It’s got the pharmaceutical industry worried enough to fund a major study to identify the factors in rising placebo potency. Drug companies could be victims of their own success in this instance: we’ve become so convinced of the power of modern medicine, it works even when we’re off the pill.
Lisa Sanders, the diagnosis columnist for New York Times Magazine (and, I should disclose, my close friend), has just published a truly interesting book, Every Patient Tells A Story, on how good doctors go about making difficult diagnoses.
| Music has power. We’ve blogged about David Gray‘s “Babylon” being used as a tool of torture, and how Barry Manilow records were played in Sydney, Australia, to flush teenage loiterers from its parks. But music can also heal, of course. A team of London neuroscientists is claiming that playing Kenny Rogers songs for stroke victims speeds their cognitive recovery. . . .
I asked my ophthalmologist on Friday how his business was doing in the recession, and he said it was stable. He noted, however, that his colleagues who specialize in Lasik surgery had seen a 60 percent drop in business. Clearly, Lasik, which is not reimbursed by most insurance plans, is postponable in times when incomes drop; at least in the . . .
Ian Ayers recently blegged you about boy-specific or girl-specific Happy Meal toys from McDonald’s.
But forget about toys; when was the last time your doctor asked if you’d like to choose your child’s sex?
Last November, I had the chance to go to Dubai for the first time to participate in the World Economic Forum Summit on the Global Agenda. Peter Ubel One of the most interesting people I met there was Peter Ubel, a practicing physician who is also trained in the ways of behavioral economics and psychology (here’s Peter’s Huffington Post write-up . . .
We recently ran a bleg about dealing with too much data. That bleg prompted the following note from a reader named Geoff Barry: I had a thought on when it can be truly negative — even unhealthy. Too much medical information at a layman’s fingertips can actually be detrimental, both for the doctor treating the patient and for the patient . . .
Sorry, moms: it turns out that reading in low light won’t make you go blind; going hatless in the winter won’t make you freeze to death; and you could eat poinsettias all day and not be poisoned. All this holiday medical myth-busting and more is courtesy of our somber friends at the British Medical Journal (part one and part two). . . .
Photo: la cola de mi perro Supporters and critics of physician-assisted suicide agree on at least one thing: terminally ill patients who take an early exit save the health care system money. Nationally, legal euthanasia for terminally ill patients could cut American health-care costs by $627 million per year (less than one-tenth of 1 percent of total expenditures), according to . . .
I’ve known several doctors who refused to read e-mail from patients. They said it was simply a bad use of their time. I also used to have a doctor who hated it whenever you came in and asked questions about some article you’d read in The Times about Lyme disease or some such. He’d get a pained look on his . . .
Photo: soldiersmediacenter How do we know that parachutes are really a good treatment for preventing serious injury in someone falling from an airplane? That’s the subject of this tongue-in-cheek paper on the limits of evidence-based medicine, written by two physicians and published in the British Medical Journal. After applying to parachutes the guidelines usually used to test new drugs, the . . .
Health care is an important, huge, and growing piece of our economy. But as a reader named Beth Wieder points out, the design of medical devices isn’t always as user-friendly (or, I would add, as cost-efficient or as practical) as one might like. For instance, we blogged some time back about a very cheap and portable asthma spacer. Here is . . .
From the Journal of the American Medical Association, the results of a randomized controlled trial using St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) to treat children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: To our knowledge, this is the first placebo-controlled trial of H perforatum in children and adolescents. The results of this study suggest that administration of H perforatum has no additional benefit beyond that . . .
Some friends of mine recently were trying to get pregnant with the help of a fertility treatment. At great financial expense, not to mention pain and inconvenience, six eggs were removed and fertilized. These six embryos were then subjected to Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (P.G.D.), a process which cost $5,000 all by itself. The results that came back from the P.G.D. . . .
One of my earliest and happiest memories was being released from a hospital oxygen tent when I was a small child. I had developed pneumonia and was in pretty bad shape. They not only kept me under an oxygen tent for several days at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, but they also gave me massive amounts of tetracycline. The . . .
Get free anti-virus software with your Valentine’s Day flowers. And you’ll need it, if you open the wrong Valentine’s e-card. Are Internet-savvy patients changing medicine? (Earlier) The professor’s dress code.
What the stimulus package could do for a slump (Earlier) What computer science is doing for the elderly What the Super Bowl can do for your portfolio What the Super Bowl might do to your heart (Earlier)
This blog has regularly featured items on the pharmaceutical industry, including posts here, here, and here. It was this post in particular, highlighting an interview with the CEO of Genentech, that made me want to post a quorum on the subject. So we’ve gathered up some willing and able candidates — Dr. Stuart Apfel, Zola P. Horovitz, Dr. Harlan Krumholz, . . .
Study shows black Americans still receive inferior cancer treatment. How many people went out for Chinese on Christmas? Could more sun actually be good for you? Ordering at restaurants: a behavioral economist’s take.
Dr. Gretchen Berland, an assistant professor at the Yale University School of Medicine and former documentary filmmaker, writes in the New England Journal of Medicine of an extraordinary experiment she has conducted over the past 10 years. It involved giving videocameras to people in wheelchairs, and asking them to document their daily lives (samples of the videos can be seen . . .
45 percent of Chicago doctors recommend placebos, survey says. What’s the secret to China’s economic success? “Five Myths About How Americans Vote.” Which science topics are the presidential candidates dodging?
A new healthcare Web site called iMedix has just been launched, and it could revolutionize the way people take care of themselves. Or it might gum up the works further; at this point, it’s hard to tell. But you have to applaud the effort. A privately funded startup launched by Amir Leitersdorf and Iri Amirav, it allows users to search . . .
I had my annual physical the other day, and my doctor asked the typical battery of questions before the physical exam began. As we got to the end of the questions, I couldn’t help but note that she’d added a few questions that doctors didn’t ask in years past: “Are you sexually active?” … and then: “Is there any reason . . .
National cholesterol levels fall to “ideal” range. (Earlier) A survey on the ethics of book reviewing. (Earlier) Hedge fund buys professional soccer team. (Earlier) Corporate battle underway over rest stop naming rights.
Divorce is bad for the environment. Survey shows that doctors fail to report each others’ errors. (Earlier) A complete compilation of science fiction baby names. (Earlier) Researchers study zebra social networks to aid conservation. (Earlier)
We recently wrote about the use of commitment devices in weight loss, particularly the recent spike in bariatric surgery. While advocates can make a strong argument in favor of the surgery, especially for the morbidly obese, it is obviously a pretty drastic resort. An article in the current Journal of the American Medical Association highlights a far less invasive commitment . . .
That is the subject of our most recent Times Magazine column, with some background research and other related material posted here. As in many of our columns, we pair a particular subject (in this case, weight-loss — a.k.a. bariatric — surgery) with an economics concept (in this case, a commitment device). Sometimes these pairings can be a bit of a . . .
Read the Column » For their Nov. 18, 2007, “Freakonomics” column, Dubner and Levitt revisit a favorite topic: unconventional weight loss. In September 2005, they wrote about Seth Roberts, who shed 40 pounds with a diet he crafted through years of meticulous self-experimentation. This week’s column digs into the risks and benefits of using surgery to combat obesity. This blog . . .
I love technological innovations. In my view, we are so lucky to live today rather than 200 years ago. One area that has seen enormous innovation recently, though much of it seems to be underappreciated, is needles. I base this only on my own limited experience as a pin cushion, but I think it is true more generally. For example, . . .