Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
© Elaine Schattner, 2009, 2022 By : Template Sell.
So many others have written on Wakefield’s fraud, and considered the role of the press in perpetuating the notion that vaccines cause autism, I wasn’t going to cover it here on ML. But I do think there are a few instructive points from this “lesson” about medical communication and news:
1. People aren’t always rational in their decisions about health care. (This is an understatement.)
Dr. John Snow, an anesthesiologist and founder of public health, recognized the mode of cholera’s spread more than 150 years ago in London, where he became famous for mandating the closure of the Broad Street Pump. Snow died at the age of 45, of what was said to be apoplexy, old jargon for a stroke.
In 2009, there were 221,226 cholera cases reported and 4,946 cholera deaths in 45 countries, according to the CDC. Based on information put together by the World Health Organization,
A new report from the “Make our Food Safe” project, based at Georgetown University, makes clear that food-borne illnesses – from bacteria, parasites and a few viruses – are ever-present and costly.
The study, authored by Robert Scharff and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, finds that food-borne illnesses tally nearly $152 billion per year. This huge sum includes some subjectively-measured expenses like pain, suffering and missed work. Even without those, the toll registers above $100 billion – it’s a big sum, either way.
The main culprits are
