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Posts Tagged ‘medicine’

The FREAK-est Links

Public school or private school: does it matter? Test security firm Caveon sees business thrive at U.S. schools. (Earlier) Employers impose “no e-mail” days; workers rebel. Are antidepressants safe for children?



The FREAK-est Links

Is the U.S. “war on cancer” focusing on the wrong things? Britain studies the economic impact of higher education. Chinese-made Cub Scout badges recalled for lead. (HT: Consumerist) Identity data: the newest hot commodity for businesses. (Earlier)



Bad News for Herbal Medicine?

The British Medical Association calls attention to a new study in the Postgraduate Medical Journal that assesses the efficacy of individually tailored herbal medical treatments. The outcome? “There is no good evidence to suggest that individually tailored herbal medicine treatment works well,” the BMA declares. The nuances here are interesting. While studies on the efficacy of herbal medicine have grown . . .



The FREAK-est Links

Women falling behind men in levels of happiness. (Earlier) Recyclable trash now a theft-worthy commodity. Are annual physicals really necessary? A Fed-to-English translation manual.



A Good and Cheap Asthma Solution

I am a big fan of cheap, simple solutions to complex problems – but really, who isn’t? One example is a column we wrote a while back on incentivizing doctors to do a better job of washing their hands to fight hospital-acquired infections. Similarly, this New York Times article described a study at a V.A. hospital in Pittsburgh where “the . . .



The FREAK-est Links

Study results show rock stars die younger. (Earlier) BMA urges “ultimate fighting” ban, UFC officials object. Wal-Mart musical opens in New York to poor reviews. Fantasy football not your thing? Try new fantasy investing.



The FREAK-est Links

Ron Paul takes all? ABC’s Langer on online “poll” results. (Earlier) Get Botox today, but possible melanomas require a wait. Kasparov, despair: computers learn checkers, Scrabble, Sudoku. (Earlier) New N.A.R. sales release overly optimistic? (Earlier)



Attack of the Super Crunchers: Adventures in Data Mining

Is data taking over the world? Ever wonder how Amazon knows what books you’ll like before you do? Melissa Lafsky discusses Yale law professor Ian Ayres’ fascinating new book, “Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart.”



The FREAKest Links: Agnostic Doctors and Doomed Trekkers Edition

Via the Chicago Sun-Times: A University of Chicago and Yale-New Haven Hospital survey of 1,260 doctors found that those who considered themselves atheist or agnostic were just as likely to provide care for patients with little or no health insurance than those who were religious — a departure from studies finding that religious people are more charitable towards the poor. . . .



Does Anger Lower Your Lung Function?

Here’s even more reason to take a deep breath and let anger slide: The American Psychological Association Journal has published a study led by Smith College psychologist Benita Jackson testing whether a relationship exists between levels of hostility and lung function — the reduction of which can lead to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, one of the leading causes of death . . .



The FREAKest Links: The Furry Reaper Edition

Via CNN.com: In the current New England Journal of Medicine, Brown University assistant medical professor David Dosa profiles Oscar, a cat in a Rhode Island nursing home who has demonstrated an ability to predict when patients will die. His means of communicating an approaching demise is uniquely feline: he curls up and naps next to those close to death. (Hat . . .



How Real Is “Restless Legs Syndrome”?

The first time I saw a TV commercial about Restless Legs Syndrome, I was pretty sure it was a spoof. I figured I had stumbled across a prime-time Saturday Night Live special and was seeing a well-done fake ad. It was pretty funny, I thought — Restless Legs Syndrome, ha! Who thinks of this stuff? Of course, it turned out . . .



The FREAKest Links: Second Life Sex and Hotel Towels Edition

More on the clash of sex and legal issues in Second Life: Tech.Blorge.com reports that one Second Life user is suing another (in real life) for copyright infringement over a virtual “sex bed” that lets avatars simulate 150 different carnal acts. Plaintiff Kevin Alderman, founder of Eros LLC, alleges that the defendant, “Second Life resident” Volkov Catteneo, copied and is . . .



Medical Failures, and Successes Too: A Q&A With Atul Gawande

As I’ve written before, I am a big fan of the writing of Atul Gawande, a surgeon who also happens to be a wonderful writer. His current book is called Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance. Between his operating and his writing, he also found time to answer this Q&A we sent him. After you read this, go read his . . .



Revisiting the Autism “Epidemic”

Anyone who cares about autism, and particularly the supposed spike in autism in recent years, would do well to read this very informative, cogent, and non-hysterical OpEd by Paul T. Shattuck and Maureen Durkin. It is written on the occasion of a case before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that’s investigating whether autism is linked to childhood vaccinations, as . . .



