Jagged Little Pills

Writing prescriptions for medications is routine part of being a doctor, but you might be surprised to learn some of the following secrets about physicians' attitude toward it all.

• They may be writing you a prescription because it's easier than convincing you that you don't actually need it.
• Just because a drug is new, fancy and expensive does not mean that it's the best. Trust your doctor if they're prescribing you something tried and true.
• Taking psychiatric drugs affects your ability to get health insurance. If you take Prozac, it may be harder and more expensive for you to get life insurance, health insurance, or long-term-care insurance.
• Doctors allow themselves to be bribed by drug companies; 94% of doctors take gifts from drug companies, even though research has shown that these gifts bias their clinical decision making. Apparently, money (and free vacations) does talk.

Among the reform issues that is most pressing is the need for universal childrens' health insurance programs. On that note, the new health care reform bill has worked swiftly to help protect the health of children. It's wonderful that the needs of the children of our country are being addressed immediately. One of the most promising elements of the reform bill is the requirement that insurance companies can't deny coverage to children based on preexisting conditions; this measure will go into effect within months of passage.

One of the controversial topics that spawned proposals for health care reform is the issue of how wasteful the U.S. health care system is. According to a report made by Thomson Reuters, a U.S. based-information company, an amount between $505 and $850 billion is wasted in the current system annually.

On March 18 of this year, the first cases of swine flu began to appear in Mexico City. Though cases of swine flu had presented themselves prior to March of 2009, it was a relatively rare and benign type of flu. In fact, there were only twelve human cases of swine flu in the U.S. from December of 2005 to February of 2009.

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have completely decoded the genes of a cancer sufferer and discovered several mutations that may have caused the development of the fatal disease.

The results, published in the journal, Nature, stated that cells which were donated by a woman in her 50s – who subsequently died of leukemia – were studied by the researchers in order to help map the characteristics of the specific DNA of the cancer sufferer.