In the 11th Report on Carcinogens, the US government added Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B, and certain papilloma viruses to their list of substances known to be carcinogenic. This represented the first time ever that viruses were included. At the sixth annual International Conference of the American Association... Read more →

The randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the gold standard for evaluating whether or not a therapeutic modality works. In RCTs testing the effect of acupuncture to improve symptoms, researchers often use “sham acupuncture” as a control procedure, on the theory that sticking needles into points... Read more →

I think it’s good to think outside the box. Especially when it comes to finding solutions to some pretty major problems. Let’s take depression for example. Starting in May 2007, the FDA started requiring that a warning be posted on antidepressant drugs. The warning was about the increased... Read more →

Continuing on in our series we will now talk about abandonment and terminating the physician-patient relationship. We’ve previously talked about the contract and consent. Then we moved on to medical malpractice and causation. Finally we discussed informed consent. Now we move on to abandonment. Abandonment... Read more →

Welcome to the thirty-seventh edition of Brain Blogging. In this round, we try to uncover the neuropathology of Asperger’s syndrome, correlate sleep disturbances with chronic fatigue syndrome, link OCD to specific neuroanatomy, and discuss several brain fitness techniques. Remember, we review the... Read more →

If we as Americans do one thing well, it’s gaining weight. NIH data shows that two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and one-third are obese. Of course we have all heard the usual “lack of diet and exercise” mantra about weight gain. Data certainly backs up our increasingly sedentary... Read more →

Do you remember a time when most people on the roads just drove their car? Let me be more explicit. Do you remember a time when the main activities drivers engaged in were talking to a passenger, singing, and eating or drinking something? Today it’s not often that I simply see someone driving;... Read more →

Who is to blame when patients die in overcrowded and understaffed emergency rooms? The story of the death of a psychiatric patient in a large Brooklyn, New York hospital got my attention, both as a nurse and as a human being. These stories are, thankfully, rare but still happen too frequently. In this... Read more →

A recent study in JAMA reported that patients treated for type 2 diabetes are at risk for developing depression. The study also reported that patients with depression are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes. The study confirmed what other studies have reported, and clinicians have seen in practice,... Read more →

I’ve been looking into violent deaths lately. And now I understand a few things.  Mostly, I understand what we don’t know about violent death in the United States. For instance, consider one of the most horrific kinds of violent death — mass shootings in public places like malls and... Read more →

When Henrikje van Andel-Schipper turned 115 years old, her mind was sharper than many 60 year olds. Years before, she knew something about her was unique and requested multiple times for her body to be donated to her hometown university in the Netherlands. As a result of her many requests, scientists... Read more →