An Op-Ed Commentary in the Lincoln Journal on March 7 reminded me that the forces of darkness and ignorance are alive and strong even in our communities. The writer proposed to remove fluoridation from our water despite almost seven decades of clearly beneficial results. I had to respond.
The British Medical Journal (www.bmj.com) just reported that a review of studies of egg consumption determined that there was no increase in heart attacks or strokes related to regular eating of eggs.
Immunizations are effective, safe and a bulwark of good preventive medicine against really bad diseases. Influenza, tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis, and herpes zoster vaccines are particularly important for everyone. Get your flu shot this week if you didn’t already do so!
Normandy and its memorials from World War II are profoundly affecting and important to understand our world. Dr. Kanner strongly recommends you experience it first-hand.
Blood-borne infections rapidly injure and kill people whose immune systems are compromised by cancer that requires chemotherapy or serious infections such as AIDS. Our best traditional lab techniques usually take several days to give an accurate microbial identification that allows specific antimicrobial therapy to be instituted. T2 Biosystems is far along in applying magnetic resonance (MR) technology to allow prompt detection of such blood-borne pathogens in whole-blood samples, potentially shortening the identification period to a few hours. This will likely substantially reduce the high mortality rates in such severe infections.
Orchard Health Care member John McDonough is the CEO of T2 Biosystems. I found his description of his company’s work to be fascinating. The molecular technology they are developing is an exciting example of how biomedical science is rapidly and dramatically improving our lives. I asked John to provide a short write-up of his company for our membership. OHC has many members involved with cutting-edge science, technology and business, as well as with the literary arts. I hope to have other OHC members describe their work or their company’s work in the coming months.
Technology: you can’t live without it, but it can drive you crazy and sop up your time. What do you make of a “technology minute?”
A front-page NY Times article about a Maryland doctor, “Family Physician Can’t Give Away Solo Practice” on page 1 April 23, 2011, explores the decline of personalized solo practice and acknowledges that “a centuries-old intimacy between doctor and patient” is being lost. Dr. Kanner comments in letter to editor.
We all need a health care agent to speak for us if we are incapacitated while critical decisions must be made about our care, for example, in an ICU. Your doctor discusses some of the many issues surrounding health care agents and provides a standard health care proxy form used to appoint the agent.
Dr. Kanner loves medical boredom because then the patient is almost always healthy. Interesting cases are intellectually fascinating but may have bad outcomes. Which would you prefer?