Not a single doctor or paramedic of the 2,000 working at public hospitals in Pune, India have accepted free flu shots offered to them by state government, according to the Times of India. Yet hospitals in the US increasingly force their employees to receive these inoculations, although they have not been shown to reduce infections…

 Oops! Copyright Cops Return Seized RojaDirecta Domain Names – 19 Months Later From Wired:  So you thought your passwords were memorized and totally secure?  Think again.  Do you really want to bank online?  These discoveries and devices are gamechangers, and the game is life as we know it.  | Edit <img class=”size-full wp-image-47189″ title=”eeg_headset” src=”http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/08/eeg_headset.jpg” alt=””…

From the article “Reform Driving Physicians Out of Private Practice to Reduce Costs” a few issues are raised about rapid and dramatic changes occurring in health care, about which consumers have little knowledge.  Health care conglomerates are being forcibly created due to the new payment structure, which can only increase costs considerably in the short…

Just another example of the crazy billing environment for medicine in the US.  From the WSJ: “After David Hubbard underwent a routine echocardiogram at his cardiologist’s office last year, he was surprised to learn that the heart scan cost his insurer $1,605. That was more than four times the $373 it paid when the 61-year-old…

I was glad to see this piece, which explains that public horror at “Total Information Awareness” caused it to be cancelled in 2003–only to have a much grander, insidious and dangerous NSA program grow up in its place. The current program lacks two critical pieces, including a way to track and record who accesses data…

Pauline Chen, MD blogs at the NY Times about what it feels like to be a doctor today.  Here she discusses a new survey of 7,000 practicing doctors, 48% of whom experienced at least one symptom of “burnout.”   Excerpts from her article follow: …Research over the last 10 years has shown that burnout –…

Interesting comments were made at the last meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, reported on the Commission blog.  They include the following: Anita Allen, J.D., Ph.D., Commission member and Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania: “Military families are subject to extraordinary pressures on the need…

Below is my recent letter to the Chair of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, preceding the Commission’s meeting last week.  The Commission’s blog mentions some of what was discussed.  The Commission will report its views to the DHHS Secretary by year’s end. Meryl Nass, MD Board Certified in Internal Medicine Mount…

I have to give the WHO editors kudos for being brave enough to commission commentaries on WHO’s pandemic planning. Peter Doshi wrote about WHO’s waffling over the definition of pandemic, which morphed into a meaningless definition that allowed even the common cold to be called a pandemic, since severity was missing from the definition. Bonneux…

Remember the 2009 Swine Flu Pandemic?  There were going to be a huge number of illnesses and deaths, but then it turned out the flu virus caused less severe disease than usual.   Since then, the H1N1 swine flu virus has remained in circulation, and we have continued to have fewer reported flu deaths in the…

From MedicalNewsToday comes the following misleading information on the dramatic benefits of flu vaccine for kids:  The UK is set to become the first country in the world to provide all children free of charge with a comprehensive flu vaccination program…  Once the program is up and running, it will cost the government over £100 million annually,…