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The US Preventive Services Task Force, part of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality of the US Department of Health and… Read full post »

For the past several years, I have been troubled occasionally by searing pains and inflammation in my big toe which I attributed to gout. I never sought medical attention, preferring to let my body heal itself. I had another such episode recently, and I resolved to tough it out… Read full post »

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Here’s a transcript of the Presidential Address given to the 9th Congress of the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity by Henry Buchwald, M.D., Ph.D., in which he touts bariatric surgery as a way to control skyrocketing… Read full post »

Rifle used in the second Italo-Ethiopian war, 1935-1941

The word “Ethiopia” is derived from the Greek word Aethiop and means “The land of burnt faces.” The first people to be called Ethiopians were the people of Meroe, which lies at the confluence of the White Nile… Read full post »

Last summer I went to two town hall meetings, one of which I wrote about here, and talked to some of the people protesting against Obama’s healthcare reform bill. The people I spoke with a bunch of ignoramuses who had no idea what they were talking about. And you… Read full post »

 View of Addis Ababa from Emperor Menelik II’s palace overlooking the city

Ethiopia is truly the cradle of humanity. The oldest fossil remains of our species, Homo sapiens, were found right here, as were the oldest undisputed stem-group human fossils, those of a tree-dwelling homi… Read full post »

Well, I’m outta here. It’s been fun. They say every academic’s secret desire is to write freelance magazine articles, and I figured this blog would be a good place to start. I don’t imagine J.K. Rowling is losing any sleep over me, but I’m gratified that every o… Read full post »

One of the unintended effects of the debate on healthcare “reform” is to highlight just how out of touch our rulers are with the rest of us.

In a statement, Senator Max Baucus told the Senate Finance Committee “All Americans should have access to quality, affordable… Read full post »

”The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by author Ursula K. LeGuin may be the most disturbing short story ever written. The story begins with the opening of the Festival of Summer in Omelas, a shining city on the sea (set in the future? The past? Some alternate reality?… Read full post »

Ana Sofia Joanes’s film Fresh forms an obvious counterpoint to Food Inc. Both films detail the manifold problems created by modern industrial-scale agriculture. Both feature shots of cows, chickens, and pigs forced to endure the unspeakable conditions of Concentrated Animal Feeding Ope… Read full post »

In this country, going to the doctor for a checkup is like being shot at by someone – the best you can hope for is that he misses, and you end up the same as you were before.

I don’t know why people voluntarily go to… Read full post »

Here’s an article in the New York Times which exemplifies so much of what is wrong with our nation’s healthcare system – and the debate on how to fix it.

The article profiles 62-year-old Bob Collier, a sort of everyman from rural Georgia who… Read full post »

 In a sane society, “Comparative Effectiveness Research” would not even be controversial, let alone be held up as the moral equivalent of murder. Hell yes, of course we need to evaluate clinical treatments for their effectiveness, and discard those which are not effective. Tha… Read full post »

Here’s an article in the Baltimore Examiner by Delia Chiaramonte, M.D. According to the article, a web community of physicians, sermo.com, has posted a “Letter from physicians to the American people,” which has been signed by over 4,000 physicians.

You can’t even ge… Read full post »

Amid the paranoia about “death squads” and irrelevant rants about illegal immigrants is one legitimate objection to single-payer health care: what about the people who are satisfied with their employer-based health insurance?

Enrollment in employer-based health insurance… Read full post »

The health care debate has revealed a lot about our national character, most of it not very flattering. I’ve watched the clips on YouTube, and I’ve attended two town hall meetings – one of which I wrote about here -- and nothing sums up the prevailing mood… Read full post »

 Tonight I went to the Towson University Center for the Arts, where Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland was holding a town meeting on the subject of health care reform. Don’t ask me what the Hell happened at the meeting, because the didn’t let me or about 1,000 other people… Read full post »

According to this article in the New York Times, lobbyists for the nation’s pharmaceutical industry plan to spend $150 million on television commercials touting President Obama’s health care plan.

That’s really bad news for the rest of us.

PhRMA President &… Read full post »

None of my four jobs provides health insurance. Recently I purchased at my own expense a policy with a $10,000 deductible (not a typo) which I suspect will turn out to be like an umbrella that folds up as soon as it starts to rain, should I ever actually need… Read full post »

“The way we eat has changed more in the past fifty years than in the previous ten thousand.”

That’s an astonishing statement, but Robert Kenner’s Food Inc. does a good job of making that charge stick. Most of us here in the overdeveloped world have no… Read full post »

The message is clear: socialized medicine kills.

At least, that’s the inference the writer of this Associated Press article obviously wants us to draw: “More serious problems in Britain's health care were reported last month, when cancer researchers announced that as many as… Read full post »

According to this article in the Chicago Tribune, the makers of Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail have replaced the high-fructose corn syrup in their product with sucrose, or table sugar. Ocean Spray is the latest in a long list of giant corporations which have made the switch, incl… Read full post »

Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs by Melody Peterson

The pharmaceutical industry is out of control. Soaring prices threaten to bankrupt us, both individually and as a society. A mu… Read full post »

 America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobbying organization for the health insurance industry, has blasted President Obama’s proposal to create a government-run insurance program to compete with private insurers. In a press release, the organization stated that “A govern… Read full post »

In a sane society, the absurdity of “screening” for depression would immediately be apparent. You mean, you don’t know how you feel? And if you really don’t know, doesn’t that mean you need to spend some time in open and honest consultation with yourself?

Nevert… Read full post »