MD Whistleblower

Gluten is in the news again.  Gluten and probiotics are among the two dietary issues that most consume my patients.  I am asked for my opinion on them several times each week.  Although my opinion is solicited, these patients have largely already made up their own minds as they are often avoiding gluten and swallowing zillions of ‘good bacteria’ with zeal and enthusiasm. Why do they do this in the absence of corroborating medical evidence?  Why do millions of voters support Donald Trump’s mantra that he will ‘make America great again’?  Both of these groups do so on faith.  When our need to believe something is overpowering, our demand for proof recedes.  Many of us need to believe that gluten is the agent responsible for our vague medical complaints that have stymied our doctors.  Similarly, our frustration with so many aspects of our society and conventional candidates makes us believe that Trump will turn the nation into yellow brick roads leading to Emerald Cities everywhere.

Lawyers and physicians have so much in common, despite some benign grievances that occasionally reach the level of homicidal rage.  Just kidding.  Calm down, juris doctors.  Consider the similarities.  Both professions serve a public who needs help.  Both wield professional advice and judgment that must be tailored to an individual’s unique circumstances.  Neither professional is ever 100% certain of anything, and an outcome cannot be guaranteed.  Both are charged to put their clients' and patients' interests above their own.  (Snickering permitted here.) Let's see what our legal brethren are up to.  Law schools in America are having a serious problem that they are struggling to remedy.   They need more students.  Of course, they could fill their classrooms by recruiting qualified candidates to apply to their institutions.  This strategy apparently couldn't fill the seats, assuming that it was even considered.  So, here is their plan, brilliant in its simplicity.  I

This afternoon, as I write this, a professional football player was ejected from a game for committing the transgression of unnecessary roughness.  This infraction should be taken seriously in a game where violence is not only legal, but desirable.  I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine how unnecessary the roughness was if it resulted in an ejection.  It is self-evident to any thinking person that the human body is not designed to withstand the punishment of this game.  Keep in mind that most of us are only seeing the actual games, and not the hundreds of hours of brutal practicing.  I take care of an octogenarian who played for the Cleveland Browns decades ago.  While this profession lifted him out of a Pennsylvania steel town, it is challenging for him to identify a part of his body that is working properly.   The National Football League (NFL), which showed us all last year how they fumbled their domestic violence issues, has belated admitted what most first graders would readi