Dr. Ozzy is in to answer health questions
It’s unlikely the new health columnist for London’s Sunday Times Magazine will be joining the Association of Health Care Journalists any time soon.
(Stefan Ruiz/The Sunday Times Magazine)
Notorious rocker and reality television star Ozzy Osbourne is writing a health advice column for the publication.
Osbourne says his new gig “makes perfect sense: I’ve seen literally thousands of doctors over my lifetime, and spent well over £1m on them, to the point where I sometimes think I know more about being a doctor than doctors do.”
Dr. Ozzy, as he says he’ll be known, admits he hasn’t exactly lived the healthiest lifestyle but says he’s cleaned up his act and now only takes drugs for “real things, such as high cholesterol, depression or heartburn.”
In a column introducing him as the new columnist, he describes prostate exams and colon cancer tests as only he could. Of course, it also includes less-than-scientific advice about getting screenings.
His first column addresses quitting smoking (”put your son off cigarettes by making him ill. Throw some fag ash on his cornflakes.”) and dealing with a cancer diagnosis (”you shouldn’t feel bad about being a mess”). His next column touts the benefits of penicillin after a fan found himself “entertaining a woman of questionable morality” and he answers a question from a woman whose son is nervous about his driving test.
By the way, the best headline for this story: “Ozzy Osbourne as a health columnist? Crazy, but that’s how it goes” comes from the Stuck in the ’80s blog on tampabay.com.
Patients at risk after free public screening
UPDATE: Commenter CT points out that the students involved were not medical school students but were in the University of New Mexico physician assistant program, a fact confirmed on the university’s web page about the incident.
Following news this week that two drug companies were hit with punitive damages after vials of the anesthetic propofol were re-used and infected patients with hepatitis C, The Associated Press’ Susan Montoya Bryan reports that “a group of New Mexico medical school students failed to properly change needles on devices used for blood glucose testing” putting people at risk for contracting serious diseases, such as hepatitis and HIV.
Photo by AlishaV via Flickr
More than 50 people were tested during a free event during the American Indian Week Pueblo Day on April 24 in Albuquerque, N.M., which was attended by people from all over the world: “The center’s visitor list for that Saturday included more than 1,600 people from across the nation and abroad – including Canada, Italy, Sweden and Germany.”
Bryan reports that the students used devices, similar to home glucose testers, which contain six lancets that are triggered to draw a blood sample. “With each use, the device must be advanced manually to load a new lancet.”
A spokesman for University of New Mexico’s Health Sciences Center says “the devices should not have been used at the public event and not all of the students were properly trained to use them. ”
Public health authorities have requested that those who participated in the testing event call 888-899-6092 or visit the UNM website for more information and referral for screening.
Panel recommends FDA restrict MRI scan drugs
An advisory panel has “recommended Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration effectively ban, for patients with severe kidney disease, the use of two drugs used to create high-contrast images on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.” ProPublica’s Jeff Gerth has been reporting on the issue for some time and offers some valuable background on the topic.
The drugs in question are GE’s Omniscan and Covidien’s Optimark. Bayer’s Magnevist, the category’s market leader, escaped the most serious censure, but all three agents have been linked to nephrogenic systemic fibrosis, a rare but very serious disease.
Parikh: Celebs’ medical advice should be tempered
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Writing for Slate, Rahul Parikh chronicles the damage done by medical advice-dispensing celebrities then, acknowledging their influence and staying power, argues that physicians need to learn to work with these prominent folks and their pet causes.
In a sobering reminder of the line between journalism and celebrity advocacy, Parikh holds up colonoscopy advocate and news anchor Katie Couric as an example of the positives and negatives of celebrities with health-related causes.
Couric partners with doctors instead of undermining them like anti-establishment heroes Jenny McCarthy and Suzanne Somers, but she doesn’t disclose potential colonscopy risks or alternatives to the invasive procedure. Parikh also points out that celebrity sound bites don’t come with the high-speed, stacatto renditions of the small print that are required for other medical advertising, which leaves folks with a one-sided impression of the treatment.
