According to the FDA’s legal definition, a drug is anything that “diagnoses, cures, mitigates, treats, or prevents a disease” The problem with this definition is that there are numerous substances, as readily available and benign as found on our spice racks, which have been proven by countless millennia of human experience to mitigate, prevent and…
Glaring Problems in Our Health Care System
The number of COVID deaths in the United States dwarfs that of any other country. According to Statista.com, as of April 11, well over 1 million Americans have died. The United States is a large country, so a high number of deaths might be expected. But the U.S. also ignominiously ranks in the top 10…
DOJ Appeals Court Decision Lifting Mask Mandate, Experts Say Move Could Backfire
The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday appealed Monday’s ruling by a federal judge in Florida that struck down the Biden administration’s mask mandate for public transport. Legal experts say the move could backfire if the case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday appealed Monday’s ruling by a federal judge in…
Black Rain: What Happens to My Emergency Room in a Nuclear War
I remember visiting Hiroshima, in 1985. I went with a doctor buddy of mine. It was a strange and yet fascinating place. Our guide was a lovely Japanese woman who said her grandmother survived the blast and recounted the horrors that followed. Everything around the memorial was now built up, with only the ruins of…
The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine
In 1990, a paradigm shift occurred in the development of new medicines and treatments. An idea so big, that it was supposed to encompass the whole of medicine. It was to start initially at the level of pre-clinical and clinical trials and work all the way through the system to the care and management of…
The Power of Multiple Opinions
We were on a three-hour road trip. My husband, Scott, was “driving” a self-driving car, our friend Tommy sat in the passenger seat, and I was in the back. Tommy was trying to reel in his fear from taking his first-ever ride in a self-driving car and tamp down his growing hunger as the aroma…
The Sordid Past and Brighter Future of Brain Surgery
PT is a 78-year-old man who developed debilitating essential tremors in which his arms and hands would constantly shake. It got to the point where he couldn’t write his own name or even hold a cup of coffee. His neurologist tried different medications but they had little effect—other than giving him serious side effects. His…
How to Be a Patient Advocate
“I just wanted to tell you how important what you’re doing is,” the young cardiology resident at Oregon Health Sciences University said to me in a quiet voice. “Your husband’s lucky to have you.” I could barely swallow the lump in my throat. My husband and I had spent the past 11 days in the…
Do You Have a Donor Card?
When I was a young adult driving in California, I rarely gave my donor card a thought. Back then, it was just another small piece of paper in my wallet. In those days, the confidence and optimism of youth crowded out any serious thoughts about real-life accidents, illness or disease. But now, decades (and decades…
Cataracts: Causes, Costs, and Possible Cures
Cataracts, the progressive clouding of the eye’s outer lens, are the leading cause of blindness worldwide, according to the World Health Organization’s 2019 World Report on Vision. Their surgical removal, typically an in-office procedure and one of the most frequently performed surgeries in the world, is and has been the only remedy approved by the…
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