A Mental Health Tragedy Revisited

On December 11 I did a post on the tragic story in which Marci Thibault, in a state of psychosis, took actions that led to her death and th...

The Sad Case of Nataline Sarkisyan Continues

Almost a year ago, in the context of the New Hampshire primary, I criticised John Edwards for politicizing the death of seventeen year old N...

Psychiatric Ethics in Mumbai

Because of (a) my clinical specialty (psychiatry) and (b) the fact that I'll be spending time in Mumbai next month, the headline "...

Hatred of Insurance Companies

The Obama transition team is sponsoring 4,200 house party-based grass roots discussions of health care in December. Today's New York Tim...

The Invisibleness of Money

Here's a letter to the editor from today's New York Times: December 22, 2008 Generic Drugs: Let Patients and Doctors Decide To the...

Mayo Clinic Skipped Written Informed Consent - Bravo!

A headline caught my eye this morning - "Mayo Skipped Written Consent." Before I say more I have to acknowledge a conflict of int...

Health Care Rights in India and the U.S.

In yesterday's post on "Drug Marketing in Mumbai" I mentioned that I'm reading ethics literature from India in preparation...

Drug Marketing in Mumbai

I'll be in India for a month in 2009. One purpose of the trip is to learn about medical ethics education, ethics committees and the broa...

Why Ethics Has a Bad Name

Here's an excerpt from an article about Illinois Governor Blagojevich I read over coffee in this morning's New York Times: The mome...

A Mental Health Tragedy

At 8:00 PM on Friday January 11, 2008, Marci Thibault came to her twin sister's home to pick up her 4 year old nephew Shane and 5 year o...

MRI and CT - the Curse of Incidentalomas

In 2001, 225 leading general internists were asked to rank 30 medical innovations in terms of their importance for patient care (see Health ...

NICE is teaching the world about health care limits

Today's New York Times has a fascinating article about the firestorm triggered by NICE's decision not to cover Sutent, an cancer dru...

Shared Medical Appointments - a Clinical and Ethical Innovation

Yesterday's Boston Globe had a fascinating article about shared medical appointments at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates (HVMA), the...