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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

 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 »

      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 »

 I appeared on NPR's Talk of the Nation last Monday to discuss my Salon article on medical malpractice reform.   To no surprise, I was on hot seat in the virtual doctor's lounge, as physicians called in with their concerns--and gripes--about my point of view that tort re… 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 »

 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 »

Have the itch to play doctor?  Well, if you have an iPhone, you're in luck, as the Apple App Store has  many, many health applications you can download, thus allowing you to completely bypass the absolute horror called med school and residency. … 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 »

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 »

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 »

Sometimes you just know it's not going to go well the minute you step in the room, as it did with the mother of this teenage girl.  Her daughter sat quietly on the exam table, coughing here and there.  Next to her was mom, probably in her mid to late 40s, but by her… 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 »

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 »

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 »

As the author of several best-selling books about health and wellness, and one who runs a prestigious wellness center on the East Coast, Dr. Mark Hyman is one of the most recognized medical experts on the Huffington Post.  Hyman helped to pioneer functional medicine, a s… Read full post »

Like most people, I had never heard of Joe Wilson until his angry outburst in the biggest town hall of them all, the U.S. Congress.  Unfortunately for him, it's hard to see Wilson beyond anything other than a symbol of everything that's wrong with modern American politic… 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 »

By all accounts this is crunch time for President Obama on health care reform, and things couldn’t be more tenuous.  In the past several weeks, we’ve seen unified Republican opposition to his ideas, a revolt against reform from leaders inside his own political party, and the head of/… Read full post »