Medical and Research Studies

Forbes: Patients Lose Thru Lack of Hospital Competition

Forbes Magazine this month includes an exhaustive and question-inducing series of articles about hospitals and their ability to best take care of the patients who trust them. And the picture isn’t pretty. Even the titles make us pay attention: Bad Medicine Dirty Tricks Hospitals’ Nightmare And the subtitle under Bad Medicine is — The heart […]

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The Nocebo Effect: The Potentially Deadly Version of “It’s All in Your Head”

Most of us know the word “placebo.” It’s a Latin word meaning “I shall please.” Along comes a word I’d never heard before yesterday — but it has application in areas of my work. The word is “Nocebo” — more Latin — meaning “I shall harm.” I heard the word from a broadcast producer, Stacie,

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Eli Stone, ABC, Autism, and My Take on the Controversy

I’ve watched and heard plenty of controversy from those who are either upset, or elated, that ABC will be airing an episode of its new TV show, Eli Stone, tomorrow night. Eli Stone is a lawyer who defends a lawsuit imposed by a family who believes that a vaccination caused their child to develop autism.

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A Reversal for Alzheimer’s Disease? Maybe. Read Behind the Headline.

Regular readers of this blog know that my mother suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease. That means our entire family suffers from the “long good-bye.” My dad, in particular, has been a saint of a caregiver, but he has watched the love of his life descend into the hell that strips them both of their quality of

A Reversal for Alzheimer’s Disease? Maybe. Read Behind the Headline. Read More »

A Reversal for Alzheimer’s Disease? Maybe. Read Behind the Headline.

Regular readers of this blog know that my mother suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease. That means our entire family suffers from the “long good-bye.” My dad, in particular, has been a saint of a caregiver, but he has watched the love of his life descend into the hell that strips them both of their quality of

A Reversal for Alzheimer’s Disease? Maybe. Read Behind the Headline. Read More »

Why Does the US Have the Worst Rate of Preventable Deaths Among Industrialized Nations?

From 2002 to 2003, about 101,000 Americans died from preventable causes ranging from diabetes to bacterial infections and surgical complications, so says a study releases this week. The reports are based on results from a study undertaken by the Commonwealth Fund, a private New York City based health policy foundation. The study took place among

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When Your Doctor Fakes You Out

Empowered patients will be interested in a report today on the study results of a survey of Chicago area internists (family doctors). It seems that 45% of them see nothing wrong in prescribing placebos — fake sugar pills — for their patients. The report actually tiptoes around what the results really mean. The spinmeisters had

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Trisha Torrey
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