Blog Posts (9)
April 22, 2013
According to the New York Times, the Boy Scouts of America on Friday proposed ending its ban on openly gay scouts but continue to bar gay adults from serving as leaders. This policy is wrongheaded, regardless of whether you think homosexuality is righ...
March 18, 2013
“I can fix this.”
The neurosurgeon was nothing if not confident.
“The cyst is pushing on your spinal cord. If it continues to expand, it will damage your nerves and you may lose the ability to walk. But I can remove the cyst, and cure...
March 11, 2013
Recently I received an email from someone I have never met, who asked me the following:
“Could you refer me to any current study results on Arimidex (Anastrozole)? My oncologist is not helpful. My oncotype dx said I have 9% chance of recurrence and w...
March 4, 2013
Before patients can become savvy consumers of healthcare, they need information about their healthcare choices. Too often, such information is nearly impossible to get, especially when it requires doctors to give patients useful statistics about thin...
February 25, 2013
Lance Armstrong cheated and bullied. These are not shocking revelations. Oscar Pistorius had a history of altercations with his girlfriend and is now accused of murder. More shocking, by far, but hardly the first athlete to be accused of such wrong d...
February 15, 2013
States face a tough choice right now, of whether to expand their Medicaid roles with 90% of the costs being borne by the government. (Medicaid is a combined Federal/State program to pay for healthcare of low income individuals and families.) Why is t...
February 7, 2013
Andrews was easily the most anxious patient I took care of that month, a gray Michigan February (is there any other kind?) which I spent in the hospital caring for patients admitted to the general medical ward at the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Medic...
January 28, 2013
The first test tube baby was born July 25th, 1978 in the north of England. Louise Brown was called the “baby of the century” by some and a “moral abomination” by others. It wasn’t Brown who critics accused of being immoral, of course. S...
January 15, 2013
In two recent posts, I have posed questions about the appropriateness or inappropriateness of manipulating consumers by taking advantage of behavioral phenomena beyond their awareness. We behavioral scientists know things about human nature that most p...