Rounding up some of the latest health coverage
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public health
With good topics for the blog flooding in and a short holiday week to get them all posted, I’m taking a shortcut to point you toward some interesting stories:
ProPublica: What Health Care Reform Means for the underinsured
Rapidly rising premiums have forced them to increase their deductible every year, and now they have a policy with a $5,000 deductible per illness per year.
Steve Lopez in the Los Angeles Times: A doctor is flummoxed by the costs when he becomes the patient
As a physician, he’s well aware that emergency room treatment is very expensive. But knowing the true cost of the limited supplies and labor required to treat such a minor wound, he found the experience more than a little disturbing.
Trevor Butterworth in Forbes.com: Why mall Santas do need the H1N1 vaccine, featuring AHCJ board member Maryn McKenna’s take on how well the media has covered H1N1.
McKenna gives the media a “gentleman’s C” for its coverage of swine flu, but believes it has been getting better in the past few months.
AHCJ member Elaine Schattner, M.D., in the Huffington Post: Mammography: A Not-So-Fatalistic View
I’m a medical oncologist and breast cancer survivor who holds a highly informed and intensely personal perspective on the subject. In my view, the press is getting and giving the wrong message on mammography. There are significant flaws in recent analyses that have escaped most headlines.
Can Americans learn that less may be better?
AHCJ member Laura Newman, the About.com guide to urology, writes about whether consumers will embrace the message that “‘less is more,’ when science confirms it.” In this case, Newman focuses on the American Urological Association’s guideline for kidney cancer treatment, released in April, that called for saving the kidney whenever possible.
Taken in the context of the conflicts in the past few weeks over recommendations for less PSA screening, less breast cancer screening, and less cervical cancer screening, I commend the AUA and other physician organizations for reviewing the balance of benefits and harms in treating early-stage kidney cancer more aggressively.
Hockey, theater tickets for prostate screenings
Gary Schwitzer, professor at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism & Mass Communication and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, writes about the Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s promotion of its “Prostate Club for Men,” complete with prizes for men who discuss screening.
As Schwitzer points out, there is no mention of the potential harms of prostate cancer treatment or the fact that some prostate cancers grow so slowly that they never produce symptoms or become life threatening. Instead, the club says the screening is “quick and simple, and it could save your life.”
The club’s Web site even carries a message from a local anchorman urging men to be screened for prostate cancer, again, with nothing about potential harms.
Effectiveness debate over virtual colonscopies
Officials are considering whether or not Medicare will cover virtual colonoscopies, a technology that, while cheaper and far less invasive, may also be less reliable. Los Angeles Times reporter Noam N. Levey looked at how the debate over colorectal screening illuminates the difficulties inherent in the larger discussion about the Obama administration’s push for efficient health-care spending.
According to Levey, “Colorectal cancer is highly treatable if detected early, but it remains the nation’s second deadliest cancer, in large part because half of adults over 50 do not get screened.” Levey reported that patients avoid screening primarily because they wish to avoid the sedation or discomfort that accompany the procedure.
Doctors and researchers do not yet agree on the effectiveness of virtual scanning, and it still requires unpleasant preparations like colon-cleansing and the insertion of air into the intestine. Nonetheless, it promises to offer a relatively enticing alternative to the traditional colonoscopy.
Some studies have indicated that the procedure can detect most polyps as well as traditional colonoscopy. But others have suggested it is not be as good at detecting some smaller polyps.
Disputes over the cost-effectiveness of virtual colonoscopy further complicated the analysis.
The agency’s extensive year-long review of the efficacy of virtual colonoscopy shows just how much budgetary pressure Medicare is under during a period of increased scrutiny and reform.
Medicare, which will spend more than $500 billion this year, is under increasing pressure to contain spending that many experts say threatens the whole federal budget.
Of particular concern has been the rising cost of scans. Medicare spent more than $14 billion on imaging in 2006, double what it spent six years earlier, according to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office.
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