The medical arena, like society at large, is permeated with self-interest. This reality makes me very skeptical that comparative effectiveness research, which I support, will get airborne. In medicine, every heath care reform, new medicine, new medical device or revised medical guideline is at some constituency’s expense. Recognizing and dismantling conflicts of interests is one of our greatest challenges and threats. When I was a gastroenterology fellow over 20 years, our department was active in new technologies to crush and dissolve gallstones and stones that had wandered from the gallbladder into the liver pipes. Millions of dollars of R & D were spent and the procedures were done in specialized centers in the U.S and abroad. The treatments were cumbersome and only modestly effective, but the treatments continued year after year. Then, laparoscopic cholecystectomy arrived, a new operation that could remove gallbladders with much less pain and recovery time. At that momen
MD Whistleblower presents vignettes and commentaries on the medical profession. We peek 'behind the medical curtain' and deliver candor and controversy in every post.