Back in 1998, as head of the WHO, Gro Harlem Brundtland, a physician and public servant from Norway, spoke with confidence from her global platform and saw her message being amplified by the exploding Internet. She repositioned health as part goodness and part fairness, emphasizing science, training and technologic discovery in equal measures with equity, justice […]
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Over the decades, I’ve developed a bias that we doctors are fast to say what we know, slow to say what we don’t know, and overly comfortable with 180 degree reversals on prior opinions without so much as a “Sorry! We got this one wrong.” When we’re right, the results can be dramatic. Take our […]
This past week I spent a day in Washington, DC, as part of Bob Kerrey and Newt Gingrich’s National Commission for Quality Long-Term Care. They had arranged a terrific list of expert testimony and the commissioners themselves have decades of experience in the field. They include a senator, a congressman, and two governors. The net result […]
A recent Wall Street Journal article made a direct connection between corn prices and McDonald’s pricing and profitability. And well they should. As outlined in this week’s Health Politics, a visit to fast food outlets in the U.S. and around the world means that you’ll be eating corn (from which the beef, the bun and the […]
I passed a billboard in Manhattan recently that read “Burning calories is now officially delicious.” Enter Enviga, joint venture of Coca-Cola Co. and Nestle. At $1.45 per 12 oz can, it comes with what the marketers say are “negative calories.” How so? Well, it has 5 calories. But they say that a critical ingredient extracted […]
The New York Times recently reported on a Harvard School of Public Health study revealing that cigarette makers deliberately manipulate nicotine levels in cigarettes to make them more addictive. No real surprise there. Dr. David Kessler, former head of the FDA, at the time that the FDA was pushing to gain regulatory control over nicotine, […]
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Paying Attention to Water
Most of us take water for granted. We turn on the tap, and there it is. But the truth is, by 2025, 63% of the world’s population will be living in water-scarce areas. That’s why, as I mention in this week’s Health Politics program, we must be extremely mindful of not only where our water […]
