October 9th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in News, True Stories
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Thanks to Glenn Reynolds over at InstaPundit, I learned that motor vehicle collisions with deer are up 18% compared to 5 years ago.
State Farm calculates the chances of a West Virginia vehicle striking a deer over the next 12 months at 1 in 39. Michigan remains second on that list. The likelihood of a specific vehicle striking a deer there is 1 in 78. Pennsylvania (1 in 94) and Iowa (1 in 104) remain third and fourth respectively. Montana (1 in 104) moved up three places to fifth.
Now, aside from the fact that deer present challenges to our driving friends in West Virgina, Michigan, and beyond – they are also the definitive host for Lyme disease. Ticks feed on the deer (who, by the way, become infected with Lyme spirochetes but suffer no symptoms) and on unsuspecting humans – passing the infection along. And so when deer populations increase, Lyme disease often does too. Read more »
October 9th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Tips, News, Video
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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNPftTx3m8I
1. Myth #1: Breast cancer doesn’t run in my family, so I’m less likely to get it.
A strong family history predicts breast cancer in only 5-10% of women in the US. In fact, 80% of breast cancer cases occur in women with no known family history of breast cancer whatsoever.
2. Myth #2: A lump in my breast means that I have breast cancer. Read more »
October 6th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Policy, Opinion
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This post appears on the Hastings Center’s Values and Health Reform Connection, a new group blog on American values and why they matter in health reform.
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Values come from the gut, not the mind, and the gut is not a sophisticated thinker about the nuances of alternative policy options.
—Jim Sabin, MD Essay: Responsibility
I’m going to do something “radical” here in the spirit of Dr. Sabin’s opening quote – and speak from my gut on the topic of responsibility.
In my opinion, it’s human nature to shirk responsibility, and our current society is a great facilitator of that natural urge. The more wealthy and technologically comfortable we become, the fewer responsibilities we have (in terms of securing basic needs), and the more empowered we are to indulge our inner narcissism. Until we accept that we all have this selfish tendency, we’ll continue to point at others and engage in a blame game that keeps us all very much in the dark about what’s really going on. Read more »
October 5th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Humor, True Stories
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Health IT is valuable in many ways and I do believe it will revolutionize how we practice medicine. However, we’ve got a long way to go yet, especially in auto-translating English into other languages. This short exercise in English-Spanish translation (through a computer software program) reminds me of how far off “seamless” health technology really is…
(My mother is fully bilingual in Spanish and English and decided to test the auto-translator service with a sentence from a book. Here is the result:)
ENGLISH: He popped a deep-fried sardine into his mouth and washed it down with a few swallows of beer.
LITERAL TRANSLATION OF SPANISH RESULT: He punctured a sardine fried deep in his mouth, and he laundered it near the bottom along with some swallows (referring to the birds) made of beer.
October 2nd, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in News
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I was reading my daily MedPage Today news, when I came across this amusing example of regulatory unintended consequences. As we all know, pharmaceutical companies are not allowed to promote off-label uses of their medications – doing so is punishable with billions of dollars in fines (just ask Pfizer). But a new set of rules created by the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) program essentially requires Allergan to provide safety information about off-label uses of the drug — uses that are illegal for them to discuss.
So Allergan has to file a law suit to resolve the issue of being required (by the government) to do something the government considers criminal.
And the winner is?
Lawyers!
