Collection of Essays

Some of my longer posts are really written in the form of essays. I've decided to collect their links and post them within a single list. A link to this list, visible in the right margin, will be given the informative title "Essays". Hopefully, this will make finding them more straight-forward. In addition, instead of posting the complete essay on my main page, I'll just post a summary with a link to the complete version. Hopefully this will relieve some clutter.

One last point: Because these particular posts will be more "archival" in nature, I may elect to violate my general principle of not editing my entries after posting. Hopefully this will give me the opportunity to correct errors and ludicrous sentence constructions and spellings. Other posts, not falling into this category, will continue to be left unmodified.

I realize that longer posts are less likely to be read but who knows, it could happen!

Click here for essay list.Here are the links to a number of my essays:

End of Life Issues

The Difference Between Living Wills and Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare. 3/28/05

The Distinction Between the Withdrawal of Futile Therapy and Euthanasia. 3/16/05

Feeding Tubes and Heroic Life Support. 3/30/05

The Groningen Protocol Revisited. 3/11/05

Terri Schiavo and the definition of persistent vegetative state. 3/21/05

Terri Schiavo and the O'Reilly Solution. 4/7/05

Health Care Economics

The End of Primary Care. 2/3/06

Health Insurance: Catastrophic vs. Insular. 4/13/05

How do we spur development of new antibiotics? 3/8/05

The Impact of Malpractice Reform. 3/25/05

New York Times Gets It Right About Health Care. 11/5/07

Paul Krugman, Your Doctor Is Calling. 11/21/07

Physicians Upset About Nurse Anesthetist Incomes. 4/1/07

Primary Care Brain Drain. 5/11/05

The Value of Life. 5/21/05

Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay for Hearing Aids. 12/19/07

Humor

The End of a Hotdog Eating Dynasty. 7/5/07

MRI’s and Demons of the Night. 11/16/07

Regarding Oscar the Cat. 9/7/07

Malpractice

The Impact of Malpractice Reform. 3/25/05

Medical Quality Innovations

Computerized Physician Order Entry Systems. 4/15/05

Electronic Medical Record May Be Cost-Effective. 7/19/07

Emergency Department Waiting Times. 4/22/05

Healthcare Delivery and Mandatory Language Translators. 4/2/05

Hospitalists serve no purpose. 6/5/05

Making a Buck Off of Disease Management Programs. 1/24/06

Political Expediency vs. Science. 6/13/05

Rapid Response Teams: Still Wondering After Allllllllll These Years. 11/27/07

Medical Ethics

Our Modern Watered-Down Hippocratic Oath. 4/5/05

A Painful Application of Medical Ethics. 5/5/05

A poignant question with a difficult answer. 2/25/05

Religion, Philosophy, and Vaccinations. 10/18/07

Medicine

A Brand New Technology for Distinguishing Between Viral and Bacterial Meningitis? 10/26/05

Evidence-based Medicine Meets CPR. 5/2/05

The Painful Limits of Western Medicine. 8/22/05

Public Citizen vs. the FDA and Iressa. 3/7/05

Miscellaneous

Grease Fires As a Metaphor For Growing Up. 11/18/07

Who am I to be pontificating about medicine? 2/20/05

Why I’m Not a Hunter. 10/25/06

Moral Indignation

Controversy regarding the new human papilloma virus vaccine. 11/1/05

Let's help the tobacco companies! 9/3/06

Psychiatry, A Tool of Social Engineering. 3/22/06

The Shame of William Swanson, Raytheon CEO. 5/6/06

Political Correctness

Choking on Caution. 1/30/07

"Cultural Competency" and Medical Licensing. 4/18/05

Open Letter to Bucknell University's Executive to the President. 9/29/05

Regarding Subversive Children’s Books. 2/8/07

Should the Law “Recognize” Friendship? 11/7/07

Questionable Science

FDA Approval of Marketing the COX-2 Inhibitors. 2/22/05

Plan B and the FDA. 5/16/05

Psychiatry and the Surgical Treatment of Depression Part I. 5/22/05

Psychiatry and the Surgical Treatment of Depression Part II. 5/23/05

Silliness in the New England Journal of Medicine or something worse? 4/21/06

A Tree Grows in Oregon...Maybe. 6/12/06

Trouble in Shangri-La. 5/22/06

Dr Roberts Responds to My TCSDaily Article. 6/1/06

Statistics

Liars, Clinical Tests and a Bit of Math. 5/19/05

Probability and Medicine. 5/3/05

Statistics and the Medical Residents Who Misunderstand Them. 11/20/07