The war over the new blood pressure guideline is not a fake war or a childish dispute. It is a real war over genuine differences in how we should think about health and disease and prevention. The publication last November of the new US blood pressure guideline sparked a vigorous and important debate. A central part…
Cardiology Is Dead. Long Live Public Health.
September 7, 2017 by 8 Comments
Cardiology is dead. Here’s two new important pieces of evidence: The FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee hasn’t met since April 2015, and even then it was for the decidedly uninspiring drug cangrelor. And the committee has no meetings scheduled for the rest of this year. Take a look at the list of late-breaking…
The Unintended Consequences Of Bicycle Helmets
June 5, 2017 by 11 Comments
(UPDATED) –We should encourage people to cycle, not scare them away. From personal experience I can attest that it is almost impossible, in the US at least, to have an intelligent conversation about bicycle helmets. The universal view is that you have to be crazy not to wear a helmet. Since I almost never wear…
Study Finds Alarming Increase In US Bicycle Accidents
June 1, 2017 by 1 Comment
–But doesn’t consider the public health benefits of cycling The problem: bicycle accidents in adults in the U.S. now cost more than $24 billion a year. The solution: more, not fewer, bikes! A new paper published in the journal Injury Prevention finds that the number and costs of bicycle accidents in the U.S. have risen…
Screen-And-Treat to Prevent Diabetes Doomed to Fail
January 4, 2017 by 7 Comments
Screening must be supplemented by broader public health approaches. Screen and treat strategies to prevent type 2 diabetes are doomed to failure, according to a large new systematic review and meta-analysis published in The BMJ. Instead, the authors said and outside experts agreed, any effort to combat the already enormous and still growing problem of type 2…
Becoming Your Own Doctor In The Brave New World Of Personalized Medicine
January 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Lately there’s been a lot of talk about personalized medicine. There’s a bold idea going around that people should take control of their own healthcare and manage the flood of new data stemming from a whole bunch of new technologies, including, but hardly limited to, personal genomes, biomarkers, wireless sensors, and iPhone ECGs. … …boutique-style…
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