he has been reaching a growing number of people with a narrative that makes COVID-19 vaccination sound scary. We cannot embed clips from the Rogan interview, which lasted about three...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 17, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy antivaxxer COVID-19 vaccine David Warmflash Joe Rogan Robert Malone Source Type: blogs

3 Patient Lessons: What Cancer Patients Teach Me
By YASMIN ASVAT An estimated 1.8 million people in this country may face a cancer diagnosis this year, in what has already been a bleak year of isolation and loss.   While news of the COVID-19 vaccine rolling out across the U.S. offers hope in a year of 311,000 deaths,  11 million  people face the financial pressure of unemployment, and, approximately 43 percent of the nation reports some symptoms of anxiety or depression.   It is understandable that a cancer diagnosis now may be too much to bear. And yet, somehow, many patients cope with t...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 22, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Medical Practice Patients Physicians Source Type: blogs

The False Choice Between Science And Economics
This article originally appeared on The Bulwark here. The post The False Choice Between Science And Economics appeared first on The Health Care Blog.
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 1, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy David Shaywitz Source Type: blogs

The Ethics of Keeping Alfie Alive
By SAURABH JHA Of my time arguing with doctors, 30 % is spent convincing British doctors that their American counterparts aren’t idiots, 30 % convincing American doctors that British doctors aren’t idiots, and 40 % convincing both that I’m not an idiot. A British doctor once earnestly asked whether American physicians carry credit card reading machines inside their white coats. Myths about the NHS can be equally comical. British doctors don’t prostate every morning in deference to the NHS, like the citizens of Oceania sang to Big Brother in Orwell’s dystopia. Nor, in their daily rounds, do they calculate opportun...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 21, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: OP-ED Uncategorized AlfieEvans Source Type: blogs

The Luxury to Choose
By TRAVIS BIAS, MD The 80 year-old woman lay on her mat, her legs powerless, looking up at the small group that had come to visit her. There were no more treatment options left. The oral liquid morphine we had brought in the small plastic bottle had blunted her pain. But, she would be dead in the coming days. The cervical cancer that was slowly taking her life is a notoriously horrible disease if left undetected and untreated and that is exactly what had happened in this case. We had traveled hours by van along dirt roads to this village with a team of health workers from Hospice Africa Uganda, the country’s authority o...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 25, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Gardasil Hospice Africa Uganda vaccines Source Type: blogs

Why Doctors should read books by Nassim Taleb
By SAURABH JHA, MD     “There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method” Herman Melville, Moby Dick Asymmetry of Error During the Ebola epidemic calls to ban flights from Africa from some quarters were met by accusations of racism from other quarters. Experts claimed that Americans were at greater risk of dying from cancer than Ebola, and if they must fret they should fret more about cancer than Ebola. One expert, with a straight Gaussian face, went as far as saying that even hospitals were more dangerous than Ebola. Pop science reached an unprecedented fizz. Trader and mathem...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 12, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Economics The Business of Health Care Source Type: blogs

Why Doctors (And Everybody Else) Should Read Books by Nassim Taleb
By SAURABH JHA, MD “There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method” – Herman Melville, Moby Dick Asymmetry of Error During the Ebola epidemic calls to ban flights from Africa from some quarters were met by accusations of racism from other quarters. Experts claimed that Americans were at greater risk of dying from cancer than Ebola, and if they must fret they should fret more about cancer than Ebola. One expert, with a straight Gaussian face, went as far as saying that even hospitals were more dangerous than Ebola. Pop science reached an unprecedented fizz. Trader and mathematicia...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 12, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Economics The Business of Health Care Source Type: blogs

The Law of Diminishing Returns of Ethicism
SAURABH JHA MD Many allege that the FIRST trial, which randomized surgical residencies to strict versus flexible adherence to duty hour restrictions, was unethical because patients weren’t consented for the trial and, as this was an experiment, in the true sense of the word, consent was mandatory. The objection is best summarized by an epizeuxis in a Tweet from Alice Dreger, a writer, medical historian, and a courageous and tireless defender of intellectual freedom. @RogueRad @LVSelbs @ethanjweiss @Skepticscalpel Consent to experimentation. Consent. Consent. Am I not being clear? — Alice Dreger (@AliceDreger) Nov...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 20, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Gaming the System
By NIRAN Al-AGBA, MD As physicians ready themselves for the future of medicine under onerous MACRA regulations, it seems appropriate to glance into the future and visualize the medical utopia anticipated by so many.  Value-based care, determined by statistical analysis, is going to replace fee for service.    Six months ago, I received my first set of statistics from a state Medicaid plan and was told my ER utilization numbers were on the higher end compared to most practices in the region.  This was perplexing as my patients tend to avoid ER visits at all costs and can be found milling about in my parking lot at 7am o...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 11, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Statin Wars: Less-is-More versus Unlimited Medicine  
By SARAH JHA, MD It is the beauty of evidence-based medicine (EBM) that a scientist can at once be a Pope and a Galileo. His transmutation is as effortless as it is discretionary. If you think you’ve met Galileo – a rebel, a free thinker, a rocker of the establishment – the following week he is a Pope, castigating detractors, censoring critics, and celebrating uniformity. He changes by a roll of the dice. His change is decided by a quirk in hypothesis-testing known as statistical significance. If the p value is 0.051 he is Galileo, if the p value is 0.049 he becomes the cardinal. He is one day a raging skepti...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 20, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs