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Should Kids Read Paper Books, Or Are iPads And Kindles Better?

My son has always loved books. They were among his first objects his eyes fascinated and focused on. He’s learning to read right now and his love of books remains as strong as it was in his infancy.

It’s clear that books – the traditional kind: made of paper and ink and labor – are being replaced by digital media. The Kindle and the iPad and other tablets are making it easier to acquire and consume material once only available on books.

For children today, the iPad is very intuitive. In fact, some parents have reported that their children have become so used to the iPad screen, that they “pinch” pages in books – expecting them to zoom-out.

Perhaps some parents believe we can let books go and just let our kids skip them in favor of digital media without any cost. They *may* be right. Or they may not.

As for me, books are still a critical foundation for civilization.

Neurons are amazing things: the more they’re used, the better they get (generally). So as a child grows, the more exposure they get to different kinds of learning and feeling and experiences, the healthier their brains grow. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*

Online Health Information Can Be More Trustworthy Than Printed Texts

Recently Ed Silverman of Pharmalot considers the case of a ghost-written medical text’s mysterious disappearance. The 1999 book, “Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care,” (reviewed in a psychiatry journal here) came under scrutiny last fall when it became evident that the physician “authors” didn’t just receive money from a relevant drug maker, SmithKline Beecham; they received an outline and text for the book from pharmaceutical company-hired writers.

poster for the X-Files

Now the book’s listing is gone from the website of STI (Scientific Therapeutic Information), the company that provided the authorship “help.” I tried to get a copy of the handbook on Amazon.com, where it’s currently out-of-stock. The book is listed in the Library of Congress on-line catalog: #99015420.

I’m reminded of clinical handbooks I used all the time when I was practicing hematology and oncology. At the hospital, I’d get freebie, small-sized chemo regimen primers that conveniently fit into my white coat pocket. In retrospect, perhaps I didn’t adequately check the authors’ credentials on those mini-book sources. It was too easy to take that information and keep it at hand, literally, especially in the times before we had constant Web access. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*

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Latest Book Reviews

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