Why is medicine prone to overdiagnosis and overtreatment?

Your first thought might be “follow the money.” Not a bad thought, but in fact there’s another force that’s more insidious: information. Continue reading →

Addiction is such an ugly word. It conjures images of squalid back alleys populated by people in a state of physical and mental decay. However, some recent articles draw attention to addictive responses to mobile communications technologies such as smart phones and PDAs. Continue reading →

Starting today, the North American Spine Society holds a conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the focus of the conference is treatments for back pain. Continue reading →

A scientific revolution is brewing in the regulation of toxins. The revolution is over how standards are set. This new understanding comes from the study of endocrine disruptors such as bisphenol A, phthalates, polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, heavy metals, perchlorate, and pesticides. The revolution is not just about what constitutes an unacceptable exposure but the very scientific assumptions used in identifying risk. Continue reading →

The alleged swine flu threat has revealed the politics of science. I don’t mean the kind of ham-fisted politics at work in the climate change debate. I’m talking about the routine, otherwise invisible way in which power within the scientific community is exercised and how that translates to the more overt exercise of power in medicine and public health, the kind of politics we examine in our book Too Much Medicine, Not Enough Health. Continue reading →

What you see is what you get. We tend to think that our senses simply carry messages to us, messages to which desires respond. Yet our environment, in addition to being the physical source for what we sense, deeply affects the message we receive. Continue reading →

We really need a robust research agenda for the science of the placebo effect. Instead, we have science that uses the placebo effect to identify drugs and procedures and other medical interventions that supposedly cause healing and protection—but with the added feature of what’s called off-target effects, also know as side effects. Continue reading →

We have a constricted view of health care practitioners. It’s part of our general conditioning to think of “medical care” (and conventional medical care in particular) as synonymous with “health care.” As I’ve said—very likely ad nauseum—health care conceived that way isn’t about health. It’s about getting diagnosed and treated. Continue reading →

Life for the elderly is looking grim according to a report by Alzheimer’s Disease International. The organization’s World Alzheimer’s Report 2009 estimates that 35 million people worldwide will have Alzheimer’s Disease by next year. In 40 years, that number will triple to 115 million. Continue reading →

This past Sunday, the New York Times published an investigative report on gross failures by the EPA to enforce the Clean Water Act. Charles Duhigg, the article’s author, describes pouring through EPA’s database on chemical contamination of water sources and the subsequent failure to take action against polluters. I’ll give you one example. Continue reading →