MD Whistleblower

Ask most of us if we are honest and we will likely respond in the affirmative.   Who among us wants to admit publicly that we are a cheat or a liar? It would be more accurate to describe ourselves as mostly honest, since there are occasions when we do some fact massaging and truth shading.   And, sometimes, applying a little spin may be the better choice. Consider this hypothetical. Your mom has been working all afternoon to prepare meatloaf as a birthday treat for you.   While it appears appetizing with its golden-brown appearance, it is simply not palatable.   Your mom asks you directly how it is.    Choose among the following potential responses. Mom, did you mix in some dog food in by mistake? Hey, are you trying to poison me? I like the ground glass.  It give the meat a great crunch. Mom, this is great!  I hope there will be leftovers for tomorrow, if I can wait that long! 'Mom, the meatloaf was....indescribable!' ...

Is gluten really Public Enemy #1?   Many seem to regard it as a toxin. .   Restaurants and supermarkets offer a wide variety of gluten-free foods.   Years ago, physicians advised a gluten-free diet only for individuals who had celiac disease (CD), which is an autoimmune disease that largely affects the small intestine.    If a celiac patient wades back into Glutenland, his or her intestine will start an internal uprising.   I care for a few of these folks, but they are but a slim fraction of my patients who are shunning gluten.    Gluten are proteins contained in wheat and other grains.     Many adherents of a gluten-free diet believe that this is a more healthful dietary choice.   For most of them, there is no supportive evidence for this contention.    Why should it matter if an individual chooses to avoid gluten?   After all, there’s no risk here?   In fact, avoiding gluten can lead to vitamin deficiencies...

You might think that gastroenterologists like me are conversant with food allergies.   You would be wrong.   Here is a second misunderstanding you likely harbor.   Most individuals who believe or suspect that they are suffering from a food allergy have no allergic condition at all.   A true allergic reaction involves the firing off of one’s immune system in response to an external stimulant resulting in a rash, wheezing and other characteristic allergic responses.   Poison ivy, for example, is an allergic reaction.   Nausea resulting from an antibiotic is not an allergic reaction.   Physicians, of course, appreciate this distinction.   This is why when you tell us you are ‘allergic’ to a medication, we will ask you specifically what the reaction was.   In my experience, most of these ‘allergic reactions’ are routine non-allergic side effects.   Often enough, a patient will claim to have a penicillin allergy, for example, but ha...

There are many forces driving utilization in health care.  Patients come to doctors for explanations and relief. They relate symptoms that will likely lead to diagnostic testing.  For example, if you tell your physician that you have a burning sensation when you urinate, it is likely that you will be asked to surrender an aliquot of your urine for analysis.  If you enter your doctor’s office with some difficulty breathing, fever and a cough, I’ll wager that there’s a chest x-ray just around the corner.  These diagnostic tests are appropriate. When does utilization morph into overutilization?   I don’t know where the threshold between them lies.   Moreover, doctors disagree amongst ourselves on what constitutes an unnecessary medical test. Doctors agree that there is too much testing and prescribing going on, but they tend to point their fingers toward their colleagues rather than toward themselves.   Think of politicians here.   It’s common for ...

Euphemisms are omnipresent.  Recently, I learned a human resources term called rightsizing.  This sanitized version sounds a little softer than employee layoffs, but they mean the same thing.  In the near term, New York City will implement congestion pricing when new Yorkers who drive through Manhattan’s central business district will be forking over 15 bucks for this privilege, $36 if you’re a large truck.  These fee amounts will vary depending upon the time of day traveled.  I suppose the marketing folks felt that the term congestion pricing was more palatable than driver shakedown .  Just a year ago, I railed against another form of customer extortion known euphemistically as a resort fee, when guests' money is essentially confiscated each day that they could have used to purchase goods or services they didn’t need or want.  Here’s the resort fee link but make sure you’ve taken your blood pressure medicine before clicking. Recently, Wendy’s, the...

Over the past several decades, I’ve earned a good portion of my living performing colonoscopies – tens of thousands of them.  And risking a charge of heresy, I’ll say out loud that patients deserve a better colon cancer screening experience.  Progress is just around the corner.  Here’s a list of negative aspects of the colonoscopy experience.  I’ve got some street cred here.  Although I am usually on the operator end of the scope, I’ve also personally experienced the light at the end of the tunnel. Pre-test anxiety over the outcome. Ingesting liquid dynamite – often in the middle of the night -  and praying for a complete cleanse. Time away from work. D-day!  Enjoy IV needle placement, repetitive interviews, posh medical garments and the dignity of a public airing of high-amplitude flatus. The procedure has risks of complications, albeit at a low rate of occurrence. Driver must be present. Post-test anxiety over pending biopsy results. High aggregate...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has arrived and will permeate every aspect of our society.  It will touch all of us in our work, in the arts, in entertainment, in our government, and in our culture.  As with all technology, it will deliver us both blessings and curses.  We have been sharply warned of its potential destructive capability even by advocates of this technology.  Will governments, industry, and the public agree on proper guardrails and restraint or will the tiger simply be let out of the cage?  I worry that the strategy will be Ready! Fire! Aim! , instead of adopting thoughtful and prudent measures to keep us safe.  Indeed, I’ve offered some sober thoughts on this issue to my readers in a prior post . My medical journals are now riddled with studies on various medical uses of AI portending an unimaginable future in the medical profession. A few paragraphs further down in this post, I will ask my readers a philosophical question regarding AI and...