Apr 2009
Swine flu–don't panic
Apr/30/09 00:02
With respect to the swine flu, I want to repeat myself, once again–Don’t Panic.
Yes, the World Health Organization revised the pandemic alert for swine flu from 4 to 5. They did this to urge vaccine manufacturers to prepare a new vaccine, to warn governments to prepare in advance, and to request that government surveillance be heightened.
This does not mean that we will be returning to the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, where more than 20 million people died worldwide. We are healthier, there are no major wars such as World War I, we have a better healthcare system, we have more focus from governments, and we have better treatments. Read More...
Yes, the World Health Organization revised the pandemic alert for swine flu from 4 to 5. They did this to urge vaccine manufacturers to prepare a new vaccine, to warn governments to prepare in advance, and to request that government surveillance be heightened.
This does not mean that we will be returning to the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, where more than 20 million people died worldwide. We are healthier, there are no major wars such as World War I, we have a better healthcare system, we have more focus from governments, and we have better treatments. Read More...
Swine flu
Apr/29/09 15:34 Filed in: Pharmaceuticals | Pseudoscience | Vaccines | Healthcare Policy | Evidence based medicine
Well, actually I’m not going to say too much about swine flu, except that my initial impression is that it’s not that much different from other types of flu in terms of severity. For example, during the 2007-2008 flu season, there were 83 pediatric mortalities in the US that resulted from influenza infections. In other words, like a lot of diseases that we think are minor, there are serious health consequences that often fly “under the radar.” There is a certain fascination with this disease because of where it started (Mexico), conspiracy theories, and for other reasons that are beyond my ability to understand. I am personally not concerned, because, as I mentioned above, the morbidity of the infection probably is similar to other types of influenza.
There are a number of bloggers who are passing along sage and sane advice. Basically, don’t panic. Wash your hands. And that’s about it for really good medical information.
Of course, the woo-meisters have weighed in with their useless advice. I won’t even begin to explain the logical and scientific fallacies of colon cleansing, but it isn’t going to either prevent or lessen the severity of swine flu. Read More...
There are a number of bloggers who are passing along sage and sane advice. Basically, don’t panic. Wash your hands. And that’s about it for really good medical information.
Of course, the woo-meisters have weighed in with their useless advice. I won’t even begin to explain the logical and scientific fallacies of colon cleansing, but it isn’t going to either prevent or lessen the severity of swine flu. Read More...
Obama's science policy
Today, President Barack Obama gave a speech (audio version can be found here) to the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s prestigious science advisors. The speech reaffirms his campaign promises regarding science policy (how refreshing that a politician actually follows up on promises made in the heat of the campaign) and follows up on his executive order to reverse George Bush’s ill-founded partial ban on stem-cell research. Below are a few key points of the speech that deserve repeating.
At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science. That support for research is somehow a luxury at a moment defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been. And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it’s today.
Federal funding in the physical sciences as a portion of our gross domestic product has fallen by nearly half over the past quarter century. Time and again we’ve allowed the research and experimentation tax credit, which helps businesses grow and innovate, to lapse.Read More...
Our schools continue to trail. Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Korea, among others. Another assessment shows American fifteen year olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science when compared to nations around the world.
Wikipedia–more bad medicine
Apr/21/09 16:24 Filed in: Wikipedia | Pharmaceuticals
The usefulness of the medical articles in Wikipedia is coming under a lot of scrutiny lately. I’ve made my opinion of Wikipedia known in the past. In this article published in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy in December 2008, the authors conclude:
Read More...
Wikipedia has a more narrow scope, is less complete, and has more errors of omission than the comparator database. Wikipedia may be a useful point of engagement for consumers, but is not authoritative and should only be a supplemental source of drug information.
Read More...
Denialism and pseudoscience
Apr/21/09 14:18 Filed in: Pseudoscience | Healthcare Policy
Today, I commented to a blog entry at Beyond the Short Coat, which is one of my daily stops on the medical blogosphere. The author, like a lot of bloggers in the medical arena, has been taking on the world of medical woo, that is, those ideas in medicine that completely lack verifiability and scientific credibility. I have a similar disdain for woo, for essentially the same reasons as the physicians who write in those various blogs. Mostly, they are troubled that patients turn to these useless therapies because they may not be getting adequate medical care, or even that those fake therapies may have terrible consequences for the patient. I take it a step further in that I believe that this woo has a substantial economic consequence with increased costs for patients, providers, and third-party payors. Read More...
Who's a skeptic?
Apr/18/09 18:42 Filed in: Pseudoscience
I don’t know what happened, but several people I know have accused me of being a skeptic. What is a skeptic? Is that like a psychic? Maybe I got the label because I would roll my eyes and laugh when someone would say, “take these zinc/vitamin C/echinacea tablets to cure your cold.” That statement is usually followed up by, “my mother’s friend’s sister-in-law’s cousin never gets colds after taking these pills.” Read More...
First iPhone application for medicine
I receive a lot of announcements of new medical products through various trade journals and email alerts. I read most of them, just to see what’s coming out of product pipelines of various medical products companies. Since I’m more of a technology person, I enjoy innovative devices that fill a need in the market. As I’ve said before, I think it’s critical that medical device and equipment companies bring products to the market that improve user ergonomics, reduce errors, and are easy-to-use. Read More...
