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
MD Whistleblower presents vignettes and commentaries on the medical profession. We peek 'behind the medical curtain' and deliver candor and controversy in every post.