Having worked as a copywriter and creative director at some of the world’s top ad agencies, including McCann Erickson (now McCann Worldgroup), I am vehemently critical of new advertising. Why? I know the tricks and how they manipulate well —…
Category: Medications
GMP vs. non-GMP: the hidden truth about your supplements
Suppose you are looking for multivitamin supplements. You pick up two containers of multivitamins and wonder which one you should get. At first glance, they have similar labels, but then you notice that one has a comment indicating that the supplement …
Doctors beware: the hidden legal risks of following CME guidelines
I have a problem with some of the continuing medical education courses offered by large health care institutions, even those like Harvard and Mayo, which have outstanding reputations for evidence-based medicine. That’s because what they teach, al…
How biased medical experts are destroying doctors’ lives and careers in the opioid crisis
As a U.S. health care writer and patient advocate for almost 30 years, I read a lot. Recently, some of that reading is in court transcripts of doctors being persecuted out of medicine or into jail by various prosecutors and their hired “experts….
Doctors under fire: Is the DEA turning them into drug dealers?
In the state of New York (you already know it’s going to be bad), a doctor and a pharmacist were arrested in a sting operation conducted by a joint task force of the DEA, FBI, IRS, and probably CIA and CBS, though I have no proof of the latter tw…
Why isn’t medical advertising regulated like other advertising?
As long as you live, you will never hear an article from news media contending that “America Runs On Duncan.” Why? Because the line is a marketing allegation created by the advertising company and designed to sell product. Yet news media re…
A true win for the DEA and society at large
In most physician prosecutions for treating pain or addiction, there is never any actual evidence of criminal intent. Just the nebulous argument that a doctor “ignored the risk of overdose,” “ignored the risk of addiction,” or p…
From conviction to appeal: a doctor’s opioid case sparks debate
A doctor in Virginia named Joel Smithers was serving a 40-year sentence in an Atlanta prison when he won his appeal to the 4th Circuit. No, he didn’t shoot someone. That’s probably 25 years. He treated patients in pain. Now, he will get a n…
Are you storing your medications wrong?
Today, I want to talk about how creative humans are. As physicians, we encounter patients with ideas that amaze us every day and make our lives interesting, to say the least. The best ones are often the elderly, who have years of experience and unique …
Young lives at risk: the unseen dangers of fentanyl addiction
When we go charging in blood vessels at breathtaking speed to relieve the blockade that otherwise may bring a sad end to life, we expect to be doing it for the mature and elderly. The stress and strains upon the heart through the journey that is life u…