The Cost of Cancer Drugs

There’s an incredibly interesting Q&A in today’s Wall Street Journal with Arthur D. Levinson, the CEO of biotech pioneer Genentech, mostly concerning the topic of the company’s cancer drugs. (There is a lot of interesting cancer news in the papers these days, mainly because of the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.) Levinson regularly deals . . .



Starting Over

I have a favorite thought exercise, especially when thinking about the sort of complex, dynamic systems that are interesting but difficult to write about: the health-care system, e.g., or education, politics, energy consumption, finance, cancer research, etc. One natural way to approach such systems is to take note of what inputs and outputs already exist and then, isolating them, try . . .



Could You Live Without Direct-to-Consumer Ads?

In the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Miriam Shuchman writes about the movement in Congress to allow the FDA to block direct-to-consumer ads for new drugs. “There is popular support for a ban: in a telephone survey conducted in March 2007 by Consumer Reports, 59% of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ that the FDA should ban advertisements for drugs that had . . .



The FREAKest Links: Tomatoes, Sex Offenders and Wonders of the World Edition

More bad news on prostate health: The latest study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute found that lycopene, the antioxidant widely hailed as a prostate cancer inhibitor, may actually increase the cancer risk. In a study of more than 28,000 men, researchers found no significant correlation between incidents of prostate cancer and the concentration of lycopene in the subjects’ . . .



The FREAKest Links

The British Psychological Society Research Digest addresses the question of how bilinguals switch between languages without mixing up words. It examines a report by the Rudolph Magnus Institute stating that, as an accidental result of brain surgery to cure epilepsy, two bilingual patients appear to have had their “language switches” accidentally flipped. The potential costs of HPV just got a . . .



What Are the Worst Jobs for a Doctor?

Mary Black, a public-health physician in Serbia, offers her ideas in the current issue of the British Medical Journal (abstract only). [Yes, I know: two posts in two days from BMJ — but hey, it’s interesting stuff.] Black’s criteria: “[T]hese are jobs that seriously compromise ethical and moral standards, are difficult to justify to your children, and are likely to . . .



Cellphones: not just for airplanes anymore!

I’ve blogged before about my suspicions that the ban on electronic devices on airplanes is the product of a regulator with an overactive imagination, which is an opinion that upsets a lot of blog readers, so let’s take it another direction. Everyone knows you shouldn’t use cell phones in hospitals for fear of disrupting life-save hospital equipment. Right? According to . . .



Don’t Drink the Purell

When I first read this headline — “Doctors Warn of Poisoning From Hand Gels” — I assumed the accompanying Reuters article was about the potential danger of becoming too dependent on alcohol-based disinfectants like Purell. (Here’s an article we wrote about hospital-acquired infections and the pressing need for medical personnel to clean their hands; here’s a more recent development.) The . . .



Freakonomics in the Times Magazine: Selling Soap

Read the Column » The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever By Ignaz Semmelweis Hand Hygiene Among Physicians: Performance, Beliefs, and Perceptions By Didier Pittet, MD et al Novel Antimicrobial Surface Coatings and the Potential For Reduced Fomite Transmission Of SARS And Other Pathogens By Craig Feied The September 25, 2006, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine . . .



Three Cheers for Big Pharma

Jeffrey Lacasse, a PhD. candidate in social work at Florida State University, has co-authored a paper claiming that pharmaceutical companies allowed to market directly to consumers take maximum advantage, exaggerating the benefits of their products in large part because the F.D.A. doesn’t pay much attention to the ads. Here’s the paper. In related news, here’s an article from today’s New . . .



Tired of waiting for hours at the emergency room?

Emergency rooms serve as the front lines in the world of medicine. Many (most?) visits to ERs are not emergencies at all, but rather, routine visits by people with limited access to health care. As a consequence, waiting for hours to be seen is not uncommon. Forced to take all patients, the ER raises the “price” by making you wait. . . .



Freakonomics in the Times Magazine: Does the Truth Lie Within?

The September 11, 2005, Freakonomics column concerns Seth Roberts, a Berkeley psychologist whose very long and frequently strange history of self-experimentation has led to, among other things, a revolutionary new diet. This blog post supplies additional research material.



Look Ma, No Epidural!

The salutary effects of Freakonomics have by now been proven considerable. A reader from upstate New York sent this picture as proof that the right book can actually speed childbirth, and do away with the need for an epidural. (No word if she was merely shopping for a high-end baby name.) In other news: Levitt and I are writing a . . .