Carol Jefferson’s right lung x-ray looked the color of a February storm in Northern Minnesota—a blizzard of white making bone and lung invisible. Her lung was “whited out” because she was experiencing a dangerous combination of tumor and infection.
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Susan Holmgren was resting in her hospital bed, a mere 72 hours removed from her first heart attack. She was out of the woods according to her doctors, with her heart having only sustained minor damage. But the next one-the next heart attack-could be worse. Almost 75-years-old now, Holmgren needed to do everything in her power to make sure that her first heart attack would be her last.
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“Misimagining the Unimaginable” – Health Psychology
A scandal is rocking Egypt, now that word has spread that those unsightly bandages on Anwar el-Balkimy’s face weren’t there because he got beaten by a masked gunman but, instead, because he had had (horror of horrors!) plastic surgery—a procedure which many people in the conservative Islamist party that el-Balkimy belongs to considered to be “sinful.”
But the real scandal? His lies were brought to light by the doctors who performed the procedure, physicians who were so aghast at his brazen falsehoods that they unhesitantly violated doctor-patient confidentiality.
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In a recent post, I laid out a question to readers — about whether and how physicians should discuss the prognosis among patients whose shortened life expectancy is the result of their already long lives…(Read the rest and view comments at Scientocracy)
Paul Kostick’s DNA was under attack and his fate was sealed. Forces beyond his control were hacking large pieces of genetic material off the ends of his chromosomes. Should his doctor tell him how long he has to live?
Is it possible for Gail Collins, New York Times op-ed columnist, to write an article about Mitt Romney without making a joke about him, as she describes it, “strapping his dog to the roof of his car”?
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In a recent post, I asked whether you think doctors should routinely discuss the costs of medical interventions with their patients before exposing these patients to large out-of-pocket expenses. According to the responses I have gotten on websites and by email, most of you think the answer is “yes.”
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The failure of health care reform does not rest solely at the president’s feet. Instead, we, the general public, are also to blame…(Read the rest and view comments at Scientocracy)
As part of the Duke undergraduate course I teach on health care policy, I recently prepared a lecture on Bill Clinton’s ultimately futile efforts to reform the US health care system early in his first term of office, back in 1993. This preparation gave me an excuse to read Theda Skocpol’s wonderful book, Boomerang.
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