MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
By Elisabeth Rosenthal, M.D., New York Times Sunday Review, June 2/3, 2012
[....] why do Americans, nearly alone on the planet, remain so devoted to the ritual physical exam and to all of these tests, and why do so many doctors continue to provide them? Indeed, the last decade has seen a boom in what hospitals and health care companies call “executive physicals” — batteries of screening exams for apparently healthy people, purporting to ferret out hidden disease with the zeal of Homeland Security officers searching for terrorists.
In 1979, a Canadian government task force officially recommended giving up the standard head-to-toe annual physical based on studies showing it to be “nonspecific,” “inefficient” and “potentially harmful,” replacing it instead with a small number of periodic screening tests, which depend in part on a patient’s risk factors for illness. Faced with such evidence, I have not gotten an annual physical since around the time I finished my medical training in 1989. I respect my doctors, but I see them only when I’m sick. I religiously follow schedules for the limited number of screening tests recommended for women my age [....]
Also see,
if you're in the mood for more on money-driven "preventive" medicine in the USA (warning: venturing into the comments section is especially depressing and not because it's the usual internet blog commentariat, but lots of medical professionals arguing on topic):
Waking Up to Major Colonoscopy Bills
By Roni Caryn Rabin, The Consumer @ Well blog @ nytimes.com, May 28, 2012
Comments
I definitely have mixed feelings. She right given the state of play in US healthcare that most of the physicals and resulting tests are a waste of time and money. But they don't have to be.
We are missing a tremendous opportunity to collect information and learn more about human health and afflictions that could benefit us and future generations as well. It would not have been possible in the past to manage the volumes of data collected but now we can. For example:
by EmmaZahn on Sun, 06/03/2012 - 8:46pm
I was pretty unconvinced by the "let's not get physicals" argument. There are actually a lot of years where, if I don't go in for my annual physical, I might not even see a doctor. Not sure that's a great thing.
by Michael Maiello on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 11:21am
And just think about it, since most of what medical data already exists comes from the ill and injured, routine physicals of healthy people could very well provide the most useful data of all.
by EmmaZahn on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 12:08pm
Emma, you wrote:
Yep, exactly and yes to everything you and destor said up-thread.
by tmccarthy0 on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 12:12pm
Thanks.
by EmmaZahn on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 3:37am