MD Whistleblower

Of course, patients are entitled to medical care around the clock.  You would not expect to show up at 2:00 a.m. at an emergency room to find a ‘Closed’ sign.  If you are having chest pain on a weekend, and you call your doctor’s office, you should expect a prompt response from a living and breathing medical doctor.  Patients are aware that when they call the doctor at night, that they are unlikely to reach their own doctor.  Similarly, when a patient is admitted to the hospital, they will likely be attended to by a hospitalist, not the primary care physician.  Such is the reality of medical practice today. No Patient Zone at Hospital Here are 3 types of after hour calls that merit mentioning. (1)One of my partner’s patients calls me because the diarrhea is still not better and it’s been more than 3 months.  While I completely understand the frustrated patient’s rationale for calling, there’s not much I can do in these circumstances.  It is generally not helpful to call a

Some issues do not need to be studied.   For example, would we expect the National Institutes of Health to fund a study to determine if drivers wearing blindfolds have better outcomes?   In the past few weeks, the National Football League (NFL) has conceded that head trauma is linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a fancy term that means brain damage.  Of course, there have been multiple studies that have examined this question.  And, in a nod to the tobacco companies, the NFL for too long failed to admit what any school child could have deduced.  Smashing your head several hundreds of times against the ground or another helmeted gladiator does not promote good brain health.  Sometimes industries will cite their own ‘studies’ that astonishingly contradict what our intuition and common sense tell us should be true.  Would we accept the results, for example, of a movie industry  ‘study’ that extolled the health benefits of popcorn? Sometimes, in medicine, we need a s

Trump is roaring toward securing the GOP nomination in Cleveland this summer.  While I am excited that the convention will occur in my city, I expect chaos and gridlock downtown.  I won’t be visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or any of our city’s other outstanding attractions, during that week. I think that Trump may garner the necessary 1237 delegates prior to the convention.  For self-serving reasons, the trailing 2 candidates are stating that no candidate will meet the required threshold and that the convention will select the nominee according to rules, yet to be decided.  My candidate Kasich – who has won only Ohio – crows that it’s now a 3 man race!  Sorry, John.  Wining 1 out of 32 states, while Cruz and Trump have won 9 and 19 states respectively, does not make this a 3-way tug of war. The New White House? The media is preoccupied to determine if the candidates and the GOP establishment will award Trump the nomination if he falls a few delegates shy and the

I am not a woman.  I cannot contemplate the physical and emotional experience of carrying a pregnancy and birthing a child.  I imagine that it is a singular experience that is as deep and awesome today as it has always been.  We have all seen the explosion in reproductive technology with in vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers, fertility agents and other emerging techniques.  This process, beyond the high costs, can create anguish for those who are on this journey. I have felt in many instances that the ethical ramifications of some of these techniques are minimized or dismissed.  Sadly, we often do stuff because we can, not because we should.  Do we really think we can stop human cloning? Recently, a woman in Cleveland had a cadaver uterus placed during an extremely demanding 9 hour operation on 2/24/16.  This was the first time this was performed in the United States.  Only a handful of these operations have been performed worldwide.  This woman, who has adopted children,

Proton pump inhibitors, or PPIs, are among the most common drugs prescribed in the United States.  They are extremely safe and highly effective for gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).  Are there potential side-effects?  Of course.  Look up the side effects of any of your medicines and you will soon need an anxiety medicine to relieve you of side-effect stress.  The side-effect lists of even our safest medicines are daunting.  PPIs are associated with a growing list of potential serious side-effects, at least according to the lay press.  A few clicks on your computer, and you will find that these medicines can cause pneumonia, C difficile colitis, malabsorption of nutrients, bone fractures and anemia.   The latest report to emerge links these drugs with dementia.  In the past two weeks, I’ve been questioned about this repeatedly by my patients.  One stopped her medication from fear that her heartburn medicine might be incinerating her neurons. Enemy of Heartburn Medicines

The nutrition police are at it again.  They demand that food products that use genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their processing inform us of this on the product’s label.  They argue, not only that consumers have a right to know how their food is prepared, but also that manufacturers should be required to disclose when evil GMOs are utilized.  (Keep in mind that most of the food that we consume includes GMOs, a fact likely unknown by most of us.) Proposed Label For GMO Foods This labeling demand from the nutritionistas is a little hard for me to swallow.  I don’t want to hear about polling that demonstrates that most American favor mandatory labeling.  I guess we cite poll results when they support our views and dismiss them when we don’t.  Donald Trump is ahead in every poll.  See my point? There is no scientific evidence that GMOs harm our health.  Fear is not evidence.  Political correctness is not evidence.  Indeed, the Food and Drug Administration requir

There was a tragedy in France recently that did not involve offensive cartoons, radicalized jihadists or terrorists masquerading as refugees.  Innocent French citizens were taken down by a profession whose mission is to heal and comfort.  A medical clinical trial careened off the rails and crashed.  Were these volunteer study patients properly informed?  Are medical study patients here in the U.S. truly making a free choice? From time to time, friends, patients and relatives ask my advice if they should participate in a medical experiment.  While I am a doctor, I usually say no.  And, once I explain to them the realities of medical research, they usually say no also. While my colleagues may chastise me for not encouraging my patients to join clinical trials, my primary obligation is to advocate for the patient before me, not for society.  If physicians contemplate changing this ethical construct to consider the greater good when we advise patients, then we need to engage the