Toxicity is a common side effect of cancer treatment. Such things as fatigue, nausea, and pain are a serious concern for oncologists, who know that they can impede treatment and diminish quality of life.
Now, in a two-part essay published in the journal Oncology, doctors at Duke University argue that the...
Toxicity is a common side effect of cancer treatment. Such things as fatigue, nausea, and pain are a serious concern for oncologists, who know that they can impede treatment and diminish quality of life.
Now, in a two-part essay published in the journal Oncology, doctors at Duke University argue that the financial side effects of cancer treatment can be just as important in impeding treatment and diminishing quality of life. Cancer treatment's costs are rising, the treatment is often being overused, and the rising costs are increasingly being passed on to patients, the doctors write.
I first caught wind of this essay, which appeared online Feb. 15 and April 15, this week when I ran across an April 25 story by Nick Mulcahy at Medscape, who was apparently one of the first to pick up on it--possibly the first. It's important story,...
Nearly two years ago, Andrew C. Revkin, author of the Dot Earth blog at The New York Times and one of the most respected reporters on the environment beat, interrupted his "nonstop journalistic pursuit of paths toward sustainable human progress to focus on sustaining...
Nearly two years ago, Andrew C. Revkin, author of the Dot Earth blog at The New York Times and one of the most respected reporters on the environment beat, interrupted his "nonstop journalistic pursuit of paths toward sustainable human progress to focus on sustaining myself." He went for a run in the woods with his son when, short of breath, he stopped to take a rest.
"Then I realize that through my left eye, the world appears paisley--as if I were looking through a patterned curtain," he writes. "Something is really wrong."
In a post on the Times's Well blog, Revkin narrates the story of that day during the July 4th weekend, 2011. In his telling, the partial loss of vision is the first in a series of events that unfold slowly and only gradually lead to the conclusion that he is having a...
If you were as impressed and enlightened as I was by Steven Brill's article on American healthcare in Time magazine, you should take a look at...
If you were as impressed and enlightened as I was by Steven Brill's article on American healthcare in Time magazine, you should take a look at the conversation he had on March 7th with reporters and editors at ProPublica about the origins of the story, how he put it together, and how it came to be published in Time. It's a short course in the practice of journalism at the highest level.
The conversation--which you can listen to or read a transcript of--begins with ProPublica spokesman Mike Webb complaining, mildly, that Brill got a story that ProPublica would dearly like to have had. "We were a little jealous," he said. "After all, longform journalism is our bread and butter at...
Next week, Time magazine features a cover story that it says is “the longest single piece ever published by a single writer” in the magazine. Entitled "Bitter Pill: Why...
Next week, Time magazine features a cover story that it says is “the longest single piece ever published by a single writer” in the magazine. Entitled "Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are Killing Us," it is an exhaustive, morbidly fascinating, and ultimately deeply discouraging story about the almost unimaginable financial excesses and distortions in the U.S. health care industry.
It was written by Steven Brill, a journalist, lawyer, and entrepreneur and the founder of Court TV, American Lawyer , and Brill's Content. Brill's most recent book was Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools (2011). ...
While politicians debate how to avoid falling off the fiscal cliff that they created themselves, not many people are talking about smart ways to lower health care costs.
The idea most often mentioned in recent days is that the U.S. should raise the age when people become eligible for Medicare. It's a...
While politicians debate how to avoid falling off the fiscal cliff that they created themselves, not many people are talking about smart ways to lower health care costs.
The idea most often mentioned in recent days is that the U.S. should raise the age when people become eligible for Medicare. It's a tactic that even the least thoughtful member of Congress can understand--save money by denying care to millions of people. Easy for Washington to understand, but maybe not so easy to understand for those millions who are denied care.
Such a crude move seems foolish in light of the years of research that have shown many, many ways to lower health care costs intelligently, with far fewer adverse consequences. You can find hundreds of such studies and proposals in the journal Health Affairs and in many other medical and scholarly journals. To take one example, the current issue of Health Affairs features a study...
Only Tabitha M. Powledge, the author of On Science Blogs, could figure out a way to package a spy scandal, a man in a vegetative state, and legalized marijuana into one post.
You'll find here a variety of links to Petraeus posts, and even a reference to Restoration...
Only Tabitha M. Powledge, the author of On Science Blogs, could figure out a way to package a spy scandal, a man in a vegetative state, and legalized marijuana into one post.
