‘The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg’ Now Posted at Authonomy.com
I just posted my novel on authonomy.com where you can vote for it if you like it. It is being written as a twitternovel, sometimes in the cafes of Barcelona, Atlanta, and Oberlin, Ohio, although not always. Follow it @GooseNovel. It is ‘The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg’ about a psychiatrist who takes on a multibillion dollar drug co and finds his mother along the way, now posted in the ‘read from the beginning version on authonomy.com here. This is the story of a psychiatrist who takes on a multibillion dollar drug company, gets chewed up and spit ou

Does America Have a Prescription Drug Problem?
Half of all Americans take prescription medications. Eighty one percent take some type of pill. 100,000 die every year from a prescription med that they either didn’t need or that was not properly prescribed. What is going on here? While it’s true that many drugs help people live longer and better lives, it is also true that they can have unintended side effects. Pharmaceutical and supplement manufacturers have to increase sales and profits, as all businesses must, and they do so in part by developing drugs to treat disease and also by convincing people they need meds to prevent disease or lessen the perceived risk of future illness. Marketing leads to efforts to promo

INFRINGEMENT: FREEDOM OF SPEECH/MEDICAL DOCTORS by Neil Shulman MD
INFRINGEMENT: FREEDOM OF SPEECH: MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS The United States is a country where freedom of speech is supposed to be a basic right. Administrative power and personal wealth should not give any American the right to infringe on one’s freedom of speech. MANY DOCTORS FEEL THAT a downturn in the economy can create an UPSWING IN VOLUNTEERISM. LACK OF MONEY DOES NOT HAVE TO MEAN A LACK OF SERVICES. MANY OF THESE DOCTORS ARE VERY CRITICAL OF BLATANTLY INSANE POLICIES BUT ARE AFRAID TO SPEAK OUT FOR FEAR OF PERSONAL REPERCUSIONS. There are many caring doctors and other health care professionals who intentionally take lower paying jobs and/or volunte

Play MISTY for Me? No Investigator Given Full Set of the Data
In the Migraine Intervention for Star-Flex Technology (MIST) trial the mist seems to be making it difficult for me to understand the study results. The original trial was supposed to examine the effects of closure of patent foramen ovale (PFO) on migrain headache. However all of the conflict of interest, alleged misrepresentation of data, authors who pulled out because they saw distortions of study results, etc etc etc, is giving me a headache. Now, the editors of Circulation are going to have to take the walk of shame (which, briefly, is when you are late picking up your kid, and they have to walk out to the

More On Flu Shots
Last week I was asked to give a lecture to the Cardiology Department at Emory and since I had been having an online schermish about the topic I offered “Why I Am Not Getting a Flu Shot This Year“. Well, flu shots are mandated for Emory Healthcare employees so I guess that raised some eyebrows, and I got a call at home asking why I wanted to give a talk about that. After some back and forth I said that I would be willing to give up half of my time, and infectious d