In response to my last post about informed consent in my Medicine and Law series, several commenters made the point that informed consent is more than just getting a form signed. That ideally it should involve a dialogue between patient and doctor. That the burden of trust is on the doctor to inform... Read more →

In my previous posts about Medicine and the Law we talked about the elements necessary for a patient-physician relationship — contract and consent as well as medical malpractice. We then went on to discuss causation and the different types. Continuing on in this series let’s talk about informed... Read more →

Our series on Medicine and the Law continues. Previously, I wrote about what is necessary for a physician-patient relationship to exist — contract and consent. Then I went on to discuss medical malpractice and that a legitimate grievance from a patient must show that the physician has a duty to... Read more →

Since I started my series about Medicine and the Law, I’ve been thinking a lot about a debate I used to have with my friends when I was younger. Some of my friends wanted to be lawyers, others wanted to be doctors. At that time, doctors were paid more than lawyers. Since that time, lawyers are... Read more →

One controversial area where the brain, politics, and law collide is in cases where people suffer severe brain damage and are in a persistent vegetative state (this is more accurately termed complete vegetative state). In this state, the higher cortical functions of the brain are essentially wiped out.... Read more →

Continuing on in my series of posts about Medicine and the Law, we’ve established that there are two elements necessary for a patient-physician relationship to be established — contract and consent. There must be a written or implied contract in place, and there must be agreement to it on... Read more →

I’ve decided to go ahead and post a series on Medicine and the Law. One of the things I hear about so often from both sides of the patient-physician relationship is the fear and threat of legal action. Typically physicians are paranoid of being sued. They practice defensive medicine and go out... Read more →

We needed a truthful account of how cigarettes have become the highest selling addictive drug in the history of the human race, lawfully. Alan Brandt, Harvard Professor of History of Medicine and Science, and author of the recently published “The Cigarette Century - The Rise, Fall, and Deadly... Read more →

Nearly 43 million Americans are without health insurance and the number is rising, as the average cost of a family’s healthcare insurance is about $12,000. America pays 16% of its national income for healthcare, more than any other country, yet its position on the health chart among developed... Read more →

In recent decades, societal conceptions of mental health and mental illness have evolved significantly. Compared to prevailing attitudes of the early 1900’s, the general public and scientific community alike have become much more aware and knowledgeable of mental illness: its causes, severity,... Read more →