You'll find here a variety of links to Petraeus posts, and even a reference to Restoration drama. And the legalization of marijuana, she reports, should lead to growth in research--that is, research on marijuana, not researchers on marijuana. That, in turn, is likely to provide employment for science writers, who will need to explain it.
-Paul Raeburn
On Science Blogs begins this week with Tabitha M. Powledge's one-word analysis of the election: "Whew!"
She collects some good links on the Nate Silver phenonemon before moving...
On Science Blogs begins this week with Tabitha M. Powledge's one-word analysis of the election: "Whew!"
She collects some good links on the Nate Silver phenonemon before moving on to the prognosis for Obamacare and the odds that climate change will move to a more important role in Obama's second term.
It's hard to know for sure; perhaps we should ask Silver.
-Paul Raeburn
"In most areas of the economy," writes James Surowiecki in the Oct. 29 issue of The New Yorker, "free market principles insure that products and services keep...
"In most areas of the economy," writes James Surowiecki in the Oct. 29 issue of The New Yorker, "free market principles insure that products and services keep improving, and that consumers get better and better deals." Yesterday's announcement by Apple of new and better products, some at the same prices as their now-obsolete predecessors, is an example.
But in this excellent, brief analysis of health care reform, he notes that the free market "falters when it comes to paying for bypass surgery or chemotherapy," and he points to what he says is a classic article published by Kenneth Arrow nearly 50 years ago. [That's my link, not his, and I think it's correct; he should have linked to the article himself.] Among other things,...
If you're looking for a Friday afternoon pick-me-up, you won't find it at Tabitha M. Powledge's On Science Blogs--unless fraud, lies, and statistics stimulate your synapses.
She starts...
If you're looking for a Friday afternoon pick-me-up, you won't find it at Tabitha M. Powledge's On Science Blogs--unless fraud, lies, and statistics stimulate your synapses.
She starts the discussion with the PNAS paper on misconduct in the life sciences, broadens that to misconduct in other sciences, and even tracks down a story about scientists in South Korea, China, and Iran who set up a scheme so they could glowingly review their own papers.
On a lighter note, she turns to the presidential debate. There she provides links to stories pointing out errors, lies, and damn lies relating to healthcare, green energy, and even one story on why it was a good thing that climate change was not mentioned in the debate.
Mercifully, she says nothing about Big Bird.
-Paul Raeburn
Barbara Feder Ostrov at Reporting on Health has put together a short list of summer healthcare stories you shouldn't miss. I've mentioned a couple of them here: Atul Gawande's...
Barbara Feder Ostrov at Reporting on Health has put together a short list of summer healthcare stories you shouldn't miss. I've mentioned a couple of them here: Atul Gawande's story on healthcare and The Cheesecake Factory in The New Yorker, and a New York Times exposé on excessive use of cardiac procedures. But she has a few other tasty tidbits as well, including a couple that I missed.
Find her recommendations here.
-Paul Raeburn
I've just finished the best story on health care that I expect to read this year--unless its author, Atul Gawande, decides to write another one.
In a piece in the current issue of ...
I've just finished the best story on health care that I expect to read this year--unless its author, Atul Gawande, decides to write another one.
In a piece in the current issue of The New Yorker, Gawande begins in an unlikely setting--at dinner on a Saturday night at The Cheesecake Factory with his two teenage daughters and three of their friends. He marvels at the restaurant. It has something for everyone--wasabi-crusted ahi tuna, and Bud Light and buffalo wings. The food is inexpensive, the place is packed, the atmosphere is Disney-like, and the staff is neatly dressed and attentive. "As for the food--can I say this without losing forever my chance of getting a reservation at Per Se?--it was delicious," Gawande writes.
Expensive restaurants serve as test kitchens for the restaurant chains, he writes, and some of the best...
The headline was ominous.
"Survey: Employers Consider Ending Health Coverage,"...
The headline was ominous.
"Survey: Employers Consider Ending Health Coverage," said the AP. The story appeared around the web, in various newspapers and websites.
Not many others covered the story, which was based on an employer survey by the consulting group Towers Watson. But I did find a similarly frightening headline at International Business Times: "Employers Look Towards Ending Health Coverage, Survey."
Boise Weekly offered its own...
©2010 Knight Science Journalism at MIT. All Rights Reserved.