Two US surgeons have offered some commentary on Why US Healthcare Costs Are Out of Control. It is a highly revealing read. They cite six reasons:
The Building of Shrines for Hospital Administrators – buildings constructed out of desire to make a mark rather than out of necessity.
Unnecessary Duplication of Services – Often added under the aegis [...]
New Zealand is now contemplating using the same set of incentives to boost immunisation rates that Australia used to boost it’s rates from 50% to 91%. The MacDoctor is not convinced that New Zealanders will respond quite as well as Australians to the incentives. The incentives were:
Cash payments to parents for completing immunisations at 6 [...]
The Timaru Herald has run an article on the website offtheradar.co.nz, who are calling for the removal of Gardasil from the vaccination regime because it causes 16 times more serious adverse events than it prevents cervical cancer fatalities. Like most of the websites “crusading” against vaccines, it destroys its own credibility by drawing non-scientific conclusions [...]
Not satisfied with rendering cold and flu medicines ineffective by removing pseudoephedrine from general sale, Medsafe continues it’s onslaught on cold and flu meds by trying to remove all the syrups and infusions from supermarket shelves. Apparently they are concerned about the use of them in under sixes (despite the fact that fatalities are very [...]
The case of the young man who died from a brain abscess following a open fracture of his skull given to him in a drunken brawl is quite unusual. The defense is probably making much of the fact that the doctor “missed” the fracture in an attempt to pass the “blame” of the death onto [...]
Yes, I know it is almost impossible to fathom such depravity, but some pharmaceutical advertisers make unsubstantiated claims in medical journals! (/SARCASM OFF) Such is the conclusion of Ben Goldacre of the Guardian, writing on the Bad Science Blog. Goldacre is writing about a recent research article in the Netherlands Journal of Medicine “Are claims of [...]
Not much time for blogging tonight but I could resist a quick comment on the low-hanging fruit offered by ScrubOne in this comment. The Yahoo “news” item reads:
I feed my son marijuana
While most parents are focussed on warning their children about the dangers of drugs, mum-of-three Mieko Hester-Perez is happily dishing up marijuana to her [...]
I have finally managed to sit down and finish Gareth Morgan’s book, Health Cheque, on the New Zealand health care system (long international flights are at least good for something). I find most of Morgan’s books a little superficial for my tastes and Health Cheque is certainly no exception, lacking, as it does, any deep [...]
The amphibious one over at Frogblog has pointed out the extraordinary consensus in the blogosphere of the matter of Simon Power’s knee-jerk dismissal of the findings of the Law Commission’s report on Controlling And Regulating Drugs (PDF). While everyone is unanimous (including me) in their opinion that Power has been far too dismissive of the [...]
The recent stunt by the New Zealand Skeptics Society might be very amusing, but it fails to add much to the debate on homeopathy. The skeptics swallow large amounts of homeopathic remedy to attempt to show its overall uselessness. Unfortunately, this demonstration is no more significant than an atheist demanding that God strikes him dead [...]
