When President Trump slurred his words during a news conference this week, some Trump watchers speculated that he was having a stroke. I watched the clip and, as a physician who specializes in brain function and disability, I don’t think a stroke was behind the slurred words. But having evaluated the chief executive’s remarkable behavior through my …
Should President Trump be tested for degenerative brain disease?
A recent ProPublica expose co-published with the Boston Globe typifies a growing gotcha genre of health journalism that portrays doctors as the enemy in a struggle for honesty and openness in medicine. These reports make unfounded leaps in their efforts to subject doctors to levels of skepticism once reserved for politicians and lawyers. They’re going to end up doing patients a disservice. For this particular hunting expedition ProPublica set its sights on …
Did ProPublica unfairly target Dr. Yoav Golan?
Boston tops The Daily Beast’s 2011 list of the 25 tipsiest towns in America, moving up from the eighth position last year. The Beast credits its click-ready rankings to a mixture of market research surveys and CDC statistics. I don’t know about the scientific accuracy, but from my perspective in its trenches, ranking Boston the booziest rings true.
You see, I spent 2011 seeing most of the traumatic brain injury …
The cost of being America’s drunkest city
Doctors are in the cross-hairs of the nation’s politics more than ever. We’re all being asked to achieve more with less. We must cope with nightmare scenarios precipitated by cracks in the social and healthcare infrastructure so often these days that medical schools insist students become effective patient advocates as well as healers. Practicing good medicine necessitates navigating a minefield of competing interests. Doctors are increasingly tempted to just walk …
Doctors who cross the line by protesting too much
Dr. Keith Ablow is an assistant clinical professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. So am I. Ablow has a problem with transgendered people. I do not. I first learned about Ablow’s well publicized stance Wednesday via an email to the Tufts community, signed by the university’s president, the dean of the medical school and the chair of the psychiatry department.
The university reaffirmed its commitment to the complete inclusion …
Keith Ablow on Chaz Bono and the outrage that follows
If you need laser eye surgery in the state of Kentucky, or a little cosmetic work around the eyelids, it now behooves you to ask your prospective surgeon the following question before signing the operative consent form:
“Say doc, did you go to medical school?”
Kentucky joined the company of Oklahoma earlier this year as the second state to conflate optometrists and ophthalmologists. Only ophthalmologists are the sort of doctors who graduated …
Why the ophthalmologist and optometrist conflict should concern patients
Three years ago, the Department of Justice took stock of the orthopedic medical device industry–represented by the five big makers of orthopedic implants–and concluded that it was rampantly violating federal anti-kickback laws with the bribes and favors it was offering to surgeons. Such bribes often came in the form of training grants for those just starting out in the profession, or as lucrative consulting contracts for influential academic orthopedists.
The …
How industry money continues to influence orthopedics
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