Medicine has become so replete with financial conflicts of interest, it becomes very hard to sort out what the ethical standards are these days. Yesterday, the NY Times told us that the AMA put out a warning to doctors that doctors’ primary responsibility is to the patient and not to their employer.  In other words,…

This piece and the one below need no introduction.  The surveillance state is developing/installing its hardware at warp speed.–Meryl Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations, according to documents obtained by a news outlet….

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324478304578171623040640006.html?KEYWORDS=US+Terrorism+Agency+to+Tap+a+Vast+Database+of+Citizens–and+share+with+other+countries 12/12/12 Wall Street Journal    page 1 By JULIA ANGWIN Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a…

Very few countries offer seasonal flu vaccines to their general (not high risk) populations, let alone mandate them for groups of healthy people.  With less institutional bias, the international literature usually fails to support mass flu vaccinations, for a variety of reasons.  Here are short excerpts from medical literature around the world of which I’ve…

From a public health standpoint, a true pandemic flu–a la 1918–is what might cause really large mortality and morbidity.  Seasonal flu causes a few hundred deaths in healthy people, and perhaps a few thousand in the frail elderly in the US each year.  (We don’t have a good count of cases, and rely on modeling…

From the Mayo Clinic and Wisconsin Medical Journal comes the following letter from Preventive Medicine specialist William Buchta, M.D., MPH: While the intent of Aurora’s mandatory influenza vaccination1 of health care workers might be noble, ie, patient protection, the research on the subject is lacking. Only 2 studies have tracked hospital-acquired worker-to-patient influenza (a relatively simple infection control…

Many healthcare institutions are imposing mandates on staff for flu vaccinations, with penalties ranging from wearing masks throughout the workday (even for those with no cough or sneeze–which demonstrates the lack of scientific basis for this measure, since merely breathing on someone has never been demonstrated to transmit influenza) to blanket firings of employees who refuse to…

Although I have deep concerns about how government would manage healthcare were it the sole provider of health insurance, there are so many terrible problems with the current system that single payer seems the only way out.  Here is an example of why the concept of markets doesn’t work in healthcare:  it is impossible to…