If you want to get insights into the problems of our health care system, you should certainly listen to policy makers like Peter Orzag, browse economist Uwe Rhinehardt's blog, or read Atul Gawande's recent article in the New Yorker.

But you should also look at a mural by Washington DC… Read full post »

Let's do a simple test association test.  I'm going to write down a word.  After you read it, close your eyes and think of the images that come to mind.

 The word is:

 DOCTOR

(close eyes now)

Welcome back.  Now it's lik… Read full post »

Late last week Oprah Winfrey, amid growing criticism of how she covers health issues on her show, issued a statement defending herself:

"For 23 years, my show has presented thousands of topics that reflect the human experience, including doctors' medical advice and personal health stories that h… Read full post »

      At the end of a long day seeing patients, when we should have been exhaused, one of my colleagues and I, both of us Indian, couldn't stop talking about the news that Sanjay Gupta appears to be President-Elect Obama's choice to be Surgeon General.  This would m… Read full post »

David Kirby wrote a rebuttal to my book review  in Salon  of Dr. Paul Offit’s new book, Autism’s False Prophets.

Here’s a link to his post:

“Dr. Parikh, I am Becoming Embarrassed for You.”

Far be it for me to change Mr. Kirby&rsqu… Read full post »

Kudos to the Centers for Disease Control for marching onto the Internet to share information related to swine flu with us.  For those who are looking for information, there are several ways to track the latest:

 (Note: not an inclusive list, so if readers know others, le… Read full post »

The latest in the long, dubious lineage of snakeoil salesmen was exposed yesterday by the Wall Street Journal--Dr. David Sinclair, a biochemist at none other than Harvard Medical School.  Sinclair has a leading researcher into the effects of Resveratrol, a compound that na… Read full post »

Buried underneath some large headlines about the Beijing Olympics, John Edwards' Affair, and Russians killing Georgians was the sad news that Bernie Mac died at the young age of 50.  And, of all things, from pneumonia. 

 How could someone so young… Read full post »

Flu season seems to be heating up, with spikes in the number of cases throughout the whole country, and very high activity in 16 states

If you're curious about where you live, check out Google's Flu Tracker

The thing that seems to have health officials worried and scratching their heads this… Read full post »

It's hard to figure out where the Republican Party stands on health care reform.  Just ask Chairman Michael Steele, who seems as vexed as you, me and everybody else. 

Just take these side-by-side excerpts form Steele's oped piece in the Washington Post and his follow-up interview… Read full post »

(hi everyone--in trying to edit this piece  from Aug 15, it got messed up.  The only way I could fix it was by reposting it--so some of you may have read it already-sorry!  I also changed the name because I didn't like the orginal one)

An article in August 14's… Read full post »

This is it, friends! 

Forget Indy and Iron Man, Hulk, X-Files and all the other big Summer movies for 2008.  The Dark Knight opens today, and is the only movie I'm getting in line for.  Growing up, I collected comic books and the dark, intense, psychically damaged alter ego/… Read full post »

 Okay friends,

In the spirt of keeping things a liitle light for Summertime, I've devised a little quiz for y'all.  I call it Name that M.D.

Below is a series of pictures of (in)famous doctors--real and fictional.  Your goal:  Name as ma… Read full post »

 Off and on during the current health reform debate, politicians, leaders and pundits have raised the issue personal responsibility. For instance, take these now infamous comments from the John Mackey, the CEO of Wh… Read full post »

Some news about children's health caught my eye last month caught my eye, something we don't hear much about.

 The World Health Organization reported that each year, 950,000 kids die from injuries.  That's genuinely disheartening.  There's nothing more u… Read full post »

Stock market guru Bernard Madoff fell hard from his perch this week--arrested for masterminding a $50 billion swindle.  He now gets to join a storied Rogue's Gallery of stock market grifters that includes Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Ken Lay and the Enron Boys, etc. 

O… Read full post »

 Like most doctors yesterday, I was in the busy seeing a full schedule of patients when President Obama addressed members of the American Medical Association at their annual meeting in Chicago.  The speech was billed as a crucial confron/… Read full post »

If you were a baby in 19th Century England you may have been better off without teeth. 

That's because according to government records, it turns out that 5% of kids died as a result of teething.  While that's not an public health crisis, it's not trivial either.

 N… Read full post »

It looks like the Huffington Post's honorary/unpaid Medical Editor, Dr.Dean Ornish, walked into the same trap that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey did.

 Mackey got a lot of flack when he wrote an oped in the Wall Street Journal on health care reform, one in which he/… Read full post »

 

Brain Tumor?

           &… Read full post »

Last Wednesday's  headline in the Wall Street Journal may have surprised you.  It read:  "Wal-Mart Backs Drive to Make Companies Pay for Health Coverage."   The article discussed Wal-Mart's open support for an employer mandate requiring all but small businesses to provid… Read full post »

Last Friday, the CDC reported the that a child in Minnesota died.  The cause of death was meningitis from a bacteria known as Haemophilus influenzae type B.  If you're not sure what meningitis is, it's an infection of the fluid and tissues that surround… Read full post »

My column this month in Salon criticizes Oprah Winfrey's approach to science and medicine.   A lot of the piece focuses on Bioidentical Hormones (BH), which Winfrey's guests endorsed in two episodes that aired earlier this year, one featuring Robin McGraw /… Read full post »

Reports have arisent that the editors of the prestigious Journal of the Medical Association(JAMA) are under investigation for attempting to intimidate a doctor. 

 Seriously. 

The reason?  Whistle-blowing.

If this sounds like an episode of Gossip Girl… Read full post »