The cost of medical woo
Apr/15/09 22:45 Filed in: Pseudoscience | Pharmaceuticals | Quackery | Vaccines | Evidence based medicine
My blog entries wander between three broad topics: medical woo (pseudoscience, science denialism, vaccine denialism, and alternative medicine), market opportunities for medical products and healthcare policy. And one discussion about my beloved Syracuse Orange. My three broad interests in the medical arena are interrelated in such a fashion that medical companies (both pharmaceutical and medical devices) need to prepare strategic plans that maximize their success despite some difficult market forces.
First, let’s talk about the whole area of medical woo. The anti-vaccine movement (which I will continue to label as vaccine denialism), if it continues to gain traction in social consciousness, will require more investment in studies that continue to confirm that there is no link between vaccines and autism (OK, yes the proper scientific method would force me to say that there is a possibility that a link could be found, but after 100’s of clinical papers, I’m firmly on the side that this issue has been decided). If this movement becomes problematic, we might be dealing with infectious disease epidemics unseen in a generation. Can hospitals and clinics deal with these diseases? How large are the infectious disease wards in hospitals? How many infectious disease specialists are there? And what kinds of medical products will need to be available to treat these diseases? Read More...
First, let’s talk about the whole area of medical woo. The anti-vaccine movement (which I will continue to label as vaccine denialism), if it continues to gain traction in social consciousness, will require more investment in studies that continue to confirm that there is no link between vaccines and autism (OK, yes the proper scientific method would force me to say that there is a possibility that a link could be found, but after 100’s of clinical papers, I’m firmly on the side that this issue has been decided). If this movement becomes problematic, we might be dealing with infectious disease epidemics unseen in a generation. Can hospitals and clinics deal with these diseases? How large are the infectious disease wards in hospitals? How many infectious disease specialists are there? And what kinds of medical products will need to be available to treat these diseases? Read More...
Healthcare IT growth potential
Today, Kim Hart at the Washington Post wrote an interesting column about one of the positive effects of the recently passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus package) for the health care industry. Approximately $19 billion of the package is specifically targeted for health information technology (HIT) upgrades for providers such as hospitals, clinics, and individual physician practices. As discussed previously, improved HIT is a cornerstone of a long-term plan to improve the quality and decrease the costs of health care in the US.
Investment in HIT should have some positive consequences to the healthcare industry:
Investment in HIT should have some positive consequences to the healthcare industry:
- Improve health care quality
- Prevent medical errors
- Reduce health care costs
- Increase administrative efficiencies
- Decrease paperwork
- Expand access to affordable care
Scientific medicine and Big Pharma
Apr/08/09 08:42 Filed in: Medical devices | Pharmaceuticals | Pseudoscience | Healthcare Policy | Evidence based medicine | Medical products
I keep reading across the blogosphere that Big Pharma (for the sake of this discussion, defined as all medical products companies, including ones that don’t manufacture or market pharmaceuticals) somehow blocks either positive or negative results to further their profits. The accusations come from a wide variety of sources, some of the more vocal being the anti-science proponents, such as the anti-vaccination movement. Utilizing an ad hominem argument of personalizing the issues and then attacking the motives or character of others, usually those who dispute the claims made by pseudoscience. Read More...
Jenny says....
If you read my blog, you know I don’t have much respect for the anti-vaccination movement, and I have contempt for Jenny McCarthy, JB Handley, Andrew Wakefield, Generation Rescue and others for the damage they have done to health care. One of my favorite blogs to read is Science Based Medicine, which has several physicians editors (and guest editors) who discuss medicine from a scientific perspective. I share their point-of-view on medicine, and since my background is from the industry perspective, I cannot obviate the need for good scientific reasoning for product development. In Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends: The Jenny and Jim antivaccine propaganda tour has begun, David Gorski, MD, tears apart, in about as civil a manner as he can, Jenny’s recent interview. Read More...
The anti-Jenny blogosphere
Medical and science blogs are aghast at Jenny McCarthy’s comments that I reviewed earlier today. Let me list some of the more choice comments. Read More...
Jenny McCarthy again!
Why is anyone listening to Jenny McCarthy? She just published a new books continuing her unscientific and unsupported rants about how vaccines cause autism. As of today, there are still no links between the two, but because she was a Playboy Playmate of the Year, she has a soapbox to promote her views. Read More...
Point-of-care diagnostic–market opportunity
Apr/01/09 10:11 Filed in: Medical products | Pharmaceuticals
Over the past year, I’ve been observing the growth of a class of medical products called point-of-care diagnostic testing. These tests are easy to use, are accurate, and provide rapid results for the patient and clinician. Some are intended for home use, but the market growth is in the physician office, hospitals (especially the point of entry such as emergency departments), managed care, and other clinical areas. Several companies are in the market, including Quidel, Inverness Medical Innovations, OraSure, and Bayer. The diagnostic tests, manufactured and marketed by these companies (and several others, too numerous to mention), are used mainly for drug abuse screening, cholesterol levels, infectious diseases (including HIV), urine chemistry, blood glucose, hemoglobin A1C, prothrombin time, cancer screening, fecal occult blood, pregnancy, and other areas of clinical diagnostics. The tests can provide results in a manner of minutes, rather than sending the patient to a laboratory to await results hours or days later. Read More...