Doctors must step up and better police their own ranks, taking a helpful warning from medical malpractice lawsuits in dealing with problem practitioners or systemic wrongs. That’s the wise view of Dr. Shah-Naz H. Khan, a neurosurgeon and a clinical assistant Professor of Surgery at Michigan State University (shown, right). Her trenchant commentary — published….
Continue ReadingArchives for September 2021
FDA will keep bumbling until Biden and Becerra at least name agency’s chief
With the Biden Administration battling the coronavirus pandemic and Democrats in the throes of determining what could be big spending for major changes in the U.S. health care system, even the president’s biggest supporters are baffled why he still hasn’t nominated a commissioner to head the federal Food and Drug Administration. The FDA, entrusted to….
Continue ReadingPfizer booster OKayed for millions, as U.S. struggles with toll of the unvaccinated
The battle against the coronavirus pandemic is further splintering Americans into brittle groups, segments familiar because they long have been components of the inequitable U.S. health care system — let’s call them the have nots, the have somes, the have much, and the won’ts. Regulators have decided that those who have some protection with lifesaving….
Continue ReadingOnline portals let patients get their medical records. They’re full of errors, and patients can get them corrected.
As doctors and hospitals switch to electronic medical record systems and try to amp up the business efficiency of their enterprises by opening online consumer portals, more patients may access their caregivers’ files on them, including doctor notes that may be shocking in their inaccuracy. Heather Gantzer, a doctor practicing at Methodist Hospital in St…..
Continue ReadingU.S. must do so much more to shield our youth from sexual abuse
Grownups got sordid reminders of how much work still must be done to protect the nation’s young from sexual exploitation, as top female gymnasts assailed the FBI and Olympic organizations for allowing the wanton predation of a serial criminal and the Boy Scouts offered yet another billion-dollar proposal to try to resolve tens of thousands….
Continue ReadingNursing homes misdiagnose and sedate residents with strong drugs but lag on vaccinating staff
The nation’s nursing homes, battered by the coronavirus pandemic, are under more fire for their resurgent reliance on powerful and risky psychiatric drugs and shaky diagnoses of mental illness to treat elderly residents, as well as for the institutions’ inability to safeguard the old, sick, and injured in their care by ensuring their staff are….
Continue ReadingPandemic’s deadly toll rises each day. Why isn’t everybody taking it seriously?
Nineteen months after the coronavirus pandemic first began to rage, the nation has racked up mortality and morbidity statistics that are tragic and horrifying: 1 in 500 Americans now has died of the disease People older than 85 make up only 2% of the population, but a quarter of the total death toll Among those….
Continue ReadingFacts and truth-telling matter — in dramas, governance, health, and the law
It’s a small occupational hazard that accompanies membership in the Bar — the ribbing that all lawyers take at social functions with those groan-inducing lawyer jokes. While the good-natured jests typically merit a chuckle and a pass, it’s worth noting, two decades after the 9/11 tragedy and with all the deeply divisive events that have….
Continue ReadingFDA snuffs out cloud of e-cigarette and vaping products but delays big ruling
The federal Food and Drug Administration punted on a scheduled showdown over e-cigarettes, delaying decisions on whether to allow Juul and other market-dominating firms to keep selling trendy “smokeless” devices while also banning millions of vaping products from other, mostly smaller manufacturers. The agency argued with a defensive and defiant tone that it had acted….
Continue ReadingNursing homes recorded a horrific pandemic toll. But it may be even worse.
In recent days, academic researchers and politicians have made distressing disclosures about the terrible toll the coronavirus pandemic took on the aged, injured, and sick in nursing homes and other long term care facilities with new data suggesting the disease infected more of the vulnerable and killed more of them than previously known. Government officials,….
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