I still recall the ICU physician holding my hand and preparing me for the possibility I might not survive the blood clots in my lungs, pulmonary embolism. It was eighteen years ago when out of the blue, I found myself unexpectedly holding the hand of t…
Frustration. If you’ve treated patients with PTSD, I’m guessing that both you and your patients have experienced frustration at numerous points along the treatment course. And it’s understandable – up until this point, the effic…
Despite health professionals’ efforts at conveying the effectiveness of immunization, many African Americans remain skeptical about the COVID-19 vaccine. Getting to the root of this distrust is critical as the Delta and Omicron variants stoke up …
With apologies to the late Yankees slugger Yogi Berra, for pandemic-weary Americans, it’s like “déjà vu all over again,” as new lockdowns and mandatory mask mandates are being imposed across the globe. The latest threat, the Omicron C…
A recent headline in my neighborhood newspaper read, “A Dentist Became a Top Opioid Buyer in W. Va. Now a Drug Firm Faces Penalty for Ignoring Red Flags.” The drug firm sent 25,400 hydrocodone pills and 3,600 Xanax to one Huntington, WV are…
Attention-grabbing headlines suggest that our crucial COVID-19 pandemic tools—monoclonal antibodies and vaccines—are incompatible. Beyond the controversy rests an evidence-based reality: monoclonal antibodies and vaccines are complementary aspects of p…
When the FDA approved Gilead’s Truvada (emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil) for HIV PrEP in 2012, it was a revolutionary step forward. The drug was safe and up to 99 percent effective in preventing HIV infection in at-risk individuals. Then in 20…
How did we Americans allow health insurers to dictate how physicians practice good medicine? The hypocritic oath says, “Do no harm.” We should not allow insurance company profits to prevent proper care for patients. Our insurer is now telli…
On Monday, November 1, an Orange County California Superior Court Judge said, in a tentative decision, that the opioid pharmaceutical companies were not responsible for the opioid crisis. This particular case, going by the name of “The People of the St…
There is an urgent need for innovation in cancer treatments. Although we’ve seen significant progress in indications for drugs treating particular diseases, cancer research data shows that 10-year survival statistics for cancers such as esophageal and …
