Health Culture Daily Dose #18

Baby ducks

Source: Wunderground

When did we start calling the whole day before Christmas “Christmas Eve?” I thought Christmas Eve was the evening before Christmas. But no. Senators voted on health care reform at 1:00 AM on Thursday December 24th. To me, that’s still Wednesday night, but it was widely reported as happening on Christmas Eve. Perhaps publishers want to save ink. Or we live in such fast times that it takes too long to say “The day before Christmas.”
Anyway, here’s a flock of interesting stories I’ve come across recently.

Aging, end-of-life, and death

The Breadth of Hope, Selling Hope, and More on Quelling Thanatophobia, (Pallimed: A Hospice & Palliative Medicine Blog)
One unspoken message behind the “sell hope for a cure” ads is “we will not only cure your cancer so that you can avoid death, but we’ll also make it so it’s a non-issue in your life so that you can return to the way things were before. It’ll kind of be like getting your car’s air conditioner recharged.”


Michael Jackson was just a symptom of a pain medicine problem, (Reporting on Health)
Americans are living longer. They are living to advanced ages and are more active than in the past. …. These people have more leisure time, and they want to have more active lifestyles than in the past. … The advances we have made in cancer, heart disease and other diseases means that people are living longer, often with illnesses. Rather than dying of an acute infection, their bodies are slowly wearing out. This means arthritis. This means pain.
Weighing Medical Costs of End-of-Life Care, (The New York Times)
“If you come into this hospital, we’re not going to let you die.”
Giving dignity to `bad deaths, (Toronto Star)
Two Toronto advertising veterans have come up with park bench plaques … meant to draw attention to the fact that death can be excruciatingly difficult and to stir up debate about euthanasia and the need for living wills.

Animals/The environment

‘Rewilding the World’ by Caroline Fraser, (The Washington Post)
In “Rewilding the World,” Caroline Fraser follows individuals who are making bold attempts to save species without resorting to booby traps.

Corporate interests vs. the public good

Pfizer’s Jeff Kindler On Corporate Trust, (Pharmalot)
“If we fail to change, the future will not be pretty – for business or for society as a whole,” he told the crowd. “People have had enough, and the backlash is real.”

Diagnostic testing

Screening Mammography and the “R” Word, (The New England Journal of Medicine)
Rationing is not a four-letter word. No health care system in the world, including our own, is free from the necessity of rationing. As long as a health care system has anything less than an infinite budget, there is a need to decide which types of health care will be funded and which will not.

Doctors

In Iran, death by poison salad and a hair-cream overdose, (The Christian Science Monitor)
Iranian whistleblower Dr. Ramin Pourandarjan was killed by a poison salad, says prosecutor, in the fourth explanation of his Nov. 10 death. It’s not the first bizarre death in Iranian political circles.

Doctor/patient relationship

The Virtual Visit May Expand Access to Doctors, (The New York Times)
Americans could soon be able to see a doctor without getting out of bed, in a modern-day version of the house call that takes place over the Web.

Health care/Politics

Winning ugly, but winning, (The Washington Post – Ezra Klein)
Passing legislation, it turns out, is a long and ugly process. God, is it ugly. … By the end, you’re passing a compromise of a deal of a negotiation of a concession.
A culture war cease-fire. (The Washington Post – E.J. Dionne Jr.)
In this highly partisan year, we did not see a sharpening of the battles over religion and culture.
Why Health Care Reform Is So Difficult in the United States, (The Health Care Blog)
Another factor that may also make a different is the influence of partisan news networks, especially Fox News, and of talk radio, that spread emotional and often misleading arguments, fuel populist feelings and dumb down the debate.
Would Reform Bills Control Costs? A Response To Atul Gawande, (Health Affairs Blog)
His analysis is deeply flawed. … First, the agriculture analogy is inapt.

Health news

Tylenol May Ease Headaches and Heartaches, (BusinessWeek)
Acetaminophen — best known as Tylenol — is usually taken to relieve physical pain, but a new study suggests that the over-the-counter drug may also help ease the psychological pain of rejection.

Medicalization

How a Bone Disease Grew to Fit the Prescription, (National Public Radio)
This is the story of how pills for osteopenia ended up in Benghauser’s medicine cabinet, and in the medicine cabinets of millions of women like her all over the United States. But more broadly, it’s the story of how the definition of what constitutes a disease evolves, and the role that drug companies can play in that evolution.
Boning Up On How Merck Marketed Fosamax (Pharmalot)
Did you know that ostopenia is considered by many physicians to be normal thinning of bones as aging occurs? And that in 1992 a group of osteoporisis experts met in Rome and decided arbitrarily who should be treated for ostopenia? Essentially, they created a new category and never imagined the term would become a marketing cry for Merck to sell Fosamax.

Sports injuries

Former NFL star Dave Pear is sorry he ever played football (Sports Illustrated)
Pear is sitting at his home in Seattle. His neck hurts. His hips hurt. His knees hurt. His feet hurt. When he wakes up in the morning, pain shoots through his body. When he goes to sleep at night, pain shoots through his body.
Helmet Standards Are Latest N.F.L. Battleground, (The New York Times)
The National Football League has spent the last month announcing major changes to its treatment of brain injuries and placating some of its most vocal critics. Meanwhile, the league’s committee on concussions is quietly devising new helmet safety standards that are raising familiar questions of faulty science and conflict of interest.

World risk society

Drug Making’s Move Abroad Stirs Concerns, (The New York Times)
“The lack of regulation around outsourcing is a blind spot that leaves room for supply disruptions, counterfeit medicines, even bioterrorism.”

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