Tag Archives: medicine

Science and Other News

What’s the Right Policy for Biologics?

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This is from a Larry Kotlikoff study:

The Drugs:  “Biologics are protein-based, rather than chemical-based, medicines. When Americans take pills, capsules, and liquid medications, they are taking chemical compounds. But for many serious illnesses, they increasingly rely on injections and infusions of biologics.”

The Promise: “Biologics are now fighting arthritis, asthma, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, Crohn’s disease, several cancers, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and AIDS. And if innovation continues, new biologics will be developed to battle the full range of cancers as well as a host of other diseases.”

Continue reading What’s the Right Policy for Biologics? →

Health Care Costs

Why Can’t Medicine Make Up Its Mind?

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The Problem:

[It] seems like an endless series of contradictory health findings. First they tell us a medication is safe, then they say it’s not. First they say women should get screened for mammograms at 40, then not. And so on to what vitamins we should take, what foods we should eat, and even how many glasses of water we should drink.

Thomas Goetz’s take:

As frustrating as these shifts can be in isolation, taken together they reflect an effective system. Every revision and new recommendation is an attempt to put forward the best available information.

My take:

This is all the more reason not to lock people into cookbook guides that rely on 5-year-old data.

(Hint: Like comparative effectiveness is likely to do.)

Science and Other News

A Pill Bottle that Won’t Take “No” for an Answer

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When it is time for a dose of medicine, the GlowCap emits a pulsing orange light; after an hour, the gadget starts beeping every five minutes, in arpeggios that become more complicated and insistent. After that, the device can set off an automated telephone or text message reminder… It also can generate email or letters reporting to a family member or doctor how often the medication is taken.

Full article on the high-tech pill bottle designed to improve pill-taking.

Hospitals

Practicing “Civil War Medicine” in Haiti

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The foreign doctors who performed the first amputations after the earthquake used hacksaws. They relied on vodka for sterilization, substituted local numbing for general anesthesia, jury-rigged tourniquets from rubber gloves. Working around the clock in improvised operating rooms, they sacrificed limbs and lost patients to injuries that are no longer supposed to be disabling or deadly.

Full article on the first amputations performed after the earthquake in Haiti.

Interesting Links

Hits & Misses – 2009/2/24

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Retired doctor wants to provide free charity care. The problem: Trial lawyers.

Why Detroit needs a bail out: workers can retire at 48 with full benefits for life.

Drug companies increasingly conducting trials in other countries. But is it ethical?

China still supplying organs to Japanese "medical tourists." Practiced banned two years ago.

Brain exercises don't help. You're going to get dementia anyway.

Science and Other News

Recycled Drugs: Why Not Use eBay?

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An estimated 3 percent of drug prescriptions nationwide go unused — lost, ignored, replaced or no longer needed. In Oregon [alone], that translates to more than 1 million drugs a year.  Many of them (especially cancer drugs) are expensive and are often destined to be flushed or tossed away. For any normal product, a thriving secondary market would be underway. But standing between willing buyers and willing sellers is……… you guessed it……. government.  Unused-drug-recycling programs are underway in 37 states. But pharmacists hate the idea. (Drug companies probably do, too.) Regulations restrict which drugs can be recycled. Usually, the drugs can't be sold. [link]

Health Care Costs

Benefits of New Pharmaceuticals Exceed their Costs

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In "Pharmaceutical Innovation and the Longevity of Australians: A First Look," co-authors Frank Lichtenberg and Gautier Duflos find that the benefits of new pharmaceuticals significantly exceed their costs. Using 1995-2003 data on actual prescriptions from the set of about 700 drugs available under the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), they estimate that newer drugs increase life expectancy by 1.23 years. The cost per life-year gained from using newer drugs is $10,585. Continue reading Benefits of New Pharmaceuticals Exceed their Costs →

Physicians

Just How Well Do EMRs Work?

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To visit the Marshfield Clinic, a longtime innovator in health information technology, is to glimpse medicine's digital future.

A computerized patient record is a continuously updated document that includes the patient's health history, medications, lab tests, treatment guidelines and doctors' and nurses' notes.  However, there is no crisp, conclusive cost-benefit arithmetic. Marshfield can point to various measurable savings, but has scant proof they outweigh the millions spent in the past and the $50 million-a-year technology budget. [link]

Interesting Links

Hits & Misses – 2009/01/05

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A famous experiment repeated – with the same shocking results. "It appears that ordinary Americans are about as willing to blindly follow orders to inflict pain on an innocent stranger as they were four decades ago."

Lab Rat"I am now a lab rat." "I have no right to know what happened to me in the study, nor do I have a right to try the promising treatment as my health deteriorates." 

The future of medicine. "Bionic limbs will be wired directly into the brain; stem cells will patch ailing organs; engineered livers and kidneys will make transplants obsolete. Neural chip implants will be available for the healthy who want to be just a little sharper."

Weird disorders. "As many as 1 in 14 people (mostly men) have angry, aggressive or violent outbursts, way out of proportion to situations."

Cookbook medicine won't work for the elderly. So says Jane Brody. But don't tell Mayor Bloomberg. He's spending $60 million so that doctors can deliver CliffsNotes primary care. [link]